‘Bless your life, mum, everybody else does! It was the doctor gived me the name and if it’s good enough for him, then who’s to say different? The kettle’s on the boil, Mrs MacMalcolm. You’ll both be wanting a drink of tea?’
Alice looked around her, remembering. The house was still pretty and white; white windows and doors, outside; white-painted woodwork inside, with white-painted furniture in a style popular at the turn of the century and Anne Lavinia Sutton had not thought to change. The house was full of greenery, then. Pots of ferns and trailing plants everywhere, though now there were none to be seen. Died from neglect, she supposed. ‘The plants?’ she ventured.
‘Mm. I shall have to buy more. I want it to be just as it was when Aunt lived here. Sparrow will see to them. She’s coming to live in, caretake the place – did I tell you?’
‘You didn’t – but it’s time for Daisy to be fed. Can I go upstairs?’
‘That you can, mum,’ Sparrow smiled. ‘The cot is made up and a warmer in it. And there’s a comfy chair for you to sit in. Anything you want, just call out. Sparrow’s here to take care of you all.’
‘She’s so pleased to be moving in here,’ Julia murmured as she watched Daisy feeding contentedly. ‘She’s a widow; her son was killed in the war, too. She’s only got the pound I send her each month for keeping an eye on 53A, and a few shillings a week pension. Hadn’t much to live on, when her rent had been paid. She’ll be a lot better off, when she lives here. Paradise, she says it will be.’
‘And will she still look after Andrew’s lodgings?’
‘No. I – I’m going to let the place go. The lease expires at the end of the year. I won’t renew it.’
‘I see. I think you’ll be doing the right thing, though it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?’
‘It’ll hurt like hell – as if I’m betraying him. That’s why I want you with me. I’m not brave enough to do it alone. You were with me the night Andrew and I met. You are a part of us. I want you to be there when I say goodbye.’
‘And I will be, though it won’t be goodbye, Julia. Just an acceptance that he’s gone. It won’t be easy. I didn’t want to let Tom go. And where is Drew?’ she demanded, eager to talk about other things.
‘Drew’s fine. He’s in the kitchen with Sparrow. He always finds someone to fuss over him. At Rowangarth he’s got Cook wrapped round his little finger – now it’s Sparrow. They’ve both got one thing in common – a cake tin filled with iced cherry buns.’ Julia was smiling again. ‘You do like him, Alice? Seeing him didn’t upset you, like it used to – bring it all back?’
‘No. I’m Alice Dwerryhouse, now. Drew is your little boy. And nothing that happened was his fault; I accept that, now. How is the adoption going?’ she murmured.
‘We-e-ll – I’ve been going to tell you about that. After a lot of thought – mostly by Carver-the-young – I think it won’t be so much an adoption as a change of legal guardian. Young Carver says it’s all that’s necessary and won’t be half so much fuss. Things are a bit behind, because of Aunt Sutton, but we’ll keep you au fait with everything. You aren’t going to change your mind?’
‘You know I won’t. Drew belongs at Rowangarth – it’s as simple as that. And one day, when they are older, we’ll tell them, won’t we?’
‘You and me both, Alice. One day …’
They took the motor bus to Newgate Street, walked up King Edward Street, then they were there, in Little Britain; in the street where Andrew’s lodgings stood beside a shop that sold stationery and newspapers, a few yards from the gates of St Bartholomew’s church.
53A, Little Britain. Julia looked at the windows, clean and shining, and the curtains; exactly the same curtains as when he had lived there.
‘It isn’t much of a street, is it?’ Alice had need to break the bleak, brooding silence.
‘No, but it was near the hospital and it was all he could afford. He was saving hard, you know, to buy his own practice. I told him I’d have money when I was twenty-one, but it made no difference, the stubborn man …’
‘I remember the day you first came here. Oh, but you had me worried, Julia. There was I, supposed to be looking after you, see you came to no harm, and there you were, insisting on going out alone – and to a man’s lodgings, an’ all!’
‘Things change, Alice. The war changed them,’ she smiled, sadly. ‘I remember how agitated you were when I told you I was going to call on Andrew. It wasn’t right, you said. And what if his wife answered the door …?’
‘Yet you came back safe and sound and in love. I could see it in your eyes.’
‘I told you it would be all right; said I wouldn’t do anything unladylike. Word of a Sutton, I said. I was shaking, though. It was such a relief when it was he who opened the door. And I remember exactly what he said.’
‘Tell me?’
‘He opened the door. I couldn’t speak, I was so ashamed at what I’d done. After all, I was running after him, wasn’t I? Then he smiled. He smiled and he said, “My dear – I hoped you would come.” And that was it, Alice. I knew there’d be no going back for either of us.’
‘And there wasn’t. Now unlock the door, love …’
The passage was dark and gloomy because all the doors leading off it had been closed. Julia stood still, listening, then tilting her chin she walked on, opening the kitchen door, standing again, waiting.
The room was clean, the table top scrubbed to whiteness. The cooking range was black and shining, a fire laid ready for a match.
‘When we were married – next morning – I couldn’t light that fire,’ Julia murmured. ‘I’d never cleaned out a grate nor laid a fire in my life. I was so angry, I wanted to weep. So we boiled a kettle on the gas ring and ate bread and jam for our breakfast.’
‘And I’ll bet he didn’t care.’
‘He didn’t. We just left everything and went to Aunt Sutton’s. She hadn’t come to our wedding, you’ll remember, so I wanted her to meet Andrew.
‘She gave us an oil painting of Rowangarth – a very old one – for a present, then announced, calm as you like, that she’d just made a new Will and I was to get everything.’
‘She liked Andrew, didn’t she?’ There was nothing for it, Alice knew, but to go along with Julia’s heartache – let her get it out of her the best way she knew how.
‘Mm. She said he had a look of Pa. Mother thought so, too. Mother adored him, right from the start.’
‘We all did. He was a fine man.’ Alice opened the parlour door and the same air of loneliness met them.
‘We never sat in this room. Not ever,’ Julia said, half to herself. ‘We were only here three days and when we weren’t out walking in London we were – well, we went to bed. Do you think that was awful?’
‘Of course I don’t, silly!’
‘His surgery.’ Julia turned her back on the parlour, gazing at the door opposite and the small brass plate bearing her husband’s name. Andrew MacMalcolm MD.
Alice opened the door wide, then stood aside.
The desk was highly polished, everything on it arranged by Sparrow with care and precision. Medical books and journals stood tidily on a shelf; a sheet was draped over a skeleton, covering it completely. Sparrow had not liked that skeleton.
‘I have all his instruments, at Rowangarth. I went to the field hospital after he was killed, took all his things away with me.’
‘Yes. You told me that day you came home to Rowangarth. I’d almost gone my