‘Oh, Mummy,’ Anna said, heaving a sigh and slumping into a chair, ‘I’ve had such adventures, but all I want to do is to see Dan. Is he with his grandmother, do you know?’
‘No idea; but I am on the telephone,’ Constance said, smiling. There was a peaceful serenity in her smile these days, which Anna found herself basking in, as though it were hot sunshine. Mummy did know best, contrary to what Anna had believed for so many years; Mummy knew that Dan was the right man for her daughter. ‘I’ll give Mrs
Lucas a ring and ask if Dan’s with her, if you like.’
‘Yes, if you … No! No, I’ll go over there myself, first thing tomorrow morning.’
She had felt she was on the right track from the moment she got on the train, but now she was positive that Dan would have gone to Blofield and his grandmother. He wouldn’t rush back to Paris because he knew that Anna would have moved heaven and earth to be at the coronation. He knows me, but that works both ways, she thought with a little smile. I know him: he’ll stay in London and do his duty to the very best of his ability and then he’ll go back to the place which is more home to him than anywhere else, his grandmother’s Victorian villa on Garden road, with the long back garden, the chickens in the run under the damson trees, and the small, square front garden with its monkey-puzzle and its formal flower beds. Yes, Dan would be there, giving his grandmother a hand, telling her all about the coronation and waiting. Waiting for Anna? She smiled again; whether he knew it or not, she was on his trail and would not give up this time.
She went to bed as soon as she’d eaten scrambled eggs on toast and drunk her coffee. She woke early, because Constance was moving around in the bathroom, getting ready for work. She was singing, something flippant about a girl who wore red feathers and a hooly-hooly skirt. She sounded happy. She is happy, Anna realised; she’s a different person now she hasn’t got to deal with Daddy.
Anna joined Constance for breakfast and they walked to the bus stop together. Constance got off on Castle Meadow and disappeared into Davey Place, but Anna stayed on the bus until Foundry Bridge hove into view, with the railway station beyond it. It was not practical to get a train, it meant walking up from Brundall, which was all uphill – but she got off her bus and ran all the way to
the next stop, feeling sixteen again, with the June sunshine warm on the back of her head. Presently a Number 7 came into view and she boarded it.
‘King’s Head, please. Single.’
The conductor turned the little handle and a thin paper ticket came out, pink on white today. Anna paid, took her ticket and tucked it into her pocket. Why had she bought a single? She really should have bought a return, it was asking for disappointment … But her optimism refused to be damped; the smile which curled her mouth refused to disappear. She sat on the front seat and watched the familiar road unfurl, and smiled at the flat fields on either side, the old oaks and elms which grew on the verges and hung their great branches so low that now and again the rasp of their twigs on the bus roof made the passengers jump. Everything was good today, everything reflected her sunny mood.
At the King’s Head she got down, crossed back over the Street, and dived down Garden Road. She had not visited Mrs Lucas since she was a teenager but she felt no qualms now. She marched along the unmade road, so little used by traffic that horseradish plants flourished in the centre of the carriageway, turned into Mrs Lucas’s gateway, went down the path, ignoring the front door, and around the side of the house. She was raising a hand to knock at the back door when something made her look down the long garden.
Dan was there, digging. In his shirtsleeves, with apparent enthusiasm, he was digging what looked like a cabbage patch. He was concentrating on his work and had not seen her … She was halfway down the path, pushing between laden currant bushes, when he looked up. He dropped his spade, and straightened.
Anna did not know how she got there, but suddenly she was in his arms, gabbling a lot of nonsense, trying to explain … and Dan was just holding her, now and
then kissing the side of her face. Then he was laughing, swinging her off her feet, calling her his darling, his best girl …
‘Oh Dan, I’m so sorry, I behaved like a fool,’ Anna said breathlessly. ‘Please, let’s get married very quickly, before I can be a fool again! These past two months have been the worst in my whole life.’
‘And mine,’ Dan said ruefully, resting his chin on the top of her head. ‘I told myself you’d come back, that it was right to let you make up your own mind, but there were times when I nearly came over to France, threw you across my saddle, and galloped off into the sunset.’
Anna giggled. ‘Oh Danny, do put me down, what’s your grandmother going to think?’
‘Doesn’t matter; let them all think what they like,’ Dan said, dropping small kisses across her forehead, cheek, chin. ‘We’ll go indoors and tell Gran, then we’ll see the vicar. I’ve always rather fancied a June wedding!’
Snip sat on by the bed, holding Nell’s hand, feasting his eyes on her. She had not meant any of the silly things she had said on that awful day when Mr Geraint had come to Pengarth. Perhaps he had known it even at the time, certainly he was sure of it quite soon afterwards, but dimly, in the back of his mind, he had realised that things could never be totally right between them until everything was out in the open, acknowledged. She had shown her love for him every day since their marriage, but she had never said outright that she loved him and wanted no one but him. His self-confidence had needed the reassurance of words as well as deeds, and it had not helped to know that she wouldn’t have children because she felt a family would tie her, cut the slight connection which still existed between her and Dan while she was theoretically free.
But it was all right now. Even righter, in fact, than she knew. It had been a tremendous shock to him, after three
days of crippling anxiety, to be told by a smiling doctor that she had come round briefly, had spoken rationally, and that she would not lose the baby after all, though they had been fearful …
‘Baby? Do you mean Hester?’
The doctor was young and red-haired. He had light brows and lashes and an understanding smile. But now he looked totally bewildered, with the light brows almost touching his curly red poll.
‘
Hester?
According to our records her name is Helen, not Hester. Have we made a mistake?’
‘No, she’s Helen all right. It’s her mother who’s Hester.’
The young doctor looked even more bewildered.
‘Her
mother
? What’s her mother got to do with it?’
‘You said … a baby, you said,’ Snip stammered. ‘Hester’s expecting a baby in September.’
‘That’s unusual,’ the doctor said. He looked warily at Snip. ‘Umm … do I take it, Mr Morris, that you were not aware that your wife, too, is pregnant?’
Snip could only stare, a tide of hot blood creeping up his neck and flooding his face. Nell, pregnant? There must be some mistake; he knew she had always been careful, she was determined not to have a family, she had said so often enough.
‘Well, Mr Morris? I assure you your wife
is
expecting a baby. She’s got a few months to go, but … does she know, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t suppose she does,’ Snip muttered. That big, foolish grin which he could never hide when blissfully happy was beginning to break out; he could feel his cheeks cracking with the strain of suppressing it. ‘She would have said something to someone … no, I don’t suppose she knows.’
‘And she’s twenty-seven? Then it’s high time she had a child,’ the doctor said cheerfully. ‘She’s young enough to cope and old enough to enjoy it. So you’ll have some
good news for her when she comes round, Mr Morris.’
And now here he sat, holding her hand, looking down at her, trying to see a difference in the slight mound of her beneath the bedclothes. A baby! he had longed for children, but it was her right to decide if and when they should start a family.
He had not told Anna, or Hester, or Matthew. The only person who knew about the baby apart from himself and the medical staff was Mr Geraint. The old man had come laboriously into the small hospital waiting room just before visiting time one evening, and even to Snip’s untutored eye, Mr Geraint had gone downhill since his visit to Pengarth less than two months ago.
‘I read in the papers that the girl was here, so I came to tell the pair of you that you and she are to have the castle,’ Geraint had said as soon as he set eyes on Snip. ‘She’s a good girl, always was. And you’re right for her – saw at a glance. Besides, I thought afterwards, she
is
a relative. She’s some sort of cousin, even though the bar sinister would stop Matthew from being publicly acknowledged. But I can leave Pengarth where I wish … most people think of it as a burden, not a gift … so it’ll be yours quite soon now.’
‘We’re having a baby,’ Snip had said, giving the only gift which was possible in return, and was rewarded. The old man’s eyes lit up and his smile was gentle, incredulous.
‘Little Nell, a mother herself,’ he murmured. ‘Well, well, I shan’t see the child but it’s good to know life goes on.’ He paused, then looked shyly at Snip from under the thick, greying brows. ‘Thought about a name for the nipper? Be nice to think there was something of me at Pengarth even when most of me’s six foot under.’
‘What if it’s a girl?’ Snip blurted, not pretending to misunderstand him. ‘You can’t call a girl Geraint!’
‘Second name? Like a sort of linked surname, perhaps?’
Snip nodded and put out his hand. ‘I’ll see to it,
sir,’ he said gruffly. ‘And thanks. For Pengarth and everything.’
‘I’ve done little enough,’ the old man said drily. ‘Mine has been an enjoyable life, but a somewhat selfish one, I fear.’
‘If it hadn’t been for you I’d never have met Nell,’ Snip pointed out. ‘In fact, she might have married someone else if it hadn’t been for a remark you made twenty years ago.’
Mr Geraint understood him. He grinned, and a mischievous look flashed across his face for a moment, stealing back the years, turning him into the handsome young man he once was.
‘Even lies, uttered as a threat, can do good, you mean? Goodbye, young Morris. Give her … give her my love when she wakes up.’ He turned to leave the room, then paused in the doorway. ‘One thing – just between the two of us, eh?’
‘Sure,’ Snip said, nodding. ‘I’ve always been good at secrets, especially other people’s.’
‘I never loved anyone the way I loved Hester Coburn,’ Geraint said slowly, reminiscently. ‘By God, she was a wild one … but the story would have had a different ending if I’d not lost touch with her after that first meeting in Rhyl, and found her again too late, married to Matthew.’
Nell woke for the second time to find herself alone, but with the warm feeling that someone – it must be Snip – had just left the room. She felt livelier now, altogether more like herself. She glanced down at the bed and there were her hands lying on top of the blue and white coverlet, pale but otherwise perfectly ordinary. She lifted one of them – this time it obeyed easily, naturally – and felt her face. A bandage was wound around her head. She poked her fingers beneath it; bristles? Oh glory, they must have
shaved her hair; what a guy she would look when they took the bandages off!
She was still smiling as she looked about her. She was alone in a small room with a big window curtained in cream and gold chintz and a door with a glass panel. At the end of the bed was a chest of drawers with masses of flowers and cards arrayed on it and a padded bench with baskets of exotic-looking fruit. It struck her that this was a private room and she wondered guiltily what it had cost and where they had found the money. Or perhaps the staff thought she needed peace and quiet to recover and had put her in here at no extra cost, for her health’s sake?
She glanced around again, but there were no answers to be read in the chintz-covered chairs, the small desk, the hospital dressing gown on the back of the door. She found she was hungry, and wished she could have some fruit, but it was out of reach. She also had wind, her tummy was gurgling, pulsating … she felt a flutter of movement which could only be wind – unless she had had internal injuries as well as concussion?
She was feeling her stomach with careful fingers when the door opened. Immediately her smile began, as though she knew it would be Snip who came cautiously into the room even before he was actually in view.
‘Darling, you’re awake! Feel better this morning?’
She blinked. This morning? But she had only been asleep a few minutes, surely, since they had talked before?
‘Much. Only I’m a bit hungry. Am I allowed to have some of that fruit?’
He grinned and carried one of the baskets over to the bed, pretending to stagger beneath its weight. ‘Trust you to sleep through breakfast, though I did my best to wake you! The food isn’t bad here, all things considered. It was grapefruit segments, scrambled egg, toast and coffee. Here, have a grape.’
She took the bunch and detached a grape, then put the
rest on the bedspread where it covered her stomach. She ate the grape and was about to reach for another when a most extraordinary phenomenon occurred. Seemingly of its own volition, the bunch of grapes slowly toppled off its perch as though pushed from beneath. Nell stared, round-eyed, then glanced up at Snip.
‘Snip, did you see that? My tummy moved those grapes by itself! I’ve had wind before, but never like that!’
Snip sat down on the edge of the bed and put his arm around her. He kissed the side of her face gently, experimentally almost, then he began to speak.
‘Nell darling, I’ve got two pieces of news for you. Both good, but very different. One will be quite a surprise to you, I think, and the other very comforting. Which do you want first?’
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