The Caxley Chronicles (46 page)

He had no intention of going to Rose Lodge, or anywhere else for that matter, until the child was born. He would stay as close as he could while it all went on. He suffered the common terrifying qualms about his wife's safety, and to calm his agitation set himself to such mechanical tasks as sorting out the cutlery and inspecting the table linen for possible repairs.

He could settle to nothing for long, however, and walked into the little garden on the dew-wet grass beside the river, looking up at the lighted window where the drama was being enacted. Every so often he mounted the stairs quietly and
listened, but there was nothing to hear. On one of these sorties he encountered the nurse, and she took pity on him.

'She's doing splendidly,' she said. 'Come and have a look.'

Maisie looked far from splendid to Edward's eyes. She looked white and exhausted, but seemed glad to see him.

'Not long now,' said Nurse Porter, with what, to Edward, seemed callous indifference to her patient's condition. 'It should be here by morning.'

'By
morning
?' echoed Edward, appalled. The hands of the clock stood at a little before two. Would Maisie live as long, he wondered desperately?

'Go and make us all a nice pot of tea,' suggested the nurse, and Edward obediently went to the kitchen to perform his task. How parents could have faced ten, fifteen and even twenty such ordeals in days gone by, he could not imagine! He decided to have a whisky and soda when he had delivered the tea-tray to his task-mistress.

Later, as the first light crept across the countryside, he dozed in the arm chair, dreaming uneasily of white boats floating upon dark water. Could they be the little boats he floated as a boy upon the Cax? Or were they the white boats 'that sailed like swans asleep' on the enchanted waters of Lough Corrib? And where was Maisie? She should be with him. Had she slipped beneath the black and shivering water? Would he see her again?

A little before five Nurse Porter woke him. Her red face glowed like the rising sun, broad and triumphant. She held a white bundle which she displayed proudly to Edward.

'Want to see your son?' she asked. 'Six and a half pounds, and a perfect beauty.'

Edward looked upon his firstborn. A pink mottled face, no bigger than one of his own buns, topped by wispy damp hair, was all that could be seen in the aperture of the snowy shawl. Nurse Porter's idea of beauty, Edward thought, differed from his own, but the child looked healthy and inordinately wise.

'How's Maisie?' said Edward, now wide awake. 'Can I see her?'

'Asleep. You shall go in later. She's fine, but needs her rest.'

At that moment the baby opened his mouth in a yawn. Edward gazed at it, fascinated. There was something wonderfully clever about such an achievement when one considered that the child was less than an hour old. Edward felt a pang of paternal pride for the first time.

'He seems a very forward child to me,' said Edward.

'Naturally!' responded Nurse Porter with sardonic amusement, and took her bundle back to the bedroom.

That was an hour ago. Since then he had seen his Maisie, well, but drowsy, drunk a pot of coffee and tried to marshal his incoherent thoughts. As soon as possible, he would telephone to Rose Lodge, but six o'clock calls might alarm the household. He must let Bertie and Kathy know too as soon as they were astir.

Meanwhile, he gazed upon the market place, pink in the growing sunlight. A thin black cat, in a sheltered angle of St Peter's porch, washed one upthrust leg, its body as round and curved as an elegant shell, and suddenly Edward was back in time, over ten long years ago, when he had stood thus, watching the same familiar scene.

What a lifetime ago it seemed! Since then he had experienced war, an unhappy marriage and personal desolation. He had watched Robert's tragic decline and death, and lost Sep, his guide and example. He had shared, with his fellows, the bitterness of war, and the numbing poverty of its aftermath.

But that was the darker side of the picture. There was a better and brighter one. He had found Maisie, he had refound Caxley, and in doing so he had found himself at last.

A wisp of blue smoke rose from Sep's old house. Miss Taggerty was making up the kitchen boiler, thought Edward affectionately. In the bakehouse, work would already have started. The little town was stirring, and he must prepare, too, for another Caxley day. It was good to look ahead. It was good too, to think that John Septimus Howard, his son, would be the fourth generation to know this old house as home.

What was it that Sep used to say? 'There's always tomorrow, my boy. Always tomorrow.'

And with that thought to cheer him, Edward went to look, once more, upon the new heir to the market square.

M
ISS
R
EAD
is the pen name of Mrs. Dora Saint, who was born on April 17, 1913. A teacher by profession, she began writing for several journals after World War II and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, but she is especially beloved for her novels of English rural life set in the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green. The first of these,
Village School,
was published in 1955 by Michael Joseph Ltd. in England and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In 1998 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.