In the event it proved a most enjoyable evening with lots of laughter and improvisation, all undertaken in high spirits. Martin certainly hadn’t indulged in anything so basic for more years than he could remember, and the time slipped by without them scarcely noticing it. The girls had found an old ladder, and with this they had managed to get into the lower limbs of the ancient oak, and by scouring the garden they found various bits and pieces of material with which to construct their den. Most of the essentials for a safe structure were located by June, who allowed them to take quite a number of planks from the garage as well as an old tarpaulin, not to mention hammers, nails rope and sundry other odds and ends. The work was far from finished when Martin and June between them decided that enough was enough for one evening.
Dirty but happy, the youngster reluctantly abandoned work for the day, and following a necessary session in the bathroom they changed into their nightwear and dressing gowns and consumed a light supper that June prepared for them before finally retiring to their room. It was close to ten o’clock before they were at last out of the way, and having wished them both a very good night, Martin rejoined June in the kitchen.
“Once again you have given up an awful lot of your own time purely for my benefit,” Martin observed, sitting down in his usual chair. “I really do appreciate it.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I quite enjoyed it. It’s good to have some youngsters in the place, sort of brings it to life. Would you like a cup of tea now that all the hassle is over, or would you prefer something stronger?”
It crossed his mind as she spoke that following her comment about the whiskey glass that had led her to assume he had been stoking up on Dutch courage he hadn’t thought about whiskey. In the days following Alicia’s death he had consumed far more than was good for him, now the need seemed to have withered away.
“I think a quiet cup of tea would go down very well,” he responded “It will give me a chance to discuss a couple of matters with you.”
“Well, the kettle is on, I hope it is something I can help with?”
“I’m sure you can. It’s nothing important; I just want my idle curiosity satisfied really. Firstly, how well did you get to know Mrs Jefferson, your predecessor?”
June stopped what she was doing and appeared to be lost in thought.
“To be honest, not to any great degree,” she finally admitted. “She was a grey haired lady, probably in her seventies I would think, although I don’t really know. She never talked much about herself as a person or her family or anything like that. She was a wonderful cook, and even though arthritis was slowing her up she still kept this place spotless, and I certainly learned a great deal from her. I got on with her quite well, although in truth I never really knew her as a person. She was totally devoted to Dr and Mrs Marston of course; she would have done anything for them. I believe she has a daughter somewhere, but I never saw her. She would sometimes go away for a couple of days to visit her, and I volunteered to stand in for her while she was away. I suppose that is how I was offered the job when she finally decided that it was really getting too much for her. As far as I know the doctor never heard from her again after she left here.”
“Do you recollect that hand addressed envelope you passed in to me this morning along with the rest of the post?”
June looked at him questioningly. “You are not going to tell me the letter was from her?” she asked shrewdly.
“I’m afraid it was. Would you believe the poor lady is quite unaware that both my aunt and uncle are now deceased?”
“How awful; what are you going to do?”
“It seems she is now rather ill, and she wrote to ask the doctor to call on her because there is obviously something she wants to get off her chest. I have written back to say that I will call on her as my uncle’s representative. She may be a little mystified by that, but I feel that I should explain directly to her what has happened. I’m going to visit her at her daughter’s home on Thursday.”
June sat down in the chair opposite him, and he could see that the news had deeply affected her.
“I don’t know what to say,” she sighed at last. “It never crossed my mind that she might die. Silly, isn’t it? We all have die sometime, and she was already getting old when she left here, and I knew even then that her health was not too good. She was such a lovely lady, and I find it so sad.”
“As you say, we all have to go sometime,” he echoed, and in his mind he was thinking once again of Alicia. Maybe we did all have to go sometime, yet it is an easier situation to accept when a person is in the evening of their life, and not young with so much to look forward to. “Then again, I suppose it is rarely ever easy to accept,” he added, shrugging off the familiar depressing thoughts that always arose when he thought of his own bereavement.
“Will you remember me to her?” June asked. “I don’t think it is appropriate to send a card or anything like that, but I would like her to know that I was at least thinking of her.”
“I’ll certainly do that,” he agreed, and then added; “What I really want to ask is; will you be able to look after the girls for me whilst I’m away?”
“Of course,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation. “It will be the least I can do; don’t worry about anything.”
“Thank you, I do appreciate how much I’m putting on you, and I have to confess that I’m not finished yet.”
“There’s more?”
“I’m afraid so. That call from Peter Buxted; he is coming over for lunch on Sunday; can I trespass yet again on your good nature to prepare a meal? There will only be the two of us; business meal and all that. I’m hoping the girls will have a picnic or something like that.
I know you said that you were not prepared to do additional catering, so I shall understand if you are not happy about it?”
“That’s no problem.”
At that moment the kettle came to the boil, and June busied herself preparing a pot of tea. Martin watched her working, and realised that he was now starting to feel more at ease in her company. It was strange, because he hadn’t really felt at ease in any sort of semi-social situation since Alicia had died. For all her earlier abrasiveness, there was something about June Brent that made her company quietly acceptable to him. Was it co-incidence that as he had got used to her, his interest in whiskey had faded? Watching her covertly a she busied herself around the kitchen, he tried to put his finger on what it was that he found about her that may have engendered this reaction. Seen out of her bulky clothes he had to admit that she was physically quite attractive, but that was equally true of quite a large number of women he came in contact with, so that had little or nothing to do with the way he felt. In fact, when he came to think about it, he realised that in general terms, the more attractive the woman, the more he tended to react against them. He pondered on this, and came to the startling conclusion that this was because he saw them subconsciously as a threat to his view of Alicia!
Trying to be honest with himself, he admitted that he found June physically attractive, and surprisingly this neither struck him as a threat nor even bothered him as most other women had done since Alicia had died. She was not what he would call outstandingly beautiful, yet certainly attractive enough to turn many a man’s head if he was so inclined. Accepting that until he had met her, he had seen every attractive woman as a threat, the real question was why he didn’t regard her in the same light? He decided after yet more introspective thought that perhaps he could detect within her an aura suggesting that she, too, had suffered trauma or loss in her life and it was that kindred feeling of mutual suffering that lay at the bottom of it. It was all pure speculation of course, and whatever the reason, he found that he could actually relax in her company, and that was all that mattered.
“I have to say that you are extremely good with youngsters,” he observed as she finally poured out two mugs of tea and sat down again at the opposite side of the table. “I think they have both taken to you big-time.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” she admitted, and then she suddenly flashed that alarmed look at him he had noticed before when she inadvertently let something slip that she didn’t wish to.
“Looking after younger siblings I suppose,” he commented, pretending not to notice how she had bitten the words off.
She looked uncomfortable, and concentrated on stirring her tea.
“Sorry,” he added. “I’m not prying; none of my business.”
“It’s all right,” she sighed in a resigned sort of manner, removing the spoon and looking across at him, “I suppose I should have told you before.”
He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“I’m an only child,” she said at last. “My parents died when I was about five. With no other family to fall back on, I was taken into care.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hadn’t meant to stir up unpleasant memories.”
She gave a short humourless laugh. “Unpleasant memories?” she echoed, “Oh yes, I have a few of them! Yes, quite a few.” She fixed him with her eyes, then continued as if determined to get something off her chest. “Unless you have been through the system you don’t really know what it’s like. Maybe there are places that really care for children, I wouldn’t know; I never had the good fortune to be in one. Most people think that being in care is a doddle; take it from me it isn’t. From the time I was taken into a council approved home until I was old enough to escape, my life has been hell. I was bullied, abused, pushed from pillar to post and generally made to feel a complete waste of space. I was only ten years old when I was raped for the first time. It was one of the older boys. I complained to the staff, but much good it did me. I was taken into the manager’s office where I expected that everything would be put right. He listened to what I was blubbing about, and then he got up and locked the door and raped me again right there on the carpet at the front of his desk! Oh yes, I’ve a few ‘unpleasant’ memories all right!”
He listened appalled to her bitter outpourings. “I don’t know what to say,” he said, his voice full of the sympathy welling up from within him, yet at the same time trying not to allow the shock her words had engendered from showing too much, “I mean; was nothing ever done to put matters right?”
“Not really,” she answered, and her voice was hard and bitter as she relived those times he felt sure she would rather forget and would never be able to. “I was told that if I made a public complaint I would never live to see it come to court. Can you imagine what a threat like that does to a kid? No, I don't suppose you can. I was moved from home to home; some were worse than others. One of these was run by a lesbian; I leave to your imagination what she was up to; I never once felt safe in my bed when she was on duty. I was put up for adoption a couple of times, but nothing ever came of it; I think the staff were worried that what they had been up to might leak out if I left them. In the last home I was in I met a halfway human being for the first time, a Mrs Wiggins. It was she who trained me to be a cook and a housekeeper. She could be hard and vicious at times, but at least she was fair, and never as cruel as so many I met. In my last year there I helped out with the younger children, protecting them where I could and comforting them when I couldn’t. Playing with your daughter and her friend has reminded me of those times, the only really good times I ever had in the system”
“You have left me utterly speechless,” he said with genuine feeling when she finished speaking. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own little world that I never dreamed such things could happen in this day and age.”
“Well, it’s all in the past now,” she said with a slight air of defiance. “I‘m sorry to have bleated on so much; it all sort of came welling up; you know how it is?”
“Oh, I do indeed,” he agreed at once. “Look, I know it’s pretty useless of me to say how sorry I am that you had such a rotten start in life. Terrible as it is, I’m glad that you have told me.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking just slightly embarrassed. “I guess you are quite a bit like your uncle; he understood as well when it all accidentally slipped out one day. When he offered me the job of housekeeper I was suspicious for a while that he did this out of sympathy, but he always denied it. He always maintained that it was purely because of the quality of the work I did. Maybe he was lying, even if he was I didn’t mind, because he and his wife became the nearest thing I ever had to parents since my own died. When they, too, were taken away from me, well, I guess I very much resented anyone else appearing to stand in their shoes. Pretty selfish and stupid of me; blaming you for my own personal loss.”