Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (18 page)

‘I see.'

‘There's something wrong, isn't there?'

Marjorie pulled her dressing gown cord tighter around her. She was still standing in only her thin night things, which now seemed inappropriate beside the policeman in his heavy serge uniform.

‘Will you excuse me for a moment please?' she asked, and hurried out to the hall, fetching her coat
from the hat stand and putting it on over her nightgown.

‘What is it?' she asked the policeman on her return. ‘Has something happened to my aunt? Is that why you're here?'

‘Afraid so, miss. I'm sorry to say your aunt – I'm sorry to report Mrs Hendry has met with a bad accident—'

‘Was it in the forest?' Marjorie interrupted. ‘I know she was out doing ambulance practice.'

‘I don't know anything about that, miss,' the policeman answered, looking surprised. ‘When would that have been?'

‘Last night,' Marjorie replied. ‘She had ambulance driving practice in Bardham Forest all evening.'

‘Not to my knowledge, miss,' the policeman replied. ‘That was cancelled two days ago. Anyway, your aunt was nowhere near the forest when the accident happened. She was fifteen miles away up on the London road, headed south. As if she was coming home.'

Marjorie stared at him. ‘I don't understand. What happened?'

‘According to a witness to the accident, a large Jaguar ran her off the road, just below Stileman's Corner.'

‘It can't have been an accident if someone tried to run her off the road, can it?'

‘I see what you mean, miss. Perhaps not. We will have to see. She's in Gateley Hospital. I'm afraid your aunt's condition is a cause for concern.'

Marjorie turned, knowing Billy was behind her, just as she had known Aunt Hester hadn't come home.

‘It's Aunt H, isn't it, Marjorie?' Billy asked quietly. ‘I knew it. I had this dream, see? I knew it. I just
knew
it.'

Billy would keep asking to go to the hospital to visit Aunt Hester, but Marjorie dissuaded him with the excuse that the doctors didn't advise it until Aunt Hester regained consciousness. Billy grew gloomy and suspicious at Marjorie's delaying tactics, but since he was still too young to make the journey to the hospital alone he was forced to rely on Marjorie to tell him how his newly adopted mother was getting on.

In an effort to protect him, Marjorie lied. She told him that Aunt Hester was unconscious, but having recovered from her injuries was expected to regain consciousness soon, while knowing all the time that even if Aunt Hester did recover consciousness she would be so badly disabled her life would be intolerable.

‘It's hard to say, Miss Hendry,' the doctor at the hospital had finally admitted to Marjorie. ‘I don't mean it's hard to say what will happen to your dear aunt for I know that well enough. What I mean is it's hard to say what I'm going to have to say to you, lassie, isn't it? No – sorry, I really must get out of the habit of calling every young woman lassie. My wife gives me terrible stick about it.'

He indicated a chair in the waiting room before sitting down beside Marjorie, and knitting his thick, sandy eyebrows together so tightly that for a second Marjorie found herself wondering if they would ever part again.

‘Fact is, Miss Hendry, and it's a hard fact, but
it's a fact – due to the severe injuries your aunt sustained not only to her chest but also to her head, and given how long she has been in a coma, I have to be quite honest – it might be better if your aunt failed to make a recovery.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Being a doctor helps, I suppose.'

‘You can't be certain, can you? I mean you're not her, are you?'

‘The best we can do now – in fact all we can do now – is pray. Pray that your aunt has a merciful delivery from her suffering.'

‘Suppose she does come round? Suppose she does recover consciousness?'

‘It's hard for you to understand this – but it would be a far better thing if she does not.'

Marjorie finally managed to find it in herself to be grateful to the doctor for his frankness. But for him she would have lived in false hope, a hope she all too soon realised she had been careless enough to hold out to Billy.

‘You – you should have told me!' Billy punched the side of a chair. ‘You should have, you oughta have!' Billy gripped his hands together and struggled against his emotions, turning first white then red in his efforts to control himself.

Watching him Marjorie felt helpless, realising quite soon that seeing Billy not crying was actually worse than seeing Billy crying, his courage so touching that it brought the wretched wishbone back to her throat.

‘I want to see Aunt Hester,' he finally announced. ‘Don't tell me I can't because I want to. I didn't see
her in hospital, and I understand why, so that don't matter – but I want to see her now. Say goodbye, and that.'

At the hospital Billy leaned over and carefully kissed his dead benefactor farewell on one cheek.

‘She looks all right,' he said, standing back. ‘Not really done in at all, not really.'

Taking courage from Billy, Marjorie did the same. Aunt Hester's cheek was cold but surprisingly firm. After she had kissed her goodbye and stood back up, she half expected to see her aunt move, as if the love they felt for her might awaken her, or because perhaps it had all been a mistake and she wasn't dead after all, just sleeping.

‘She's all right, now, you know,' Billy assured her as they waited for the bus to take them home. ‘She's dead – yeah, I know. But she in't gone, 'cos we got her right here, in our memory. She's not dead to us. Never will be. Not ever. And you know – she'll always be Aunt Hester, won't she?'

‘Wonder what's going to happen to us,' Marjorie said, preparing to get into the Green Line bus that was now drawing up at their stop. ‘With Aunt Hester gone now, do you ever wonder what's going to happen to us?'

‘Why should anything happen?' Billy wondered, hopping on the bus and grabbing the front seat. ‘We can manage.' He stared ahead of him, his expression resolute.

‘I know we can manage, Billy, it's more a question of how.'

It was no good trying to turn to Marjorie's mother and stepfather for help. She had received a card on her seventeenth birthday, postmarked
Canberra, Australia but with no address, and merely the words
still travelling around, love from Mummy and Jo
scrawled on it. Billy she knew must be an orphan, if not literally, certainly in practice, because he had been well and truly dumped, yet even so Marjorie suspected that she would have quite a struggle on her hands to try to stop them from being separated again. When it emerged that Aunt Hester had neglected to update her will, Marjorie knew that there were storm clouds ahead, and not just because of the impending war.

The question of their future hung over them both until a Mr Anthony introduced himself to her at the funeral tea.

‘Miss Hendry?' As Marjorie nodded he pushed his face closer to her, while at the same time carefully wiping the end of his long, reddened nose with a clean white handkerchief. ‘Since your aunt's death you have possibly been made aware that she died without making any alteration to her Last Will and Testament, which means neither you nor your adopted brother nor indeed your mother, her sister, have been included.'

For some reason this caused him to smile.

‘I don't mind,' Marjorie asserted, stepping back from him. ‘It really doesn't matter. Billy and I don't mind, really. We wouldn't expect her to think of us.'

‘Well, I think perhaps the matter of the house may be of interest, Miss Hendry, since this is your present abode. It seems Mrs Hendry long ago bequeathed the house and its contents to her other sister – Miss Roberts. The lady seated in the corner there.' Mr Anthony indicated with a small
nod of his odd-shaped head. ‘Although the two ladies had become somewhat estranged by circumstances over the last few years, Mrs Hendry made no alteration to her will and so the inheritance stands. This will mean, naturally, that you will have to vacate the premises and find yourself some other place of – of abode.'

‘I don't mind,' Marjorie maintained, as stoutly as she could. ‘I'm not sure I would want to go on living here without my aunt. Not want to go on living in this – abode.'

‘Miss Roberts wants you to understand that when you go, you are not to leave here with anything that is not in your direct ownership. She wishes to avoid any controversies concerning items that might be claimed possibly to have been gifted when in fact they were no such thing. Shall we say anything loaned to you by your late aunt shall have to be returned to its new rightful owner? Miss Roberts informs me that for instance her sister is said to have lent you quite a large amount of clothing, which naturally must be returned.'

Marjorie was about to protest that Aunt Hester had bought her the clothes in her wardrobe when she felt a tug on her skirt from behind.

‘Come on,' Billy whispered to her. ‘Someone wants to say goodbye to us – in the kitchen.'

Excusing herself from Mr Anthony's company, Marjorie went out to the kitchen. Billy followed her and shut the door behind him.

‘That woman in the corner just told me. She says we gotta move out. 'Cos she's goin' to sell the place. So what are we goin' to do, Marge? What's goin' to happen to us?'

‘Nothing's going to happen to us, Billy,' Marjorie replied, watching him pick up a plate of fresh food. ‘Least not for a while.'

‘What about what they're saying? About what Aunt Hester gave us really belongin' to them?'

‘It doesn't. Everything Aunt Hester gave us is ours. They're just trying to bully us, Billy – and I'm not going to let them. So stop your worrying,
and
stuffing your face. That food's meant for our visitors.'

‘Yeah,' Billy said with a look into the living room. ‘And you'd better go look after Mrs Watling 'cos it looks as though she's about to fall over.'

Marjorie followed Billy's glance and saw how right he was. Mrs Watling had been happily helping herself to an abundance of sherry wine, and was now standing holding on to the lintel of the door with one hand and beckoning to Marjorie with the other.

‘You all right, Mrs Watling?' Marjorie wondered, hurrying to her side.

‘Me? I am fine, dear. Absolutely fine. I just wanted to say how fond of your auntie I was, Marjorie, how very fond,' she said, nodding seriously to underline her point. ‘I wanted to say also how very fond I am of you as well, dear. Very, very fond, and of little Billy too – who's really not so little any more, is he?' She nodded over to where Billy was standing watching and smiled crookedly at him. ‘Furthermore,' she continued slowly. ‘Furthermore I want you to know that whatever I can do for you two little orphans I shall do, and more than that I
will
do. My door is open for the two of you, always. Open. Always. Your
aunt was a very lovely lady. A very lovely lady indeed.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Watling,' Marjorie said, even though she had carefully noted that Mrs Watling had as yet not made any definite offer.

‘It's the very least I can do,' Mrs Watling assured her. ‘We may not be able to offer much in the line of home, you know, but what we do comes from the heart. My heart. And at least you would both have a roof over your heads, dear. If needs be. So you just keep me in the picture, won't you? There's a good girl.'

‘Are you – are you inviting Billy and me to come and stay with you?'

‘You young people.' Mrs Watling smiled. ‘Only got half an ear for everything, haven't you? That's what I said, didn't I? At least I'm sure I did. Didn't I? Anyway. Anyway, at the risk of repeating myself, you and Billy are more than welcome to put up with us for just as long as it takes you to find something better. It will be our pleasure, dear. Least Mr Watling and me can do in your hour of need. Least we can do.'

Mrs Watling nodded at her once again, put her hand suddenly to her chest to try to stifle a hiccough and then with one final nod left, but not before walking into the front door and apologising to it.

Once she had seen her neighbour safely out of the door Marjorie went in search of Billy to tell him the news, only to find herself intercepted and sidetracked by another guest, this time someone not immediately known to her.

The fact that she failed to recognise him
immediately was not surprising since she had only seen him once before, and then only very briefly. It was a moment or two before she remembered who he was – one of the two mysterious gentlemen who had called on her aunt when they were on holiday, the quiet pipe-smoking middle-aged gentleman in thick horn-rimmed spectacles who had arrived at the cottage in the company of the dashing young Frenchman.

‘Miss Hendry?' he called again, pipe out of his mouth and held in one hand while he nodded to her. ‘Might I have a word? I am Mr Ward. We met very briefly at Foyle Sands. You may remember?'

‘I remember,' Marjorie said, looking straight into a pair of very resolute eyes, and finding her hand held in greeting in an equally resolute grasp, while the pipe stayed in his left hand. ‘You called at the cottage.'

‘I'd like a quiet word.' Mr Ward looked round the small crowded room. ‘Is there somewhere more private?'

‘Only outside,' Marjorie replied.

‘It won't take a minute. Lead the way – if you'd be so kind.'

There was something in the way he said that last phrase that sounded as if he was mocking his own words, but seeing the determination in his eyes she led him outside to the garden.

They stood on the stone steps outside the back door, overlooking the tiny, brave patch of lawn inset in the yard that led down to the outhouse and the privy. Mr Ward, pipe back in his mouth, nodded at Marjorie as he closed the door tightly behind him then stood in silence for a moment,
drawing on his pipe and staring across the small yard at nothing in particular.