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.
‘The thing is,’ he began carefully, ‘the point is I knew your aunt very well. She and I worked together.’
‘You worked together?’ Marjorie interrupted. ‘Doing what? I often wondered what Aunt Hester did—’
‘That isn’t important,’ Jack Ward insisted. ‘Particularly now she’s gone. What matters is that we knew each other very well. She was one of my most – my most trusted friends. We were very fond of each other – in the way that real friends are. I wanted to make that perfectly clear.’
‘I see,’ Marjorie said, although nothing was at all clear to her. If anything matters were a lot less clear than they had been before she was summoned outside by her mysterious visitor.
‘To come to the point,’ Jack Ward continued, after examining the state of the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, ‘because of my association with your aunt, and because the times we live in are becoming increasingly difficult ones, I want you to know that if you ever want anything – you must call me. From what I understand of your circumstances you don’t have a lot of people to call on.’
He had a remarkably beautiful voice, low, measured, and immediately charismatic. Marjorie was so entranced by it she missed taking in what he was actually saying. As if noting her inattention, Jack Ward looked over the top of his thick spectacles and stared at her hard.
‘I’m sorry to ask you this – but do I have your undivided attention, Miss Hendry?’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Marjorie blushed. ‘It’s the funeral. And all this – the tea. I’ve never done anything like this before.’
‘Of course. I understand. Would you like me to go over what I said? Or did you catch my drift? So to speak.’
Again his voice took on that near mocking tone, although his round, unlined face betrayed no sign of any such jocularity, other than a slight softening of his dark, determined eyes.
‘You must call on me if you need help,’ he repeated. ‘You and your young friend.’
‘Billy’s not my friend, he’s my sort of brother.’
‘It’s no cliché, it’s a reality – we live in dangerous times, Miss Hendry. Here’s a telephone number at which you can always reach me, any time, day or night. Learn the number and then destroy the piece of paper. I mean that. Learn it, and burn it. It’s been very nice making your acquaintance, and again, please accept my condolences for your loss.’
Having handed her a slip of paper on which was written a telephone number in pencil, he shook hands with Marjorie and returned inside the house, collected his hat from the back of a chair where he had left it, and disappeared from the gathering as discreetly as he had arrived.
His departure did not go entirely unnoticed, however. A man standing in one corner of the living room, dressed in nondescript fashion and smoking a cheap cigarette, had been watching the conversation between Jack Ward and Marjorie through the adjacent window while engaging another guest in desultory small talk. Seeing Jack Ward come in from the garden he turned his back on him as if he were of no interest, watching him instead in the round gold-framed diminishing mirror that hung above the fireplace as he picked up his hat and disappeared through the throng of mourners. The watcher lit another cigarette from his now finished smoke before excusing himself to collect his coat from the pile on the chair in the opposite corner of the room and putting his own hat back on, a stained grey trilby that had never
left his hand. Timing his own departure to what he thought perfection, he opened the front door and slipped out of the house after his quarry. But once outside he saw there was no sign of the heavily bespectacled man in the light grey suit and fawn raincoat who seemed to have vanished into thin air. But then vanishing into thin air was one of Jack Ward’s stocks in trade.
In the house Marjorie was memorising the Victoria exchange telephone number, before destroying the slip of paper as instructed. Once she was sure she had the number firmly in her mind, she folded it into a taper and set it alight with a match. As she watched the piece of paper extinguishing in the grate, it seemed to her that her future might well be as black as the charred remains of the message.
‘I’ve been giving this all some thought, Marge,’ Billy said to her one day as she walked him back from school.
‘What’s this?’ Marjorie wondered, leafing through the exercise book that Billy had been carrying rolled up in a trouser pocket. ‘What are all these hieroglyphics, Billy? They teaching you Greek now, or something?’
‘What? Higher-o what?’
‘This funny writing of yours, Billy. Looks like Greek to me.’
‘That’s code. If you must know,’ Billy replied tightly, taking back his exercise book.
‘What sort of code? You don’t know any codes.’
‘Want a bet?’
‘You mean a made-up code?’
‘What else are codes but made up, you nit.’ Billy rolled his exercise book up again and stuffed it back into the pocket where it belonged. ‘Friend of mine and me. We got this gang, see. And in order to keep things secret, we have a code. Like our enemies, the Black Spot mob. They got a code too, see? Except we cracked it already. Rather I did.’
Billy grinned at Marjorie and started to whistle a cocky little tune.
‘That’s clever, Billy,’ Marjorie said admiringly. ‘I mean it. I mean cracking someone’s code has to be pretty clever, I’d say. How do you do it?’
Billy shrugged.
‘It’s easy.’
‘Will you show me?’
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 14
