Convalescence

by Maynard Sims

  I dropped the book back on the bed and followed it down, resting my head against the feather pillow. When I closed my eyes it was as if I could still hear that awful droning, so I lay for a long time, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, wondering what it was I’d heard in that corridor, and what on earth was behind the door at the end.

  I heard movement on the landing so I hurriedly swung my legs to the floor, grabbed my book and left the bedroom, heading downstairs to find Mrs. Rogers before Miss Holt could grill me again. I’d be glad once she was gone tomorrow.

  The sun was high in a clear blue sky and it was very warm in the summerhouse as I sat reading in the deck chair Mrs. Rogers had provided. The glass of iced lemonade she’d pressed on me had been dispatched quickly and now I was feeling quite thirsty again. I picked up the glass and upended it, draining the last dregs of lemonade and melted ice. As I set the glass down on the small bamboo table, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something was moving through the trees at the bottom of the garden. I leaned forward in my deck chair and squinted my eyes to get a better look.

  I recognized the brown curls. It was Amy, but she wasn’t wearing her maid’s uniform. Instead she wore jeans and a summery pink blouse, and she was moving through the trees as if she were on some kind of secret mission—watchfully—ducking behind the tree trunks and dashing across the spaces between them, all the time moving closer and closer to the pond. Once she stared directly back up to the garden and the summerhouse, and I had to duck back behind the metal doorframe in case she saw me. I didn’t want her to think I was spying on her.

  I watched for a few moments more before the reason for her secrecy became apparent. Barnes stepped out from behind a large oak and stretched out his arms. Amy fell into the open embrace and threw her arms around his muscular neck, and her mouth closed over his in a passionate kiss.

  I looked away, blood rushing to my cheeks in a blush of total embarrassment. In a strange way I felt I was betraying her. This was obviously a secret assignation and I was privy to something that was clearly none of my business.

  Eventually, after what seemed an age, the kiss ended and they walked off arm in arm towards the pond. Soon they were out of sight.

  I went back to my deck chair and picked up my book, reading to try to fill my mind with images of boats and grand lakes, and to rid myself of the vision of Amy locked in a passionate embrace with the gardener-cum-handyman. But I kept reading the same page over and over again, not taking it in, and it did nothing to diminish the feeling of disappointment I was feeling. From the first moment I’d met her I had thought of Amy as an ally, a friend. Now it was as if I had lost her to an adult world that I had no part in.

  I closed my book, picked up my empty glass and went inside to refill it.

  The kitchen was cool, a welcome relief from the sun outside. Mrs. Rogers was seated at the kitchen table, deep in conversation with another woman of about the same age. They both looked up as I came in from the garden.

  “Jimmy,” Mrs. Rogers said, “this is Mrs. Ebbage, cook here at the manor. It’s her wonderful meals you’ve been tucking in to.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” I said to the other woman.

  Mrs. Ebbage was everything you expect a country cook to be—plump, russet-faced with rosy cheeks. The only thing needed was a cheery smile, and that was noticeable by its absence. Mrs. Ebbage had a thin, spiteful-looking mouth and dark, flinty eyes. She regarded me sternly, and the kitchen seemed to grow even chillier.

  She said nothing to me but turned to Mrs. Rogers. “What did you say his name was, Daphne?”

  “James,” she said. “Jimmy.”

  “And he’s Frank’s boy you say?”

  “Yes, June.”

  Mrs. Ebbage gave a derisive snort, dismissing me from her thoughts. “I have to get on,” she said.

  I stood there, wondering what I’d done to upset the woman.

  Mrs. Rogers got to her feet. “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s go back to the garden.” She came across to me, wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me back outside.

  “She doesn’t like me,” I said as we walked back to the summerhouse.

  “Take no notice,” she said. “She knows your father and uncle fell out. There have always been a lot of bad feelings, and June pinned her colors to your uncle’s mast. She’s always been very loyal to him.”

  “I see,” I said, even though I didn’t. I never knew the reasons behind my father and his brother falling out.

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Rogers said, “don’t let her bother you. Just enjoy the food she cooks.”

  “Why did Uncle Thomas and my father stop speaking?” I said.

  The smile slipped from her face, leaving it gray and deeply troubled. She gave a brisk shake of her head. “That’s not for me to say,” she said. “And, anyway, it’s nothing for you to worry your head abo…” Her voice trailed off. She was staring beyond me. “Is that Amy down there?”

  She was staring intently, down towards the trees. “It is! It is Amy. Disobedient girl!” Suddenly she was striding towards the tree line, calling, “Amy! Come here this instant,” and punctuating each word with a sharp clap of her hands.

  I stayed at the summerhouse, watching as Amy emerged sheepishly from the trees.

  Being so far away from them, I couldn’t hear what was being said, but Mrs. Rogers seemed to be very angry with her. And when Amy’s mouth opened to give some kind of retort, Mrs. Rogers lashed out with her hand, catching Amy with a stinging blow across the cheek.

  Amy started to run back towards the house. When she reached the summerhouse and saw me watching her, she paused. Her cheeks were wet with tears. For a moment our eyes met. There was pain in hers, and something else I couldn’t read. “Thanks a lot,” she said bitterly. “I thought we were friends.”

  “But I didn’t tell—” I said, but she had already taken off again, running back to the house.

  Mrs. Rogers was striding towards me. I ducked back inside the summerhouse, picked my book up and pretended to be immersed in the story. Mrs. Rogers walked straight past me, following Amy inside the house.

  I sat there, bemused and confused, and wishing I were anywhere else but here.

  Dinner that evening was awkward. Amy was serving, but she was more subdued, keeping her head down and avoiding making eye contact with me. She looked as if she had spent most of the day crying. Her face was pale, and her eyes red and puffy. Thankfully both Miss Holt and Mrs. Rogers were at the table, and they kept up a steady stream of conversation between themselves that more or less excluded me. I declined the offer of a postdinner game of cards, telling them I wanted an early night to finish my book, and retreated to my room.

  As I shut my bedroom door relief washed over me. I kicked off my shoes and went to lie on the bed. No one could accuse me of not taking my convalescence seriously that afternoon. I had done nothing physical at all, apart from going to sit in the garden, which probably explained why I was feeling as wound up as a tightly coiled spring.

  I tried reading for a while but, as I had found earlier, I couldn’t concentrate, and eventually I put the book down and went across to the window, staring out at the garden. It was still light—a fine summer evening—and the white roses and the lavender spikes of the lupins seemed to glow.

  I wasn’t ready for sleep, and my book couldn’t hold my attention, but I was reluctant to leave my room. The thought of bumping into Miss Holt or Mrs. Rogers held no appeal at all. Worse, I could run into Amy and I was eager to avoid that.

  As I stood there staring out through the window, the crying started again. As before, it started as an almost-inaudible moan, but gradually the volume increased until there were clearly defined sobs.

  Finally I overcame my reluctance to leave my room.

  Creeping out of my bedroom I quickly identified the direction the sound was coming from, and I headed s
traight away to the end of the landing. This time, though, the door to the corridor was locked, but the door on the opposite side of the landing was ajar. I went across, pulled it open, and the volume of the crying increased.

  With the door open I was confronted by another flight of stairs. These were plain, wooden and uncarpeted, and stretched up through the house, ending at another door.

  I walked up the stairs quietly until I was standing outside the door. I put my ear to it and listened to the heartrending sobs coming from behind the wood.

  I wrapped my fingers around the round door handle and gently turned it. To my surprise I heard the click of the latch, and the door swung inwards silently on well-oiled hinges.

  The room was a bedroom, plain and sparsely furnished, with whitewashed walls. A low-wattage bulb hung from a plain plaster ceiling rose and lit the room dimly.

  There was an ordinary-looking wardrobe against one wall and a simple dressing table with a brown-spotted rectangular mirror against the other. Separating them was a bed with a cream-painted iron frame that looked like it might have come from a hospital.

  Amy was lying facedown on the bed, sobbing into the pillow.

  I crept into the room and across to the bed, standing there, watching her shoulders heave as she cried, and felt inadequate.

  Eventually I reached out and laid my hand on her back. “Amy?” I said softly.

  She reacted as if she had been stung, twisting around on the bed to face me, her eyes wide.

  “It’s only me,” I said.

  She breathed in, sucking in air in short staccato gulps. “What do you want?” she said.

  “I heard you crying,” I said.

  “Go away.”

  I didn’t move. “Can’t I help?”

  The look on her face became hard. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  I shook my head. “No, you’ve got it wrong. I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Rogers. She just came out to the summerhouse with me and saw you down by the trees.”

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You didn’t tell?”

  I shook my head again harder, more emphatically. “No! Why would I tell on you?”

  She continued to stare, challenging me, looking for the lie.

  Finally the hard look melted from her eyes. She sniffed and turned away from me. “Leave me alone,” she said.

  I stood my ground. “No,” I said. “Earlier you said that you thought we were friends. Well, so did I. I want us to be friends. Tell me what I can do to help.”

  She spun round on the bed again to face me. Her eyes were puffy, her nose was red, and her brown curls had been plastered to her forehead by her tears. She sat up, reached for a tissue from a box on the small bedside cabinet and blew her nose noisily. “All right. I believe you. You didn’t tell.”

  I gave half a shrug.

  “Sit down,” she said and patted the bed beside her, shifting to make space for me.

  I hopped up onto the bed and sat there cross-legged.

  “I love him, see? Andy, I really love him,” she said. “But she’s forbidden me from seeing him.”

  “Mrs. Rogers?”

  “The old cow,” she said venomously.

  “Can she do that?”

  Amy nodded. “Says she’ll get Mr. Bentley to sack him…and he needs this job. Since his dad ran off, there’s just him and his mother. They need the money.”

  “What’s Mrs. Rogers got against him?”

  “He’s a gypsy…lives with his mum in a caravan on the other side of the woods. Rogers would have them driven off if she had her way.”

  “But surely my uncle—”

  “You uncle will do as he’s told. Mrs. Rogers rules the roost here. She lets them stay because your uncle needs him to do the work in the house and garden,” Amy said. “But that’s the only reason.”

  “But she seemed so nice when I first arrived.”

  “Because you’re a boy, and you remind her of her son, her precious Hughie. He had the sense to get away from her. Moved up to London on his sixteenth birthday and hasn’t been back to see her since.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a month after I arrived here. He was nice, Hughie, but his mother had him under the thumb—suffocating him, smothering him like a mother hen. I wasn’t here long enough to get to know him well, but we used to talk, and he told me how he couldn’t wait to get away from her, from here. And he did just that as soon as he was sixteen. That morning I went upstairs to wake him and tell him breakfast was ready, but he’d gone—just packed a bag and left during the night.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “She didn’t react. It was like her face was made of stone when I told her. She just said ‘very well’, or something like that, and that was it.”

  “Strange, if she thought so much of him,” I said.

  Amy shook her head. “Not really, once you scratch away the surface. She’s a cold bitch.”

  “Amy!” I said. “Look, you’re angry. Cross with her about not letting you see Andy.”

  She shook her head. “Yes, I am, but that’s not why I said it. You haven’t been here long enough yet. You’ll learn,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  “If she’s that awful, why don’t you just leave?”

  “And go where?” she said. “Back to St. Joseph’s?”

  “What’s St. Joseph’s?”

  “A children’s home in Dorchester.”

  She noted the look of surprise on my face.

  “What? Did you think you were the only orphan living here?”

  “I didn’t realize. What happened to your parents?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve no idea. St. Joseph’s is the only home I’ve ever known. The nuns there brought me up. Sister Rosalie and Sister Theresa were the main ones who looked after me, but all of the nuns there took care of me at one time or another.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  A small smile hovered on her lips. “It wasn’t so bad. The nuns were very kind. They saw that I was fed and that I had clean clothes to wear…and at Christmas they sang carols in the chapel.” A wistful expression crossed her face. “I know girls who had it far worse than I did.”

  “So how did you end up here?”

  “Your uncle. He was a regular visitor at the home. Actually, I think he was on the board of governors. One day he came and told Sister Rosalie he was looking for a maid to work and live here at the manor. We all knew who he was—he’d been visiting St. Joseph’s for years—and we knew it was a big deal to be chosen to work for him. I begged Sister Rosalie to let me come—begged her. So she did. They say you should be careful what you wish for because it might come true.”

  “And you regret coming here?”

  “I hadn’t counted on Mrs. Rogers,” she said bitterly.

  “So, can’t you go back to the orphanage?”

  She shook her head. “They wouldn’t take me back. Not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  She swung her legs to the floor, walked across to the window and opened it. From the pocket of her apron she took a packet of Senior Service cigarettes and shook one out, putting it between her lips and lighting it with a match from a box of Swan Vestas, striking the red phosphorus tip on the windowsill.

  I watched as she drew the smoke in deeply and blew it out through the window in a thin stream.

  “Why not now?” I asked her again.

  Again she shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, shouldn’t you go back to bed?”

  “Not if you’re going to cry yourself to sleep again. I could hear you from my room.”

  “Sorry,” she said and drew in more smoke.

  “I heard you this morning as well.”

  She turned to face me. “What do you mean?”


  “This morning after breakfast. I heard you crying when I came back up to my room.”

  She turned back to the window, pinched the glowing end from the cigarette and slid the half-smoked part back into the packet.

  “Well, I don’t know what you heard, but it wasn’t me. I was working downstairs in the kitchen, washing up after breakfast. After that I had the downstairs rooms to clean.”

  “But I’m sure…”

  “It wasn’t me!” she said, raising her voice. “I didn’t have a reason to cry until Mrs. Rogers caught me on my way back from seeing Andy.”

  “But…”

  “Like I told you, this house can sometimes catch you unawares.”

  She came back to the bed and flopped down. “Go back to bed, Jimmy. I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

  I climbed off the bed and walked to the door. “Unawares,” I said. “I didn’t understand what that meant yesterday, and I don’t understand now.”

  She shifted further down on top of the covers and closed her eyes. “Never mind me. Mrs. Rogers probably told you, I make things up.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “No, she probably said I have a fanciful imagination, right?”

  “Er, right.”

  She yawned. “Thought so. Go to bed, Jimmy. We’ll talk again. Oh, and turn the light off as you go. Good night.”

  “Good night,” I said, reached out and flicked the light switch, closing the door behind me.

  I went back to bed and lay there, half expecting the crying to start again, but there were no more sounds from Amy’s room, and gradually I drifted off to sleep.

  I awoke suddenly the next morning. I had been dreaming.

  In the dream I was in the corridor at the end of the landing, walking toward the black door, my hand outstretched, reaching for the handle, but I was moving so slowly it was as if my legs were wading through treacle, and the handle remained tantalizingly out of reach.

  As I moved, the droning sound started, coming this time from behind the door, and I knew I had to find out what was causing it. In my head it was imperative, and I was driving my legs forward—one agonizing step after another—until I could reach the handle.