The Asharton Manor Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4)

by Celina Grace

  I heard the click of heels echoing from down one of the corridors and a moment later, a woman in a green nurse’s uniform came into view.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, peering at me over her wire-rimmed spectacles. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Vivian Holt,” I said, holding out my hand. “I think we spoke on the telephone earlier this week. About the nurse’s aide volunteering…?”

  “Oh, of course. Hello. I’m Celia Manning. Sorry, we’re all at sixes and sevens here, at the moment. Are you ready to start right away?”

  “Yes, no problem.” I felt a leap of anxiety but tamped it down.

  Celia guided me through a doorway at the back of the hallway, which led to a dark corridor that ended in a flight of steps. We went down, Celia chatting about the manor and its occupants all the way. I nodded and tried to keep up with her quick pace, catching glimpses of storerooms which held crates of bandages, bedpans and other medical equipment.

  “We’re a convalescent home, rather than a hospital,” said Celia, holding open a door for me. She ushered me into a small, dark room where one side was fitted with open shelves piled with clothing. She gave me an assessing stare, picked out a pile of folded clothes and handed them to me. “But you’ll have to change into this – even our aide workers have their own uniforms. It’s all very hierarchical here, I’m afraid, just like a hospital in that respect. You mustn’t directly address the doctors, you know. If you have a concern, speak to the ward nurse who’ll speak to Sister. Then Sister will speak to the doctor.”

  It seemed like a ridiculously convoluted way of passing a message on, but I just nodded. What if it was an emergency? The patient might die before the message was passed on. I shook out the clothes and held them against me. Rather unflattering, but what did that matter? I waited for Celia to leave the room to allow me to change, but she just stood there, tapping her foot impatiently, so in the end I took off my skirt and my blouse and wriggled into the navy blue tunic. It wasn’t too bad a fit.

  “Now,” said Celia, turning on her heel even as I fastened the last button. “I’ll take you through to Rose, in the dispensary. She’ll be able to tell you what to do first. I’ve got to get back to my ward.”

  She whisked me through a maze of corridors, past what was obviously the kitchen – bustling with several women wearing overalls and white aprons, through a cloud of cabbage-smelling steam – and more store rooms. Finally she hustled me up a short flight of steps and deposited me outside a room marked ‘Dispensary’. She flung the door open and shouted. “Rose? Rose! Can you show this lady the ropes, please? Usual thing. Thanks.”

  Slightly winded from our fast climb up the stairs, I waited for Rose to show herself. Celia flapped a hand in goodbye and clicked off down the corridor. I waited, feeling rather foolish, by the glass door, which had closed itself with a small click. I hoped someone would show me the way out of the building later – I had no hope of finding my own way out; I felt totally disorientated.

  Rose turned out to be a peroxide blonde, heavily made up and rather blousy. She had the soft West Country burr which was rather at odds with her sexy appearance. Her curves were tightly packed into a cream-coloured overall. “I don’t know why Celia expects me to do all the training,” she said rather sourly. “It’s not like I’ve got nothing else to do.”

  I smiled apologetically and introduced myself. Rose shook my hand limply, heaved a sigh and indicated I should follow her.

  “We start the new ones off on Ballroom Ward,” she said. She almost, but not quite, said ‘wrrrd’. “That one’s for the men who are nearly well again.”

  “Rightio,” I said. “Ballroom Ward? That’s a strange name.”

  “Oh, they’re all named like that. You’ll see why.” We crossed back over the main entrance hall and entered through a large set of doors on the opposite side. As soon as Rose opened them, I saw what she meant. This had once been the ballroom; high-ceilinged, with a beautifully painted mural above our heads depicting celestial beings, angels and cherubs entwined with rosy-pink clouds, all against a soft blue backdrop. It was wonderful. The chandelier that had once hung in the centre of the room had gone – too valuable to have remained, I surmised – but the magnificent wooden panelling on the walls remained.

  All this I took in with just a couple of glances. Then, of course, I noticed what was in the room itself: neat rows of beds, bedside lockers, a nurses’ station up at the far end. And the men, sitting or lying in the beds. At first glance, they didn’t seem too bad. There were missing arms and legs and some wore eye-patches, but I saw nothing that made me flinch. I let out my held breath in a rush, relieved.

  Rose led me down the middle of the room. A fusillade of wolf whistles followed her and she smirked. I supposed they were whistling at her – I couldn’t imagine anyone would be whistling at me. I had been pretty when I was young but now I’m thirty-five, with lines on my face that the powder doesn’t disguise and grey streaks marbling my dark brown hair. It wouldn’t have mattered to Sidney, if he’d ever come home. But there – he hadn’t come home.

  I bit my lip. These sorts of thoughts were why I was taking on this role. I found it too hard to sit at home, day after day and night after night, staring into the fire. The wireless would be on but I’d barely hear it. Sometimes the tide of grief and anger – at the bloody unfairness of it all – would rise up until it smothered me. It was then I thought that I should have stayed in London, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stand seeing the streets where Sidney and I had lived smashed to bits, houses broken into rubble, even those places where everything had been cleared away were terrible in their emptiness. Gaping holes along the terraced streets and grief and bitterness and anger was everywhere. So many people — people I’d known all my life — were gone, never to return. Even those that were left – and I included myself in that – were changed irrevocably. Nobody gets through a war unscathed.

  Rose was talking to the nurse who sat at the desk at the end of the room. I dragged myself back to the present and tried to look eager and alert.

  The nurse was an older, grey-haired lady, with a pinched face and a manner almost as sour as Rose’s. She was introduced to me as Nurse Bennett.

  “Well, we don’t have much time to waste babysitting those who don’t know what they’re doing,” she said. “You’ll mainly be helping out with the things we don’t have time to do ourselves; cleaning, talking to the men, fetching and carrying. Nothing glamorous about it.”

  Why she thought that was what I had come for was a bit of a mystery, but I just nodded and smiled.

  “Very well,” Nurse Bennett said, dismissing us. “Rose, please show her where she can find the cleaning products and so forth.” She bent her grey head back towards the files on her desk.

  Rose rolled her eyes and clicked off towards the door at the back of the room. I hurried after her. She took me through to another maze of rooms, and waved her hand towards each. She was talking nineteen to the dozen, about meal trolleys and bed pans and bandages and the sluice, whatever that was, but I just kept nodding and making what I hoped were intelligent noises of agreement.

  “There,” she said, finally winding down. “That’s it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to my real work.”

  She almost, but not quite, flounced off towards a set of stairs at the end of the corridor.

  “But what am I supposed to do—“

  Rose had gone. I shrugged and turned back towards the ward.

  Nurse Bennett had disappeared too. I stood for a moment, hesitant and shy.

  “Hey, hey, who have we here then?”

  The shout came from a man sitting up in bed at the near end of the room. The grey blanket that was spread over his legs lay flat on one side of his body, but he wore a broad grin on his face and his eyes twinkled. I was so relieved to finally be addressed in a friendly manner that I found myself walking over to him, smiling.

  “Who are you, ducks?”

  I held out a hand a
nd introduced myself. His hand was strong and calloused – a worker’s hand.

  “So you’re here to cheer us up then, are you, love? Very nice, too. I’m Norman.”

  “Can I help you with anything, Norman?”

  “Aye-aye,” he said with a wink, “Now that’s an offer I can’t refuse.” I smiled tightly and he must have sensed that I didn’t much appreciate that sort of tone, because he turned serious a moment later. “Don’t mind me, ducks, I do like me jokes. I don’t mean any harm. There is something you could do for me, actually – and nothing like that!” He reached over to the metal locker with some difficulty and took a book off the top of it. “Would you run down to the library, love, and get me something else to read? I’m bored bananas, sat here on me tod with nothing to read.”

  I warmed to him again. I’m a great reader myself and I know the feeling of, well, almost panic, when you realise you’ve not got a book about you.

  “Do you want me to get you anything in particular, Norman?”

  “Nay, love, whatever you pick’ll be fine, I’m sure. No romance, though! That’s me only criteria.”

  He winked at me again and I burst out laughing, unable to help myself at the thought of the burly, grey-haired man in front of me sat devouring romance novels in pink covers. He grinned, clearly pleased to have made me laugh.

  “Where is the library?”

  “I’m not sure meself, gel. Never been there. Ask Nurse to show you where it is.”

  Nurse Bennett had reappeared in the meantime. She sniffed when I asked her where I could find the library but directed me back towards the hallway. The library turned out to be across the other side of the house. I’d been expected a shelf or two full of books, but I was astonished to find that it was actually a real library; shelves up to the high ceiling with one of those ladders that roll along the walls. Again, the hook for the chandelier in the ceiling was empty and strip lighting had been installed, bathing the ancient wooden shelves in an unforgiving white light. Ivy had grown up over the tall windows at the front of the house and, when I flicked off the strip light to see how much better it was without that awful bleaching glare, the sudden dimness and the flickering green shadows that were thrown over the room made me switch it back on again in a hurry.

  The books were a mixed bunch. Anything valuable had clearly long since disappeared but there were plenty of modern paperbacks, some leather-bound classics, an assortment of newspapers and magazines, and a small reference section.

  I brought Norman back a rollicking mystery by one of my favourite authors, Joan Hart. He turned it over to read the back cover, nodding approvingly.

  “I’ll enjoy this, I can see that. Nothing like a nice juicy murder, eh, Miss Holt?”

  “It’s Mrs,” I said. “But you can call me Vivian.”

  “Mrs, is it? What’s your husband think of you coming up here to tend to all us rough old soldiers, eh?”

  I tried to speak and explain but all of a sudden my throat closed up and I couldn’t see for the tears stinging my eyes. Norman noticed immediately.

  “Oh, pet, I’m sorry. Like that, is it? Well, never mind me. Why don’t you go and make us all a nice cup of tea. Meet some more of the lads here.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to smile, blinking hard.

  “Yes, I will. Thanks, Norman.”

  That first day passed, as first days in a new role are wont to do, in a blur of new faces and names and instructions and procedures. I sluiced out bed pans (successfully managing not to gag – I was quite proud of myself), filled flower vases with fresh water, helped the nurses to lift and straighten patients, carried towels and blankets, asked Rose for a prescription, swept the ward floor and read some Trollope to a soldier called Fred, who’d lost the sight of both eyes at Dunkirk. Every so often, Norman would catch my eye and give me a nod and encouraging smile. It helped me. I got home to the tiny cottage I now called home that night absolutely exhausted, but feeling better than I had done in simply ages.

  I went back the next day, and the next. After a couple of weeks, everything sort of fell into place and I felt as if I’d been at the manor forever. I got to know all of the patients and I made some headway with the frosty Nurse Bennett, who was beginning to appreciate how hard I worked. Norman and I became fast friends. I don’t know why we hit it off so well; perhaps we had that London bond in common, although he hailed from Walthamstow and Sidney and I had lived in Crystal Palace. As I grew to know him better, I realised that his bluff, hearty salt-of-the-earth manner hid an unexpectedly sensitive side. He was observant too and interested in people, just as I was. And, of course, we loved to chat about books. He was a great letter writer too, and seemed to have pen-friends all over the country.

  “Us old soldiers, we remember each other,” he said once, when I’d joshed him about the amount of letters he wrote. “I can’t keep up with everyone I once fought with face to face, but I like to keep in contact. They’re the only ones who really know, you know.”

  “Know?”

  Norman capped his pen and leant back against his pillows with a sigh. “They’re the only ones who know what it’s really like.”

  “War, you mean?” I asked, rather timidly.

  He nodded, as if suddenly tired. “Yes, ducks. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  It was some time before I realised that he was talking not only about the men he’d fought with in the war just past – the one that had cost him his leg – but people he’d fought with in the First World War. I was astonished, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been. It seemed like ancient history to me. I’d been two years old when the Great War began.

  “You must have been so young, Norman,” I said, when we began to talk about it.

  “Nineteen, gel. Had barely cut the apron springs! But there – we did what we had to do. And if you didn’t – well, people weren’t too happy.” He stared off into the distance for a moment, clearly remembering. “Mate of mine, Arthur Hopgood, had a bad go of pneumonia the winter of 1914. The doctors thought for a while that he wouldn’t make it. So he couldn’t join up, o’ course. Anyway, he come out of hospital eventually and he’d not been home for a week before he got a white feather through the letter box.” He frowned. “If people knew what they were shaming lads into, they’d have thought differently.”

  I nodded. We were both silent a moment, thinking. Then Norman sighed. “It’s a funny thing, ducks. When I came back from the war – the first one – I remember thinking to myself, ‘Norman, my lad, that’s the biggest thing you will ever live through. That’s the most dramatic thing that’s ever going to happen to you. You managed to survive it and it’s over, and nothing like that in your life will ever happen again’.” He was silent for a moment and then looked at me. He was almost smiling, but not quite. “And then bugger me, Vivian. Less than twenty-five years later and here we all are again, marching off to war. You just wouldn’t credit it, would you?”

  I nodded. It did seem incredible, put like that. Barely a generation later and we were fighting each other again, as if we just hadn’t had enough of it, the first time round. I looked down at my hands, clasped in my lap and suddenly thought, well, what if this war, the war just ended, the war that had ripped so many lives apart – what if there was another conflict up ahead in the future, in my lifetime? Could I actually live through something like this again? What if it was worse? I thought of the atom bomb the Americans had dropped on Japan and a shudder actually convulsed me.

  “Now then, love,” said Norman, who must have noticed how pale and silent I’d become. “Aren’t we gloomy today? Why don’t you make us a cup of tea and we’ll chat about books or something else?”

  I concurred with his suggestion and went and put the kettle on. I also remembered that I’d packed a slice of ginger cake that I’d made at the weekend in my handbag and divided it into two to share.

  It didn’t take much to cheer Norman up. The tea and the cake did it – oh, that’s champion, that is, Vivian. Good lass
– and soon we were talking of books and films and gardening and the war – both wars – receded into the background.

  “You’re a London lass, aren’t you?” Norman said, dabbing his finger around the plate to pick up all the ginger cake crumbs. “What made you move down here?”

  “Sidney – my husband – his mother lived here. She died not long after – not long after he did — and we inherited her cottage. I mean, I inherited the cottage. And after the war, I felt like a fresh start, somewhere new, so I moved down here.”

  Norman looked at me keenly. “Does it feel like home yet?”

  I was silent for a moment. Two weeks ago, I would have answered with a violent negative. Now, I wasn’t so sure. “A little,” I said, honestly. “It’s growing on me.”

  Norman shifted himself in his bed. “Stump’s aching today,” he muttered. “Give it time, ducks. Takes time to settle into a place. This flippin’ place feels like home to me sometimes. Now, that’s a thought, and not a happy one.”

  “How about some fresh air?” I suggested. “Could I push you out to the garden, perhaps?”

  “Ah, now, that’s a champion idea. Get one of the porters to help you, love, don’t go trying to heave me about on your own.”

  I did just that and once Norman was comfortably settled in the wheelchair, I steered him carefully out of the ward and towards the side exit of the house, which had been adapted with a ramp and rails. The two of us made our way out to the terrace that ran along the back of the house.

  The view from the terrace was undeniably lovely. If you looked past the unkempt lawn and the overgrown flowerbeds, and kept your gaze on the vista of forest and hills and the distant glittering thread of the river, it was wonderful. Here and there, I could see that someone had begun to make a start on tidying up the garden itself and, as we looked, a young man pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with weeds trundled into view. He stared at us both curiously for a moment, before disappearing behind the wall of what had once been the kitchen garden.