the way he was facing that he was just about to go inside. Godfrey slackened his pace. A good ten minutes or more before Nightingale would be ready to leave. A few moments later Theresa turned and led the way indoors.
The bungalow would have looked a good deal more at home under the burning skies of Africa than in its orderly setting in the gentle English landscape. In the early nineteen-fifties the old colonial life on the Gold Coast had ended for ever in a series of changes and upheavals that Miss Tillard had viewed with dislike and apprehension. She was no longer young enough to adapt herself and her professional attitudes to new ways; when she learned of the proposal by which Europeans in her position were to be allowed to opt for an early pension – together with a handsome lump sum – it didn’t take her long to make up her mind to leave the country where she had worked for thirty years.
She had come back to the neighbourhood of Chilford where she had been born and brought up. Her father, a partner in a local firm of estate agents, was now dead, but her brother, of whom she had always been fond, had taken over the half-share in the firm and lived on the outskirts of the town with his wife and two daughters. He had found Elinor a small furnished house in which she and Theresa Onil had lived for the year during which the bungalow had been designed and built to Miss Tillard’s very precise specifications.
She had reconstructed as nearly as possible the dwelling she had occupied for the last fifteen years as headmistress of the African school. The bungalow was raised up on a kind of plinth in a way that made sense in the tropics where any whisper of breeze was welcome. A wide verandah supported by slender pillars ran along the front of the house; even the wicker chairs and tables arranged in casual groups carried a note of that other way of life, remote now, part of the past, already beginning to be fossilized.
Godfrey’s easy pace had brought him to the top of the rise and the gate that led into Miss Tillard’s garden. Flowerbeds filled with brilliant cannas were cut into the smoothly sloping lawn. He paused and looked down towards the village, at the church, the central green, the satellite cluster of buildings, and beyond, near the summit of the gentle incline that rose up at the far side of the village, the clubhouse on the golf-course.
He let himself in through the gate. The bungalow stood at a physical remove from the village, and its occupants were isolated also by the way in which they kept themselves aloof from local contacts. This was partly because Miss Tillard found it very difficult to get about; she kept an unwelcome souvenir of her final days in Africa in the shape of an exceedingly troublesome hip joint. The farewell ceremony had taken place at the school; the leather trunks stood locked in the hall. On the day before she was due to wave goodbye, Miss Tillard took it into her head to enjoy a nostalgic ride in a local bus. She hadn’t done such a thing for a quarter of a century, since the days when she was newly out from England, a young and humble member of staff, without a dignified position to keep up.
The buses were strange, not to say fearsome vehicles, ramshackle to the point where it was astounding that every jolt over the roads didn’t cause them to fly apart. Decorated in garish colours, crammed with passengers, and invariably ornamented with painted signs of a religious nature, at once stoutly optimistic and realistically aware of peril implicit in the next lurch.
Miss Tillard had been accompanied on her fateful excursion by Theresa Onil, then a young woman in her early twenties. She had been enrolled as a pupil at the school not very long after Elinor became headmistress; a couple of years later her mother had died and Theresa had been kept on as a boarder, her fees being paid by Elinor who liked the girl and felt sorry for her. Besides, there was really nowhere else for her to go. She seemed to have no knowledge of any relatives back in her native village, and Miss Tillard knew that a light-skinned child was unlikely to be welcomed by any connections who might be discovered. Inquiries were made through the District Commissioner but no one came forward to claim Theresa.
She had formed an ambition to become a teacher, probably in imitation of her admired Miss Tillard, but she hadn’t managed to pass the examinations. When she was eighteen she had begun to take on a number of unofficial duties which she allotted to herself and discharged with care. By the end of another year or two she was supervising the welfare of the youngest children, occasionally acting as a classroom assistant, helping Miss Tillard with a number of irritating minor tasks and in general making herself useful and agreeable all round.
Elinor had felt a blend of sentimental nostalgia and holiday gaiety as she boarded the bus. Theresa had worn an unsmiling look, considering the expedition both undignified and unwise. On the front of the vehicle a short length of wood hammered into place above the driver’s seat bore the flowing inscription: The Lord Will Lead Me. Beneath it a second piece of wood said simply but alarmingly: To The Cemetery.
Half a mile outside the town Theresa had suddenly seized Elinor’s arm and pointed with horror at the road ribboning out behind them. Elinor had just time to catch sight of a wheel from the bus bouncing along on its own before the vehicle fell over.
When Elinor came out of hospital some weeks later it seemed a very good idea for Theresa to accompany her on the voyage home and see her settled into temporary accommodation. Two or three months had lengthened into six, into a year. And then there was the move to the new bungalow, Theresa would be so useful at such a time. Miss Tillard had always intended to lead an active life during her retirement, but the England in which she perched her exotic bungalow was a good deal changed from the country in which she had grown up; in fact she frequently felt herself in the first year or two after her return as much of an alien as she had felt during the recent upheavals in the Gold Coast.
And physically she had never been the same woman since her disastrous trip in the bus. Time drifted by and she made a cosy little nest for the two of them on the outskirts of this quiet English village. She saw a certain amount of her brother and his family, but nothing like as much as she had expected.
She had barely moved into her bungalow when her brother’s elder daughter got married and took herself off with her new husband to the other side of England. A year later the second girl also married; Miss Tillard had scarcely had time to congratulate herself on the fact that Pauline would be living at Oakfield, more or less on her own doorstep, when she learned that Godfrey Barratt intended to make his career in the Army.
Eighteen months later Elinor’s brother died and his widow sold her house, disposed of the half-share in the estate agency to a Tillard cousin – neither of the girls having the slightest inclination to concern themselves with the firm – and took herself off to Spain to live.
The next eight or nine years floated past Elinor like a none too pleasant dream. She no longer even raised the question of sending Theresa back to Africa; without her she would have felt herself totally isolated, a prey to melancholy. It scarcely ever occurred to Godfrey Barratt’s father, perfectly content with his life at Oakfield, his long-settled hobbies and interests, to invite Miss Tillard in for a meal or to share in an outing, nor did it ever cross the mind of Bessie Forrest – who ran Oakfield after the death of Mrs Barratt – that she might make overtures of friendship to the young African woman at the bungalow.
Miss Tillard was able to feel little regret when old Mr Barratt died and it was with deep relief that she learned soon afterwards that his son was leaving the Army and coming home to settle.
Godfrey stood now just inside Miss Tillard’s gate. Must be about time for Nightingale to be leaving; he walked briskly up the path and pressed the bell. The door was opened a minute or two later by Theresa who gave him her usual calm glance.
‘Do come in.’ She stood aside to let him enter the bright airy hall decorated with mementoes of Africa. ‘I don’t think Dr Nightingale will be much longer.’ She opened the door into the sitting room. ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting in here.’ A little heavier than when she had first come to England but still trimly built, rather tall, with a graceful, erect way of walking.
