up the business, Burnett read books and won scholarships. He came back here to practise after he qualified. Then, when he was about thirty or thirty-five, he went off to Yorkshire and didn’t come back till about ten years ago. I suppose he found he was growing old, thought he’d like to end his days where he was born. Not an uncommon wish.’
‘Did he never marry?’ Gina spoke the words with a trace of hesitation, hoping that Richard wouldn’t think she was sending out a feeler of any kind. Marriage had never been mentioned between them, but she knew that he had considered it, that during their visit to his home he would make up his mind.
Richard shook his head. ‘No, not so far as I know. He certainly never mentions a wife and I’ve never heard that he married. Rather surprising really, when I come to think about it. A wife is very useful to a doctor, most doctors marry. And Burnett, in particular, I would have thought he was the type to fall in love deeply and permanently.’ He laid down his cup. ‘By the way, Gina, I haven’t pressed you, but are you coming with me? Next month, when I go home? I’d like you to meet my parents, I’d like it very much.’ He gave her a level, direct, unsmiling look. ‘It’s important to me.’
She felt her heart give a sharp leap. ‘I’d like to, Richard, I’d be very pleased to. It’s only—’ She broke off and bit her lip.
‘Only what? What silly notion have you got into your head?’
It was utterly impossible for her to open her mouth and mention such a ridiculous trifle as her clothes. A man would never understand, and particularly a man like Richard. He would brush the words aside with impatience. But it does matter, Gina thought, it matters a lot to make the right impression. With the right clothes, I’d feel at ease, adequate, able to hold my own, however grand his parents are.
‘They mightn’t like me,’ she heard herself say, and was instantly depressed at the stupidity, the childishness of the remark. ‘I’m no one,’ she said, plunging even deeper into foolishness. She abandoned all pretence and let the words come out in a rush. ‘I’ve no family, no background. Your parents are well-to-do, they live in a big house, they’d wonder why on earth you bothered to bring home a girl like me.’ It was out, she’d said it. She closed her eyes for an instant in despair.
A moment later she was astounded to hear Richard laugh. A deep amused laugh, echoing round the hall. She jerked her eyes open.
‘You silly child!’ He bent down and put his arms round her, kissed her lightly and firmly on the mouth.
‘You’re someone very special, to me,’ he said, suddenly serious again, looking down into her eyes. ‘Don’t ever let me hear you talk such nonsense again. My parents will love you – as I do.’
‘Oh, Richard—’ Upstairs she heard a door open and close. She pulled back from his arms and glanced nervously towards the stairs.
‘It’s all right,’ he said in a low voice. ‘There’s no need to act like a startled fawn.’ But his manner resumed its customary trace of formality. ‘I take it you’ll be coming with me, then? If your objections are nothing more serious than that?’
She drew a deep breath. ‘All right, I’ll come.’
He patted her hand. ‘Good girl, I knew you’d see sense.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now I really must be off or my patients’ relatives will all be ringing the surgery to find out where I’ve got to.’
She went with him to the door. ‘I’ll phone you,’ he said. ‘This evening or tomorrow, it depends how I’m fixed. We’ll go out and have a meal together as soon as I can manage a couple of hours off.’ He brushed her cheek with his lips and was gone.
Gina closed the door and stood with her back to it, her hands clasped together. I will go, she thought, and I’ll be a credit to him. I’ll get the suède coat and the skirt and the sweater. Shoes, bag and gloves. I’ll get them all. Somehow. I’ll look poised, elegant, suitable. I won’t let Richard down. She unclasped her hands, stood up very straight and looked up at the stairs towards the corridor beyond, towards the room behind whose door old Mr Mallinson lay.
‘Doing very well indeed,’ Kenneth Mallinson said. ‘Still plenty of room for expansion of course.’ He gave a little smile. ‘We’re not in the same class as you, not by a long chalk, but our balance sheet is pretty healthy.’
Henry Mallinson put the tips of his fingers together. ‘No, I don’t suppose you are in the same class as me. Took me fifty years to build the firm up. And things were different then. More opportunity for a young man with vision. Not so many rules and regulations, taxation wasn’t so crippling.’ He looked back into the past for an instant with pleasure, remembering the old days, the struggles, the triumphs, the near-disasters. He gave a little smiling sigh, wishing it was all to do again, that he could turn back the clock and start the whole long battle all over again.
‘There isn’t a thing I’d do differently,’ he said suddenly, following his own train of thought. ‘Not a thing.’ He’d enjoyed every moment of it, the difficulties and conflicts, perhaps those most of all.
‘Nothing?’ Kenneth asked in an altered tone. He wasn’t thinking of the business, he was thinking of his mother, of her spirit bruised and crushed over the long years of marriage to a man whose first and only thought was for the firm he had reared with so much toil and sweat. He was thinking of his own quarrel with his father and the years of silence. ‘Nothing at all?’
Henry Mallinson raised his eyes. ‘Not a thing,’ he said. ‘I’d do it all again exactly as before.’
Kenneth stood up and walked over to the window. He stood looking down at the sweep of lawn, at Foster kneeling by a bed, patting the earth around a plant. One learns nothing from the past, he thought, one learns nothing from one’s mistakes, we are all bounded inexorably by the limitations of our own natures. Myself as well as other men. He felt suddenly and acutely depressed.
‘You’re quite settled up north, then?’ his father’s voice asked. He didn’t add, ‘Not thinking of getting married one of these days?’ It wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask. A confirmed bachelor, his elder son, he would retreat year by year further into his shell, growing more solitary, more self-sufficient. Any grandchildren Henry Mallinson might hope for must be looked for elsewhere. The firm would not be carried on, nurtured and served by any descendants of Kenneth’s. ‘You’ve given up all notion of coming back here?’ He didn’t say, ‘Of coming home.’ Whitegates was no longer home to Kenneth, hadn’t been home to him since the day he’d followed his mother to Rockley churchyard where she lay at last in peace, beyond unhappiness, beyond the possibility of pain.
Kenneth turned from the window. ‘I don’t know,’ he said with an air of lightness. ‘I haven’t totally ceased to consider it.’ His own business concern might go bust in a matter of days. He had to keep the door open, he might be very glad indeed to creep back to Rockley and make a niche for himself in the family business. But what kind of a niche would it be? Would David even contemplate relinquishing command? He gave a fractional shake of his head at the notion. No, David would not contemplate it. He would take very great pleasure in assigning his elder brother to some inferior position, in issuing orders and waiting for them to be carried out.
I couldn’t do it, Kenneth thought. But reality stared back at him implacably. He might have to do it, there might be no other conceivable course.
‘There’s always room for a little more capital in a growing concern,’ he said, smiling at his father. ‘I don’t have to tell you that. Do you fancy a sound investment? I could
