seen in years. The marvellous thing is this, our landlord actually gave us notice to move out of our house because it’s been sold, and I had no idea what I could do.’ She poured their coffee, beaming at him across the little table. ‘Now we can go to Much Hadham…’
He interrupted her abruptly. ‘Much Hadham? The village near Ware?’
She was still too bemused to notice the abruptness. ‘Yes. It’s a small house called Ivy Cottage. There’s a garden, a real one, not just a dusty strip of grass, and trees, and Mike and Christine can go to decent schools and Zoë is bound to get a good job…’
‘And you?’ he prompted.
‘Me? No, I mean I, don’t I? I’ll get a job at Bishop’s Stortford or Stevenage.’ Her practical mind was beginning to take over again. ‘I’m sorry to bore you with all this; you’ve been very kind. I think I was so bowled over that I could have danced a jig in the middle of Holborn. You see, it’s a miracle…’
His voice was reassuringly matter of fact. ‘They do occur.’
He gave her an abstracted smile and she said hurriedly, ‘Thank you for my lunch, I did enjoy it. I must be getting back.’
He made no effort to detain her, but paid the bill and walked back the way they had come. In High Holborn she stopped. ‘There is my bus stop…’
He ignored her, and lifted an arm to a passing taxi, put her inside, closed the door on her with a suave, ‘Allow me,’ and paid the driver and gave her address. She sat there, too astonished to speak, while the cab bore her homewards. He hadn’t even said goodbye, she remembered; he must have been bored out of his mind. She went a bright pink at the idea and the cabby, glancing back in his mirror, thought what a very pretty girl she was.
Dusty was delighted to see her again and, since there was no one else to talk to, she told him all about it while she hoovered and polished and hung out lines of washing, impatient for the others to come home.
She had tea ready for them, and over that meal told them the news.
‘We would have had to move anyway,’ she finished, ‘but now we will have a real home of our own and no rent to pay…’
They sat and stared at her, speechless until Mike let out a whoop of delight. ‘I’ll be able to leave this school…’
‘So will I,’ crowed Christine. Not a demonstrative family by nature, they hugged each other, talking a good deal of nonsense and making outrageous plans. Louise went to the dark little pantry and fetched out a bottle of sherry she had been saving for Zoë’s nineteenth birthday and opened it, and they sat round, the washing up forgotten, while she told them her own sensible plans. They agreed to everything that she suggested; she was the eldest and a good deal older than they were, and they had become accustomed to go to her for help and advice. If she said that it was the best thing for them to move, then move they would, and be overjoyed to do it.
On her first morning after her return to night duty, she went to the office and handed in her resignation; she had always got on well with the senior nursing officer, and now she was listened to with sympathy.
‘In the circumstances,’ declared Miss Pritchard, ‘I can understand that you have no choice but to move to this house which you have been left—most fortuitously, I must add. I shall be very sorry to lose you, Sister, and can but hope that you will be able to find another post near your new home. You can rely upon me to give you an excellent reference, and if I can help in any way, I shall be glad to do so.’
Her friends at the hospital received her news with mixed feelings; she was well liked and, moreover, they had all known each other for a number of years, but they echoed Miss Pritchard’s opinion; there was nothing else for Louise to do. There was no question of selling the house at Much Hadham, she would never get sufficient for it to buy anything similar in London, and in a way, she reflected on her journey home, it was nice not having to make up her mind about it; circumstances had done that for her. She composed a letter to the landlord before she went to bed, and slept soundly for the first time in days.
CHAPTER TWO
ON THE first day of Louise’s next nights off they all went to Much Hadham, Dusty, on his best behaviour, going with them. It was a short journey and they were there before ten o’clock, walking down the village street with its charming mixture of sixteenth and seventeenth-century cottages and large Georgian town houses. The house was more or less in the centre of the village, standing cornerwise on to the junction of a side lane and the main street. It wasn’t large but, even so, bigger than their house in Hoxton, and there was, as far as they could see as they approached it, a sizeable garden. Louise unlocked the front door and they crowded in silently, to stand in the narrow hall and gaze around them. The passage ran from the front door to the back, where there was another stout door, and on either side there were two doors, with a pretty little staircase near the backdoor.
After a few moments Louise walked to the back door and opened it. The garden was nicely old-fashioned, although neglected, but there was a fair-sized grass plot, flowerbeds and, along the end wall, what had been a vegetable patch with the garden shed at one end of it. Still silently she led the others into the first room: the kitchen, with a stone-flagged floor, a very elderly Aga cooker, an old-fashioned dresser and Windsor chairs around a wooden table. Its windows overlooked the garden at the back.
Louise said at once, ‘Someone to see to the stove; we can paint the walls and plan to make curtains and polish the furniture…’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but led the way across the hall and opened another door. A small room with worn lino on its floor and faded curtains, but the desk in it was a charming one of rosewood, badly in need of a polish, with a sabrelegged Regency chair drawn up to it, and there was a library table against one wall, flanked by two matching chairs.
‘Nice,’ commented Louise, and led her party back into the hall and into the room facing the small front garden. It must have been the drawing-room, they decided, for there were several easy chairs, shabby but whole, a long case clock and a glass-fronted bookcase, as well as a pier table under the window. The carpet under their feet was faded but still good, if somewhat grubby. ‘A good scrub,’ said Louise as they went into the last room. The dining-room, small and rather dark by reason of the gloomy wallpaper and heavy serge curtains. But the table at its centre was solid mahogany, as were the four chairs around it, and there was a sideboard of the same wood.
They looked at each other and smiled happily and went up the stairs.
The bathroom was almost a museum piece with a bath on claw feet in the centre of the bare floor, but the geyser above it looked modern enough. The washbasin was large and, like the bath, white, with brass taps and a wooden cupboard beneath it concealing a multitude of pipes. There was lino on the floor here, too, badly in need of replacement.
There were three bedrooms, one large enough for Zoë and Christine, and two smaller ones for Mike and Louise, and at the back of the landing a tiny curved staircase leading to an attic with windows back and front.
Louise caught Mike’s look. ‘Once we are in and things have got sorted out, we might turn this into a room for you, Mike; that would give us a spare room. What do you all think of it? Will you be happy here?’
Their chorus of delight almost deafened her.
‘We’ll go and find somewhere where we can have coffee. Then, Mike, will you check the lights? Zoë and Christine, you have got the tape measure? We shall need curtains everywhere; I’m going to see if I can get hold of someone
