and, Euphemia suspected, more money, had brought a bright blue nylon overall and had her hair permed.
‘Every day ’e wants me,’ she explained. ‘Got to get ’is breakfast most mornings and cook ’im a meal at night, but ’e’s almost never ’ome for ’is lunch and I’m ter suit meself ’ow I’m ter work. Me sister Eth, she’ll come in mornings and give an ’and. Paying us ’andsome, ’e is, too.’
‘That’s very nice for you, Mrs Cross,’ said Euphemia cheerfully, and her companion made hasty to add: ‘Not but I wasn’t ’appy with you an’ yer father. I’ll miss yer…’
‘Well, yes, we’ve all had to make changes, haven’t we?’ She kept her voice steady. ‘But it’s nice that we can keep the house this way, and Dr van Diederijk seems to like it.’
‘But ’e won’t be ’ere all the time, ’e goes ’ome ter Holland quite a bit. I gets me pay whether ’e’s here or not.’
‘That’s splendid, Mrs Cross. Now, I must go—I’ve still an awful lot to do. You’ve got the back door key, haven’t you? I’ll keep mine until the doctor actually gets here just in case there’s something I’ve forgotten.’
Euphemia went back to the house and began on the boys’ rooms—the worst of the lot, what with model trains and boats and footballs all over the place. By the end of the second day she was tired out but satisfied. The house looked delightful—shabby, certainly, but the furniture was good and well polished and she had decided that somehow or other she would come down and arrange fresh flowers. Mrs Cross had offered to do it, but she tended to fling a dozen blooms into a vase and leave it at that. The roses in the garden were flowering well; she would pick the choicest. On the thought she went and gathered a bunch for herself to take back to her room; after all, the house wasn’t the doctor’s for another five days.
She managed to give herself a free evening on the day before he was due to move in, and drove herself down through a heavy summer shower to spend an hour or more gathering roses and arranging them around the house. As she made a last tour of inspection the thought struck her forcibly that now the house was no longer home. Until then, polishing and cleaning and turning out cupboards, she hadn’t allowed herself to think of that, but now she would have no right to come any more; she would have to travel down to Middle Wallop or spend her free days window shopping and going to cinemas. She came slowly out of the drawing-room, her eyes full of tears, but not bothering with them, since there was no one to see her crying, and lifted the latch of the front door. It was opened at the same time from outside and she found herself staring up into the doctor’s face.
Without giving any reason as to why he was there, he pushed her gently back into the hall and came in and shut the door. ‘This is still your home. I’ve only borrowed it for a time.’ He smiled so kindly at her that she could only gape at him, astonished that he had hit the nail on the head so unerringly. He went on matter-of-factly: ‘Is everything locked up and put away, or can we have a cup of coffee? I was on my way back from a patient of mine in Guildford and it seemed an idea to come this way. I didn’t expect to find anyone here.’ His eyes had taken in the bowl of roses on the side table. ‘Flowers,’ he observed, ‘and a wonderful smell of polish and lavender bags. Thank you, specially as you had no need to do it.’
Euphemia sniffed. ‘I wasn’t going to hand it over all dusty and—and lonely.’ She got out a hanky and blew her nose vigorously and wiped her eyes. ‘I’ll get some coffee.’
They went into the kitchen together and she made coffee for them both while he carried on a rather one-sided conversation about nothing in particular. They left the house together presently, and he gave her no chance to linger but ushered her through the door with a brisk: ‘Of course, you will be coming back, probably sooner than you think.’
Euphemia had murmured something, intent on being sensible and unsentimental about it all, then got into the Morris and driven away after bidding him goodbye in answer to his own still brisk farewell. He had been kind, she acknowledged, as she started on the drive back to the hospital, but she still didn’t like him. And why had he been there, anyway? He hadn’t told her that. She shrugged the thought aside; it didn’t matter now, in a few hours he would be living there. She wanted to cry again because she was lonely and missed her father, and picking up the threads of life and changing its pattern wouldn’t be easy.
She flung herself into her work with an energy which left her nurses breathless, and even Sir Richard, pausing at the end of his round to bid her a courteous farewell, remarked that her devotion to duty exceeded even his high standards. ‘But I daresay you are glad to be occupied,’ he observed, ‘although it must be a great relief to you to know that Dr van Diederijk is your tenant at Hampton-cum-Spyway and not some stranger.’
Euphemia clenched her teeth on the observation that he was, at any rate to her, a complete stranger. She agreed politely and sped the great man on his way to the Women’s Medical. But it was a relief all the same when the cheque for the handsome sum Dr van Diederijk was paying every month arrived by the next day’s post. She paid it into the bank with instructions that the mortgage was to be paid each month. There was still a little money over: holidays, she decided, clothes for the boys, and perhaps it would pay for some sort of training for Ellen, only she wasn’t sure what. Of course, Ellen might marry. She had had a number of boyfriends, although Euphemia didn’t think that she was serious about any of them; all the same it was a very likely possibility.
Euphemia stopped thinking about Ellen for a moment and thought about herself. Matthew Patterson, whose parents lived on the other side of the green, had asked her to marry him several times, but she had refused him on each occasion; his eyes were too close together, she considered, and he had a nasty temper. And there was Terry Walker too, Senior Medical Registrar, who had proposed, rather lightheartedly, she had to admit—besides, she had the lowering feeling that when he discovered her father had left them all without a penny, he wouldn’t be as keen as he made out. Miss Blackstock, with a highly respected colonel for a father and a supposedly comfortable portion of his worldly goods to come her way sooner or later, was a rather different kettle of fish from Miss Blackstock with nothing at all. But it was hardly fair to think about herself; it was the boys who mattered. The house would have gone to Nicky and she must at all costs try and save it for him. The sums she had scribbled on the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper weren’t encouraging; the mortgage would take fifteen years to pay off, which would be about right for Nicky but would leave her, at the ripe age of forty-two, exactly where she was now…
It was almost a week later when she received a brief note from Dr van Diederijk inviting her to join himself and a few friends for drinks at her old home. In four days’ time, he had written in a rather sprawling hand, and underlined the date and the time. She read it several times and then put it down on her desk as Terry Walker walked in.
He was a good-looking youngish man, ambitious and good at his work but not over-liked by his colleagues. He smiled at her now in a rather guarded manner and asked: ‘What’s this I hear about you renting your house? Surely you’ll need to keep it open for the boys and your sister?’ And when she didn’t answer at once: ‘You didn’t have to rent it, did you?’ He gave her a sharp look and although she hadn’t meant to tell him anything she changed her mind now.
‘Yes, we did. The house is mortgaged.’
He looked so surprised that she felt quite sorry for him. ‘You mean you’ve no money?’ At her cold stare he added hastily: ‘What I mean is, how about the boys—their education?’
‘That’s safe enough.’ She saw the embarrassment on his face and felt sorry for him—after all, he had been home with her once or twice and he must have got the impression that her background was comfortable and solid. To lighten the atmosphere
