Eve and Her Sisters (27 page)

‘Dr Wynford didn’t have to tell me that. It’s obvious to everyone.The flu has provided a wonderful excuse for you.’

Her tone was not gentle and his eyes snapped open. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me.’ Her voice grim, she continued, ‘I perhaps should have said this a long time ago but I didn’t consider it my place. But now I think it is necessary. Esther would have been horrified, horrified and disappointed to see the man you have become since she died. She would have expected more of you.’

Howard clearly couldn’t believe his ears. He had been lying very still, his arm resting on top of the bedclothes, but now her words acted on him like a bucket of cold water, so much so that the sharp movement he made to sit up caused him to cough and gasp for air.

When the paroxysm was over, Eve spoke before he could. ‘She fought her illness every step of the way, you know she did, and for you to simply give in must be the worst insult you could pay to her memory. She loved you and she wanted you to go on—’

‘
Be quiet
.’ It wasn’t a shout, he didn’t have the energy for that, but nevertheless the tone of his voice brought Eve’s head jerking upwards. ‘Please, Eve, be quiet.’

‘No, I won’t. I won’t be quiet. I’ve been quiet long enough.’

‘What do you mean, you won’t. I pay your wage, remember.’

It was the first time he had ever said such a thing and although she told herself he was reacting out of the black anger evident on his face, it hurt. ‘I know that but I have to say this whether you are vexed or not. It’s-it’s what Esther would have wanted. You don’t want to hear it but it’s true.’

‘Don’t presume to tell me what Esther would have wanted.’

‘Someone has to.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I would be failing in my duty to her if I didn’t speak out.’

‘I suppose John put you up to this?’

‘Dr Wynford is concerned about you, yes, but I’m saying it because it’s the truth.’ Her voice had risen. ‘The past months you have been so different.When-when you’ve had a drink, Daisy is slightly afraid of you. Did you know that?’

‘
What?
’ Again he reared up like a scalded cat.

He looked dreadful, as pale as lint but for the two red feverish spots of colour burning his cheekbones, but Eve did not allow her pity to weaken her. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘I don’t believe you. Daisy has been with us since she left school. She would never be frightened of me.’

Eve looked at him but she did not speak.

After a moment he lay back against the pillows, grinding his teeth. When his jaw stopped working, he muttered,‘I’ve got the influenza like half the nation. What’s that got to do with having a glass of wine in the evenings? This is ridiculous.’

‘You drink one or two bottles a night before you retire to your study. Then you turn to brandy—’

‘
Enough!
’

Sick as he was, his voice resounded like a pistol shot, making Eve jump. Her voice shaking, she said, ‘Well, don’t you?’

‘I don’t have to explain my actions to you.’

‘No, you don’t.’ She stared down at him, taking a deep breath before she was able to say, ‘You are answerable only to your conscience and perhaps the memory of a sweet, brave lady who would never have taken the coward’s way out. I’ll go and get your medication and a hot drink.’

She turned and had reached the door before his voice came,saying,‘You don’t understand.I miss her . . .’

‘I do understand.’ Her voice was soft but firm.

‘You aren’t the only one who has lost someone but shutting everyone out, Dr Wynford and the rest of your friends, isn’t the answer. Neither is drinking too much.’

He coughed again, hard, racking sounds, and she went to him, reached for the glass of water on the bedside cabinet and held it to his lips as he took a few sips. When the spasm subsided, his voice came as little more than a whisper. ‘What was the answer for you?’

She didn’t pretend not to understand. ‘To say goodbye and move on. It’s not easy but it is the only way, believe me.’

‘And it worked? For you it worked?’

‘Mostly.’ Her voice was very low.

He nodded. ‘What about the times when it doesn’t?’

‘Then you weather them.And eventually you come through.’

‘I don’t know if I can, not without a prop.’

She looked at him, pity filling her. ‘Then let me be your prop, not - not the wine. You can always talk to me, night or day. I made Esther a promise I would be here for you and I will be, but you have to let me in. If not me, then someone.’

He waved a weary hand.‘It would be much simpler to join her. I want to be with her, wherever she is.’

‘I doubt you’d get the reception you expect. Like I said, she wouldn’t approve of your conduct over the last months.’

‘That’s true enough.’

She thought she detected a note of amusement in his voice even though his expression had not changed. It encouraged her enough to say, ‘Will you fight? Not just the flu but this . . . depression? Will you at least promise me to try?’

‘Oh, Eve,’ he closed his eyes, ‘you make it sound so easy. I don’t know if I’ve got the strength or the inclination. That’s the truthful answer.’

‘I can provide the former but not the latter.That’s up to you. But I will stand with you every inch of the way.’

‘I might not get over this flu. Millions haven’t.’

‘You’ll get over it.’ She smiled faintly at him.‘What was it you used to say? Only the good die young.’

‘I’m not young though.’

‘Of course you are.’ She meant it. Before Esther had died, she would have said he had the most youthful, inquiring, open mind of anyone she’d ever met. ‘And Britain is going to need men like you when this war is over.’

‘Men like me?’ He stared at her, sweat gleaming on his brow although his hand had been cold when she had helped him drink. ‘Britain can do very well without men like me, Eve.’

‘I think not.’ She looked at him in silence now, then moved her lips one over the other before she said,‘You have no idea of the esteem in which you’re held, not just by Elsie and Daisy and me but by your friends and those who work for you at the factory. Esther used to tell me about all the people you’ve helped, quietly and without fuss. It’s no wonder your employees think so much of you. Most men in your position look on the men and women who work for them as little more than scum.’

‘I’m no saint, Eve.’

‘No, you’re not a saint, Mr Ingram.’ She put her head on one side, her smile wide. ‘No one could ever accuse you of sainthood, you’re too human for that. But you’re much nicer than you give yourself credit for. And now I’m going to bring you a bowl of soup with your medication and I expect you to eat the lot. All right?’ She left the room quickly, pretending she hadn’t noticed the moisture swimming in his eyes.

Howard lay still for some moments and then he wiped his wet eyes with the back of his hand. She had said he was held in esteem, that people cared about him. She’d also said Esther would be disappointed and horrified to see him now. She was right in that at least. He shook his head, his lips moving in a brief grim smile. And Esther would have let him know it too.

Was he drinking too much? The answer was clear and again he shook his head, which was pounding. After that he lay staring up at the ceiling.

When Eve returned with the tray holding a bowl of soup and a freshly baked soft roll, the smell of the food made him faintly nauseous but still he sat up and made an effort to eat. He didn’t touch the roll but drank half the soup.

‘That’s better. You see, you can do it if you try.’

She had stood and watched over him like a mother with a recalcitrant child and her voice reflected this. In answer he said wryly, ‘After the talking-to I’ve just received I didn’t dare do anything else to bring your wrath down on my head.’

She smiled. He had noticed before how her smile changed the whole of her face, lighting up the green eyes and giving her nondescript features a charm that made the onlooker want to say something more to make her laugh. Their conversation that morning had made him realise he really knew very little about her. Esther had told him there had been a man involved in Eve’s decision to leave Washington, unrequited love or something of that nature, but he had not pressed to know more. Perhaps Esther had not known anything more. Suddenly, though, he needed to hear her story and he would not have a better opportunity to ask. Feeling slightly ashamed of the way he was using her concern for him, he said, ‘Would it pain you too much to tell me about the person you spoke of earlier, the one you lost?’

It was some seconds before she answered, ‘There is not much to tell. He - we weren’t - what I mean to say is, it wasn’t like you and Esther. We weren’t even betrothed.’

‘Was he killed in the war?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. He was injured, but he recovered before I left. My sisters and I worked for him. He was the innkeeper I told you about when I applied for the post of housekeeper.’

Howard nodded. ‘He took you in when you left the village where you had been born, if I remember correctly.Why did you leave there? I don’t think you ever said.’

He could see the indecision in her face and knew she was wondering how much to say. Then she sat down in the chair at the side of the bed. ‘How much do you want to know?’

‘All of it. If you want to tell me, that is.’

Again there was a pause; and then, her words clear but her voice low, she began to speak.

It was a full twenty minutes before she became silent, and Howard had not interrupted her. He found her story remarkable but he did not comment on this. What he did say was, ‘You are worth more than being second-best. You know this, I hope.’

Her chin lifted. ‘Aye, I do. That was never an option.’

‘You haven’t said how you feel about Mr Travis now, after so many months have elapsed.’

Her voice was small as she said, ‘I shall always have a regard for him that time and distance won’t change. I-I think that’s the way I’m made.’

Yes, he could see that.What a pity she had chosen to give her love to a man who did not appreciate her rare qualities. ‘And your sister, Mary. You have no idea where she is or what she is doing?’

‘None. Nell would write and let me know if she heard anything. To date there has been no word whatsoever.’

‘You must miss Nell and her family.’

‘Aye, I do. We write every week but it’s not the same as meeting. But she is happy and that’s the main thing. She had a little girl a few weeks ago and I would like to see her before she is much older, but,’ she shrugged, ‘I don’t want to go to Washington and it would be difficult for Nell to make the journey to Newcastle. But it doesn’t really matter.’

‘That is a shame when you clearly value each other so highly. I have siblings but we haven’t spoken in some time and we were never what you would call close. It was not encouraged in the house in which I was born. It was, I suppose you could say, run on military lines. Affection had little place in it. In fact, any show of emotion was considered a weakness.’

‘That’s awful. All children need plenty of love.’

‘Looking back now I would agree with you but at the time I considered it normal. One’s environment and the way one is brought up has a lot to do with the finished article, don’t you think? Give me a child until he is seven and all that.’

She considered this for a moment. ‘Partly, but character will out too. The way you’ve described it I can imagine your family as being a little cold but you are not like that.’ And then she blushed furiously, rising to her feet as she said, ‘I have to see to things downstairs, Elsie is still very weak and Daisy does her best but . . .’

‘Of course.’ When he was alone again, Howard closed his eyes. She had said character would out.After the Boer War when he’d suffered the mental breakdown and his family had been so appalled at what his father had declared was lack of moral fibre, his low opinion of himself had never recovered. Esther had tried to bolster him up, bless her, but his family’s verdict had trickled its way into his very bones. All his life he had been trying to rise above it but according to Eve others saw him quite differently. They perceived what his family labelled weakness as kindness.

He swallowed hard. With Esther’s going he had felt bereft; she had been his rock, his mainstay for so long. Which was funny when you thought about it because most people thought that was exactly what he had been for his wife. Only he had known the truth, that without her unswerving faith in him he felt himself reverting to the spineless creature his family had branded him to be.

His breathing laboured, he moved his aching limbs in the bed. His remorse for what he had seen and had to do in South Africa had separated him from his family for ever but that was no bad thing. He was not like them. He did not want to be like them. Why had he never seen it so clearly before?

He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes again. He had cried in those weeks and months when he’d first been back on English soil, and sometimes he had been unable to contain it to the night hours when he was alone. The atrocities he’d witnessed, atrocities carried out on innocent women and children by so-called civilised men, had haunted him to the point where he had attempted to take his own life, and that had been the final straw for his father. He would never forget the contempt on his father’s face or the things he had said when he’d come to see him in the hospital. It had been the beginning of the end, they had both recognised that. But there had been Esther. Sweet, gentle Esther. And now . . .

He gave a shudder and opened his eyes. Now she was gone and he had to let her go. Eve was right. And drinking himself into a stupor each night was no answer to anything. After South Africa, he had never felt he had the right to live on and be happy, not when so many children had died so horribly because of a country and army he was part of. If he had been able to bring one child back by dying himself he would gladly have done so. But he couldn’t. Remorse was one thing, self-pity quite another, and he had been indulging in the latter for too long. But no more.