The Shadow of the Sycamores (10 page)

When he turned up the following day to attend to what had to be done, Roderick Emslie expressed himself in much the same way. Of course, as Henry knew because Janet had once mentioned it, her brother would no longer have fees to pay for keeping his mother at The Sycamores so that would be a relief for him.

A few days after the funeral, Janet had to admit to herself that she, like her brother, felt a great sense of relief at her mother’s death. She no longer had the feeling that the old woman was at her side every minute of the day, watching what she was doing, finding fault, making sure she stayed on the straight and narrow path, the way of the righteous. Yet, even accepting that she was free of this burden, Janet still held Innes at bay if she felt that he was about to ask her ‘that’ question again.

One obstacle had certainly gone but the one that remained was insurmountable. Innes already had a wife and she, Janet Emslie, would never step into the absent woman’s shoes – or her bed – however much he pleaded with her and however much she wanted to.

Henry had been wondering who Max had been out with on the past three Wednesday evenings but, when he checked, none of the girls was missing and nobody he asked knew anything. He wouldn’t really have been bothered if Max hadn’t been so secretive about it. All he would say when pressed was, ‘It’s a lassie I met a while back.’ He wouldn’t say who she was or where they had met.

His mind not on what he was doing, Henry cut his thumb with the scythe – a really deep gash – one afternoon in August, when he was helping Max to cut the grass for horse fodder. The wound kept bleeding, spurting out, and Max told him he should get one of the nurses to bandage it. Janet, however, happened to be in the kitchen when he went in. She was supervising the potting of a huge panful of raspberry jam and, after a quick look at his hand, she said, ‘Get Meg to bandage it but you need it seen to proper. I’ll tell young Roddy to make the gig ready to take you to Drymill. I’ve heard the druggist there’s near as good as the doctor.’

He stood silently while the nurse came and wrapped wads of cotton wool and bandaging round the injured hand. He couldn’t afford the services of either a doctor or a druggist so this would have to do. ‘Thank you, Meg,’ he muttered as he turned away. ‘I’ll be fine now. I’ll not need to see anybody else.’

‘Just you do as you’re told and tell the man to send the bill to Mr Ledingham,’ Janet stated firmly, correctly assessing the reason for his refusal. ‘And you’d better hurry afore you bleed to death.’

Looking down, he saw that the blood was already soaking
through the wadding and the likelihood of her dire prediction made him feel less brave.

Thirteen-year-old Roddy, the stable lad, could hardly keep his fascinated eyes off the bloody channel inching its way through the grime on Henry’s arm, which he was holding upwards because it was less painful than letting his hand hang down.

‘Will they need to cut aff your hand?’ The urgency of the situation was making the boy tug the reins and click at the pony to make it go faster.

‘Don’t be daft!’ In spite of his vehement denial, Henry was feeling slightly light-headed and leaned back with his eyes closed.

Terrified that he would be left transporting a corpse to the village, Roddy urged the pony on to yet greater speed and heaved a sigh of relief when his passenger murmured, eyes still closed, ‘How far yet?’

‘Jist aboot there. We’ve passed the first house.’

Seconds later, he had to help the patient down and support him till he walked into the shop and collapsed on to the chair placed conveniently at the counter.

Taking the situation in at a glance, the pharmacist hurried round to remove the sodden bandage, then raised his head to call, ‘Fay! Bring me a bowl of hot water – as quickly as you can, please.’

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Henry was aware that two people were treating him – a man dishing out the orders and a girl handing him whatever he asked for. The application of iodine brought him round immediately. He screamed at the pain but the girl whispered, ‘I’m sorry but we must clean out any dirt – otherwise infection could set in.’

His stomach churning, Roddy took himself outside and stood stroking the pony until, about ten minutes later, he was called back to the shop, where the girl was fixing a sling round Henry’s neck. ‘You must keep this on and come back here tomorrow,’ she advised the chalk-white Henry, who seemed to be still in a daze.

‘It is very deep,’ the man observed, ‘and in a very nasty place – between the thumb and forefinger. It would be best if we could keep an eye on you, young man, until we can be sure there are no after effects.’ Getting no response from the patient, he turned to Roddy to ask how it had happened and where they were employed. After learning that they came from The Sycamores, he said, ‘I do not know your employer but I am sure that he will understand the position.’

‘It was the cook tell’t me to tak’ him here,’ Roddy managed to get out.

The pharmacist walked round behind the counter again. ‘Right, then, um …’

‘Roddy,’ supplied the boy.

‘Good. You can go back to The Sycamores now, Roddy, and let the Superintendent know that we are keeping your friend here until tomorrow.’

A distant memory returned to Henry. ‘Janet said to send the bill to him.’

‘Fay will attend to that later.’

After making sure that Roddy had turned the gig round safely and was on his way again, the chemist said, ‘We had better introduce ourselves. My name is Joseph Leslie and this is my daughter, Fay.’

‘I’m Henry Rae.’ The effort of talking was beginning to tell on him, however, so he sagged back, utterly drained.

‘Fay, my dear, take Henry up to the sitting room and make him a bed on the couch. I think he will be quite comfortable there for one night.’

The stairs to the upper storey were steep and he was forced to lean quite heavily on the girl as they negotiated the bend on the top landing. ‘I’m far too heavy for you,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, no,’ she smiled, tightening her hold on his waist. ‘I’m as fit as a fiddle. Father says I should have been a boy.’

It did not take long for her to settle him down with a pillow under his head and a large eiderdown to cover him and, in no time, he had fallen asleep.

When he awoke some time later, a middle-aged woman was knitting in a chair nearby and he lay without moving, studying her and deciding that she must be the pharmacist’s wife. Her hair was just a shade lighter than her daughter’s gold, the shape of her head and the way she was holding it were exactly the same as Fay’s …

Something alerted her to his scrutiny and she looked up at him. ‘Ah, so you have come back to the land of the living, have you?’ She put her knitting into the sewing stool at the side of her chair. ‘How do you feel now?’

He sat up a little. ‘Better, I think. I’m ashamed of being so weak.’

‘You have no need to be. Joseph said you had lost a great deal of blood. Is your hand still very painful?’

‘It is a bit but I could easily have gone back with Roddy.’

‘In the gig? No, no, you were certainly not fit for that. But now that you are sitting up and taking notice, will you be all right on your own while I prepare supper?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ He was quite glad to relax when she went out and closed his eyes to go over what had happened. He couldn’t remember much about what had been done to his hand – all he could think of was the girl’s beautiful face.

After some deliberation, he decided that she wasn’t one of those raving beauties he’d seen in books and magazines, who wouldn’t have lowered themselves to speak to anybody like him, but she had been kind and quite concerned. She had actually held his uninjured hand, clasped him against her until they climbed the stairs, had spoken to him sympathetically, had looked at him as if she actually liked him.

Her fair, golden hair was loosely curled, swinging round her shell-like ears and swan-like neck. He gave a rueful giggle. He couldn’t think of anything original – every writer and poet compared girls’ ears to shells and their necks to swans – but it was the only way to describe her. Her face was a sweet oval shape, with definite bones above rose-pink cheeks, one with a dimple, and a darling, darling mouth. Her father had said she should have been a boy? Thank God she wasn’t!

He had drifted off again into a light doze when the rattle of dishes made him jump.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ It was Fay. ‘Did I wake you? Mother asked me to take you some of her broth and there’s beef stew and dumplings to follow.’ She laid the tray down on the davenport and crossed over to him. ‘Here, let me help you to sit up.’

He had believed that he was quite able to sit up by himself, but he did need her support, her arms under his, her face so close that her breath fanned his cheeks. If this was heaven, he wouldn’t be afraid to die. Then she laid the tray across his legs, packed the pillows behind his back and made sure that he was coping before she left him.

After supper, he was joined by Mr Leslie. ‘The ladies are washing up, so I hope you don’t mind my company?’

‘I’m glad of the chance to thank you for what you did,’ Henry said earnestly if rather weakly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I could have died.’

The man’s expression sobered. ‘Yes, I am afraid you are quite right. You should really have been in a hospital or gone to the doctor but I did what I could and, apparently, it was enough. Now, would you like to tell me a little about yourself if you do not think I am being too inquisitive?’

‘Not at all.’ Recognising that a man has to be careful about the people he brings into his house, Henry gave him a brief outline of his life until the ladies came in and the conversation broadened.

‘I usually have my last pipe outside so that the smoke will not bother the ladies,’ Mr Leslie observed as he stood up at nine thirty. Then, taking a small hand-bell from a drawer in the beautiful mahogany davenport, he handed it to Henry, ‘I will not bother you again but do not hesitate to ring this if you need me in the night.’

In another fifteen minutes, Fay and her mother had also left and he was alone with his thoughts. All his reflections led him to the same conclusion. Despite having almost sliced his thumb off with a scythe (he had hardly felt it at the time – the pain came later), the prolonged loss of blood then the agony of the
iodine applications, it was the best day he had ever spent in his life. He would go through it all again if he could have more time with the girl he had met because of it.

Fay Leslie was in a class of her own. She had softness about her yet she had an air of superiority – although she hadn’t made him feel in the least
in
-ferior, quite the opposite. She had been warm and friendly, sympathetic while she attended to him and worried about leaving him on his own all night. Even after he assured her that he would be fine, she had been reluctant to go. She was a girl in a million, a girl who clearly had brains as well as beauty, a girl he would be happy to have as his … wife?

He heaved a great sigh at this point.
He
would certainly be happy, more than happy, but would she? It was an impossible dream. Even if Fay did respond to his feelings, a man with no real trade or profession wouldn’t be her father’s choice of son-in-law. The chemist would want his daughter to marry somebody who came of a well-to-do family, who could keep the girl in the manner to which she was accustomed, as the saying went, or in an even better manner, so what chance would an odd-job boy have?

Henry changed position now but it was some time before he fell asleep, a deep sleep of reaction to what he had gone through. Only about an hour later, he woke up drenched in sweat, pain shooting up his whole arm. Determined not to ring for help, he gritted his teeth and braced himself to bear it, thole it, as his Gramma would have said, but the pain only intensified. Not only that, he was sweating like a stuck pig.

Of course, he reassured himself, he was bound to get some discomfort; the cut could hardly have been worse. It wasn’t just discomfort, though. He tried to lift the affected left arm and found he couldn’t move it. He was being slowly paralysed yet he could feel the blood pounding in his head, louder and louder until he was almost screaming.

It had been an eventful day and Fay was far too emotional to sleep. She had never before met anyone like Henry, a
working-class boy who was softly spoken and well mannered. She had to admit that she didn’t know many young men of any class, except the sons of her father’s friends and they were either too stuck up to talk to her or they flirted outrageously if they had the chance. Most of those who came into the shop were rough in their speech as well as their dress and lacked respect when they spoke to her. The majority of them, give them their due, did pretend that they had come to purchase a cake of soap or something equally innocuous but a few asked boldly for ‘ointment to cure the pox’ or other even more indelicate items and it was she who was the embarrassed one.

She had been asked out a few times since she turned sixteen and had accepted one invitation because her father had been away on business. The young man, tall and handsome, had taken her for a walk and she had been somewhat disappointed, if the truth were told, that he said or did nothing out of place which was why she had agreed to meet him again – and again. By the end of that third evening, she had seen through him. His bland compliments, the ‘accidental’ brushing against her bosom with his large rough hands told her that he was an accomplished ladies’ man. The final straw had come on the return walk to the village. She had expected him to kiss her but he tried to go much further than that and she had to fight against him fiercely to get free. It hadn’t been funny at the time but she could laugh at it now.

Her thoughts returned to their guest for the night. Was he having a peaceful sleep – or was he in too much pain? He had not rung the little bell – or maybe she hadn’t heard it? Feeling a tightening in her chest, her stomach turned over in apprehension, sure that all was not well with him. She had to find out but she couldn’t possibly go through to him – especially not in her nightdress.