The grassy track from the meadow twisted between rhododendrons as tall as trees, whose woody arms, stretching along the hard, bare earth, were supported and propped upon deep-rooted, knuckly elbows. The tough, lance-shaped leaves shivered in the chilly, gently shifting air and, at the edge of the path, clumps of snowdrops gleamed dimly in the gathering shadows. Light shone suddenly from an upstairs room and a figure stood with arms wide-stretched, pausing briefly to look out, before the brightness was quenched by the sweep of curtains drawn swiftly across the windows.
By the time the girl had reached the garden door, kicked off her boots and crossed the hall to the drawing-room, Mousie had come downstairs and was piling wood onto the open fire.
‘So there you are, Joss.’ There was an odd note of relief in her voice. ‘I wondered where you’d disappeared to. Were you putting the donkeys to bed?’
‘I took some apples.’ She sat on the wide fender, curling her toes in their thick, cosy socks, relishing the warmth from the flames that licked with greedy yellow and orange tongues at the rough-sawn logs. ‘How is Mutt?’
‘Sleeping peacefully. I shall take up a tray of tea and sit with her for a while. Would you like to join us?’
Joss shook her head. ‘I’ll go up later and read to her. She gets restless after supper and it distracts her. Who was that man who was here just now? What did he want?’
Mousie hesitated, as if making an effort to formulate an accurate answer. ‘He’s an American tracking down a relative. He seemed to think that your grandmother might have known his great-aunt during the war. Something like that. Not a particularly suitable moment, I’m afraid.’
‘And does Mutt know her?’
‘I haven’t asked her,’ answered Mousie crisply. ‘Do you want some tea?’
‘I’ll come and get mine in a minute, just leave it in the pot.’ Joss smiled at the small upright figure, whose high-necked jersey was slung about with several pairs of spectacles all mixed up on long pieces of cord. ‘You know I can manage perfectly well if you want go home, Mousie.’
‘I know that, my darling.’ Mousie relaxed visibly, tension flowing from her shoulders and smoothing away the lines of anxiety: her slate-blue eyes were bright and warmly affectionate beneath the unruly crest of soft white hair. ‘But perhaps just one more check to make sure that she’s settled. This new antibiotic …’
Joss chuckled. ‘Hopeless,’ she said. ‘It must be all those years of nursing and being in charge. Old habits die hard. I’m qualified too, you know. OK, I know I’m not a proper nurse, but I can lift Mutt and I promise you that some gentle massage will really help now that her foot is out of plaster.’
‘And you also know very well that I am not prejudiced against osteopathy,’ said Mousie firmly. ‘I have no anxiety about you looking after your grandmother; I’m just rather worried about the chest infection. And she’s in a rather confused state, although that’s mostly due to the antibiotics.’
Her eyes were anxious again and, watching her, Joss had no desire to tease her further but felt instead a stomach-sinking fear.
‘We have to give her time,’ she said. ‘It was a bad break and this horrid infection isn’t helping. She’ll be fine, Mousie.’ It was almost a plea for consolation and Mousie swiftly responded to it.
‘Of course she will, my darling. Thank goodness you can spend some time with her. Having you here is the best medicine she could have.’ She smiled mischievously, her sense of humour and natural resilience returning. ‘That and the massage, of course.’
Left alone, Joss drew her feet up onto the fender, rested her chin on her knees and began to think about the good-looking American. She’d been attracted by the eagerness that had informed his gestures and expression, and was already regretting her own wariness. How simple – she told herself now – to have joined in the conversation; offered him some refreshment. She’d seen him standing at the field gate but this newly acquired reticence – so foreign to her character but necessary to protect herself – had made it impossible for her to call a friendly greeting. She’d been surprised, however, at Mousie’s uncharacteristic caution and the guardedness with which she’d parried his enquiries, although, under the circumstances, it wasn’t terribly surprising that Mousie was preoccupied.
Now, as Joss gazed into the bright heart of the fire, she imagined a different scene: a scene in which she’d strolled forward, smiling in response to his friendly glance, saying, ‘Goodness! This sounds fascinating. What’s it all about?’ They might have had some tea together and he could have shown her the photograph of his long-lost great-aunt. She felt frustrated by this new constant need for wariness that clamped her tongue and inhibited her gestures, although, she reminded herself, she was at least able to remain open and confident with her patients.
This was because they rarely asked about her private life and so there was no need to be on guard. If the dreaded questions – ‘Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?’ – were to be asked, she was able to deal with them more casually with patients than with those she loved. Relationships with her family had become more complicated since she’d moved out of the bed-sit in Wadebridge to stay at Paradise whilst she renovated the tiny cottage at the end of The Row. Yet how could she have foreseen that a childhood friendship would flower so abruptly into a love that must be kept secret?
‘Tea’s made,’ Mousie called on her way upstairs.
Joss went out into the hall, pausing to revel in the atmosphere of this house that she loved so very dearly. It was such a perfect little place, elegantly proportioned with high sash windows, and she’d sometimes imagined tilting back the roof and looking down inside as if it were a doll’s house. Mousie’s voice could just be heard, murmuring comfortingly beyond the closed bedroom door, and Joss wondered whether her grandmother had once known the American’s great-aunt, way back when they’d both been young. She understood his interest in this vanished relative, dimly recognizing in him a need for security that is centred in family. Her own heart was much more at home here in this tiny valley of St Meriadoc, where her mother’s family had lived for centuries, than in her parents’ house in Henley or the London flat where her father spent most of his working week.
She decided to ask Mousie if she might see the photograph, hoping that there was some connection that would encourage the young man’s quest. Still thinking about him, she poured tea into a mug and carried it back to the fire.
Upstairs, Mousie removed the tray, saw that Mutt was dozing again and looked about the room. A small but cheerful fire burned in the grate, safely contained behind a tall meshed guard, and a pretty painted screen had been set so as to shield the elderly woman in the bed from the brightness of the tall lamp set on a gate-leg table near the window. It was at this table that Mousie kept her vigil and it was piled with books, newspapers and the paraphernalia of letter-writing.
She stood for a moment, her back to the bed, tidying the bulky newspapers, squaring the loose sheets of a letter she’d been writing before folding them into the leather blotter, collecting stray pens and a pencil and putting them into a blue and white ceramic jar. Presently she slid the print from beneath the blotter and stared down at it. It was evident that it had been recently copied from an original photograph itself, rather than from the negative, and it bore the marks of scratches and creases. Nevertheless she’d recognized it at once: in 1941 her cousin Hubert had sent an identical print all the way from India to his aunt in Portsmouth.
He’d written:
I was deeply horrified and sad to hear about Uncle Hugh and the loss of HMS Hood. But I am so pleased that you’re going to St Meriadoc to be near Mother and Father… I can’t wait for you all to meet Honor, she’s a darling. Give my love to Mousie and Rafe …
Even now she could remember the shock and misery she’d felt at this news coming so soon after the death of her father. From her earliest memories she’d loved Hubert with an overwhelming devotion, willing herself to grow up quickly, imagining the glorious, much-dreamed-of moment when he would see her as an adult and realize that he’d loved her all the time. It was Hubert who had given her the nickname ‘Mousie’ and, though he had teased her, he could always make her laugh: there was no-one else like Hubert. She’d gazed at the face of Hubert’s new wife, mistily smiling beneath the charming, silly hat slanted over one eye, and had silently, bitterly, hated her. As the war dragged on, news had filtered back to St Meriadoc from India: Honor had given birth to a son, Bruno, and, three years later, to a daughter, Emma. Mousie was seventeen when they’d heard that Hubert was trying to book a passage to England for his wife and children in an attempt to protect them from the riots and upheaval of partition. He’d planned to follow them when his discharge came through, later in the year, but he had died of some kind of food-poisoning days before his family were due to sail and Honor – whom Hubert had nicknamed Mutt – and the children had come back to Paradise alone.
Mousie slid the photograph beneath the blotter and glanced across at the bed. Mutt was lying on her side, watching her with calm intelligence. Mousie concealed the tiny shock that these switches from feverish confusion to brief moments of lucidity caused, and smiled.
‘I’m afraid that tea must be cold by now,’ she said. ‘Would you like some more?’
Mutt made a faint negative shake of her head on the pillow and Mousie moved back to the bed, sitting in the low upholstered armchair so as to be nearly on the same level as the sick woman in the high bed.
‘Poor Mousie,’ the words were barely stronger than a breath and Mousie had to bend closer to catch them. ‘What a nuisance I am.’
‘Not a bit of a nuisance.’ She took Mutt’s weakly outstretched hand and held it warmly between both of her own. ‘You’re getting better by the minute. And Joss will be up soon to read to you.’
There was a little silence whilst the logs crumbled together in a soft ashy explosion of flames and the shadows streamed across the ceiling.
‘Odd, wasn’t it,’ Mutt murmured, ‘both of us being nurses?’
‘It was all Hubert’s fault,’ Mousie answered lightly. ‘You know how he was my hero when I was small. Once he’d qualified as a doctor I was determined that I would train to be a nurse. I was always foolishly pleased that he knew I’d started my training before he died. It was as if it made some kind of connection between us.’
Mutt stirred restlessly, turning onto her back and pulling herself higher up the bed.
‘I might try to sleep again,’ she said.
The tranquil moment had passed, although there was no sign of fever, and Mousie watched her thoughtfully for a moment before putting the handbell beside her on the quilt, and going quietly away.