Emma Page - In Loving Memory

‘I could give you lunch,’ Burnett said. ‘If you’d care to wait till I’ve seen your father. It won’t be anything very fancy but it might be better than the Swan.’ Hardly noted for its fine cuisine, the village pub. He was surprised at Kenneth wanting to stay there. Plenty of servants at Whitegates. What else were they paid for but to look after the family? All those bedrooms, half of them never used from one year’s end to another nowadays.

‘It’s very kind of you, but I think I’ll go along right away and see about booking a room. And I’ve some business matters to attend to.’ Kenneth smiled a little. ‘You know how it is. I’ve left my junior partner in charge, he isn’t quite as experienced as I am. One has to keep in touch.’

Burnett turned towards the stairs. ‘I’ll be seeing you again, of course. We’ll both be in and out of Whitegates. Perhaps we can take a meal together another time.’

‘Father is all right?’ Kenneth asked suddenly. ‘I mean he is going to—’

‘To recover?’ The doctor gave him a shrewd look. ‘I see no reason why not. He isn’t all that old.’ He smiled. ‘That is to say, he’s exactly the same age as I am. I suppose to you that seems a very great age indeed but here in the country—’ he spread the fingers of one hand – ‘it’s no very great age as they reckon things here. I think you can set your mind at rest.’

At rest, Kenneth thought, letting himself out of the front door a few moments later. A strange word to express the present state of his mind. Behind him the door opened and the maid came running out.

‘Oh – Mr Kenneth – aren’t you going to stay for lunch? Cook is expecting you – and your room, it’s all ready for you!’

Kenneth turned. ‘No, I’m not staying in the house. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you thought I was. I’m staying at the Swan.’ The girl looked disappointed. They would welcome a visitor or two, he saw suddenly. It must be dull for the staff in the half-empty house. He gestured towards his car drawn up a few yards away. ‘I’m taking my things along there now. I’ll be back, of course.’ He gave her a cheerful smile. ‘I’ll be popping in and out all the time.’

As he headed the car towards the tall iron gates he saw a girl walking along the little path leading through the shrubbery. She raised a hand to part the overhanging branches and stepped fully into view. He slowed the car for a moment and their eyes met. He inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment and let the car glide forward again.

A pretty girl, an extremely pretty girl, pale shining hair and wide blue eyes. A slender figure, a diffident, vulnerable-looking face. His mind flicked rapidly through a catalogue of the residents and neighbours of Whitegates, striving to place her. A face too delicate and sensitive to belong to a servant, the clothes a little too tailored for a village girl.

As he drove out through the gates he remembered all at once that his father had said something about a secretary. That would be it, his father’s secretary. He considered the notion with a trace of surprise. There had been secretaries before, middle-aged women or older, lean and sinewy women, thickset, comfortable-looking women, but never one like this, never one with graceful limbs and palely-gleaming hair.

The pub came into sight. He put up a hand to his mouth and yawned, all at once extremely tired. It had been a long morning, full of surprises.

‘Very well then,’ Dr Burnett said. ‘Lunch now, a light lunch of course. Light meals only for the present. There must be no strain on the digestion. Then a nap. Afterwards, if you still feel like it, and only if you feel like it, you can sit up for half an hour this afternoon. Put on a dressing-gown and sit in that chair—’ He indicated a large upholstered chair near the window. ‘See that you’re warm, it’s most important to keep warm. Then back to bed again. And no further attempts to get up till I’ve seen you again, seen how you are. If everything goes well, we’ll think about letting you take a walk along the corridor tomorrow.’

‘Get along with you, you old fraud,’ Henry Mallinson said, grinning at him. ‘Who do you think you’re impressing with all this professional mumbo-jumbo? I’m as fit now as I was before this happened, just a little tired, that’s all. I’ll be as right as rain in a few days. I’ll see you into your grave before me. I’ll be the one who buys the wreath, not you, and well you know it.’

‘You can’t brush old age away by refusing to acknowledge it,’ Burnett said, unwilling to return the grin. ‘You’re not one of your own cars, you know, you can’t have a rebore, a new carburettor, a new engine. There’s to be no more driving on the brake and the accelerator for you from now on, you’ve got to get down to a slow steady speed.’

Henry acknowledged temporary defeat. ‘Oh, all right. Have it your own way. I’ll sit in my dressing-gown like a sick child in a nursery. Am I allowed comics? Or would the excitement prove too much for me?’

‘I have some new tablets here,’ Burnett said, ignoring the tedious humour. ‘I’d like you to try them. Some quite promising reports of them.’ He dug into his bag and produced a white cardboard drum. He removed the lid and tilted the drum forward under Henry’s gaze. ‘Tiny, as you see, no difficulty about swallowing them. One with a drink of water three times a day.’

‘What are they?’ Henry asked suspiciously. Didn’t like tablets, didn’t hold with any kind of drugs, pumping alien chemicals into perfectly good blood, unnatural, potentially dangerous.

‘You wouldn’t understand the name if I told you, you wouldn’t even be able to pronounce it. Just do as you’re told for once and take them for a few days. We’ll see how you get on with them, then we’ll think about continuing them or changing over to something else.’

‘I’m not a guinea-pig,’ Henry said without much hope. ‘You can carry out your experiments elsewhere, somewhere where they’ll be appreciated.’

Burnett opened the bedroom door and thrust his head out into the corridor.

‘Mrs Parkes! Could you come here, please?’

The nurse came out at once from her own room next door where she had been awaiting just such a summons. She came briskly into the room in her clean crisp uniform.

‘Yes, Dr Burnett?’ She slid a glance at the old man propped up against the pillows. He looked less tired now, stimulated by his exchange with the doctor.

‘Mr Mallinson may sit up for a short time when he has had an afternoon nap.’ The doctor repeated his instructions about care and warmth, about the dosage of the tablets.

‘And you are to remember particularly, both of you, that the tablets are on no account to be taken with alcohol.’

‘Alcohol?’ Henry frowned. ‘Do you mean I can’t have a glass of whisky?’ One of the few pleasures left to me, his aggrieved tone implied, I am to be robbed of that as well. Is there no limit to these infernal restrictions?

‘I didn’t say that.’ Burnett’s voice grew a trifle impatient. ‘I said the tablets were on no account to be taken with alcohol. If you must have a glass of whisky – ’ and his tone conceded that in all probability Henry must – ‘then you must dispense with the tablet. That is, if you insist, for instance, on a glass of whisky before you go to sleep, then you are on no account to take a tablet later than, say, four o’clock in the afternoon. The effect on the system will have ceased by the time you drink your whisky.’

‘Is he still to take the three tablets a day?’ Mrs Parkes was a little puzzled.

‘Yes.’ Dr Burnett sighed. He strove to make his meaning clear, as if to inattentive children. ‘One tablet on waking in the morning, one at noon, and the last at four o’clock. If by any chance either of you forgets and the last tablet is administered later, say at five or six, then there is to be no whisky on that evening. Do I make myself clear?’