Mrs P’s Book of Secrets. Lorna Gray

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СКАЧАТЬ space here was tiny. My aunt was quite right to keep me in the attic above the office. There truly wouldn’t have been room here for us both.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said as I slid away along the wall.

      He made me pause in the midst of making for the next flight of stairs. I turned my head. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said.

      His voice had held a firmer hint of certainty than I was used to when compared to the man who often looked taken aback if I surprised him in the office.

      It was, in fact, like a continuation of that moment when he had corrected me for saying that he didn’t like me to talk – unexpectedly decisive.

      And I was flushing because it really had been a rapid search through drawers and boxes upstairs, and his few words of thanks cut a little deeper when I lingered before making for the next set of stairs. There was a different kind of steadiness in the way he met my eye. Quite simply, he was at home here too.

      And now that I had finally been permitted to meet the man out of hours, I could see that my aunt had been right to fuss and worry about his supper. Not even weariness could alter the posture this man had, or the way that he moved, but he certainly was tired. And for him I believe this quiet exchange was one of those gentler moments that are seized like an intense release after a test.

      Wherever he had been on that train, it hadn’t been pleasant for him. Whereas this; in these few peaceful seconds, this was better.

      I didn’t tell any of this to Amy Briar. It was Monday and we were in her shop and she had a theory about our Mr Underhill. It was fuelled, I might say, by the doctor who was Miss Prichard’s tenant and Amy’s friend and here with us in time for the morning cup of tea.

      She was saying regretfully, ‘I had a cold last week.’

      Doctor Bates understood her point even if I didn’t. He was nodding seriously from the other side of the counter that kept customers away from the foot of the stairs.

      Beside me, the curve of Amy’s mouth moved as she added with a meaningful nod, ‘I was ill last week and he was barely here. I’m better today and he’s upstairs.’

      ‘Don’t be silly.’ My retort came swiftly.

      I surprised the doctor. He often stopped in during the brief respite between his round of home visits and his lunchtime surgery. Today, his grave tones ought to have befitted a man who was old and wispy-haired. In fact, the doctor was in his late thirties and his hair was sandy and he was one of those thoroughly self-assured people who had been demobbed from his military service and seamlessly bought his stake in the town practice as if he had never spent time away.

      Now he asked me with mock seriousness, ‘You don’t believe that our Mr Underhill was afraid of catching the office cold and put himself into quarantine? So what’s your explanation?’

      Ignoring my memory of the way Robert had grimaced when Amy had sneezed last week, I protested rather too keenly, ‘I’m certain that Mr Underhill wasn’t hiding in his bedroom, at the very least. He went away overnight. And my uncle – Mr Kathay I mean – knew about it, so he must have been working on a job, mustn’t he?’

      And that was when I realised that I’d just shared the way my aunt and uncle were guarding Robert’s absences, and I must have done it to prod Amy into showing that she knew where he was going.

      Only of course she couldn’t tell me anything, and I was thoroughly ashamed of myself because the morning was running on and I shouldn’t be down here speaking about Robert like this when my mind was still swimming with the vividly living memory of the way the man had looked on Friday night.

      That had been an abrupt encounter with thought laid bare, and now he was upstairs and working quietly in his office, while we were skulking down here and discussing a different kind of man who might have spent weeks creeping away from his desk because my uncle’s shopkeeper had shown the merest hint of ill health.

      I didn’t want this conversation. I tried to curb it. ‘Anyway,’ I said brightly, ‘What about my advent calendar? I only really came down just now because today is the second day of December and I spent the weekend filling these drawers. I had imagined that Miss Briar would like to be the first person to bring our advent calendar up to speed.’

      As it was, this was another decision I would rapidly come to regret. Amy obediently drew out a drawer, discovered a neatly rolled length of very pretty ribbon and set it to one side without really looking at it. Then she seamlessly resumed the discussion about her concern for Mr Underhill.

      And it really was concern. She was a universally caring woman who seemed as if she and her country tweeds had worked for my uncle since the dawn of time. She hadn’t. Amy was like the doctor and only about ten years old than me. I hadn’t known either of them as a child.

      ‘Watch him,’ she told me seriously. ‘Next time someone sneezes, you watch him. I have a theory about our Mr Underhill. You know he trained as a doctor, don’t you? Before the war, I mean?’

      ‘He never qualified,’ corrected Doctor Bates. ‘He and some of his fellow students got caught up in all that excited talk about duty and service, and abandoned their medical college when the first call went out for volunteers.’

      He didn’t mean that as a compliment. He meant to imply that the decision counted as lunatic when Robert might have qualified and postponed his war duty, or might even have never served abroad at all.

      Amy added thoughtfully, ‘Actually, it must drive the man mad, really, mustn’t it, to think that after all that enthusiasm and training, he had one brief battle in northern France and was a prisoner for the rest anyway.’

      ‘I served in the European War too, you know,’ remarked the doctor a shade plaintively when he realised how his comments had been interpreted. ‘I’m not suggesting that qualified doctors didn’t serve at all. I staffed a field hospital behind the front line, wherever that line should have been at the time.’

      ‘You were already qualified?’ I hadn’t meant to say that. I had meant to slip away to resume my work. Then I realised what I’d asked. I drew back and added quickly, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry into your war service.’

      Just as I had never asked Robert about his life as a POW, it wasn’t really the done thing to push returning soldiers into speaking about their experiences, any more than anyone dared ask me about my husband. People offered whatever they were willing to share and we were all content to leave it at that.

      Doctor Bates, to do him credit, though, didn’t look remotely shaken by my question. He didn’t look proud either. He simply looked tougher all of a sudden. Less like a Cotswold teddy bear and more like a man who had experienced some of the harder corners of the world when he said, ‘I qualified in ’36. I got my name on a brass plate the year Mr Underhill began his training. In fact, he and I both studied at the same university hospital in Birmingham, although I’d already left by the time Underhill joined my old college.’

      Amy leaned in to rest her folded arms upon the glass countertop. Beneath her, ranks of pens and other writing tools glittered as a shining island in a sea of yet more old and blackened wood. ‘You knew him back then?’

      The doctor shook his head, ‘He wasn’t a native of this town. There was no earthly reason for our paths to cross either before or after his studies, until Underhill moved here and took up his job with Mr Kathay. But you might be interested to know that these days СКАЧАТЬ