(12/20) No Holly for Miss Quinn (2 page)

"Won't be long now," comforted Mr. Lamb, looking at the bleak village street through the window.

But Mr. Lamb was wrong. Bob Willet, weather prophet among his many other roles, was stern in his predictions.

"We won't get no warmth till gone Easter," he told those who asked his opinion. "Then we'll be lucky. Might well be Whitsun afore it picks up."

"Ain't you a Job's comforter, eh?" chaffed one listener. But he secretly respected Bob Willet's forecasts. Too often he was right.

On one of the darkest days of January, when a gray lowering sky gave the feeling of being in a tent and Fairacre folk were glad to draw the blinds at four o'clock against such an inhospitable world, news went round the village grape vine that poor Ambrose Benson had been taken by ambulance to Caxley Hospital.

"Couldn't hardly draw breath," announced Mrs. Pringle, who had received the news via Minnie Pringle, her niece, who had had it from the milkman. "Choking his life out, he was. I've always said that anything attacking the bronichals is proper cruel. It was congested bronichals that carried off my Uncle Albert, and him only fifty-two."

The next day, the Bensons' daughter arrived, and the following day their son.

Gerald Partridge, the vicar, calling to offer sympathy and help, found the two ladies at Holly Lodge red-eyed but calm.

"He is putting up a marvelous fight, they tell me," said Joan Benson, "and he has always been very fit, apart from this chest weakness. We are full of hope."

"If there is anything I, or my wife, can do, please call upon us," begged the vicar. "You are all very much in our thoughts, and we shall pray for your husband's recovery on Sunday morning."

"You are so kind. We've been quite overwhelmed with sympathetic enquiries. Really, Fairacre is the friendliest place, particularly when trouble has struck."

True to his word, Mr. Partridge and his congregation prayed earnestly for Ambrose's restoration to health. But, even as they prayed, the sick man's life was ebbing, and by the time the good people emerged into St. Patrick's wintry churchyard, Ambrose Benson had drawn his last painful breath.

***

This tragic blow, coming at the end of a long spell of anxiety, hit Joan cruelly. For years, she and Ambrose had looked forward to his retirement. They had planned trips abroad, holidays in London where they could satisfy their love for the theater, and, of course, the shared joys of the new home and its garden. Now all was shattered.

In a daze, she dealt with the dismal arrangements for the funeral, thankful to have her son and daughter with her over the first dreadful week of widowhood.

Luckily, Ambrose's affairs had been left in apple-pie order, as was to be expected from a methodical bank manager, but it was plain that Joan would need to be careful with money in the years ahead.

When her son and daughter departed, after the funeral, Joan was thankful to have the company of her mother in the house. The old lady seemed frailer than ever, and Joan took to sleeping in the spare bed put up in her mother's room.

The annex had been planned on one floor, and during those nights when Joan lay awake, listening to the shallow breathing of her mother and the queer little whimpers which she sometimes made unconsciously as the arthritis troubled her dreams, she began to appreciate the charm of the new addition to Holly Lodge.

Sometimes she wondered if she might let it, and install her mother on the ground floor of the main house. Many a night was passed in planning rooms and arranging furniture, and this helped a little in mitigating the dreadful waves of grief which still engulfed her.

It was during this sad time that Joan found several true friends in Fairacre. Mrs. Partridge and Mrs. Mawne were particularly understanding, visiting frequently, and taking it in turns to sit with Mrs. Penwood so that Joan could have a brief shopping expedition to Caxley or a visit to old friends in the town.

She was met with sympathy and kindness wherever she went in the village, and became more and more determined to remain at Holly Lodge as, she felt sure, Ambrose would have wished.

Spring was late in arriving, as Bob Willet had forecast, and it was late in April that the first really warm day came.

"I shall sit out," said Mrs. Penwood decidedly. "Put my chair in the shelter of the porch, Joan, and I will enjoy the fresh air after all these months of being a prisoner."

"It is still quite chilly," said Joan. "Do you think it is wise?"

"Of course it's wise!" responded her mother. "It will do me more good than all the doctor's pills put together."

With difficulty, Joan settled her mother in the sunshine. She was swathed in a warm cloak and had a mohair rug over her legs, but Joan was alarmed to find how cold her hands were when she took her some coffee.

Mrs. Penwood brushed aside her daughter's protestations.

"I haven't been so happy since Ambrose—" she began, and hastily changed this to, "for months. The air is wonderful. Just what I need."

She insisted on having her light lunch outside, and Joan watched her struggling to hold a spoon with numbed fingers.

"Do come inside after lunch, Mother," she begged. "You've really had the best of the day, you know."

But the old lady was adamant. In some ways, thought Joan, as she washed up, it was far simpler to cope with half a dozen children. At least they recognized authority, even if they did not always obey it. Old ladies, however sweet-natured, did not see why they should take orders from those younger than themselves.

She returned to find her mother sleeping, and decided to let her have another half an hour before she insisted on moving her indoors. Carefully, she spread another rug over the sleeping form, tucking the cold hands beneath it. Already the air was beginning to cool, and Joan went in to light the fire, ready for a cheerful tea-time.

A few minutes later, she heard cries and groans from her mother, and hurried outside. The old lady appeared to be having a spasm, and made incoherent noises. The only word which Joan could understand was the anguished cry of "Pain, pain!"

Fear gave her strength to wrest the old lady, coverings and all, from the chair and to stumble with her to the bedroom in the annex. Swiftly she managed to put her, still fully clothed, into bed, and ran to the telephone.

Their old family doctor from Caxley arrived within the hour, examined his patient minutely, and shook his head.

"I shall give her an injection now," he told Joan. "Just see that she remains warm and quiet. I will look in again after this evening's surgery."

Joan nodded, too stricken to speak.

"Got a good neighbor handy to keep you company?" asked the doctor, knowing how recently she had been widowed.

"I will telephone the vicar's wife," whispered Joan.

"I'll do it for you," said the doctor.

Within five minutes, Mrs. Partridge arrived, and the doctor went to his car.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Pen wood is in a pretty poor way," he confided to the vicar's wife as she saw him off. "It's a sad task to leave you with, but I will be back soon after seven."

He was as good as his word. But when Mrs. Partridge opened the door of Holly Lodge to him, he saw at once that his patient had gone.

***

Joan Benson spent that night, and the next one, at the vicarage, and the bonds formed then between the two women were to remain strong throughout their lives.

After this second blow, Joan went to stay for a time with her daughter. The children's chatter, and their heed of her, gave her comfort, and she had time to try to put her plans in order.

She decided to stay. Holly Lodge might seem rather large for one widowed lady, but her children and grandchildren would need bedrooms when they visited, and she did not want to part with much-loved possessions.

But the annex, she decided, must be let. It was quite self-contained, and would make a charming home for some quiet woman in circumstances such as her own, or for that matter, for a mature woman with a job.

The Caxley Chronicle
carried an advertisement in early June. Several people came to see Joan Benson but nobody seemed really suitable.

It was Henry Mawne, the vicar's friend and a distinguished ornithologist, who first mentioned Miss Quinn.

"She's secretary to my old friend Barney Hatch in Caxley," he told Joan. "I know she needs somewhere. Her present digs are noisy, and she likes a quiet life. Nice woman, thirtyish, keeps old Barney straight, and that takes some doing. Like me to mention it?"

"Yes, please. I would be grateful."

And thus it came about that Miriam Quinn, personal private secretary to Sir Barnabas Hatch, the financier, came to look at Holly Lodge's annex one warm June evening, breathed in the mingled scent of roses and pinks, and surveyed the high hedge which ensured privacy, with the greatest satisfaction.

"I should like to come very much," she said gravely to Joan Benson.

"And I," said that lady joyfully, "should like you to. Shall we go inside and settle things?"

Chapter 2

MISS QUINN ARRIVES

M
ISS
Q
UINN MOVED IN
on a still cloudless day in July. Fairacre was looking its best, as all downland country does, in summer heat. all downland country does, in summer heat.

Wild roses and honeysuckle embroidered the hedges. The cattle stood in the shade of the trees, swishing away the flies with their tails and chewing the cud languorously. Dragonflies skimmed the surface of the diminishing river Cax, and a field of beans in flower wafted great waves of scent through the car's open window as Miss Quinn trundled happily towards her new home.

Before her the road shimmered in the heat. It was almost a relief to enter the shady tunnel of trees at Beech Green, before regaining the open fields which led to Fairacre at the foot of the downs.

Her spirits rose as she left Caxley behind. Miriam Quinn had been brought up in a vicarage in a lonely stretch of the fen country. Space and solitude were the two things which that windswept area had made essential to her happiness. Sometimes she longed for the great Cambridge sky when the canyons of some city streets drove her near to claustrophobic panic, and even the pleasant tree-lined road in Caxley, where she had lived since taking up the post with Sir Barnabas, she found stuffy and oppressive.

Now she would live in open country again. The encircling holly hedge, which gave her new abode its name, would not worry her. The windows of the annex, she had noticed swiftly, looked mainly upon the flank of the downs. She reckoned that she could see seven or eight miles to the distant woods to the south of Caxley from her sitting room window.

She reached the signpost saying
FAIRACRE 1,
and began to look out for the hidden drive on her left which ran beside the high holly hedge to the main gate of Holly Lodge. It was propped open ready for her, she was grateful to see, and her own garage had its door hospitably open.

Miriam Quinn shut the car door and stood for a moment savoring the peace and the blessed coolness of the downland air. Bees hummed among the lime flowers above her, and a tabby cat rolled luxuriously in a fine clump of catmint in the sunny border.

Some distance away, Miriam discerned the figure of her new landlady. She was asleep in a deckchair, her head in the shade of a cherry tree, her feet propped up on a footstool in the sunshine.

Intense happiness flooded Miriam's being. The atmosphere of country tranquillity enveloped her