The Dream House (24 page)

‘Oh?’ said Kate, with interest. ‘Do you ever show your own work there?’

‘Sometimes. I’ve got some drawings up at the moment, in fact.’

‘I’ll have to come in and see them,’ said Kate.

‘That would be great.’

‘It’s special seeing work by people you know, don’t you think?’

‘It can be dangerous sometimes. What happens if you don’t like it? Does that change your opinion of the person who created it?’

‘By their works shall ye know them. Yes, there is that risk.’ Kate chuckled. ‘But I’ll take it.’

‘And then there’s my motorbikes,’ he added.

‘Your motorbikes?’

‘Yes, I buy old ones and restore them and sell them. And I do a bit of stunt riding.’ Dan grinned. ‘When the police aren’t looking!’

‘It sounds safer to have the van. Do you camp in it?’

‘It’s done a lot of travelling, good old soul, been round Europe.’ He patted the dashboard affectionately. ‘Now it’s mostly useful for carting stuff about.’

‘Hope you’re not meaning me,’ Kate teased him.

‘Yup, stuff like you,’ he agreed and laughed.

When they got to the hospital, they found a space easily in the car park.

‘I’ll come in and say hello and give her this from Marie.’ From behind the seat, Dan lifted out a leather shopping bag, which appeared to have clothes in it. ‘Then I’ll drive down to the town. Pick you up here about four?’

Kate thanked him and Dan looked at her as if wondering whether to say something else.

‘Just a word of warning,’ he said finally. ‘Well, perhaps “warning” is too strong a word. That nephew of hers is about.’

‘Max? I bumped into him at the weekend.’ She explained about Bobby’s drama.

‘Yeah, he’s not a bad bloke. Trouble is, he rubs Miss Melton up the wrong way. Treats her like an old person, if you know what I mean.’ He was choosing his words with care. ‘My view would be he’s too aware that he’s her closest relative. He’s hardly been to see her at all until she had this accident. Now he’s around half the time asking me and Marie questions about this and that . . . Miss Melton’s solicitor said he could have the keys to the house.’ He stopped. ‘I’d better shut up. I get over-protective about her and, after all, it could just be real anxiety for her on his part.’

Kate nodded. After Max’s help with Bobby she felt she owed him the benefit of the doubt, too. It didn’t sound as if it had been his fault that he hadn’t got to know his great-aunt earlier. The family row, whatever it was, had not been of Max’s making.

They asked directions to the ward. Kate was relieved to see that it was bright and airy, with a dozen beds. Agnes was, fortunately, alone. She was sitting in a wheelchair next to her bed, staring into space, a stale cup of tea untouched on the tray table in front of her. Someone had left an old copy of
Woman’s Weekly
next to it. That wasn’t touched either. Huddled up in a blanket, despite the warm weather, her face looked shrivelled, vacant. Kate was struck again by how she now often looked every one of her ninety-odd years. A butterfly of unease fluttered in her mind.

It took a moment for Agnes to recognize them, but when she did, the vitality rushed back.

‘You found me then,’ she quavered as Dan placed the bag on the bed and pulled up a chair for Kate. ‘Don’t know why they’ve put me in here with all these poor old things.’

Kate kept her eyes on Agnes and hoped the other occupants of the ward hadn’t heard this.

‘It’s good to have people to talk to,’ Dan said. ‘And it’s a nice bright room, this. I won’t stay now. I have to get a few bits and pieces to deal with that rotten window in the library. I’ll fetch Kate in an hour, Miss M., and come back later in the week.’ He winked at Kate and strolled off down the ward, his rangy figure attracting admiring looks from the two young nurses on duty.

‘Good boy, that one,’ croaked Agnes, then cleared her throat and spoke more strongly. ‘I wish he’d make a success of something. Did you know he gave up a career in London?’

‘Really?’ said Kate, surprised. ‘I don’t know much about him, but he certainly doesn’t strike me as an urban animal. Have you known him long?’

‘Only since he came home looking for work a few years ago. Summers knows the family. She engaged him to clear the front garden while he was studying and then we kept finding other things for him to do. I think he only comes out of kindness now, you know. He always seems very busy . . . whatever it is he does. Kate, it’s lovely to see you. And what wonderful roses. Ask Nurse to bring you a vase, and a proper cup of tea, too. I was asleep when they brought this. It’s disgusting.’

Kate went over to the nurses’ station to cajole one of them into carrying out Agnes’s orders, then sat down at the bedside. Agnes pulled Dan’s bag over and started rummaging around amongst the clothes. Kate took the chance to look round at the ‘poor old things’. The cubicle curtain was drawn between Agnes and the bed on her left, but in the bed on the other side, a nearly bald lady lay asleep. Opposite was a huge woman crippled by a stroke. She sagged against the pillows, her eyes unable to focus, her mouth hanging open. Her equally large husband, a man in his seventies, was sitting by her side, coaxing her to drink from a child’s beaker. He caught Kate’s eye and twinkled at her. ‘I come every day to see my Maureen,’ he confided. ‘She looked after this ol’ bugger –’ he jabbed at his chest to indicate himself as the old bugger ‘– every day for fifty years. Never a cross word. Now I look after her.’

Kate didn’t know what to say, though her father’s ever-patient tending of her mother passed through her mind. There were so many quiet faithful acts to see in the world if you only looked. She gave him a smile and turned back to Agnes. The old lady had wrestled a small envelope out of the bottom of the shopping bag and put it on the tray in front of her.

‘Kate Hutchinson,’ Agnes said, fingering the envelope. ‘I’m telling you all this because I think you understand me. I don’t believe I’ve got much time left.’

Kate opened her mouth to object but Agnes waved her hand impatiently and went on. ‘No, I don’t think I’m going to get home again. It’s not because they’ve put me in here. I just feel it to be so.’

‘Agnes, don’t. I know it seems—’

Once again, Agnes shushed her. ‘I know we’ve only got to know each other a little time, dear, but we’re family and we see eye to eye. There are things that you’ve said about yourself that make my heart go out to you. We’re birds of a feather. I wish we had met before. However,’ she went on, ‘we’d better get on before my great-nephew turns up. You met him at the weekend, I hear. What d’you think of him?’ She didn’t wait for Kate’s answer. ‘Well, never mind, it’s not his fault he is who he is. This is the key,’ she handed the envelope to Kate, ‘of a cupboard in the library. It’s behind a set of the
Domesday Book
. I want you to read what’s inside – then you’ll know who we’re looking for. I want to find him, you see . . .’

Kate took the envelope wonderingly, but before she could ask who ‘he’ was, the young West Indian nurse Kate remembered from an earlier visit arrived with a vase and two mugs of tea. She and Agnes had clearly taken to one another, for Agnes didn’t seem to mind being mothered by a girl a quarter her age. After the roses had been arranged, the nurse tidied up the bed and left them once more. Agnes started to talk again, but then she looked past Kate to the nurses’ station. ‘Oh damn,
he
’s here. I can’t say any more now. Take the key and read, then we’ll talk.’

Kate rose from her seat and turned to see Max marching down the ward. He was wearing a grey suit and light blue tie today, his dark hair neatly slicked back, and was carrying a bunch of pink carnations. He nodded to Kate then bent and kissed his great-aunt on the cheek.

‘Nice to see you sitting up in your chair, Aunt,’ he said, speaking in the slightly too-jolly voice people use for young children and those in their second childhood. ‘You look well today. I expect Kate here has been cheering you up.’

‘I’m just off now, actually,’ said Kate. ‘I have to meet someone.’ They stood there awkwardly, as if unsure of the protocol around a hospital bedside. Max’s tall businesslike presence filled the little cubicle. His aunt, huddled in her chair, seemed diminished in comparison. Kate said, rather gushingly, ‘I must thank you so much again, Max, for saving poor Bobby.’

‘How is he now? That was quite an adventure he had.’

‘Back to his normal bouncy self, I’m glad to say. Joyce is so relieved.’ Kate gave her apologies to Max as charmingly as she could, then squeezed Agnes’s proffered hand and hurried off down the ward. Was it her imagination, or did Max’s gaze follow her all the way?

Downstairs, she walked into the car park to see whether Dan was waiting yet. She couldn’t see his van, but then it was still only twenty to four. She returned to the reception area and sat down to wait in the cool quietness.

Usually she was soothed by her visits to Agnes. The old lady was almost Kate’s grandmother’s generation, but this wasn’t quite like snapping back into the motherly relationship she had had with her grandmother – no, Agnes was more of an equal, a very good friend. Despite the gulf of experience between their generations, they had something important in common, more than the ties of blood. Perhaps it was the currency of grief? But today, Kate felt disturbed by her visit. It wasn’t just the mysterious task Agnes had entrusted her with – Kate felt for the envelope in her trouser pocket – though that was troubling enough. Nor was it Max’s slightly oppressive presence, or finding out that Dan didn’t fit into the handyman pigeonhole she’d made for him. No, it was that the grip of Agnes’s fingers on hers had seemed weaker, her normally upright pose slacker, her attention beginning to wander, as though the knot that tied her to life was gradually loosening.

She couldn’t lose Agnes now. She needed her, her strength of will, her links with her family’s past, with Seddington House. She wanted to find out the rest of Agnes’s story. Talking to the old lady was like immersing herself in a different reality to her everyday life, one from which she herself gained strength. She could forget her anxieties about Simon when she was with Agnes, but now that she had a moment of peace, all this morning’s misery came flooding back. She sat there, the tears rolling down her cheeks, uncaring of the curious looks she was getting from passers-by – weren’t people used to tears in a hospital, for goodness sake? – when someone sat down on the banquette beside her. It was Dan.

‘What’s happened?’ he whispered, the expression in his blue eyes both tense and tender. She looked away, not able to bear his sympathy. ‘It’s not Agnes, is it?’

Kate shook her bowed head quickly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘No. Agnes is . . . as you said. And Max is there, so I came down early.’

‘What’s the matter then?’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go and find somewhere to have a cup of tea.’

They drove into town and found a little café and Kate sat and told him about Simon having an affair, and how he was pushing her away, about how lost she sometimes felt down here, how she missed her work and her friends, about the threat hanging over the school and how she just felt so muddled and angry and didn’t know what to do. Dan listened. He didn’t try to comfort her or to make bright suggestions or to volunteer his own experiences. It was a relief to lay it all out like this. Eventually, they sat there, comfortably silent. Kate had told him how relieved she was that Joyce wanted them to stay, and now she had run out of words.

‘So here you are,’ Dan sighed, his eyes fixed on her face, ‘like Ruth amid the alien corn, if I remember my scripture lessons right.’

Kate thought about the implications of that. In the Old Testament story, Ruth had gone with her husband to live in his country, as was the custom. Then her husband died. She was supposed to return to her own people but instead she chose to stay with her lonely mother-in-law, Naomi. ‘Your country will be my country, your people, my people,’ Ruth had told Naomi. Well, she wasn’t sure she could feel like that about Joyce, but the two of them had certainly been thrown together. And at least Kate’s husband wasn’t dead. And she had her darling Daisy and Sam. Ruth’s story had a happy ending – she had married a wealthy farmer and was able to look after Naomi in her turn.

But what does Dan mean? We haven’t got to that stage yet, Kate told herself fiercely. It’s going to be all right with Simon – isn’t it?

The waitress appeared with the bill, which Dan paid, and Kate’s mind snapped back to the present. The key! She decided to confide in Dan, whom she instinctively trusted.

When she told him all about Agnes’s strange request he seemed quite animated.

‘It’s nearly five. Do you have to get back right away?’ he said. ‘We could go to the house now.’

Kate rang Paradise Cottage but heard only the answerphone. The family must still be at Hazel’s. She left a message to say she’d be back in an hour and then they walked back to the van.

‘Thank you, Dan,’ she said simply. ‘You’re a good listener.’

‘That’s got me into trouble plenty of times,’ he said mournfully, and she laughed.

‘Agnes said you used to work in London.’

‘Yes, in advertising – Jones Kline. I was a designer there.’

‘What sort of thing did you work on?’

‘Toothpaste, toilet cleaner, weedkiller . . . yes, I got all the glamorous accounts. Stuck it out for nine years then I just lost the urge to get up in the morning. The design bit was all right. I just hated London, hated the office politics, missed Suffolk, my home ground.’

‘Where did you study design?’

‘Norwich. That was all right, I could still live at home, get in on my bike every day. But London turned out to be where the jobs were.’

‘Couldn’t you have gone freelance once you got back here, or worked somewhere local?’

‘Could have. I just felt I had other things I wanted to do. The painting mostly. I did a part-time fine art course a couple of years ago. That’s what I should have done in the first place, but everyone was telling me I needed to train for a proper job.’

‘I remember what that feels like. And haven’t you ever . . . I don’t know, settled down? I mean, didn’t you need to pay for things?’