He didn’t miss the little flicker of unhappiness that moved across her face.
‘Very well, thank you.’ She allowed the conversation to rest there, not inviting further questions. Burnett turned to the secretary.
‘I shall need the address and phone number of Mr Mallinson’s elder son, Kenneth,’ he said. ‘Could you look it up for me now, while I’m here? I promised Mr Mallinson I’d get in touch with Kenneth first thing in the morning and I won’t be looking in here again till lunchtime.’
‘Certainly, Dr Burnett.’ Pleasant and efficient as always, Gina Thorson smiled at the doctor and gestured along the passage towards the ground floor. ‘If you’d like to come down into the office, I’ll look it up in the files. I know we’ve got the address there. I’ll write it down for you.’
Mrs Parkes stood for a few moments watching the two of them walking away towards the flight of stairs, then she tiptoed along the corridor and stood listening outside Mr Mallinson’s door. No sound from within. She turned the handle with great gentleness and put her head round the door. The bedside lamp was still on, it shed a mellow glow over the peaceful features of the old man, deeply asleep now, breathing easily and naturally. Satisfied, she closed the door and went back to her own room.
It was no good, she knew she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep now for an hour or more. She switched on the electric fire and took a letter from her little bureau. She gave a deep sigh, opening the letter and reading it yet again, knowing by heart what it said … ‘We’ve talked it over a great deal recently,’ her son had written, ‘and we’ve finally decided our best opportunity lies in Australia. Without any capital the most I could hope for in this country is a position as a farm manager or a bailiff. It’ll be a terrible wrench of course. If there was any possibility of getting a farm of our own here we’d much prefer to stay, even if it was only a smallholding to start with, but even that takes more capital nowadays than we’d ever be likely to raise. I’ve written off for the emigration forms. It will all take some time but we hope to be on our way next year. Once you’ve made up your mind about a thing, there isn’t much point in hanging about.…’
Mrs Parkes sighed again, staring down at the glowing bars of the fire. Just a few thousand pounds, that was all that was needed to keep her son and his family within reach, a few thousand pounds between herself and the long years of loneliness, the gap bridged by air-letters, a solitary trip scrimped and saved for, a reunion with grandchildren grown into suntanned strangers. A few thousand pounds, so little when you said the words aloud, so impossibly large a sum to a widowed nurse with only her monthly pay-cheque … only the expectation of what a grateful patient might see fit to leave her.
Mrs Parkes sat up suddenly and pulled her dressing-gown more tightly around her. She turned her head in the direction of old Mr Mallinson’s room, held herself rigid while a multitude of thoughts ran through her brain. ‘Stay with me,’ the old man had said a few months ago. ‘I won’t forget you.’ She had paid little attention at the time. It had suited her to stay on, not to have to bother about looking for a new post, not to have to begin all over again the weary business of adapting herself to the ways of a strange household. In a few weeks, she’d thought, in a couple of months at most, Mr Mallinson will be himself again, he won’t need me any more, he’ll summon me one morning and say, ‘You’ve been very kind, Mrs Parkes, I’m very grateful, but I don’t really feel I can detain you here any longer.…’ In the meantime she’d been pleased to be able to take things easily for a while.
‘You look after me and I’ll look after you,’ Mr Mallinson had said. She’d thought little of it, they were all grateful when pain and misery swept over them, they didn’t always find it convenient to remember when health and strength flowed back.
And now Mr Mallinson was ill again. Just how serious was it? ‘Only a mild attack,’ Dr Burnett had said. ‘We must see he takes things easily from now on.’ But Mr Mallinson was an old man. Health and strength might flow back but never again with the strong spate of youth, never again in the full surge of virile manhood.
Perhaps he had meant what he’d said, perhaps he’d added a codicil to his will. She stood up and began to pace about the room.
She could easily find out. A methodical man, Mr Mallinson, there’d be a copy of his will downstairs in the office safe. Gina Thorson could be spoken to, a word at the right time and she could study the contents of the will.
Mrs Parkes paused in her progress and bit her lip in fierce thought. It might be best though to say nothing to Gina, it might be best to consult the will without Gina’s knowledge. She wasn’t all that fond of the girl, it might be better not to be under any kind of obligation to her. She resumed her silent pacing. Yes, she must think of some way of getting hold of the keys of the safe. Not much difficulty there. Next time Gina was out on one of her dates with young Dr Knight, Mrs Parkes could take the keys and open the safe at her leisure. Late in the evening, perhaps, when the rest of the household was at rest, when Gina and young Dr Knight were holding hands in some secluded moonlit spot, that would be the time.
She sat down abruptly by the fire and looked at the letter again. ‘On our way next year,’ her son had written. Just suppose old Mr Mallinson had added a codicil to his will, just suppose gratitude had prompted him to translate promise into reality, exactly how long might he be expected to last? Several years? Or only a year or two? … Or was it only a matter of months? … Of weeks? … Or even days? …
‘I’ll look after you.’ In terms of hard cash how much might that mean? Five hundred pounds? She shook her head sharply, dismissing the idea of such skinfllint generosity. A wealthy man, Mr Mallinson, a self-made wealthy man who’d come up the hard way. Not one of your soup-and-red-flannel-for-the-poor aristocrats, imagining a few hundred pounds spelled unimaginable luxury to an employee. He was a man who knew the value of money and what it might represent in terms of ease of mind and security. A few thousand at least. She stood up again. Her face wore a brighter, less anxious air. Yes, a few thousand at the very least, that was what he’d meant, surely, that was what he must have meant. And Mr Mallinson was a man of his word. Even after only a few months she was aware of that. A man who said a thing and meant it, a man who would carry out a promise.
Dr Burnett let himself into his house with the efficient noiselessness born of years of taking night calls. He stood in the dimly-lit hall for a moment, listening. No sound from any of the rooms. Richard Knight had gone back to bed again then, was in all probability by now sound asleep. And it took a lot to wake the housekeeper.
Upstairs in his bedroom Dr Burnett sat wearily down on a chair and bent to unlace his shoes. Then he took from his pocket the sheet of paper on which Gina Thorson had written the address. He yawned widely. As soon as he woke in the morning he must ring Kenneth Mallinson and explain matters. He propped the paper against the alarm clock to remind him.
He stood up and removed his jacket. The other son, David – and David’s wife, Carole – I suppose Mrs Parkes will get on to them in the morning, he thought. David Mallinson lived on the outskirts of Rockley village in a fine old Georgian house. He had run the family business – under the close supervision of his father – ever since his elder brother had walked out. Not a man to quarrel with his father, David Mallinson, not a man in the least likely ever to quarrel with his bread and butter. Dr Burnett hung his neatly-folded clothes over the back of a chair. David and Carole would be up at Whitegates as soon as they heard the news, bearing bunches of flowers, wearing suitably agitated faces. ‘Such a pleasant, uncomplicated, refreshing girl,’ old Mallinson had said a year ago when David had brought home the girl he wanted to marry.
Dr Burnett gave a little worldly-wise smile. Carole Mallinson had proved herself a most attentive daughter-in-law to the old man. Simple and refreshing she might appear to the casual eye, Dr Burnett thought, winding his watch, but she had her head screwed on the right way. Just the wife for David Mallinson, two of a kind.
He went over to the mantelpiece and stood looking at the framed photograph, the young woman smiling out from the circle of the young man’s arm. He stooped and touched the glass with a finger, then he crossed