And then the smell of frying sausages floated up to his nostrils. He smiled. A world that contained sizzling brown pork sausages wasn’t after all such a dismal world. The high spirits of youth rose up inside him. He snatched at his toothbrush and anointed the bristles with a ribbon of white paste. Just suppose old Mallinson regarded eighteen as a landmark, suppose he made it not three, not five, but ten pounds! It was possible. Eighteen was really quite an important birthday when you came to think about it. Yes, it was more than possible, it was actually quite probable. By the time he was scrubbing at his face with a flannel foaming with soap he was quite certain the old man would make it a tenner. He splashed vigorously at his glowing cheeks with cold water, reached blindly for the towel and began to whistle.
Ada Foster speared the glistening sausages on to the expectant plates held out before her.
‘Get those inside you!’ she commanded. Footsteps ground along the gravel path. ‘Who’s that? At this hour?’ She thumped the frying-pan back on to the stove and flung open the kitchen door a couple of seconds after the double rat-tat assaulted her ears.
One of the young maids from the big house faced her in the doorway. ‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,’ the girl said importantly, delaying the moment of revelation, savouring her position as messenger. ‘It’s the old gentleman—’
‘Mr Mallinson?’ Ada cried, flinging the door wide, gesturing the girl inside. ‘He’s never dead!’
‘Well, no, not exactly.’ The girl looked a little put out, her tidings now appearing diminished, less weighty in their impact. Ada Foster might have the manners to wait without interrupting till a person had had their say. ‘But he was took bad in the night. Heart it was, Mrs Parkes said. She had to call old Doctor Burnett out, two o’clock in the morning.’ The lateness of the hour lent a certain impressiveness to her tale. ‘Thought I’d pop in and let you know.’ She glanced about the kitchen, registering the pork sausages, the brown teapot, with practised eyes. ‘Thought you’d like to know.’
‘Just how bad is he?’ George Foster pushed away his plate and stood up. ‘Does Doctor Burnett think he’ll get over it?’ A flood of anxious thoughts whirled through his brain. If the old man died Whitegates might be sold. Hardly likely young Master David and his wife would want to live in that great mansion of a place, not when they’d got their own house so nicely furnished and all. George saw himself all in a matter of weeks, days even, thrown out of work, given notice to quit the cottage.
‘A mild attack,’ the girl said, a little grudgingly, cheated of high drama. ‘Got to take things easy, Mrs Parkes said. Doctor’s looking in again at lunchtime.’ Not that she wished the old man any harm, far from it. A good employer, Mr Mallinson, strict mind you, but he paid a good wage and provided a good home and what more could a girl ask?
But it would have been interesting all the same to have knocked at the cottage door with a tear-swollen face, to bring news that would have shattered the easy peace of the sausage-savoury kitchen. It would have been nice just for once to have been able to say something that the listeners would remember for ever.
‘A cup of tea,’ Mrs Foster offered, picking up the earthenware pot. The maid shook her head.
‘No thanks, I have to be getting back.’ She nodded in the direction of the big house, indicating vague and onerous duties awaiting her. ‘There’ll be a lot to do today.’ She turned and stepped out on to the gravel path.
Norman sat at the table picking at his sausages now with a merely mechanical show of appetite, not listening to the animated interchange taking place between his parents. Just my luck, he was thinking, just my rotten luck! There would be no summons now on Thursday evening, no present would be formally handed over, there would be no tenner, no fiver, not even a single pound note. Disaster loomed before him, utter and total disaster, not a single ray of hope anywhere in the universe.
He lifted his head and threw a swift glance at his parents. Neither of them paid him the slightest attention.
‘Not easy to get another job at my age,’ his father said heavily.
‘I’ll be off now,’ Norman mumbled.
‘Don’t you go starting to worry about it now, George,’ Ada Foster said, her voice habitually soothing in times of crisis, although her eyes were anxious.
Norman pushed his chair back quietly and let himself out into the fresh morning. He went over to the shed and unlocked the door. For a long moment he stood gazing down at his beloved gleaming dully in the light shining from the kitchen window. Then he moved over and gave her a pat, rubbing his fingers over the silk-smooth metal. His eyes were full of tears.
Gina Thorson stood at the foot of the staircase with a small sheaf of papers in her hand. The sound of a door opening and closing in the first-floor corridor – Dr Burnett’s visit must be over then. She could hear voices now, low voices, Dr Burnett talking to Mrs Parkes. Then the doctor’s footsteps, brisk but quiet, moving along the corridor.
He came into view. Gina smiled at him.
‘Good morning, Dr Burnett. How is Mr Mallinson?’
‘Very much better this morning. Really surprisingly well.’ He gave a little astonished shake of his head. ‘Of course there’s to be no work or excitement for the present, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he isn’t up and about again in a week or two.’
Gina glanced down at the papers in her hand. ‘There are some letters here he ought to deal with. I can see to most of the mail myself, a lot of it is pretty well routine, but these – would it be all right if I slipped into his room for a couple of minutes? I’d make it as brief as possible.’
Dr Burnett shook his head. ‘Surely David Mallinson can deal with these queries?’
Gina looked faintly disconcerted. ‘Yes, I suppose he could.’ She raised her eyes to the doctor. ‘Though old Mr Mallinson does like to keep the reins in his own hands.’
Burnett smiled. ‘I’m afraid he’s going to have to learn to let go of the reins. It happens to us all in the end. You take your queries to David, my dear, he’s very efficient, there won’t be much he can’t handle.’
Gina sighed. ‘Very well.’ She detached one letter from the sheaf. ‘There is this one, though. It’s a little more – personal – than the others. I don’t mean that it’s a private letter, but it is really for the attention of Mr Mallinson and not his son.’ She held it out. ‘Perhaps you’d better read it. I’m sure you know all about what’s in it. It seems everybody does, it was in all the papers, I believe, though of course it happened long before I came here.’
Burnett frowned and took the letter. He ran his eyes over the closely-written sheet, turned it over to glance at the signature, then turned it back again and read it with care.
‘I see,’ he said as he took it in. ‘From the widow of that man.’ He clicked his tongue against his teeth, recalling the case. Not a very savoury affair. Victor Stallard, employed in the Accounts department at Mallinson’s, accused of embezzlement – quite a sizeable sum involved, several thousands of pounds. A tall, quiet, bespectacled man with a wife and a baby son, he’d protested his innocence throughout his trial but the evidence had been there. Seven years he’d got and lucky to get off so lightly, old Mallinson had said loudly at the time. Stallard couldn’t have altogether shared this view of his sentence, six weeks later he’d hanged himself in his cell.
All this had happened some years ago, the widow and the baby son had dropped away out of sight. No provision had been made for them by Mallinson’s, for after all why should they? ‘‘Stallard must have put the money away somewhere safe,’ Henry Mallinson had