Rose Cottage Read Free Page B

Gran her soup and toast, but she looked tired, so when I went up to collect the dishes I smoothed the quilt over her, drew the curtains, and left her to sleep.
    Then walked up the hill to sit in the sun and listen to the curlew’s song.

3

    Gran was sitting up against her pillows when I went upstairs after washing the supper dishes and saying goodnight to Kirsty, who had eaten with us.
    ‘Well, and did you have a nice walk?’
    ‘Lovely. How are you feeling now, Gran?’
    ‘I’m fine. Now pull that chair up where I can see you properly. Hm. Very smart, I’m sure. Where’d you get that skirt, London? So they have tartans there now, do they?’
    ‘England’s pretty civilised these days. But you’ve had me worried, you know. What’s it all about? If you say you’re not really ill—’
    ‘I’m not. I’ll be up and about again in a wee while, but I can’t say I’m not glad of a bit of a rest just now. It’s a lot of standing, cooking, and my legs aren’t as good as they were. Once this stomach’s settled, I’ll be as good as new, forbye a bit of the rheumatism when the weather’s no’ right.’ A trace of her girlhood’s accent had come back, I noticed, to mix quite kindly with the familiar North-country lilt.
    ‘You want to go back to work? Truly? You don’t have to, you know.’
    ‘What would I do with myself if I didn’t? Nay, lass, we’ve had all this out and settled, so say no more. I’m as well here as I’ll ever be, with folk I know, and with you coming home when you get your holidays, and the family for ever in and out of the door. It suits me fine, for all I miss Todhall and the folks there. Now tell me about yourself and this grand London job, for all I’d have thought you should have something better than working in a shop.’
    It was plain that, whatever she had to say to me, she would say it in her own time, so I stifled my curiosity and told her as much of my London news as I thought would interest her. I had only seen her once since my marriage, a flying visit in the summer of 1945, as soon as term ended, to tell her about Jon and that I was giving up my school job and going, at any rate until our affairs were sorted out, to London. I had offered to stay with her at Strathbeg, but, predictably, she would not hear of it. I must make a new life for myself now among my new friends (she meant, but did not say, ‘better myself’) and try to let time heal the wounds of war. Not that she put it like that, but once again I knew what she meant; ‘stay where you’re more likely to meet somebody else when you’ve got over it.’
    I knew she was hoping that this would be my news, but she bore very well with the daily doings at Platt’s Plants, and then in her turn she brought me up to date with the happenings in the glen, and the affairs of the family at the House.
    ‘I phoned them,’ I told her, ‘and Mrs Drew asked me to go over and see them.’
    ‘Well, of course you have to. Her ladyship’s always asking after you. She’ll tell you about it herself.’
    She was not looking at me as she spoke, but at something beyond the bedroom window. Not the blue hilltops of the summer evening; something further away even than they.
    We had come to it at last. I said gently, ‘Tell me what?’
    The roughened hands moved on the quilt. ‘It was something I heard not long syne. Something the family are doing at Todhall.’
    ‘Yes? Do you mean them turning the Hall over into a hotel? I heard that, too; in fact, I think they’ve already started.’
    ‘Aye, they have. Annie Pascoe wrote me. Jim and Davey are working there.’ Jim Pascoe was the Todhall carpenter, and Davey was his son. His wife, ‘Aunty Annie’ to me since childhood, was my godmother.
    ‘Do you mind very much, Gran?’
    ‘What’s the use of minding?’ Recovering herself, she was brisk. ‘It was a nice house, and I liked my kitchen – better than the one I’ve got here – but it had to come, and I’m well enough myself