THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK
Chapter 14: A Month in the Country
“Hurry up, Grace!” Evelyn cried, patting her hands over the surface of the eiderdown, trying to locate her other glove. She had just heard the honk of a car horn from the street outside. “Are you ready, love? It’s here, the car’s here!”
She found the glove and pulled it on. Her new summer gloves, bought for this special day, were made of some new stretchy fabric, non-wrinkle, fully washable, and, or at least as they had promised her in the shop, gleaming white. Today, Uncle Les was sending a car right to the door that would convey them to the convalescent home where, as he had written in his postcard, he was settling in fine after just a week and already feeling the benefit.
It was so long since Evelyn had been out anywhere that she was as excited as a young girl. When had she last gone for a spin through the countryside? It was years, and that was by bus. The thought of being taken in a private car was almost more excitement than she could bear. She was vague about where exactly Uncle Les’s convalescent place was, but that didn’t matter. In fact she liked the mystery. It was an extra thrill to feel that only the driver had to know the route. She could just sit back and be taken to her destination, like a duchess! It didn’t do any harm to feel like a bit of a swell, once in a blue moon. It was only pretending, and life was ordinary enough the rest of the time for it not to turn her head.
Evelyn’s good spirits survived, even when Grace refused to describe the car to her. Was it big and black and shiny, she asked, but Grace would say only that yes it was a car, yes it was big and black, just about all cars were, and as to shiny she hadn’t noticed. Inside the car smelled leathery and expensive. When she leaned across and asked Grace in a whisper if the driver was in a uniform, Grace shooshed her impatiently.
They drove in silence. When the sounds of other traffic died away and she knew they were out of town, Evelyn wound down the window for some country air. But she enjoyed it for only a few minutes before Grace complained of the draught.
It was getting on for dinnertime when the car left the road and made its way slowly along gravel and finally came to a stop. The driver jumped out and crunched round to open the passenger door.
“Here you are, ladies, the Maud Braddock Memorial Home for Invalids,” he said, handing Evelyn out so gallantly that she felt certain he
The air was certainly bracing, just what you would want at a place of convalescence, Evelyn said to herself, breathing it in. It was cool and mossy, and somehow watery, and there seemed to be a lot of it, more than you got in an ordinary lungful of town air. She could hear a fast-flowing stream not far away, and birds high in the sky. But Grace was tramping ahead over the gravel now, and Evelyn followed.
The place seemed half hospital, half hotel, hushed and smelling of floor polish rather than disinfectant. They were greeted in the hall and told that Mr. Hibbert was expecting them, and then they were led into a room so warm Evelyn felt she had stepped into a greenhouse. Indeed she almost had, as Uncle Les, who was waiting there, explained. They had entered a marvellous, newly built glass sun lounge, the last word in luxury, that stretched across one side of the front of the old Edwardian building, originally used as a hunting lodge.
He went on to tell them that the Maud Braddock Memorial Home for Wounded Servicemen had been set up here during the War. Now there was no further use for it in that capacity, and it was now catering to a different clientele altogether, convalescents and invalids who would pay for the best and insist on getting it.
“Like your sun lounge, for instance,” Uncle Les said, waving his arm.“Deluxe. No expense spared.”
A proper sun trap it was, apparently, where most of the patients lay on reclining chairs surrounded by potted palms for much of the day, basking in the warmth.
“Blowing a gale outside and you could be on the Riviera, lying here,” Uncle Les said.
“Don’t you want to get out, though, into the fresh air?” Evelyn asked. Uncle Les explained that half an hour out of doors twice a day, morning and afternoon, was as much as he was allowed. Well wrapped up in blankets, he was wheeled along by a nurse and encouraged to walk for five minutes at the beginning and the end of each session. Next week he was going to walk for ten minutes each time, and he was also planning to try the steam bath in the Home’s brand-new hydro facilities.
Perhaps once they’d stayed for lunch (and the food was excellent, he assured them), and he’d had his afternoon nap, Grace would be so kind as to do the honours and push him along in his wicker chair for his afternoon constitutional? That’s if, Uncle Les said rather tightly, she would deign to honour them with her presence? He’d only glimpsed her at the door, and then she’d disappeared. Where had she got to?
Uncle Les called a nurse and asked if Grace had been seen wandering about anywhere, and might she be informed that her uncle was ready to be her host at luncheon. Evelyn said nothing. She hoped Grace might just have taken herself off outside to explore and go for a walk, since the opportunity to enjoy country air was a rare one for Grace as much as for herself, but still she felt uneasy. Once the nurse had been dispatched to find Mr. Hibbert’s mislaid visitor, Uncle Les began telling her, in a low whisper, about some of his fellow patients and Evelyn tried to concentrate, frowning.
Half an hour later, Grace still had not been found. The nurse reported back to them that she thought the lady must have gone for a longer walk, and she would ask the kitchen to keep aside something for her luncheon, which was now about to be served.
But when the meal, braised liver and onions with cabbage, with a glass of milk stout for Les, followed by ginger pudding, was over, there was still no sign of Grace. After coffee, Les was wheeled away for his hour’s rest, and Evelyn was invited to sit in the sun lounge.
It was while she was there, feeling the sun on her face through the glass, that the commotion began. The same nurse who had looked for Grace came running in.
“Oh, excuse me, madam!” she began. She seemed not to know what to say next. “Oh, madam, your daughter, she is your daughter, isn’t she? Oh, thank goodness you’re here. Oh, what a shock! We need to contact her
