(12/20) No Holly for Miss Quinn (9 page)

Miriam was spared replying as Lovell returned.

"The chairman of Eileen's bench. Just enquiring."

Eileen, she remembered now, had recently been made a magistrate. Frankly, she wondered if she were capable of the task, but simply said politely:

"Does she worry much about her duties?"

"What she really worries about," replied Lovell, "is whether she should wear a hat or not."

Then, sensing that this might smack of disloyalty, he enlarged on the many compliments he had heard from her fellows on the bench, on Eileen's good sense and fair-mindedness.

His discourse was cut short by a ring at the back door. Hazel skipped off to answer it and came back, much excited.

"It's the turkey man, Aunt Miriam, and it's all right! He's bare!"

Construing this correctly, Miriam felt a wave of relief, and hurried to fetch the bird, Lovell following close behind to pay the bill.

***

A little later, she sallied forth with several baskets, and the three children in tow. Lovell had to conduct a funeral service and visit two desperately sick parishioners. He would be back to late lunch, and then stay at the vicarage while Miriam visited the hospital.

"Can you possibly get back by about four, do you think?" he enquired, consulting a list anxiously. "I'm supposed to call at the village hall to have tea with the Over-Sixty Club, and be at a Brownies' Carol Service in the next parish at the same time. Then I must have a word with the flower ladies, and get ready for the midnight service."

Miriam assured him that she could manage easily.

"Can we come and see Mummy? Can we?" clamored the girls. Miriam looked at Lovell.

"Sister made no objection last time, as long as they behave, of course, and aren't there too long. But how do you feel?"

"I'd like their company," said Miriam, and they fell upon her with shrieks of joy.

The grocer's shop was one of three in the village. Across the road was the butcher's, and next door was the post office which sold sweets and tobacco.

The proprietor of the village store bore a strong resemblance to Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre. She had the same square frame, the identical short-cropped hair, and an expression of malevolent resignation.

Fortunately, the similarity ended there, and she turned out to be unusually helpful about the needs of the vicarage household.

"Did you want the piece of gammon Mrs. Quinn asked about? I've put it by, in case."

"Yes, please," said Miriam. At least it would make a change from turkey in the days to come.

"And you'll want potatoes," Mrs. Bates informed her. "That half-hundredweight was nearly finished last week, Annie told me."

Miriam, slightly dazed, remembered that Eileen's mother's help was a local girl.

"I'm her auntie," vouchsafed Mrs. Bates, scrabbling in a box of potatoes hidden behind the counter. Fair acre all over again! thought Miriam.

"Take five pounds now, and my Bert'll bring up ten pounds tomorrow if that suits you. You don't want to hump all that lot, and Robin's push chair's not that strong."

Miriam agreed meekly. It was quite a change to be managed. Was this how Barney felt when she mapped out his routine?

With a shock she remembered that there had been no preparations made for lunch at home. For the first time in her life, she bought fish fingers, and a ready-made blackcurrant tart. How often she had watched scornfully the feckless mothers buying the expensive "convenience" foods. Now, with three children distracting her and the clock ticking on inexorably, she sympathized with them. Catering for one, she began to realize, was quite a different matter from trying to please the varying tastes of five people, and hungry ones at that.

"Where's Robin?" she enquired suddenly. The child had vanished.

Hazel and Jenny were talking to a boy in the doorway.

"Probably in the road," said Mrs. Bates. "And the traffic's something awful this morning."

There was a hint of mournful satisfaction in this remark that reminded Miriam yet again of the distant Mrs. Pringle.

She rushed to the door, heart thudding, calling his name. The road was clear, except for a scrawny dog carrying a large bone.

"It's all right!" shouted Mrs. Bates behind her. "He's here."

The child was sitting on the floor, hidden behind the end of the counter, beside a rolled-down sack containing dog biscuits which he was eating with the voracity of one just released from a concentration camp.

"Robin,
really!
" exclaimed his aunt. Like Tabitha Twitchit, she thought suddenly, I am affronted.

"Don't worry, miss. He's partial to dog biscuits. And these are extra pure," she added virtuously.

"You must let me pay you," said Miriam, hauling the child to his feet and brushing yellow sulphur biscuit crumbs from his coat.

"Oh, he's welcome," said Mrs. Bates indulgently. "I'll just add up the other."

By the time she had visited the butcher to buy steak and kidney for a casserole for the evening meal, and then the post office for stamps and sweets, Miriam seemed to have accumulated three heavy baskets.

The wind was now boisterous, and carrying rain bordering on sleet. The children did not seem to notice the cold, but Miriam, struggling with the erratic push chair and the shopping, felt frozen through.

Ah! Dear Holly Lodge! she thought with longing. Tucked into the shelter of the downs, screened by that stout hedge, when would she see it again?

***

"What a lovely, lovely lunch," sighed Jenny, leaning back replete.

"Excellent!" agreed her father.

Miriam was secretly amused. If her friends could have seen the meal she had assembled, fish fingers, instant potatoes, tinned beans, and bottled tomato sauce, followed by the bought fruit pie, her standing as a first-class cook would have taken a jolt.

And yet it had been relished. Perhaps there was a moral here, but there was certainly no time to pursue the thought, with the washing up to be done, the girls to get ready, and Robin to be put down for his afternoon nap. She must put the steak and kidney in a slow oven too, so that it could cook gently while they were at the hospital. How on earth did mothers manage? She was more exhausted now, at midday, than she was at the end of a hard week at the office.

At half-past two she set out, with the girls in a state of wild excitement in the back of the car. They were carrying their Christmas presents for Eileen, and keeping an eye on Miriam's. Tomorrow Lovell would be the only visitor at the hospital, while Miriam took charge at home.

Eileen looked prettier and younger than ever, propped against her pillows in a frilly pale blue nightgown. It so happened that Miriam's present was also a nightgown, but a black chiffon one threaded with narrow black satin ribbon. It would make a splendid contrast, she thought, to the one she was now wearing.

Eileen greeted them all with hugs and kisses.

"You are a perfect angel to come to our rescue," she said when the little girls had been settled, in comparative peace, with some magazines. "Have you had a terrible time coping?"

Miriam reassured her.

"I think all the shopping's done. No doubt I've forgotten something quite vital like bread, but I've remembered stuffing for the bird and even salted peanuts in case people come in for drinks."

"That's more than I should have done," said Eileen cheerfully, and Miriam began to feel more drawn to her sister-in-law than ever before. There was something engaging about such candor.

"Is that lady dying?" asked Jenny, in a high carrying voice, her finger pointing to a gray-faced woman dozing in the next bed. Miriam went cold with shock.

Eileen laughed merrily.

"Good heavens, no! Mrs. White is getting better faster than any of us. Be very quiet, darling, so that she doesn't wake up."

At this point, Sister arrived, and asked Eileen if the children would like to see the Christmas tree in the children's ward. They departed happily.

"By the way," said Miriam, "did you know that Hazel has tumbled to Father Christmas?"

"Yes. I hope she won't tell Jenny yet."

Miriam explained what had happened.

"Always problems," said Eileen. "And with some you will be wrong whatever you do. I thought this when Lovell and I were invited out together, the other evening. He was suddenly taken ill. Of course I rang our hostess, and she said: 'Will you feel like coming?'

"What do you do? Say 'Yes' and be branded as callous to one's husband's sufferings, and probably greedy to boot, or say 'No' and let down the hostess?"

"Insoluble," agreed Miriam. "Or, worse still, wondering whether to pull the lavatory chain in the dead of night in someone else's house. If you do, you can imagine the startled hostess saying: 'You'd think she would have more sense than to rouse the whole household!' On the other hand, one is liable to be branded a perfect slattern if the hostess visits the loo first in the morning!"

They laughed together, and Miriam, for the first time, felt completely at ease in Eileen's presence.

"But tell me about yourself," she said. "Are they getting things right?"

"I think so. They couldn't be kinder, and once the results of the tests are through I may be able to come home. Strict diet, and all that, and weekly checkups, but I've a strong suspicion it won't come to surgery."

"Thank God for that!" said Miriam.

"You must be longing to get back to Fairacre," said Eileen. "The vicarage is such a barn of a place. But Lovell is terribly grateful to you for coming up so quickly, and so am I, as you know. We should have foundered without you. Ah, here comes Sister."

The children had been given a chocolate toy from the tree, and were starry-eyed with pleasure.

"Shall I unwrap your presents while you're here?" asked Eileen.

"Yes, yes. Do it now!" they clamored.

With great care, she undid the wrappings, read the lopsided cards covered in kiss-crosses, and finally displayed a canvas bookmark embroidered in lazy-daisy stitch by Hazel and a thimble in a walnut-shell case from Jenny.

"Perfect!" smiled Eileen, putting the thimble on her finger, and the bookmark in the novel by her bed. "Now Christmas has really begun!"

Miriam looked at her watch.

"I must take them back. Lovell has to be off again by four. He'll be in tomorrow, and I'll come again after that."

"Dear Miriam," murmured Eileen, as they kissed. "No wonder Lovell adores you. You are an absolute tower of strength."

Miriam called into Sister's room as they went out, to thank her for the children's presents, and to enquire after Eileen's progress.

"She's doing very well. We couldn't have a better patient, and a real help to the others in the ward."

"She says you are all very good to her."

"That's nothing to Mr. Quinn's kindness to my old mother," said Sister, with energy. "You don't forget help like that when you're in trouble. He lives by his beliefs, that brother of yours."

"He tries to, I know," replied Miriam, much moved.

"Come on, Aunt Miriam, we've got to get our things ready for Father Christmas," urged the girls.

"First things first," called Sister, as they left the hospital.

***

The wind had become a vicious howling gale by the time they reached home. The sleet slanted across the headlights, and a wicked draft blew from the east under the vicarage doors. Water was blowing onto the landing from a window which took the brunt of the weather, and Miriam searched for something to staunch the flow.

"Mummy just leaves it," said Jenny, faintly surprised at so much fuss over some intruding rain. "It always dries up after a bit."

Exhausted as she was, Miriam began to sympathize with this laissez faire attitude, although it was against all her principles. She rammed a shabby towel against the crack, and hoped for the best.

Lovell had departed into the waste of wind and water, and Robin's bath time arrived. Hazel and Jenny accompanied her to the bathroom, anxious to help and to explain to the boy the importance of hanging up his stocking.

Less hostile than the previous evening, nevertheless the child still resented Miriam's attentions

"Dadda do!" he muttered sulkily. "Go away!"