Выбрать главу

“I must have startled you.” She came towards him, concerned. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, confusedly. “But thoroughly ashamed of myself . . . behaving so stupidly.” And seeking an excuse, he added: “I—was quite unprepared . . . You see . . .”.

She look at him understandingly.

“I met our minister, on the way in. You were a friend of my dear mother’s.”

He inclined his head, indicating respectful sadness.

“And of all your family. They were very good to me when I was a poor . . . and homeless student.”

Her face expressed sympathy and kindness. It was evident that his grief at the grave had strongly predisposed her in his favour.

“Then you knew James, my grandfather?”

“A wonderful man . . . I could see that, though I was a heedless young fellow then.”

“And Uncle Willie?” she asked, with a warmer sympathy.

“Willie and I were the best of friends,” he said, with a half sigh of recollection. A sudden inspiration led him to validate their association. “We often bunked together. Long talks we had at night. He was a fine boy.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can believe that.”

There was a pause, during which he could not bring himself to look at her. His mind was not yet clear, not fully adjusted to this extraordinary turn of the wheel. He still regretted the mother and all that her loss entailed, yet it had begun to dawn on him that in the daughter he might still find the opportunity he sought. Perhaps, after all, it wasn’t the end of his journey; at least, in sudden anxiety, so he fervently hoped. With an effort he maintained an air of calm.

“I must introduce myself. My name is Moray—David Moray.”

Her expression did not change. As she took the hand he held out to her, he could barely suppress a sharp breath of relief. She did not know of him, nor of his unedifying history. Why had he doubted? Mary would never have told her, the secret was still locked up in that poor broken heart, now stilled for ever, down there, six feet under his expensive hand-made shoes.

“You have my name,” she was saying shyly, while he still held her hand. “Kathy Urquhart.”

He gave her, though still with quiet sadness, his most winning smile.

“Then, if I may, as an old friend of your dear mother, and of all your family, I shall call you Kathy.” He said it kindly, almost humbly, anxious to put her at ease, to make her feel at home with him. Then, standing aside in subdued fashion, with a sense of compunction and responsibility, conscious of his defects and deficiencies, of all his misdeeds of the past, he watched her as she placed her few chrysanthemums in a green enamelled vase before the Celtic cross and began, with a few touches, to move some fallen beech leaves from the sward.

She was bareheaded, wearing a dark blue, noticeably shabby coat over her denim nurse’s uniform of lighter blue, and one of her shoes, he observed with a pang, was patched, a neat patch to be sure, yet an actual cobbler’s patch. These little economies, so apparent to his expert examining eye, moved him. We will change all that, he told himself, with a sudden burst of feeling. Yes, his opportunity was here, certain and predestined, he felt it in his bones.

“There!” she exclaimed, straightening herself with a confiding smile. “We’re all tidy for the Sabbath. And now,” she hesitated shyly, scarcely daring, yet venturing to say it, “. . . would you like to come away home with me for a nice cup of tea?”

They walked down the pathway of the graveyard together.

Chapter Four

Seated by the window in the room above the dispensary while she went into the kitchenette to infuse the tea, he glanced about him, surprised by the want of comfort, the bareness of all that met his eye. Not even a rug on the scrubbed and polished wooden floorboards, the furnishings scanty, little more than a square deal table and some horsehair covered chairs, the fireplace blackleaded yet lacking coal, the walls white-distempered, relieved by only one picture and that a religious subject, a reproduction from the Christian Herald of a bad copy of Valdez Leal’s Transfiguration. There were a few books, mainly nursing manuals and a Bible, on a shelf. A hart’s-tongue fern in an earthenware pot stood on a blue saucer on the window-sill beside a work basket holding a piece of knitting, ready to be picked up. But while admitting its spartan neatness, and the touch of brightness which a vase of wild asters on the mantelpiece, caught in the yellow light of sunset, gave to it, he saw in the room, as in the little alcove bedroom, the door of which on entering she had quickly closed, disturbing evidence of straitened circumstances. On the tray, too, which hospitably she now brought in, the china was of poor quality and the single plate held nothing more than buttered slices of cottage loaf. He could not altogether understand it, yet with a sudden lift of mood he reasoned that the more help she needed the more would he be able to give her.

“If only I’d known you were coming,” a little flustered, pouring the tea, she reproached herself as she handed him his cup, “I’d have had something nice. When I’m busy I don’t bother about shopping till the Saturday. But never mind me, tell me about yourself. . . . You’ve been abroad.”

“Yes, for many years. You may imagine what it’s meant to me, coming home.” He sighed, then smiled. “Now that I am here I mean to make an extended stay.”

“Where were you?”

“Mostly in America.”

“I almost hoped you’d say Africa.” She half smiled to him, though her gaze, passing beyond, was remote. “Uncle Willie is out there—at Kwibu, on the border of northern Angola.”

Although he gave no sign, he nevertheless experienced a strong sensation of relief. Willie would certainly have known him; any premature meeting might well have induced a most undesirable crisis.

“You don’t surprise me a bit,” he said pleasantly, with a light note of interest. “Even as a boy Willie was wild about Africa. Why, he and I walked practically every mile of the way with Livingstone, to Lake Victoria. And when Stanley found him you should have heard us cheer. But Angola, isn’t that rather primitive country?”

“It’s all that. Since Uncle went out he’s had some terrible rough years. But things are going better now. I’ve all sorts of interesting snaps I can show you. They give a good idea of the conditions out there.”

At this stage he thought it wise not to enlarge on the question of Willie’s pioneer activities—whether mining or engineering he could not guess—so he refrained from pressing the matter.

“When you’ve time I’ll enjoy seeing the photographs. But what I really want to hear about is your own work here.”

She made involuntarily a shy, disclaiming gesture.

“Oh, it’s nothing much. Just the usual run of district nursing, health visiting, and the like. I go round the countryside on my bicycle, sometimes on foot. Then there’s the Welfare Centre for pre- and post-natal care, with a clinic—we call it the milk bar—for the babies. And odd times I do a turn at the Cottage Hospital in Dalhaven.”

“All that sounds as if they work you much too hard.” He had already noticed that her hands were rough and badly chapped.

“It’s nice to be busy,” she said cheerfully. “And they’re very decent. I have Thursday afternoons off and three weeks’ holiday in the year—I still have two weeks of it to go, in fact.”