by Nevil Shute
“He’d have to be,” she said. “My grandmother’s a lady—the old-fashioned sort.”
There was a pause. “In any case,” she said, “that won’t be necessary now. Granny got a cheque today for five hundred pounds, from a relation in Australia who was worried about her. There’s enough money now to pay for anything she ought to have.”
“Five hundred pounds!” he said, “That’s a lot of money. Pity it didn’t come three months ago.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s just one of those things.”
He thought for a moment. “Would you like me to see if I can get a nurse for her tomorrow?”
“My father will be here tomorrow,” she said. “He’s a doctor. He’ll be here about midday. Could we talk it over with you then? I should think a nurse would be a good thing.”
He nodded. “I’ll see if I can get one for tomorrow night. You’ll need some relief by then.”
They went out into the hall, and he put on his coat. He paused then, hat in hand. “She’s got relations in Australia, has she? Do you know where they live?”
“They keep a sheep farm,” the girl said. “Somewhere in Victoria, I think.” He nodded slowly. “I still can’t quite understand it,” she said. “Granny thought they were quite poor, but then this money arrived for her today. They must be very well off to send a sum like that.”
“The graziers are doing very well,” he said. “Everybody in that country seems to be doing very well.” He hesitated. “I’m going to try it out there for a bit, myself.”
She looked at him, surprised. “You are? Are you leaving England?”
“Just for a bit,” he said. “I think it does one good to move around, and there’s not much future in the Health Service. I think it’ll be better for the children, too, and it’s not like going abroad. I’ve got a passage booked on the Orion, sailing on April the eighteenth. It’s a bit of a gamble, but I’ve had it here.”
“Where are you going to?” she asked. “What part of Australia?”
“Brisbane,” he said. “I was there for a bit in 1944, when I was in the Navy. I liked it all right. I believe you could have a lot of fun in Queensland.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Don’t talk about this, please, Miss Morton. It’s not generally known yet that I’m going.”
“I shan’t talk,” she said. “I don’t know anyone in Ealing.”
He went away, and she went back into the kitchen and stood thoughtful over the electric stove as she warmed up the milk again. The house was dead silent but for the low noise of wind and a little trickling noise of water from some gutter. She poured the milk into the cup and added the brandy, and took it up to her grandmother.
“How are you feeling now, Granny?” she asked.
The old lady did not answer, but her eyes were open and she was awake. Jennifer sat down on the bedside and lifted her with an arm around her shoulders, and held the cup to her lips. She drank a little, and the brandy may have strengthened her, because presently she said in a thin voice, “Jenny, I’m going to die.”
The girl said, “So am I, Granny, but not just yet. Nor are you. Drink a bit more of this.”
“Have you ever seen anybody die, Jenny?”
The girl shook her head.
“I wish there was somebody here with you.”
The girl held the cup up to the lips. It was stupid to feel frightened, and she must not show it. “Try a little more. It’s good for you.”
Too weak to argue, the old lady took a tiny sip or two. Then she said, “Jenny.” There was a long pause while she gathered strength, and then she said. “My cheque-book. In the small left-hand drawer of the bureau. And my pen.”
“Do you want to write a cheque, Granny?” The old eyes signified assent. “Leave it till the morning. Drink a little more of this, and then get some sleep.”
The old lady pushed the cup aside. “No. Now.”
The girl put the cup down and went downstairs. She knew that the doctor had been right and that her grandmother would die that night. She was not frightened now; her duty was to ease the passing of the old lady and do what she wanted in the last few hours. She was calm and competent and thoughtful as she brought the pen and cheque-book and a blotting-pad to the bedside.
“Are these what you want, Granny?”
The old lady nodded slightly, and the girl put them on the sheet before her, and arranged the pillows, and lifted the old body into a sitting position. She gave her another drink of the hot milk and brandy. Presently the old lady said, “Bring that thing.”
The girl was puzzled. “What thing is it?” And then she got up and fetched the draft from the dressing-table, and said, “This?”
Her grandmother nodded weakly and took it from her and looked round, questing, till Jennifer divined what it was that she wanted, and gave her her spectacles. She put them on, and then she said distinctly, “Such a funny sort of cheque. I never saw one like it.” And then she endorsed it on the back with a hand that trembled, with a signature that was barely legible.
Jennifer held the cup to her lips, and she drank a little more. Then, with a sudden spurt of energy, she took the cheque-book and wrote quite a legible cheque for four hundred pounds, payable to Jennifer Morton.
The girl, looking on as she wrote, said, “Granny, you mustn’t do that. I don’t want it”, and you’ll need the money when you get well.”
The old lady whispered, “I want you to do something for me, Jenny. Write letters now, send this to my bank and this to yours. Then go and post them.”
“I’ll do that in the morning, Granny. I can’t leave you alone tonight.”
The old lady gathered her ebbing strength, and said, “Go and write them now, my dear, and bring them up and show me. And then go out and post them.”
“All right.” She could not disobey so positive and direct a command. She thought as she wrote the letters at her grandmother’s bureau in the drawing-room that she could sort the matter out with her father next day and pay the money back; the thing now was to ease the old lady’s passing and not disobey her. She brought the letters and the envelopes up to the bedside and showed them; the old lady did not speak, but watched her as she put the letters and the cheques into the envelopes and sealed them down. The girl said, “There they are, Granny, all ready to post. May I post them in the morning?”
The head shook slightly, and the old lips said, “Now.”
“All right. I expect I’ll be away about ten minutes, Granny; I’ll have to go down to the Broadway. I’ll be back as quick as ever I can.”
The old head nodded slightly, and the girl went down and put her coat on, and ran most of the way to the post office and most of the way back. She came back into the bedroom flushed and breathing quickly, but her grandmother’s eyes were closed, and she seemed to be asleep.
The girl went down to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea, and ate a little meal of toast and jam. Then she went back to the bedroom and settled down in the chair before the electric stove.
At about half-past twelve the old lady opened her eyes and said, “Jenny, did you post the letters?”
“I posted them, Granny.”
“There’s a dear girl,” the voice from the bed said weakly. “I’ve been so worried for you, but you’ll be all right with Jane.”
The girl blinked in surprise, but there were more important things to be done than to ask for explanations. “Don’t try to talk,” she said. “Let me get some more hot water in these bottles.”
Her grandmother said, “No. Jenny … Jenny …”
The girl paused in the act of taking the bottles from the bed. “What is it, Granny?”
The old lady said something that the girl could not catch. And then she said, “It’s not as if we were extravagant, Geoffrey and I. It’s been a change that nobody could fight against, this going down and down. I’ve had such terrible thoughts for you, Jenny, that it would go on going down and down, and when you are as old as I am you would look back at
your room at Blackheath and your office work, as I look back to my life at Steep Manor, and you’ll think how very rich you were when you were young.”
It did not make sense to the girl. She said, “I’m just going to take these bottles down and fill them, Granny. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Her grandmother said, “I always took a hot-water bottle with me when we went out on shikar. Geoffrey’s bearer, dear old Moung Bah, used to boil up water over the wood fire and fill it for me, while Geoffrey cleaned his gun in front of the tent. Such lovely times we had out in the jungle, dear. Such lovely places …” The old voice died away into silence.
The girl took the hot-water bottles and went quickly downstairs to fill them. When she came back with them and put them in the bed around the old lady, her grandmother was lying with closed eyes; she seemed fairly comfortable, but the respiration was much worse. She was breathing in short gasps three or four times in succession; then would come a silence when for a long time she did not seem to breathe at all. It was fairly obvious to the girl that the end was coming. She wondered if she ought to go and fetch the doctor from his bed, and then she thought that there was nothing he could do; better for other and more vital patients that he should be allowed to rest. She sat down by the bedside in the chair to wait, holding her grandmother’s hand, filled with deep sadness at the close of life.
The old lady spoke suddenly from the bed. Jennifer missed the first words again; she may have been half asleep. She heard, “—on twenty-two thousand a year, better than we lived at Steep. Give her my very dearest love when you see her, Jenny. I’m so happy for you now. It was so sweet of her to send those lovely fruits. Be sure and tell her how much we enjoyed them.”
There was a long, long pause, and then she said, “So glad she sent the money for your fare. I’ve had so much, much more than you poor girls today.”
Jennifer was on her feet now; there was something here that had to be cleared up. She held her grandmother’s hand between her own young, warm ones. “What did you give me that money for, Granny? What do you want me to do with the four hundred pounds? Try and tell me.”
The old lips muttered, “Dear Jane. Such lovely fruits.”
The girl stood by the bedside, waiting. If she had understood the old lady at all she was making an incredible proposal, but, after all, the doctor was going.
She said, “Try and tell me what you want me to do with the four hundred pounds, Granny.”
There were a few faint, jumbled words that Jennifer missed, and then she heard, “—a little horse for you, everything that I had at your age.”
There was very little time left now. The girl said, “Granny! Did you give me the four hundred pounds because you want me to go to Australia to visit Aunt Jane? Is that what you’re trying to say? Is that what you’d like me to do with the money?”
There was a faint, unmistakable nod. Then the old eyes closed again, as if in sleep. The girl laid the hand carefully beneath the bedclothes and sat down again to wait. There was a terrific mess here that her father must help her to clear up.
At about two o’clock her grandmother spoke again for the last time. Jennifer, bending by the old lips, heard her say, “The dear Queen’s statue in Moulmein … white marble. So sweet of the Burmese …”
About an hour later the old lady died. Jennifer, standing by the bedside, could not say within a quarter of an hour when death occurred.
Three
JENNIFER met her father at the front door of the house early the next afternoon. She had gone out into the wet, windy streets at about four in the morning to stand in a call-box in the Broadway to ring him up in Leicester; the telephone was by his bed and she got through to him without delay, and told him of the death. Then she had walked back to the house. She had expected to be troubled and reluctant to go back there, but in fact she found she was not worried in the least by the thought of her dead grandmother upstairs. She was calm and serious; she felt that she had done a good job and her grandmother was pleased with her; if she had still been alive the old lady would have wanted her to have a little meal and get some sleep. So she made herself a meal of tea and bread and jam in the kitchen of the silent house, turned on the radiator in the living-room, curled herself up on the sofa with a rug over her, and slept. She did not wake until the middle of the morning, when the district nurse came.
Her father came down to Ealing alone. Her mother had made arrangements to come with him, but she was coughing a good deal and far from well, and on the news of her mother’s death Jennifer’s father had persuaded his wife to stay at home and not risk making herself ill just for the funeral. So he came down alone, and met his daughter at the house at about two o’clock.
“I’m very sorry you had this alone, Jenny,” he said. “I’m very sorry indeed.”
“That’s all right, Daddy,” she said. “It’s a good thing I was working in London.”
He glanced around the drawing-room. “She was very fond of this house,” he said. “We tried once or twice to get her to come up to Leicester and live near us, but she insisted on staying here.”
The girl nodded. “This was her own house, and she wouldn’t have wanted to be a burden upon anybody. She was very independent.”
Her father said, “We never dreamed that there was anything wrong with her pension, or her money generally. I suppose I should have come to see her more often, and gone into things a bit more.”
“She probably wouldn’t have told you,” the girl said.
He asked her about the practical business of the doctor and the death certificate and the undertaker, and went out to see about these things himself. Jennifer went out to find somewhere for her father and herself to stay that night, and with some difficulty found a private hotel with a couple of bedrooms empty; then she went back to the house to wait for her father. When he came she made him tea, and they sat in the drawing-room among the Burmese relics before an electric radiator while she told him what had happened the night before.
“She insisted on giving me the cheque,” she told her father, “and she made me go out and post it to my bank. What ought I to do, Daddy? I’ll have to pay it back to the executor, shan’t I?”
He shook his head. “Keep it.”
“Is that all right?”
“I think so,” he said. “Unless she’s changed her will, I’m the executor and the whole of the residuary estate goes to your mother. The four hundred pounds is probably yours, legally. But anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
“Oughtn’t it to go back to Aunt Jane?” She paused. “After all, she sent it for Granny, not for me.”
He pondered this. “Did you say there was a letter from Jane Dorman?”
She went and fetched it for him from her grandmother’s room, and he read it carefully. “I don’t think you need give it back,” he said. “The intention is quite clear; she says that if Ethel didn’t need it she was to give it to a charity. Well, she doesn’t need it, and she’s given it to you. It’s yours to do what you like with, Jenny.”
The girl stared at the hot elements of the fire. “I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “I think it’s mine to do what Granny liked.”
“What do you mean?”
She told him what had passed between them in the last hour of the old life. “She kept saying what a rotten time girls have in England now, compared with when she was young,” she said. “I suppose all old people are like that, that everything was better in their day. And then, it seemed quite definite, she wanted me to go and see Aunt Jane with the money. Go to Australia, I mean. It seemed as if she thought that I’d be getting back into the sort of life she knew when she was a girl, if I went out there and stayed with Aunt Jane.”
Her father said thoughtfully, “I see. Do you want to go, Jenny?”
The girl said honestly, “I don’t know. I’ve not had time to think about it. I’d love to travel, of course, and see something of the world. But Granny’s world … that’s gone for ever, surely? Huntin’ and
shootin’ and fishin’, and about fifteen servants all calling you Madam…. If that’s what happens in Australia, I don’t want to go there.”
“I should be sorry to see you go to Australia, Jenny. You’re the only one we’ve got.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Daddy. I can’t see myself going.”
There was one job that had to be done before they left for the hotel, and that was to gather up all the papers in the house for examination. Edward Morton decided to start on that that evening at the hotel, but when they came to investigate the papers they found a formidable mass of stuff. The drawers of the old lady’s bureau, and a sort of tallboy, were crammed full of letters and papers, the relics of a long life thrust into drawers and there forgotten. Insurance policies of 1907 were mixed up with leases of furnished houses rented on some leaves in the dim past, and personal letters, and receipts, and cheque-book stubs were everywhere among the mass. They found three suitcases in the house and filled them full of all this paper, and at that there was enough left over to fill another two. Her father said, “I’ll go through these tonight, Jenny, and chuck away what it’s not necessary to keep. Then perhaps I’ll be able to look through the rest of it tomorrow here.”
Jennifer hoped that The Poplars private hotel would be complacent about a hundredweight of waste paper, in the morning.
They got a taxi from the station and drove to The Poplars and dined together meagrely. Jenny had had two virtually sleepless nights and she could hardly keep her eyes open during the meal. As soon as it was over, she said, “Daddy, do you mind if I go up now? I’m practically asleep.” He kissed her and wished her goodnight. Then he went up to his own room and put a shilling in the slot of the gas meter and lit the stove, and pulled a chair up to the little radiants, and opened the first suitcase.
In the white-painted, rather bleak and functional bedroom the pageant of a long life gradually unrolled before him as the heap of torn papers on the floor beside him grew. It was about twenty minutes after he had started that he came upon the cookery book.