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  When they had finished Jane went to tidy her room, which she had left in chaos. Logie and Alison stacked the dishes on a tray and Logie took it to the kitchen while Alison followed with the coffee-pot.

  Logie, her back turned as she ran hot water in the basin, said abruptly, “Alicey—I’m the most ungrateful pig that ever was! Instead of being simply thrilled over those nylons, I keep on thinking that I’ll never have the chance to wear them. Suddenly it’s come over me in the most depressing wave that nothing ever happens here and nothing ever will.”

  “I know. A liver-coloured wave, with purple streaks, and when it breaks it’ll be bilious green.” Alison tossed some soda in the basin. “And when you’re in the middle of it, you think life will go on being like that for ever. But it won’t. There are the loveliest patches of blue sunny water waiting ahead if only one could realise it.”

  Logie sighed. “Yes. If one could!” She slid an arm round Alison and hugged her. “You always understand,” she told her gratefully. “Goodness—I must fly or angry patients will be dancing on the doorstep.”

  A moment later Alison heard her hurrying through the garden to Swan House. She made a rueful grimace, half amused and half exasperated as she reflected on the selfishness of youth, absorbed so deeply in its own affairs and feelings that it had no thought to spare for those of others. Did Logie never dwell a moment on the fact that while the best years of her life lay still ahead, ten years of Alison’s had been sacrificed to the young Selkirks? One of these days, she thought, I’ll have to point out a few things to Logie, for her own sake as well as mine!

  Jane came to dry the dishes, chattering of school and happenings there. She wanted a new tennis racket. Did Alison think they might go together this afternoon to see if Goffin’s had one the right weight? Eleanor Purcell’s mother had got her one from there last week—a beauty.

  Alison, meeting the dark blue eyes that met hers with such innocent candour, yet held a quality of reserve, thought how little one knew of the most intimate thoughts and feelings even of those who were the greater part of one’s own life. Where did Jane’s thoughts linger when they came to rest? What stirred the force of her imagination? Did she dream still of childhood’s pleasures, or of all that lay ahead—romance and love, a home and children? ... How lonely, she reflected, are our lives. And yet how terrible it would be if this were not so, if the last stronghold left us, thought, were vulnerable to invasion.

  Together they made their beds. Jane asked, “Any jobs for me to do?” There were many things she might have done to make Alison’s morning easier, but Alison sent her off to spend the morning out of doors. Jane had been growing too fast, and Dr. Sinclair wanted her to have as much fresh air as possible.

  A door in the passage opened on to a flight of steep steps going down into the coach-house. Jane went down them and out into the sunlit stable yard, where the Rhode Island hens came running hopefully, though Alison had fed them before breakfast, and a tortoiseshell cat rubbed, purring, against her bare legs. Jane picked her up and, carrying her, went to inspect her kittens which were lying in a nest of hay in one of the stalls in the stable, a nest she shared with one of the hens, who always laid there. Neither seemed to mind the presence of the other. The hen was sitting there now, and looked at Jane with a suspicious gold-rimmed eye. She fluffed out her feathers, bridling, as Jane slid a gentle hand beneath her and withdrew a stripey kitten a few days old, its eyes not open yet. She held it out to Miniver, the cat, who nosed it with a gentle crooning sound but seemed quite unconcerned when Jane replaced it and it crawled back under the enveloping feathers to rejoin its black brother. Jane left her sitting there beside the hen, washing herself industriously, and went out again into the sun’s warm embrace.

  An old high wall of rose-red bricks skirted the garden from Swan House to the stables. In it, at one end of the yard, was set a wooden door. Jane opened it and stepped through, closing it behind her, then leaned against it, drawing a long, deep breath of satisfaction.

  She was standing on a short flight of stone steps that led down to the river bank. Below her lay an overgrown path, nowadays seldom used except by lovers seeking privacy and small boys looking for adventure. Here, partly hidden by elderberry bushes and wild roses, one might find traces of landing-jetties and the remains of a few ancient, tumbled sheds, relics of the days when Market Blyburgh traded with the sea. Willows and a few tall poplars grew on the far side of the river, and beyond them lay the reed-grown marshes. Down the steps went Jane on to the path. Lightfoot she followed it downstream, brushing aside the bushes plucking at her skirt, the late wild roses snatching at her hair, looking about her with bright, eager glances. She came in a few minutes out of her green tunnel into a small clearing by an old wharf. Its planks and timbers were in mouldering decay and the remains of what had been a shed were buried deep in vegetation, while the road that once had led from here into the town had long ago been overgrown by grass and bracken and hawthorns, so that to-day no trace of it was visible.

  This was Jane’s private world, the world she knew by instinct. Here she had come day after day, year after year, a child made solitary by the six years dividing her from the twins, to live the fantasies of her secret second life. Here she had played many parts—had been the mother of a family of cherished dolls, a highwayman, the leader of a gang of smugglers, the hero of a lost cause hiding from pursuit. Here she had narrowly escaped disaster in a derelict boat that she herself had reconditioned after a fashion. Here she belonged as surely as the heron standing sentinel in a shallow pool, the water-rat whose course was marked by a bright silver arrow moving on the water, the flight of a kingfisher. She was as much a part of this place as the distant crying of the redshanks on the marsh, the moist warm smell of rotting vegetation, the weeds that streamed like verdant hair down in the dappled water.

  She sat a while upon the sun-warmed planks, absorbing all she smelt and saw and heard and felt. Presently she slipped off her dress. Under it she wore her bathing-dress. She stood a minute poised above the water for a dive, slim as a reed, less angular than a year ago, more delicately curved.

  She thought in that delicious moment of anticipation, how terrible to be Logie, cooped up among medicine bottles and the smell of disinfectants!

  It was after she had dived and swum and dried in the sun and put on her dress that the frightening thought came to her.

  Logie once loved to come here. When I was quite small I came here for the first time by myself, and found her here, and she was furious—as I should be if someone came here now—and said this was her place, her private special place. But when I came again, after a bit, she never even knew. She’d given it up.

  A passing cloud covered the sun. The world was momentarily darker. Jane shivered. Impossible to imagine that one could forsake this other world, this secret life, for the prosaic interests grown-ups seemed to find so engrossing. Frightening, too. Or wouldn’t one? Could one be different from other people? Was one perhaps peculiar? She detested Peter Pan; to her it seemed a piece of whimsy-whamsy nonsense. Yet there might be something in the idea of never growing up. O, Time, stand still!

  An hour ago she would have watched with sympathetic interest the travail on a twig beside her, where a grotesque embryo creature that would presently become a butterfly was in the throes of struggling from its chrysalis, leaving the familiar security of an outgrown shelter for an unknown world.

  Now, lost in thought, she did not see it. If she had, she might have taken comfort.

  Left alone, Alison set to work with mop and dusters. Ruefully she wondered whether she were spoiling Jane. Many a time she had wondered the same thing in regard to the twins. This business of a new tennis racket, for instance. It was going to be expensive, more expensive than they should afford. Ought she to have a talk with Jane concerning money matters? Point out to her that while Eleanor Purcell’s family was well off, Jane’s was not; that she must go without many things that might be Eleanor’s for the asking? Was carefr
ee childhood the best preparation for the difficulties to be encountered later? Was it a handicap—or a treasure beyond price, a treasure that one ought to try to give to every child, untarnished by the shadow of ways and means and dismal calculations? Oh, if only adult problems were as simple as those of childhood, when conscience told one that a thing was right or wrong and that was that!

  Into her mind drifted the echo of something Logie had said earlier this morning: “Didn’t you miss being with girls of your own age? And men?”

  For the moment Alison became again a girl in her twenties, all her time and energy devoted to cooking, cleaning, washing, mending, planning and contriving for three children, dearly loved but not her own, while youth slipped by, bringing no opportunity for having any life apart from them.

  She switched her thoughts back from herself to Logie. “It suddenly came over me in the most depressing wave that nothing ever happens here, and nothing ever will.” Poor pet! thought Alison—she wants young company and gaiety and the opportunity to fall in love and marry. She needs them. How am I to give them to her?

  Peeling potatoes, creaming margarine and sugar, greasing a pudding basin, she wrestled with the problem of Logie’s future. The residents of Market Blyburgh were for the most part elderly, being chiefly retired army and naval men, doctors, clergymen, schoolmasters, and business men who had retired here with their wives. Their grown-up families had gone elsewhere for a livelihood, since there was little here to occupy them. How then should a girl of Logie’s age find any of the things that youth desires and needs in these surroundings? Jane, too, when her turn came?

  Presently, as she began to clean the silver, Alison squared her shoulders and her lips took on a happier curve. She had found escape, as she had often found it in the past, in an imaginary world where she retreated when the realities of the world of everyday became oppressive.

  This morning, in that other world, some distant cousin of whose existence she had never heard left her a fortune. All of them equipped with ravishing new clothes, she and Logie and Jane set out for Switzerland, where Jane was left at a boarding school where she was rapturously happy. Alison then took Logie to an hotel, where they made charming friends who invited them to stay in London on their return to England. Logie was taken to theatres and dances and fell happily in love with an adoring and delightful young man, possessed of enough money to ensure that no financial cares should come her way. They bought a charming country house where Andrew on his leaves and Jane in her holidays might make a home with them, and all lived happily ever after. And Alison was freed to take up the threads of life in Edinburgh, renew old friendships, take up forsaken interests, stretch the wings that had so long been cramped.

  Guiltily she came back to earth as sizzling noises and a most unpleasant smell proclaimed that the hens’ food was boiling over.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Logie, fastening the belt of the white overall Alison had cut out for her from a linen sheet brought from Swan House but never used, since it was a double one, ran down the steep flight of steps from Fantails into the stable yard. As she was opening the gate in the low wall dividing it from the doctor’s garden, the church clock began striking nine, telling her that after all, she wasn’t late—she could be in the surgery by the time the last stroke of the hour rang out.

  It had been raining in the night. Silver drops hung on the nets over the raspberry-canes, and glittered in the sun on every leaf and petal. The shining air was sweet with roses and sweet-peas, and spiced with currant-bushes, mint and thyme, and all their fragrant neighbours in the herb bed. Logie’s depression lightened as she hurried down a path between box hedges, flanked on one side by fruit bushes, on the other by a wide flower border. On such a day as this it was impossible not to feel a gay conviction that something lovely must be waiting round the corner!

  “I feel gay,

  As well I may,

  For something nice Will happen to-day!”

  she chanted, laughing at herself.

  Opening the garden door she wondered, as she wondered every morning, whether the Sinclairs were acclimatised by years of custom to the faint astringent smell of disinfectants that pervaded Swan House. It had been architecturally impossible to make a separate door for surgery and waiting-room without spoiling the character of the Queen Anne home, and so the smells of home and practice mingled in the hall and passage, where, as she entered, Mrs. Sinclair was conferring with the elderly woman, Mrs. Moffat, who came from eight to twelve, and who for some time had been her only help.

  The doctor’s wife was short and dark, and always managed to seem cheerful, no matter how she felt. She had dark, sparkling eyes, a round face with strong features, and even white teeth that showed a good deal when she smiled, which happened often. Her age was forty-nine. She was by reputation and in fact the most discreet woman in Market Blyburgh.

  “Good morning, Logie! Such a lovely morning, too! The Doctor’s only just begun his breakfast. He had a call to Mrs. Chiffin in the night. Another boy.”

  “I’ll hold the fort,” said Logie, and went into the waiting-room, that had chairs ranged round the walls, and picture papers on a table in the middle. Beyond it lay the surgery. Both rooms were ready for the arrival of the patients, as Logie “did” them as a rule when evening surgery was over, preferring that to getting up an hour earlier of a morning. Now and then the morning help gave them a good turn out. As she was opening the window Mrs. Sinclair popped her head round the door. “Is Alison about this morning? Not going out shopping?” she asked.

  “She’s going to be in, as far as I know. She did a lot of Marketing yesterday,” said Logie. “But I can’t be sure.”

  “Oh, well—I just thought I’d look in to have a word with her. If she’s not in it won’t quite kill me to have walked all the way for nothing!”

  “Shall I go back and tell her you’ll be coming?”

  “Goodness me, no! Thanks all the same. I want a word with Michie, in any case.”

  This being the obliger’s day for turning out the dining room, Mrs. Sinclair dealt herself with a good deal of the routine housework. It was eleven before she was free to go out into the garden, where she spent some time in trying unsuccessfully to persuade the elderly Scots gardener that she and the doctor far preferred the peas picked while they were small and sweet, instead of waiting till they were as large as marbles and as tasteless, and finally went up the flight of steps to Fantails. The door was open.

  “Alison? Are you there?” she called.

  “Indeed I am! And charmed to see you! Do come in. How nice of you to give me an excuse for idling. I’ve been longing for a cup of coffee, but I’d never bother to make one myself. I’ll just put on the kettle and be back with you in half a minute.”

  “You’ve brought the art of welcome to perfection, Alicey,” said Ella Sinclair when they were sitting side by side on the low window-seat, each with a large cup of coffee.

  “I don’t think it’s an art. It’s simply that I’m really pleased to see you!”

  “Well, whatever it is, coming here certainly does give one a cosy feeling of being wanted. What delicious little crunchy biscuits! I can’t make out what it is they taste of.”

  “Custard powder, in place of a quarter of the usual amount of flour.”

  “Next time I make biscuits I shall practise the sincerest form of flattery. Good news of Andrew?”

  “Yes, he’s very fit. We heard from him this morning.”

  In silence Mrs. Sinclair sipped at her coffee. Then she said, “You must be wondering why I’ve dropped in at a busy time of day. I wanted to have a quiet word with you. The fact is that we may be leaving here.”

  “Leaving? Oh dear!” Alison was startled and dismayed. The Sinclairs seemed so much a part of Market Blyburgh, she had supposed that they had taken root for life.

  “Oh, not for ever—though it’s nice of you to look so tragic! Only for a year or so. You know that paper Tom wrote for the Lancet that made so much stir?”r />
  “The one about his theory of anaesthetising?”

  “Yes. Well, it’s had repercussions. Bietmann, one of the most distinguished surgeons in America, thinks it may revolutionise the whole science of anaesthetics. He’s been corresponding with Tom for some time. Now he wants him to go to Boston so that they can work on it together. He would arrange for Tom to lecture to a medical congress and all over America to medical students.”

  “Ella! How simply wonderful for you both! How proud you must be!”

  “Yes. I don’t think either of us can quite realise it yet. It’s such a wonderful opportunity for a hitherto inconspicuous G.P. And though we’ll hate to leave home, it will be rather marvellous to see America. And, of course, an experience beyond Tom’s wildest dreams—or mine, for that matter.”

  “What’s going to happen to the practice?”

  “That’s one reason why I came to talk to you. We wanted you to know about it first of all, so that you’ll have time to think things over. Then, if all goes as we hope it will, you may have some plan to suggest to Logie. That’s the one snag. The man who will be coming here is bringing his own secretary-dispenser. It’s natural enough; she’s been with him for years. But it means Logie won’t be needed.”

  “No. No, of course not.”

  Ella Sinclair looked at her anxiously. “Alison, is this an awful blow? We’ve been wondering, Tom and I, what else there is for her to do here. Have you any ideas?”