The Magic Hour Read online

  ‘Perhaps she’s ill?’

  Frances looked bright-eyed and at the same time practical, which was one of her many attractive expressions. Alexandra stared at her for a minute before turning back to Cherrypan’s quarters.

  ‘Ner-no. She’s not ill.’ She started to move the brush over the horse once again, determined to be able to see her face in its shining quarters. ‘Ner-no, she’s not ill. That’s what I mean about being a plant. You ner-know how you can water it, and all that, but it doesn’t do any good. Well that’s what my grandmother’s like, she’s like a per-plant without water.’

  Frances stared with interest at Alexandra.

  ‘I think you ought to call a doctor, you know. If old people stop eating and sleep all the time, they can be not just ill, but very ill. Sometimes you find them in their chairs frozen to death, because they haven’t moved for days. I know because I heard it on Mrs Dale’s Diary.’

  Although Alexandra had never heard Mrs Dale’s Diary except once at Frances’s house, she was nevertheless impressed.

  ‘Do you think she could be dying too, then?’

  Frances looked oddly excited by the idea that she might have diagnosed correctly the state of the older woman from listening to her mother’s favourite radio serial.

  ‘If I hadn’t heard it, I wouldn’t have thought of it.’

  Alexandra put down her grooming brush, her mind made up.

  ‘In that case I am going to call Dr Frobisher, because Gran likes him. It might help to keep her awake, if she knows the der-der-doctor is coming.’

  When he arrived at the cottage Dr Frobisher was already looking serious. He knew all about the new situation that had come about at Lower Bridge Farm, all about Betty Stamford refusing to stay on with the new wife, and leaving without any of her possessions, except her clothes in a suitcase, and not wanting to attend John’s wedding. He knew too that although the village gossip was none of his business, it would have every bearing on the declining health of his older patient. He was also uncomfortably aware that no one except the dark-haired young woman with the bright blue eyes standing in front of him was in the least bit interested in the old lady’s wellbeing. Now that John Stamford had a new woman in his life, now that he was getting his oats again, he would be less than interested in the poor old girl. Indeed the good doctor was all too aware that if Betty had been an animal on her son’s farm he would doubtless have had her shot, but since she was not an animal on his farm, indeed since she was no longer living in or near the farm, it would seem that her demise would be nothing but a relief to John Stamford. The truth was that decent though John was, his life had now taken on a whole new brighter turn, and he could not be blamed for allowing it to take him on a new road, even if it did mean cutting with the past – a past that included his mother and daughter.

  ‘I am going to give your grandmother a vitamin tonic, and some brewer’s yeast. There’s nothing physically wrong with her, at least not that I can find,’ Dr Frobisher told Alexandra, who was staring up at him with large anxious eyes as they both conversed in quiet tones in the small cottage porch. ‘No, what has happened is that Mrs Stamford has lost her interest in life. This happens in old people, but doubtless’ – he continued quickly, because finding himself faced with such patent anxiety as he saw in Alexandra’s eyes, he suddenly knew he could not be as honest as he might perhaps have been with someone older – ‘doubtless as soon as she starts taking the vitamins she will perk up.’ He gave Alexandra a kind smile as he clipped his suitcase smartly shut. ‘And let’s hope that, like the horses in the meadows over there, as soon as she has some sun on her back, she will spring back into working order again.’

  Following the doctor’s visit Alexandra dutifully dosed her grandmother with the required vitamins, every day before and after school; but although she hoped with all her heart that with the ingestion of the tonic the old woman would turn back into her usual crusty self, in her heart of hearts Alexandra soon came to realise that if the vitamins were having significant results, they were not, as yet, visible.

  Even so, every evening, as she lifted the latch on the old oak door, she could not help hoping that she would soon be hearing the dull thud of her grandmother’s wooden spoon vigorously mixing up a cake, or the kettle hissing on the old cottage range as she waited to make tea for them both. Instead, as the daylight from outside momentarily lit the old oak-furnished room, she would see her grandmother still seated in the same chair, still seated in front of a now dead fire, fast asleep, not even turning at the sound of the latch lifting, as if she was determined that if she slept long enough and deep enough, friendly death would soon come to her aid.

  In the kitchen the daily sight of shiningly clean unused china proclaimed the same lack of interest in life, but pride stopped Alexandra confiding in anyone except Frances, and finally Mrs Chisholm.

  ‘She’s quite given up on life, I saw that in her eyes,’ Mrs Chisholm announced when she returned from her own regular weekly visit to Betty Stamford. ‘I really think you will have to call the doctor in again. You can’t be expected to cope, Alexandra, really you can’t.’

  She gave Alexandra a kindly look, touched her briefly on the arm, and strode off towards her house, her riding boots making a sharp, clear sound on the cobbled stones of the yard.

  After she had finished helping Frances to hay up the horses and freshen their water buckets at evening stables, Alexandra found herself half walking half running home in panic, Mrs Chisholm’s words ringing in her head louder than her own footsteps. She pushed open the cottage door, still panting, and walked quickly into the sitting room, expecting to see the old lady fast asleep in her own preferred armchair. On seeing the chair was empty her heart soared with sudden delight. Grandma must be awake! The vitamins must be working. She must be getting better.

  ‘Grandma? Gran? Yer-yer-yer-who-hoo, Gran?’

  Receiving no reply Alexandra ran excitedly up the steep cottage stairs to the two upper rooms they used as bedrooms, hoping all the time to see the old woman once more as she had always been throughout her granddaughter’s childhood: busy, vigorous, full of what she always referred to as gumption.

  But there was no Betty Stamford, not in either of the small bedrooms with their flowered wallpapers and white counterpanes, not in the oddly large walk-in linen cupboard, nor was she in the small garden into which Alexandra peered from the upper windows.

  She ran down the stairs again, a feeling of suffocating anxiety coming over her, for the cottage was undoubtedly empty, and what with the road so near, it quickly came to her that the old lady might have wandered off on her own, perhaps still half dazed from sleep. Or she might have decided to return to the farm, or set out on some mission to find Alexandra, so it was only when she returned to the sitting room, that she found the note.

  Have taken Mother to the old people’s ward at the cottage hospital, as Dr Frobisher was worried about her condition. She will be put in a side ward, that is a room on her own, and they will look after her until she is better. Kay will come by to see that you have everything you need until we can all make plans for your future, for I don’t suppose you will want to go on living at Pear Tree Cottage on your own, now Grandma’s gone. I will talk to you about this tomorrow some time. Father.

  Alexandra stared at the note. It was curt and to the point, and in her father’s handwriting. She glanced up at the old cuckoo clock on the sitting-room wall with its long brass chains. It was well past teatime, she had a mountain of homework, her sausage and bacon supper was waiting on the sideboard to be cooked, and it was raining hard, nevertheless she grabbed her grandmother’s old flowered umbrella and headed back towards the village, and the cottage hospital.

  * * *

  The cottage hospital was divided into two. One section was devoted to young mothers, pregnant women and children, and those in a younger age group. There was also another smaller section, now taken up with the elderly and infirm, with those who found it too difficult to cope, or were
thought to be too dangerous to be allowed to care for themselves.

  ‘Families handing over their old to be cared for by other people, did you ever hear of such a thing?’

  Alexandra had grown up with the shocked tones of Betty Stamford and Janet Priddy discussing the treatment of the old people in the village, old people who before the war would always have lived on with their families, revered for their farming knowledge and useful for the young who loved them with that unreserved affection that children feel for the old.

  But of course the conversations that she had overheard had meant little to Alexandra at the time, so that it was only now that she was walking up to the reception desk with a leaden heart that she realised their import, and the words came back to her as if they were something that had been read in church, or a quotation from the Bible. It was only now that she realised what they actually meant. They meant that someone whom you had once loved took over your life and made a prisoner of you, put you in a place where you did not want to be, shut you away, left you to die.

  ‘I have come to see Mrs Stamford, Mrs Betty Stamford.’

  ‘We’re just making your grandmother comfortable,’ she was told as a young nurse in a crisp uniform walked ahead of her to the main ward. ‘You sit there, my dear, until we call you. Matron likes to get to know her elderly on arrival, doesn’t want to treat them like they are just a number, which of course they are not to us, my dear, I do assure you, they are not just a number to us.’

  She smiled brightly and was gone, leaving Alexandra to look around the area in which she was seated, an area that was currently occupied by several old people, one of whom was clearly unable to recognise her surroundings, and the other of whom was singing to herself in a low voice. To Alexandra the whole scene was reminiscent of a painting in one of the art books at school. The low lighting of the seating area, the darkness outside that was beginning to fall, the nurses’ starched white hats glimpsed every now and then through the window of the ward opposite, the sound of the warbling from the other side of the room, her own school dress and white summer sandals, all carefully picked out by all the available light. She knew that her grandmother would hate to be even a visitor to such a place, that she who had so loved fresh air and the farm, who lived and breathed the rhythms of the seasons and the countryside, would sink into despair at being put in such a place.

  Despite every effort not to look at the two old ladies seated opposite her, there must have been something about Alexandra that attracted attention, because the one who had been singing stopped suddenly and, standing up, came towards her. Putting out longing hands to the young woman’s cardigan-clad arms, she pulled at her in desperation.

  ‘My name’s Mary Laughton, you don’t know me dear, not really, but I haven’t done anything, not anything. It’s my daughter that put me in here – says I’ve gone mad, but I’m not mad, really I am not. Please, please, help me get out. Have you a car, can you take me away? I’m no trouble, they all said I was trouble, but I’m no trouble, really I’m not. Take me away, please, take me out of here!’

  The words stopped in Alexandra’s mouth as she found herself staring into the old lady’s desperate eyes. How terrible to be put away by your family, abandoned to a dull creampainted room, no familiar voices, nothing to comfort you with its easy familiarity, no piece of furniture or painting to evoke tender memories, no young people to need you.

  ‘I-er-I …’

  Although she left the despairing hand on her arm Alexandra found herself desperately searching around in her mind for what to say by way of an excuse.

  ‘I-er-I don’t have a cer-cer-car, I’m sorry, I-er cer-can’t drive.’

  Another old woman on the other side of the room stopped rocking herself as she heard Alexandra’s young voice. It was as if the sound of younger tones had somehow reminded her of something cheerful and happy, something from her past.

  ‘Miss Stamford?’

  As Alexandra turned in answer to the nurse’s voice she could not help feeling an overwhelming relief, could not wait to leave the room and follow the nurse quickly down the hospital corridor.

  ‘Grandma?’

  She went up to the bed. Her grandmother was staring ahead of her, her hair swept back in a pristine unflattering medical fashion, as if the nurses had wanted her quickly to achieve an anonymous look that they themselves found proper to her age; as if like at some over-strict school, on admission, they had wanted to make her look uniform, the same as all the other old ladies in all the other beds.

  ‘Grandma?’

  Betty turned slowly on the pillow and stared at her granddaughter. She knew she must now look like a frail old lady to Alexandra, not the vigorous old woman that she had once been, but something pathetic, and yet strangely … she could not find it in herself to mind. She just wanted to be on her way, to get out of it now.

  ‘Alexandra,’ she stated.

  Alexandra put out a hand and held that being now held out to her.

  ‘I’m here, Grandma.’

  ‘I know, dear, I can see you; and very nice of you to come.’

  She turned her head away and lapsed into silence, staring ahead, unable to continue.

  ‘You’ll be out of here soon, Grandma, see if you aren’t. I’ll get you out of here, really I will.’

  Alexandra was struggling to keep the panic out of her voice, but knew she was failing miserably. She should be more grown up. She should be more mature. For heaven’s sake, she was seventeen!

  ‘If only you could get me out of here, dear.’ Her grandmother turned her head to look at Alexandra once more, a mixture of resignation and despair in her eyes. ‘But you see … you see, John, your father, has committed me. Says I can’t live on my own with you any more, must stay here for the moment, until I start to eat again. Lost too much weight to be responsible for myself. I might have an accident, or set the cottage on fire, or some such.’

  ‘You-you-you can get out of here, Grandma. Get dressed, get up and get dressed and I will take you back to the cottage with me, we’ll have tea together, and I’ll make you a-a Her-Her-Horlicks the way you like it.’

  ‘No, dear. He has committed me. John has committed me. My own son has committed me.’

  Tears rolled down the old lady’s now sunken cheeks.

  ‘See those things at the side, dear?’ she said finally, when she could speak. She patted the sides of her institutional bed with her old hands. ‘Well, these, these are the things they lock you in with at night. Can you see them? See, dear? They’re like a child’s cot. They lock you in here, and they leave you so you can’t creep out at night and find your way home.’

  Alexandra stared at the iron contraptions on the side of the bed, her emotions boiling over as she saw the tears once more rolling down her grandmother’s face.

  ‘I won’t let them do this to you, Gran, I wer-wer-won’t!’

  The words burst out of her, and later as she walked and ran back through the rain to the cottage, she thought with murderous hatred of her father and Kay Cullen, of their new, smug life together, with Kay calling all the shots, her father going along with everything, Mavis being made to leave; and as she neared the front door of the little thatched house she realised that much sooner than she cared to think her grandmother would be dead, and she would be left quite alone.

  Tom knew that it would be hard for him to find another position in a house such as Knighton Hall. Without his mother to apply for a position as a much-needed cook, he quickly became just another young lad desperate for work, wanting nothing more than some sort of roof over his head, some kind of wage, one of many in the long queues staring up at boards, or running to be the first to fetch the earliest edition of the local newspaper, newspaper that he would later wrap around himself to keep warm at night in what passed for lodgings at the run-down house where he was staying.

  Grooms’ positions were highly prized and few and far between, so he began to apply for any or every situation that might fit him. Assistant garden
er, footman, under-butler, but even if he was seen, which was rare, the response to him was always the same. He was too young, too inexperienced, and there was not enough time to train him.

  He had never felt lower, or hungrier, not even when, during the war, his mother had been sacked from two positions in a month, and she had finally ended up cooking for a rich old lady who liked to have food set in front of her, which she promptly left, and then expected to be reheated for her, again and again, before she finally and generously donated it to Tom and his mother.

  That had been one of the worst places. There were others that had been bad, but none quite as bad as that damp old house with its mouse-infested kitchens and its furniture that seemed to drip with moisture.

  Although he tried to keep his spirits up, Tom was all too aware that it was not only inexperience that was keeping him from employment, it was the way he looked. It seemed that the hungrier he felt, the less he had eaten, and the more he had grown, so that for all he was certain that he was intelligent, and his manner appropriately deferential, nevertheless, he no longer looked what his mother would call suitable. His old third-hand hacking jacket that had been handed to him as part of his uniform at Knighton Hall was now so short it looked ludicrous. Passing shop windows and trying not to look at himself, he was nevertheless well aware that he looked more like a scarecrow than a hard-working likely young lad who could make himself if not indispensable, at least useful.

  ‘You know your trouble, don’t you?’ his landlady said to him one day. ‘You’re going after jobs what have already gone. What you want to go after is a job that’s not yet come up. As it happens I know that there’s a job coming up, at the nursery up on the hill out of town – it’s some walk from here, I tell you, but I know the man who runs it. Mind you, you’ll be lucky if you get in there either, seeing it’s owned by the Duke of Somerton. They don’t take just anyone; even with so many acres of garden to look after, they’re strict as can be. Still, if you tell them that Muriel Posnet sent you, and ask for Jim Blakemore, you might be lucky. Mind, I only said “might”. Here’s the address. And remember, you go in the back gate. Don’t dare go up the main drive, not that I think you would.’