The Wind Off the Sea Read online

  ‘You think smoking’s that terrible?’

  ‘No, I don’t think smoking’s terrible, because I smoke, Miss Gore-Stewart. But I’m absolutely convinced it’s not good for us, whatever the Government says.’

  Judy was waiting in Lionel’s sitting room for Mattie to come back from picking Max up from school and start cutting out the bridesmaids’ dresses. She stared down at the material, remembering her own less than glamorous appearance at her wartime wedding and how she had insisted on wearing her WVS uniform and not her mother’s wedding dress. How upset her mother had been! Judy clicked her tongue in irritation as she realised what a stubborn little fool she had been, more intent on impressing the village with her patriotism than pleasing her mother to whom she owed so much.

  She would do anything to be able to redress that moment. As she started to open out the swathe of material on the table in front of her she imagined herself walking back through the narrow streets of the village until she reached the beautiful old house that was her family home. The housekeeper would, as ever, open the door and announce her to her mother, who would be seated in front of a small fire in the morning room reading the Daily Telegraph. She would look up in surprise, the way she always did when Judy visited her, even when she was expected, before slowly lowering her newspaper, taking off her glasses and gazing curiously at her daughter.

  Mamma, Judy heard herself saying, I’ve come to say sorry to you, about not wearing your dress on my wedding day. I’ve come to say sorry for being selfish and not thinking of you.

  As always when she had this fantasy, her mother said nothing. All she did was give a small sniff, raise her eyebrows as if to say it’s a little late now and return to her reading. Now, hearing the front door of Mattie’s house close and the sound of Max’s piping voice, Judy quickly returned to reality, vowing never to visit that particular land of make-believe again, knowing that there was no point – that even if it wasn’t make-believe but reality, the fact was that however sincere her apology it would do no good whatsoever. Her getting married in uniform had for some reason hurt her mother beyond measure, and there was nothing Judy could do about it now.

  It had been bad enough telling her mother recently that she was expecting a child. Lady Melton had greeted the news with the kind of look on her face she usually wore when having spotted greenfly on her precious roses. To her it was bad enough one’s daughter getting pregnant – but to talk about it was compounding the felony, as she indicated to said daughter in no uncertain terms. Having hoped her good news might bring her mother some happiness, Judy left the house feeling as though she and Walter had managed to do something utterly shaming.

  So it was with no little relief that she greeted her returning friend Mattie, who had now appeared in the living room having handed her son over to his grandfather to have his tea.

  ‘I still can’t believe Waldo Astley actually bought Cucklington House for Meggie,’ Mattie exclaimed as she sat down opposite Judy to help cut out. ‘How lucky can one person get? And when you think what they thought of each other when they first met. According to you, anyway.’ Mattie shook her head, an amazed expression on her face as she readied the pinking scissors.

  ‘I think Meggie was badly in need of some good luck,’ Judy replied. ‘Davey, the war, all her work under cover in France and Germany, having had to sell everything when her parents died. We’re all inclined to think life’s been a bit of a cakewalk for Meggie, when in fact it’s been far from it.’

  Mattie looked up momentarily, caught by Judy’s reprimand, before beginning to cut. ‘We all need a bit of luck, Judy,’ she replied as her scissors click-clacked into life. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. John and I are certainly going to need it – otherwise we’re not going to be able to get married in Bexham church. John’s father is doing his best, but you know a lot of vicars won’t marry a couple if the bride has a child.’

  ‘Reverend Anderson will marry you,’ Judy said quickly, looking up. ‘He’s a friend of the family.’

  Mattie pursed her lips and frowned. ‘Crossed fingers department, Judy,’ she replied. ‘If it was just up to the Reverend Anderson there’d be no problem – but Daddy says otherwise. At least so he’s heard.’

  Midway through the following morning Dr Wright, considered by most to be the top general specialist in the country, stood in front of the row of illuminated X-rays that hung on the wall in front of him. He stood with his hands behind his back and his chin punched slightly forward, as if examining a set of rather fine prints or other works of art, hardly moving except to shift his weight occasionally from one foot to the other or to tilt his handsome, craggy head to right or left.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ he said to himself thoughtfully, ‘Mmmmm’.

  Then he took himself slowly through to his office.

  ‘Helen?’ he called through the door that led to his secretary’s room. ‘Is Miss Gore-Stewart up and about yet? I told Nurse Bradshaw to make sure she was ready for me at eleven.’

  Meggie in fact had been up and ready for over an hour, sitting in Dr Wright’s outside office idly flicking through copy after copy of The Tatler and Bystander without seeing one photograph or reading one word. So when Dr Wright’s secretary popped her head round the door to tell her she was needed, Meggie was practically up and out of the waiting area before she had finished speaking.

  ‘I hope it’s good news, Dr Wright,’ she said after she had sat down nonchalantly stretching out her silk-stockinged legs in front of her. ‘One thing I cannot abide hearing from doctors is any sort of truth.’

  Dr Wright looked at the beautiful woman opposite him, who was so stunning and arresting that for once he was able to see a patient as the extraordinarily attractive and vibrant creature she was rather than a collection of organs inside a skeleton and epidermis.

  ‘Then I shall, I am glad to say, be very much in your good books,’ he replied with a smile, closing the confidential file in front of him. ‘There is a certain amount of gloom, alas, but very little doom, you’ll be happy to hear.’

  ‘I could have done with an utterly clean bill of H, Dr Wright,’ she replied. ‘I’m the sort of person who likes things to be either one thing or t’other.’

  ‘With a bit of care, and good management we shall very soon have you entirely one thing and not the other, I hope,’ he replied. ‘But there is absolutely no doubt at all you have had a very bad infection.’

  ‘Have had? Well, that sounds a bit more cheerful.’

  ‘I apologise. I phrased that wrongly. You have had and still do have a bad infection in your lungs and in your chest.’

  ‘So it’s not coffee.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And it’s not just the smokes.’

  ‘The smokes as you call them haven’t helped – but no, it’s not just the smokes, and it’s not just the coffee. I’ll try to keep it as simple as I can – not because I don’t believe you’d be able to understand the medical ins and outs, but because I think really they’re irrelevant, and they might even alarm you. So this is it in a nutshell. You have contracted some particularly nasty infection that has attacked the chest and respiratory system. It’s more than likely this is part and parcel of the influenza epidemic, but it could also be something quite separate from it. But no matter – whatever caused it, the treatment remains the same.’

  ‘Not more bedrest,’ Meggie groaned. ‘I’ll shoot myself if you send me back to me bed.’

  ‘I agree,’ the specialist smiled. ‘I cannot stand being sent to my bed. In fact sometimes I think it makes patients sicker to be sent to bed than to be allowed downstairs to sit and read or listen to the radio. Resting in bed doesn’t always help. But then it depends on the patient.’

  ‘I’m a lot better sitting up than lying down,’ Meggie assured him. ‘At least when I’m ill, that is.’

  ‘You’re going to have to take things a bit easy for a while, Miss Gore-Stewart. A lot of your trouble possibly stems from the fact that you haven’t given your body a ch
ance to recover properly from this infection. What would have been ideal would have been for you to take two or three months off somewhere – even at home actually, it doesn’t matter where. Just doing nothing. But according to you – at least what I learned from our talk yesterday – you find doing nothing all but impossible.’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ Meggie said, a little alarmed at the prospect that by her wilfulness she might have damaged her health. ‘But obviously from your tone this is what I’m now going to have to do for a while. Not very much.’

  ‘Even less if possible, if we’re to get you one hundred per cent yourself again. So here’s the regime. It’s going to sound mighty boring, but believe you me this is really what you have to do to get better. I’m going to put you on an extensive menu of drugs in order to try to hit this infection on the head, and while you’re on these I want you to stay indoors for the next two weeks doing as little as possible – and in this case what I mean is nothing at all. You’re to treat yourself as if you were an invalid, which means no excitement and no leaving the house. Every afternoon you are to go to your bed for a two-hour rest, and then when you get up you are to do nothing more energetic than read or listen to the radio.’ Dr Wright raised a warning finger when he saw his patient about to protest. ‘If you don’t – because that’s the question everyone asks at this point – if you don’t do as I advise you won’t get better, it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘You mean it’s as bad as that.’

  ‘I mean it’s as simple as that. After a fortnight, provided the medication’s doing its stuff, you’ll be able to start getting out and about a little, and after another couple of weeks there’s no reason to suppose you can’t slowly get back to rebuilding a normal existence – provided the drugs are doing their stuff. Do you have staff?’

  ‘Yes,’ Meggie lied initially, before changing her mind. ‘No. I live alone.’

  ‘You’ll need a nurse, and a housekeeper. I can organise the nurse if you could perhaps organise the latter?’

  Meggie nodded. ‘How shall I know if the pills are doing the trick?’ she asked, doing her best not to sound anxious.

  ‘I shall be in touch with your GP who will keep a weather eye on you, as will I – and before you ask how that will be possible, as I said, our friend Waldo holds an awful lot of my IOUs. Besides, my family lives in Sussex, not a million miles from Bexham, so it’s not exactly off my beat.’

  ‘I see.’

  While Dr Wright, having smiled briefly but comfortingly at her, proceeded to write out several prescriptions, Meggie took stock and considered her position.

  In her heart of hearts she had known there was something wrong with her, and from the way she had been feeling of late she had feared the worst, so at least this diagnosis had relieved the very blackest of her fears. She also believed the man sitting on the other side of the desk implicitly. Not only had she liked him at first sight, but she was aware the reason why she had liked him was because she felt she could trust him, so she knew she must do as he said. Waldo was going to be away for at least two weeks if not longer, so if all went well she could be up and about by the time he got home, if not well on the way to a full recovery. So for once in a life full previously of stubbornness, Meggie decided to do exactly as told, take her medicine, obey her advisers, and give herself the best possible chance of being in the best possible shape for the moment for which she was living: Waldo’s return.

  ‘Good,’ Henry Wright said as he handed her a sheaf of prescriptions. ‘Before you go I’ll give you a parcel of the medicines you’re going to have to take straight away, and I’m also going to give you a shot of something that’s going to make you feel considerably more at ease. It’s all right’ – he smiled in answer to Meggie’s anxious look – ‘it’s only an injection of iron and vitamins. You came up by train, did you not?’ Meggie nodded. ‘At this time of year, with the weather being so entirely unreliable, I’d much rather not have you exposed to any such vagaries, so forgive the presumption but I have made arrangements to have you driven home. Don’t worry about the expense. Likewise about the nursing care. Waldo told me that he’ll cover all the costs incurred.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Waldo?’

  ‘No, no. No, this was something we agreed in advance. Should it be necessary. Don’t look so surprised, Miss Gore-Stewart. You must surely know Waldo well enough by now to realise he is not a man to leave any stone unturned.’

  ‘He can’t have known I was ill.’

  ‘No. But he certainly suspected you might not be exactly well.’

  Having personally seen Meggie off from his clinic, safely tucked up in the back of the car hired to drive her back to Sussex, Henry Wright returned to his consulting room and sat down behind his desk. As he did so, Helen his secretary came in and handed him another medical file in a brown folder.

  ‘You asked to see this, Dr Wright,’ she said. ‘As soon as the results were through. I’ve just this minute finished typing it up.’

  ‘Thank you, Helen,’ Henry Wright said, taking the file from her and putting it down in front of him. ‘I’ll read it immediately.’

  But he didn’t. After Helen had left the room, Henry lit one of the four cigarettes he permitted himself a day and turned his chair round so that he could look at the painting hanging on his wall. Waldo had told him about the artist, and being a bit of a collector he had hurried along to the Oliver Gallery and been unable to resist buying one of the few of the exquisite paintings that had remained unsold.

  He stared at it long and hard, allowing himself to be taken into the picture, to be transported to a spot on a beach somewhere where the sun always shone hot and strong, and the sea ran deep blue and cool. He could feel the light sand between his toes and the wind rustling his hair while the sounds of children playing and dogs barking came faintly into earshot.

  Then he turned his chair back and his attention to the folder on his desk which was marked Mr Waldo Astley. Confidential.

  Once he had read it, he read it again, then replacing the copies of the X-rays inside the folder he looked at his watch and buzzed through to Helen.

  ‘What time is it over there now, Helen? Do you know?’ he enquired.

  ‘Still the wee small hours, Dr Wright,’ came the reply. ‘At least they’re certainly not up and about yet. It’s only about six a.m.’

  ‘Then I think a cable is in order,’ he said. ‘In fact it might be the better way to go. Can you come in here in a couple of shakes? After I’ve composed what I must say? And take it down? Thank you.’

  As the cable was being wired across the Atlantic Waldo was on his way to a meeting with the other side at the Plaza Hotel. He had refused yet another office meeting because meetings in offices were inclined to get overheated, particularly when they involved subjects as touchy as this, and had insisted on the impartiality of the lounge in a big hotel. Besides, he was very fond of the Plaza and provided he got a move on he’d have time for some of their delicious Oeufs Benedict and a pot of coffee before battle commenced. His hopes were dashed, however, for on his arrival in spite of his promptness he spied the other side already in place and waiting.

  ‘I don’t know why we’re bothering,’ the tall, extremely handsome and expensively groomed woman he had come to meet said at his approach, not bothering either to stand or extend a hand in greeting. ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’

  ‘Then I have to wonder at the purpose of this meeting.’

  ‘Why – to see you of course, Waldo. What else? To see my lovely, rich husband.’

  At exactly the moment Waldo was signalling for someone to fetch them some fresh coffee, a fellow American was also on the look-out for refreshment, some four thousand miles away in Bexham. Having admired the pretty little town from the wheel of his rented car, he was searching for somewhere he could get a drink and maybe a sandwich. His eye fell on a black and white painted sign advertising the local inn. Following the arrow he soon found himself at the side of the large public house that domina
ted the quays and turned his car into the car park at the rear of the building.

  Still unfamiliar with the English licensing laws he found to his disappointment that the doors to the bars were all locked, and was about to leave when a young man who was just depositing a crate of empty beer bottles outside a side door asked if he could be of assistance.

  ‘I was looking for some refreshment,’ the stranger said. ‘But I guess you’re all shut up.’

  ‘The bars are, sir, to non-residents,’ the young man replied. ‘But the inn itself is open and we could certainly manage you some tea and toast, or a soft drink if that’s your preference.’

  ‘That would be dandy,’ the American said. ‘That would be most kind.’

  He followed the young man back into the inn through the side door, which he realised was possibly the main entrance to judge from the small table inside lit by a standard lamp and bearing a large register for the signing-in of guests. His guide led him on to a small lounge overlooking the harbour and leading into the lounge bar which as the American visitor could see was firmly under wraps, judging from the tea towels draped over the beer pumps and the lack of any lighting. But the view from the lounge was first class and the furniture comfortable, and within no time at all the stranger was happily tucking into a plate of delicious cucumber sandwiches washed down with a pot of first class Darjeeling tea.

  ‘I trust everything is to your satisfaction?’ a tall, lugubrious man enquired, appearing out of the shadows of the bar as the American was finishing his first cup of tea.

  ‘Quite excellent, thank you,’ his visitor replied, carefully wiping his mouth on a linen napkin. ‘The sandwiches are everything cucumber sandwiches should be and the tea – for which I have acquired quite a taste over the years – is most refreshing.’

  ‘Then I take it you have visited our shores before,’ Richards said. ‘Since coffee is your national drink, rather than tea, obviously.’

  The American laughed and extended a hand.

  ‘Rafferty,’ he said. ‘Michael Rafferty. How do you do?’