Read Online A Kind Man by Susan Hill - Free Book Online

made for the stairs and she watched him climb as if he had weights tied to his legs and his body had turned to stone and the tears ran down her face for the sadness of it.
    The next morning he left for work as usual though she did not know how he got down the stairs. He drank a mug of tea but ate nothing and it was painful to see him draw his jacket on as if every movement were an effort so great he might never finish making it. But he left.
    Eve could not bear to watch him go but turned away from the window and tidied the dresser until she knew that he would be out of sight.
    It was not usual for her to feel that she did not dare to be alone, but this morning she washed the pots quickly and went to the Ankerbys, not only because she was worrying about Tommy but because, suddenly, alone in the house meant alone. Jeannie Eliza, who had been there, always just behind or just ahead of her, always just out of sight but laughing somewhere, and calling out, ever since the day she died – Jeannie Eliza had gone. There was no child. No footsteps. No cry. No sudden laughter.
    ‘Ah, my dear.’ Mary Ankerby put out her hand and touched Eve’s cheek the moment she saw her, and pulled back a chair for her and set the kettle on. Bert looked at her, shaking his head, and touched her shoulder, before going out of the door and into the garden.
    ‘He went to the doctor,’ Eve said.
    Mary waited
    ‘He got some sort of medicine. For the pain in his stomach and to help him sleep. But they don’t seem to have done much for him.’
    Mary Ankerby sighed. ‘And the price of the doctors,’ she said.
    ‘He’s very kind. That doctor. He came when … he was very kind.’
    ‘I’ve watched Tommy.’ Mary poured the tea out. ‘He goes so slowly.’
    ‘He doesn’t complain at all but I hear him sometimes, he makes a little moaning noise and puts his hand on his belly.’
    They sat in silence after that, watching the sun move round, until Bert came back in and sat with them and the sun moved further, touched the scarlet petals of the geraniums on the sill and turned them to fire.
    A little after that, Tommy passed by the window, half bent over and his walk so slow he seemed hardly to move at all.

12
     
    NOTHING WAS said between them but Eve knew, as Tommy did, that he would not go to work again. She also knew that he felt shame at being sent home. It was a fine, warm day and she put the garden chair out for him. He rested there for an hour or two, dozing, refusing anything to eat but asking her to bring him the medicine a couple of times. She stayed with him, hoeing and weeding, snipping the edges of the grass, collecting the eggs, things she thought would not worry him.
    But in the early afternoon, the sound of a car coming down the track woke him from sleep, and he started to struggle up as John Bullard came through the gate.
    ‘It’s all right.’ Eve laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘Tommy hasn’t felt so well,’ she said, hearing the defiance in her own voice.
    But John Bullard barely glanced. ‘You need to come,’ he said to Eve. ‘Miriam’s bad. She said to fetch you right away.’
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    He shrugged. ‘Only she can’t manage with all of them.’
    ‘And I have a sick husband, John. I can’t just leave him.’
    He stood staring at the ground.
    ‘You should go, Eve,’ Tommy said. ‘Go to your sister. I’m fine, I’m just sitting here a bit but I’ll go inside in a while, there’s a few things I’ll do.’
    ‘You can’t do anything, you have to rest. The doctor said that.’ She swung round to John Bullard. ‘Why can’t you help her? It’s your wife, your children.’
    But he seemed like a tree, rooted to the ground, and did not look at her.
    Eve sighed.
    In the end, she went next door and Mary and Bert said they would be with Tommy, one or the other of them, and he could call for them, Bert would be in their garden and he could keep an ear out. Of course he would, Eve knew that, knew that Mary