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

him.
    Eve cradled his head close to her and took him out of the room.
    Mary went into 6 The Cottages every hour and each time it seemed that Tommy had slipped a little further down, a little further away from her and from this world, though he smiled and raised his hand and, once, sipped some milk. Later, Bert helped him up the stairs to bed, half carried him he was so weak, and helped him undress too with gentleness and a respect that Tommy was aware of and grateful for. But it was Eve he wanted. Eve could not make the pain easier but her presence helped him bear it quite well.
    ‘She should be here,’ Mary said in the late afternoon.
    ‘She knows,’ Bert answered. ‘She was torn.’
    ‘That sister.’
    ‘What could she do?’
    Mary shook her head and went back to Tommy. She listened at the foot of the stairs to the silence and for a moment her heart jumped, but then she heard a slight sound and went up. She saw his eyes, wide open and looking at her, and with small pin points of pain in their centres. His forehead was damp and she found a clean handkerchief to wipe it gently.
    ‘Eve?’
    ‘She’ll be home any minute now.’
    Tommy smiled and closed his eyes, reached for Mary’s hand and held it with what grip he could find in him. She saw that he had very little strength left.
    ‘Eve.’
    ‘You have to go for her,’ she said. Bert stood up at once, seeing the expression on her face and what it meant.
    ‘Quick as I can.’ Though he was an old man and quick was not so very quick now.
    ‘Get that lummock to bring you both back in his car.’
    His fingers seemed twice their usual thickness as he tried to lace his boots quickly. When he had set off, Mary returned next door and sat at Tommy’s bedside, praying for Eve to get back in time. But Tommy seemed a little easier, sleeping quietly.
    Mary put her own hand over his and held it there.
    * * *
     
    Eve fed the children on what she managed to find and washed them as well as she could, though the water was barely warm because Miriam did the range and John had no notion how until Eve showed him, pinching her lips tight together so that she would say nothing angry, apportion no blame. It was not for her to criticise him out loud. He watched her sullenly and she wondered how much notice he took or whether he had any intention of doing it for himself after she had left. No, he would wait for Miriam, whine until she got up before she was ready and have her riddle out the ashes and heft the coal into the range.
    ‘I might take a walk out,’ John Bullard said.
    ‘And you might not. I can’t stay, I told you, John, I’m needed at home.’
    ‘You’re needed here.’ He sat down in the chair again and picked up the paper.
    She did not answer.
    Upstairs, Miriam slept.
    Bert Ankerby arrived breathless, his face contorted with the effort of walking so fast, for he was a man who had always moved at a slow, steady pace, which got things done fine, he said, and for a few moments he could say nothing but stood, the breaths heaving in his chest, so that Eve was afraid he might drop down dead. But after a moment, the breathing settledand he refused a chair to rest, simply saying, ‘You have to come now, Eve.’
    ‘What do I do about the boys?’
    ‘They’re all right, why shouldn’t they be? I’m here, Miriam’s upstairs.’
    ‘No, John, you’re taking us in your car.’
    He started to protest, but seeing how it was, how even mild Bert Ankerby stood over him, and Eve’s anger, he got up reluctantly.
    ‘I’d better wake Miriam,’ Eve said, ‘tell her you’ll be back as quick as you can. That the boys are on their own.’
    ‘Leave her be,’ John Bullard said, and she understood, that it happened often, the boys were used to being on their own and having to look out for one another and the baby between them.
    John drove, Bert Ankerby sitting awkwardly in the back, his huge frame as if it were folded into a matchbox, Eve in the front and leaning forward to