‘I’ll have to make their tea,’ she said now, taking over the pram.
‘Thank you for coming there.’
‘I would never have stayed away, how could you think that?’
‘I didn’t think it,’ Eve said.
Her sister did not invite her in to share their tea or even just a cup.
Bert called from their door as she went by, asked her to go in to them. ‘But maybe you’d rather just be on your own tonight and come to us another?’
‘I would. But thank you and I will come. Later in the week I’d like to.’
He nodded and went in.
For a second, after the door of Number 5 closed, Eve felt entirely alone and bereft of anyone in the world. But she made herself tea and fed the chickens and then switched on the old wireless. There was dance music, which she liked and she knew that Tommy would not think her unfeeling.
Tommy.
It was not until the following week that she took enough courage to go through his few things and it was then she found the receipt for the year’s rent on 6 The Cottages, folded carefully and tucked into his inside pocket. And the money. All that money.
She took it downstairs and laid it on the kitchen table under the lamp and knew everything then, though knowing was not understanding. He had been given something freely and passed it freely on, and when he had kept Mr Arnold’s money, it had been withdrawn from him. That was how he had paid for this rent and for her blue scarf and the bar of rose soap. He had bought nothing for himself.
The gift had been withdrawn and with it his own health and strength. The pain and swellings and sickness had overwhelmed him and there were no more gifts.
But he was not to blame. How could he have been?
She sat on looking at the receipt for the rental, and the bar of rose soap wrapped in its pretty paper, lying on the table together, as the darkness drew in and a tawny owl hooted and the moon rose over the peak.
One night, a long time afterwards, she heard footsteps, steady on the path. She had been washing some of the china and looking for a clean cloth with which to dry it and polish it up to shine. It was early afternoon. She waited but for a moment there was silence outside. Since Tommy’s death she had become strangely nervous sometimes, about being alone in the cottage and not only at night. She had no fear of spirits and in any case Tommy’s spirit was always around her, she had nothing to be afraid of in that.
And then a soft knock on the door.
* * *
Arthur George had changed from a small boy into an older one. His face was beginning to form, the bone structure just visible beneath the still-soft round flesh. He had Miriam’s eyes and his own withdrawn, slightly wistful air.
His jacket needed patching.
‘Something has happened. What’s wrong? Has your mother sent for you?’
‘I came on my own.’
She opened the door wider and he walked quietly, almost hesitantly in, looking round as if he had never been in the place before, for all that he had known it since he was a baby.
‘Would you like a glass of milk Arthur George?’
‘Could I have a cup of tea?’
Eve smiled. ‘There isn’t a cake though.’
He looked disappointed. There was always a cake. She realised that she had not bothered because there was no one else here and what need had she of a cake to eat alone?
‘I’ll make a cake later. There’s biscuits.’
He sat at the table and looked out of the door and down the path. ‘The hens are laying then,’ he said.
‘They are – more than I can eat. You can take some back home with you.’
‘I thought I wouldn’t go home, just for a bit.’
‘No, I meant later on. You’re welcome. If there isn’t anything wrong?’
‘There’s nothing …’
She set the sugary milky tea in front of him, as he liked it, and he began to dip a biscuit carefully in and stir it round as if it were a spoon, just pulling it out before it broke off, soft with liquid.
‘Ha …’ He smiled.
‘You did that a long time ago.’
Eve had poured herself tea but sensed that he would not want to sit across the table with her and so she began to dry one of the rose-painted bowls.
‘I could be handy,’ Arthur George said.
‘Handy.’
‘I am. I can do a lot of things.’
‘I know that. You’ve had to learn.’
‘I’d be a help to you.’
She set the bowl down on the dresser. He was bolt upright on the chair, anxious eyes meeting hers. Eve went to sit down. She took a biscuit from the tin and after a second, dipped it into her tea. Arthur George watched and when she failed to catch it before it folded over into the hot drink and disappeared, banged his hand on the table and laughed with the glee of the small boy he had been so recently.
* * *
So that was the beginning of it, though she made him return home to tell his mother, as well as to fetch what things he needed.
‘A short stay,’ she said, as he went off, ‘tell her you’re coming for a short stay.’
He was back in not much more than an hour with a cloth holdall over his shoulder and watching him come brightly up the path to the open door, Eve was reminded of Tommy, saw Tommy in Arthur George, though of course they were not related.
But he had a look of Tommy and she clung to that.
It would not be a short stay. They both knew it. Did Miriam? If so, Eve knew her only thought would be that there was one less mouth to feed.
When he had gone to bed that night, after helping her shut up the hens and bolt the doors, Eve went to the dresser drawer, where she had put the money, took it out and counted it on the table. Money she had not known what to do with. But now she knew.
It was to be money for Arthur George, one day, for school or an apprenticeship. She had no idea how it might be used, what he would need and it scarcely mattered, for already he was what Tommy had been. A kind man, though still a boy. Another kind man.
Susan Hill, A Kind Man
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