Because –
Mary and Sandy! I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine Mary with anyone. But was that because I thought she was not … not, say, ordinary enough to have ordinary desires and ambitions? Perhaps my feeling that she had a ‘kind’ face was as unthinking and shallow as Euan and Ellen calling her a goblin.
What Sandy thought was another story. A story I didn’t know.
Mary became brisk again all of a sudden. ‘Now, darling, I don’t want you sitting about here idly, so you can help me set up the card tables and unpack the boxes. The tables are going to go around the edges of the room in front of the shelves. It’ll make it very tight, so be sure to leave a gap for people to get through. And if you could make a note of everything you take out of the boxes and which table you put it on, that would be most useful.’
I couldn’t believe my luck, really. Perhaps I would come across Grandad’s pearls myself. Taking an inventory of the Murray Hoard would be a fabulous way to spend my convalescence. And maybe I’d find some clue as to what had happened to Housman.
After nearly a fortnight of being treated with the fearful gentleness one might use to handle a treasured pet budgerigar with a broken wing, it was a shock to be awakened one morning with the mattress beneath my feet bouncing so hard it made the iron bed frame squeak. I raised my head and shoulders, leaning back on my elbows. And there was my favourite brother Jamie. He is only a year older than me.
‘You are going to give me concussion again,’ I told him.
He stopped bouncing, took one look at me and clapped a hand over his mouth in an attempt to suffocate himself so he could not laugh. His shoulders shook.
‘Stow it!’ I said.
‘Sluggard!’ he accused. Then he added, rather chokingly, ‘I think I shall call you Feathers.’
‘Don’t be unkind!’ I was very pleased to see him. ‘They cut my hair while I was insensible in hospital and I’ve only just been allowed to wash it.’
‘It’s very modern. Very gamine. You look like a jazz singer.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Actually, you look more like that doll you used to carry around by its hair, Donalda. Do you remember? Till most of it fell out except that wiry ashy tuft on the very top that you used for a handle –’
I threw my pillow. He nearly threw it back, instinctively, but checked himself just in time. Instead he tucked it behind his head against the French window. I pulled my knees up so there was more room for him.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Much, much better.’
‘I thought you might need cheering up. Invalids need cheering, don’t they? I’d only just got home from school myself, and I overheard Father speaking to Mother on the ’phone. You know how he echoes back everything you say to show he’s being attentive? “She spent a night with the Travellers! A man standing in the river! That’s all she remembers! The scholar’s still AWOL!” I couldn’t hear what Mother was telling him – just all the intrigue he was repeating. So here I am. I took the milk train from Aberdeen.’
‘You have cheered me up enormously already,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re here to look after me I’ll be able to go somewhere other than the library day after day! I want to retrace my steps. I want to know what happened to me.’
‘Let’s get started,’ Jamie answered, grinning.
He provided me with clothes. This is the sort of thing that makes him my favourite. No other brother would have thought of it. He was patient with me eating the tea and toast he’d carried up from the kitchen, and then with me getting dressed in Mother and Solange’s little room (in Mother’s clothes again because although Jamie had brought me several of my favourite garments, it cannot be said he’d included anything practical ). He got bored waiting for me to finish fussing with my hair at Mémère’s dressing table.
‘Let me,’ he said, leaning over my shoulder to take hold of the comb. ‘We did HMS Pinafore this spring and they made me be Josephine because I’m so scrawny. I’ve become rather good at primping.’
He was standing behind me and we could see each other in the mirror. With my hair short we looked very much alike, except that he was grinning and I was scowling.
‘I should think you made a lovely Josephine,’ I said. ‘You are quite as pretty as me. I’ll bet you wore a wig though. Yellow curls.’
‘True, but not for rehearsals.’
‘I wish you’d brought it down with you. I could have used it.’
Jamie laughed. He was deft and sure with the comb and hairgrips. ‘It would not have suited you at all. Anyway we had a ritual burning of it after the last performance, carrying it down to the river on a pike like a beheaded aristocrat.’
‘You seem to have a great deal more fun at school than I do,’ I grumbled.
Jamie stood back, lifting his hands. ‘There.’
He’d really done as good a job as Solange. He held a hand mirror to the back of my head so I could see how he’d hidden the stubble.
I said, ‘You should leave off bothering with Eton and become a ladies’ –’
‘Stop being such a miserable cat, Julie,’ Jamie said hastily, going a little pink. ‘Now. Where do you want to go?’
‘I’m burning to go to Inchfort Field!’ I answered. ‘I want to see how far I got between hitting my head and falling over. I want to see if we can find any trace of Dr Housman. And maybe the lad who rescued me has come back. The Traveller folk who took me to the hospital told me to come and see them. Everyone is so suspicious of them and as far as I can tell they haven’t done a thing to deserve it. I want to tell them thank you.’
FREEDOM!
We left the house through the terrace doors of the morning room and stood for a moment surveying the building works.
‘They’re putting down paths,’ I observed, and was struck with melancholy over my grandfather not being around to appreciate this improvement. ‘We could have pushed Grandad about in his chair if there’d been paths last summer.’
‘I remember him wishing for a smooth path down to the river. He didn’t have the money for it,’ Jamie said soberly. ‘Cheer up. Let’s see what they’re up to over by the tennis lawn – it looks like they’re digging a swimming bath. Tell me what it was like to sleep in a Travellers’ camp!’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said crossly. ‘I was asleep the whole time.’
‘Perhaps they’d let me stay with them tonight, if they’re there,’ Jamie said. ‘Better than sleeping all by myself in one of those servants’ rooms in the attic. Or I could build a camp tent on the terrace. I wonder how deep they’ve gone with that swimming hole.’