A Brighter Tomorrow by Maggie Ford (read with me .txt) 📕

He would go to the window to stand there silently, having exhausted all talk but reluctant to leave. He’d sometimes glance about the room at this and that, everything in here her own stuff, Chambers resigned to remaining in the other room with her belongings.

The day before she was to get up, he had idly glanced at some bits of paper she’d been drawing on to occupy herself while being confined to her bedroom under this pretext of having caught a bout of ’flu.

‘What are these?’ he’d enquired. She had already asked if she could have some paper to draw on. She watched him scan her simple sketches: the view from her window, her own face as seen in the bit of mirror over the washstand, some bits from memory – cats, dogs, horses, carts, people.

‘They are quite good,’ he’d said. ‘You’ve quite a talent.’

She knew that. Ronnie Sharp had told her that time she’d gone to see his family. She was aching to see him again, but this awful business had intervened and she wondered if he had more or less put her aside.

‘I think,’ Doctor Lowe had said slowly, as he put the drawings back on the side of the washstand, ‘it might be good if someone showed you how to draw even better – perhaps even learn to paint.’

‘I ain’t never painted,’ she told him. ‘Couldn’t afford paints.’

‘Then we shall provide you with a box of paints and you can use my study when I am not using it. I will give you a key so you’ll not be disturbed. After you have completed your duties, of course,’ he’d concluded in a more formal tone, remembering his position.

‘What if the mistress finds me in there, wasting me time?’ she asked, still slightly taken aback by his offer.

‘She never goes into my study,’ he told her. ‘If she needs me, then she rings for Chambers to inform me.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘We seldom see each other except for meals. There was a time we’d relax together in the sitting room, but not since the loss of our daughter. These days my good wife prefers her own room.’

His chubby features had dropped a little. They now brightened again.

‘To this business of painting: it so happens that I know of someone who might help you – the son of an acquaintance of mine. He is quite a good artist, though he studied to become a doctor like his father. I will ask him. He may also care to help with your English at the same time – teach you how to speak more nicely than you do at present.’

‘Why do you want me to speak better?’ she’d asked and he had looked at her for a moment before speaking. When he did, very quietly, she had heard a catch in his throat, his voice wavering a little. ‘You must try to understand. You know that we lost our only child.’

Yes, she knew, but she’d let him continue.

‘Forgive me, my dear, but I fear that, despite my better judgement, perhaps, I find that having you here does ease the pain of my loss. I hesitate to admit that I have a foolish need to keep her memory alive. Your being here has helped. My dearest wish was to have given her all the things she would have wanted, but I feel in retrospect that I was too busy in my work to give her the attention she should have had. Now it’s too late…’

He broke off then began again. ‘With you, my dear, I feel that perhaps it is not too late. I have a wish to do for you what I neglected to do for her, but I can do so little, things being what they are. You see, my wife—’

He’d broken off sharply, as if knowing he had said too much. Turning away quickly he didn’t see the brief excitement that crossed Ellie’s expression. By the time he turned back to her, it had been replaced by a sudden feeling of sadness for him, which she knew was genuine, despite her elation.

‘I do apologize,’ he’d said hurriedly.

‘No, please don’t,’ she’d answered.

‘Will you promise not to repeat to anyone what I have just told you?’ he had begged, so pathetically that she had reached out and touched his arm.

‘Cross me heart,’ she’d said simply, making a concentrated effort to put the aitch in the word ‘heart’.

That had been four weeks ago. He’d not referred to it again, nor had she, realizing that sleeping dogs should be left to lie. She saw Michael Deel on Tuesday evenings for about an hour and a half. Tuesdays were easier, the heavier work of the weekend having subsided a little before the build-up to the next weekend began. Ellie, Florrie, Rose and Mrs Jenkins could relax in the evenings, sitting around the kitchen fire reading, chatting, knitting or sewing, using the area in place of the servants’ hall most larger establishments provided.

At eight o’clock Chambers would get up to go and answer the front-door bell’s jangle and show the visitor up to Doctor Lowe’s study. She’d come back down to throw herself testily on to her chair to pick up whatever she’d been doing and almost always pass some testy remark that Mr Deel must have something very private to do with the master to come so regularly. Her surmise was inevitably cut short by Mrs Jenkins telling her sharply that, whatever it was, it was none of her business, and that tittle-tattle and idle conjecture didn’t go down well in this house.

Shortly afterwards, Ellie would casually get up from the chair where she’d been reading, with all pretence of going off to her room. It was exciting in a way to skitter along to Doctor Lowe’s study, eyes darting about in case she was seen.

Doctor Lowe and her tutor would be there and as she entered, so Doctor Lowe would leave. For perhaps half an hour Michael Deel would