Chapter 10 Lilias #2
“David!” she called instead, holding out her hand, and the boy came almost immediately, receiving a poisonous glare from Cook as he made his way past him.
“Who is that man, Auntie Lilias?” he asked, taking one of Lilias’s cold hands with his warm ones.
“That’s Mr. Cook. He lives in the house on the hill. He’s not a very nice man. You need to stay away from him. Is that clear?”
David nodded, looking up at her with frightened eyes, and she realised she was holding him a little too tightly, had spoken a little too sharply.
She relaxed her grip and smiled, smoothing his hair back from his face.
“Come along,” she said. “Let’s get home to see if there’s a letter from your father today. ”
After his first letter, Harry had written to his son once a week without fail, and, charged with the task of reading the letters to David, Lilias had come to look forward to them almost as much as David did.
Sometimes there was a note for her, as well, and since Harry wrote much as he spoke, his letters brought him into the house, like a weekly visitor.
When she and David were seated on the cart and on their way again, Lilias wondered whether Harry had encountered men as base as Cook. Possibly he had, living, as he did, in the East End of London.
Shuddering, Lilias flicked the reins again. “Walk on, Rosie. Walk on.”
There was a letter. Rather than open it straightaway, Lilias made some hot drinks and banked up the fire in the sitting room, treating the letter’s opening like the special occasion it was.
While she was in the kitchen, David played with his model plane, making it “fly” around the room, complete with aeroplane noises, but finally he settled on the floor, resting back against her legs when she picked up the envelope.
“I’ll read my letter first,” Lilias told him. “I expect it contains some top-secret instructions for looking after little boys. You drink your Ovaltine. Make sure you blow on it first.”
But David had other things than Ovaltine on his mind. “That man is like Mr. Brown at home,” he said.
“Mr. Cook, d’you mean?” Lilias asked, slicing open Harry’s letter with a letter opener.
David nodded. “Mr. Brown always comes out to tell us off when we play football in the street. I think Mr. Cook would tell us off too.”
Cook would probably snatch up the football and puncture it. “An old misery guts, is he, Mr. Brown?”
“Dad says he’s jealous because he can’t play football anymore, but I think he’s just mean.”
“Yes,” agreed Lilias, taking Harry’s letter from the envelope. “I think you’re right.”
She unfolded the single sheet of paper covered in Harry’s now-familiar handwriting and began to read, a smile of anticipation on her face.
Dear Lilias,
I hope all’s well at Marsh House? Sadly, I’m unable to say the same about us here, and as I didn’t know how to write to young David about it, I wondered if you’d be so kind as to break the bad news to him? I realise it’s a bit of an imposition . . .
The smile quickly vanished from Lilias’s face, and she read on quickly, frowning. After she’d finished, she folded the letter up again with a sigh.
David was obediently blowing on his Ovaltine, his enthusiasm sending froth onto the carpet, and she reached forward to take the cup from him, placing it on the hearth so she could turn him to face her.
“I’m afraid your father’s written to us with some bad news, David,” she said. “He’s asked me to tell you about it.”
“Is it Mummy?” he asked, his eyes big and anguished. “Has a bomb got Mummy?”
“Oh, no, David,” she reassured him. “Nothing like that. Your mother is fine. Well, that is . . .” Gosh, what a mess she was making of this after Harry had entrusted the task to her.
“The thing is, I’m afraid your mummy had her baby a bit early, and . . . well, I’m afraid she wasn’t alive when she was born.”
David sat staring at her, digesting this news. “And it wasn’t because of a bomb or anything?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing to do with a bomb. Babies just do die sometimes. It’s very sad when it happens.”
“Yes.” David sat silently for a moment before asking politely, “Can I have my Ovaltine now, please?”
“Of course.” She passed him his drink, and for a few moments there were no sounds save for the crackling of the fire and David slurping his drink.
There wasn’t any way to tell what the little boy was thinking or feeling, and Lilias felt inadequate all of a sudden, not wanting to rush in to fill the silence in case he wanted to say anything.
She tried to imagine Harry was here with them, and to think about what he would do or say if he were.
And she wished with all her heart that he was.
While David lapped up his father’s words when Lilias read his letters to him, she knew they must be a poor shadow compared to the physicality of his father, and she pictured the boy clinging to Harry like a little monkey, imagining the comfort it would bring both of them in their sadness if they were able to hug each other close in that way now.
“Would you like to sit up here with me?” she asked him gently after a few moments, and when he nodded, she held his cup while he climbed up onto her lap.
And then Compass whimpered to join them, so when the door opened and Ruth came in, it was to find both Lilias and David laughing as they tried in vain to evade the dog’s licking tongue.
“Goodness,” said Ruth. “You two look as cosy as bugs in a rug.”
And, as Compass jumped down, Lilias smiled at her sister and held David close, feeling him relax against her.