A Week of Love by James Leasor

Author:James Leasor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cord car, giglio, praia da luz
Publisher: James Leasor

FRIDAY in England

Jewels from an empire crown

It was that special hour of evening, when the world seems to pause between light and dark, and when Love liked to be alone with his thoughts, to review the past, to consider the present and contemplate the future.

The last patient had just left his surgery, and he could spare a few minutes for a Gitane before he locked away his drugs in their cupboards, closed the surgery door on another day's work and went into the house for the cold supper that his housekeeper, Mrs Hunter, had left for him in the study, and an evening with the latest 'Newsletter' of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Club, which had arrived that morning from the States.

He sat down at his desk in the surgery, watching the purple dusk pour itself slowly across the lawn beneath the cedar trees that ringed it in. The dusk had been doing this for centuries, he thought, not very originally, and it would go on doing it every evening for centuries still to come, long, long after he was only a forgotten name cut on crumbling tombstone in the graveyard at the other end of the village. Not for the first time, he was filled with a sense of the futility of human effort, of the unimportance of the individual when measured against the endless mists of eternity.

A shadow, deeper than the rest outside, moved across his window, then hands cupped round a face that peered in at him hopefully. Love frowned at first, and then, recognizing the face, waved a greeting and opened the door. A dark-skinned man stood grinning at him.

'What on earth brings you here?' asked Love in surprise, as they shook hands. 'Is this a professional call - or a social event?'

'Half and half,' the man replied.

'Well, come in and let's deal on both levels. And how's my richest patient, or, rather, ex-patient?'

Love always referred to him as his richest patient, which was no more than the truth, for Tariq Khan, as the only son of an Indian ruler, a widower, who had left his princely state when India became independent in 1948, and settled in England, stood to inherit a sum that made Love's income seem like petty cash.

The old maharajah had bought one of the larger properties a few miles from Bishop's Combe, set back off the Taunton Road, and Love had been first the doctor to father and son, and, later, their friend.

Love had served in India and Burma during the war, and one of his colleagues had been the Nawab of Shahnagar,( Editor’s note: For further details about the Nawab, see 'Passport to Peril') who was related by marriage to the old maharajah. He had spent many winter evenings playing chess in the maharajah's panelled study, and, after the game, there would be nostalgic recollections of a life that had gone for ever, from an India that no longer existed.

Love would hear of days when the Nawab - and the maharajah - would ride

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