Dear Henry by Brenda Little

Author:Brenda Little [Little, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9326-6
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2001-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

‘Sit down! Read a book! I don’t know why you didn’t stay in bed,’ Andromeda scolded.

Last night Catherine, determined not to backslide again, had set the alarm on her bedside radio and, this morning, had risen at an early and exemplary hour.

‘You’re always knackered and when you have the chance of a rest you don’t take advantage of it.’

Catherine sighed. She not only could not please all of the people all of the time, but some people she did not seem able to please any of the time. She meanly pulled rank. ‘That’s enough,’ she said sharply.

‘But you worry me!’

Authority was no match for affection.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely. ‘I didn’t mean to snap.’

‘Oh that’s all right,’ Andromeda was airy. ‘I know it’s only your arm talking. People say funny things when they’re in pain.’

Paul had certainly come out with some ‘funny things'. And she knew he was in pain. How airy could she be about it?

‘He must have been good-looking when he was young, that possum chap,’ Andromeda said with a complete volte-face that momentarily took Catherine’s breath away.

‘He’s not bad looking now,’ she said with forced joviality.

‘He lives in that big house down by the beach. Mrs Tims used to go there when his wife was alive.’

‘To do the cleaning?’

‘No!’ Andromeda’s laugh was full-throated. ‘Dulcie’s no cleaner! She just went there to see them.’

Dulcie Tims paying a social call! The idea was ludicrous.

‘People like her,’ Andromeda added defensively, picking up on her expression. ‘She’s very kind. She’s been unknown good to me. People are always coming up to visit her.’

The world must be full of masochists! ‘Whoever would choose to make such a climb! Whatever do they come for?’

‘I dunno. They just sit and talk.’

‘Ah,’ Catherine said, feeling that there could only be one possible explanation.

‘I get it! She tells fortunes! Cross-my-palm-with-silver stuff!’

‘No!’ Andromeda was outraged. ‘She’d kill you if she heard you say that! She’d never take money!’

‘Then what is it all about?’

‘I don’t know! I asked her once and she told me it was nothing to do with me. And when I said go on, tell me, she went all jokey. “I can smell the weather for folks,” she said.’

Catherine was not interested in Dulcie’s jokes, she wanted to know about the puzzling connection between her and Henry and his wife.

Andromeda was getting tetchy.

‘All I know is she thinks the world of him. He gave up his practice to look after his wife.’

‘What was wrong with her?’

‘Cancer,’ Andromeda replied, as though it could hardly have been anything else.

‘And what was his practice?’

‘He was a vet.’

It was all falling into place. A vet. That explained his knowledge of possums and why he could show such wordless intuition.

She pictured him sitting by the bedside, playing chess by himself, and making up crossword puzzles. Her throat thickened as she thought of the way she had looked forward to her tussles with H.G.

‘I think I will go and lie down,’ she said.

She was overcome with the need for time and space in which to try to cope with all the new things that had come into her life.

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