Long Acre by Claire Rayner

Author:Claire Rayner [Claire Rayner]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781849820615
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 1978-10-07T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

At first, Martha’s explanation was slow and faltering, even stilted, but as she warmed to her theme her words came more easily and, listening, Amy felt the weight of years of this family’s history pressing down on her.

She heard the story of a small boy, a gutter boy who had dragged himself out of the horrors of the slums of Seven Dials almost seventy years ago and set out on the road that was to make him one of London’s greatest surgeons. Martha’s description of that ragged child tallied not at all with the memory Amy had of the old man she had seen in the casualty room at Queen Eleanor’s Hospital on the day of Fenton’s accident. He had been harsh, imperious, anything but pathetic. It seemed impossible that he could have started life as the sad child of whom Martha was talking. But that, it seemed, was how it had been, and Amy listened enthralled as Martha told her how the child had met a girl as ragged and poor as himself, and loved her. How the girl had gone away. That there was some mystery there, about where she had gone and why she had gone, was obvious, but Martha was able to explain none of that. Instead she went on to tell how eventually the little girl, now full grown and very lovely, had come back into the ragged boy’s life, a boy himself now full grown and filled with ambition. How the girl had become an actress, and succeeded in making herself a great draw, a superbly popular performer. And how the boy had loved her still.

At this point Martha stopped, sitting looking down at her hands on her lap, and Amy leaned forwards and said breathless, ‘Yes? And then what happened?’

‘Hmm?’ Martha looked up, and her eyes seemed glazed, as though she were far away; and then they cleared and she shrugged and said, ‘It is hard to know where to go on from here. Let me just say that this girl — and she was this Lilith Lucas of whom you have been told — refused my father. He was sadly hurt by this — and even many years later, long after he had married my Mamma, he refused to allow any of us to enter a theatre or to speak of matters theatrical. He had been so deeply hurt, you see. And so it has always been — the enmity has continued.’

Amy leaned back, her brow furrowed, staring at Martha in disbelief. ‘But I do not understand! You are saying that Mrs Henriques became so — so angry and distressed simply because I spoke about a lady who had refused her Papa’s proposal so many years ago? Oh, come, Miss Lackland, that cannot be so! There must be more to it than that!’

Martha shrugged again, trying to look unconcerned, but her gaze slid away from Amy’s direct stare. ‘Oh, as to that, there were of course other — episodes. But they really do not need to concern us now, for they all happened so many years ago.

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