There had been a few days of what appeared to Jean complete and irreversible derangement, during which her mother entirely failed to recognize her, mistaking her variously for the ward nurse, Queen Mary and a pickpocket bent on stealing her wedding ring. She had lost all sense of time and place, with no inkling of where she was or how long she had been there. The mystery of her circumstances didn’t appear to cause her any anxiety and her hallucinations—badgers romping up and down the ward—amused rather than alarmed her.
Although Jean found these developments troubling, she couldn’t help noticing that losing her wits had greatly improved her mother’s mood and general demeanor. She was infinitely more cheerful now than at any time in recent memory. Jean’s prayers for her recovery had a flavor of St. Augustine’s plea for chastity. Please, God, make Mother better, but not yet.
Jean carried the last load of leaves to the compost, swept the drive and returned the rake and broom to the shed, and not a moment too soon. There was a growl of distant thunder as she crossed the lawn and a few fat drops of rain began to fall.
Howard would be back from work at six-thirty and there was liver and bacon for dinner and then the cherry cake. They would sit together on the couch holding hands and listening to his jazz records on the phonograph. Then they would go upstairs and climb into Howard’s single bed together, ignoring that abandoned one just beyond the gap, and make love, because you never knew what was around the corner and when something might come along to put a stop to it.
Now, though, she had a couple of hours before she was due to cycle over to the hospital for visiting time, just long enough to ice the cake and have a hot bath—on a Saturday afternoon! She had just weighed out the sugar when the doorbell rang. Mrs. Bowland again, she thought with a sinking heart. Stretching her face into a patient smile, she opened the door.
Margaret stood on the doorstep, red-eyed, her coat bulging oddly as she clutched at her chest. A fine mist of raindrops was caught in her curls like dew on a web.
“Margaret! What are you doing here?” Jean exclaimed, glancing up and down the road for evidence of Gretchen or some other companion.
Belatedly, she took in the child’s bedraggled state and the bulge, now revealed to be a struggling Jemimah.
“I’ve run away,” Margaret said, sniffing noisily and hoisting the rabbit into a more manageable position. “I didn’t know where else to go. Daddy’s at work.”
It was some weeks since Jean had seen her and the resemblance to Gretchen, and the doll-like beauty of her face, struck her all over again.
“Come in, come in,” she replied, her mind racing at this new development. “Have you come all this way by yourself?”
“Yes. With Jemimah. She was all right at first, but she got a bit wriggly. And then it started to rain.”
“How on earth did you find your way here?”
“Mummy takes me to school every day so I know how to get trains and I remembered that you lived near the station from that time I came to make cinder toffee. I know your address from sending you a postcard. So I asked the lady at the newsstand in the station. She hadn’t heard of you, but she’d heard of the Knoll.”
They had advanced no further than the hall during this exchange.
“Let’s go and put Jemimah down and then you can tell me why you’ve run away,” Jean suggested, wondering what Margaret would have done if she had not been at home, as was very nearly the case. The thought made her feel quite dizzy.
In the kitchen, while Jemimah hopped around the linoleum, exploring her new domain and shunning the wizened carrot supplied by Jean from her depleted pantry, Margaret took off her wet coat and rotated her aching arms with relief. She had also been carrying a shoulder bag, which she now unpacked onto the table to reveal her beaded purse, toothbrush, notebook and a sack of dried rabbit food. As a running-away kit, it struck Jean as touchingly inadequate.
Jean made her a glass of hot milk, cut a slice of cake and then fetched the least threadbare of their towels to put around her shoulders.
“Now, what’s all this about running away?” she said at last as she patted dry Margaret’s hair.
“I hate Martha,” said Margaret, her pretty face crumpling into a frown.
“Hate’s a strong word,” said Jean, silently rejoicing.
“Well, she hates me, too.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t. Who could possibly hate you?”
“She won’t let me bring Jemimah in the house for even one minute because she’s allergic to fur, she says. So I have to play with her out in the backyard in the cold. And there’s not even any grass. It’s horrible.”