The Gale of the World by Henry Williamson Page B

help him now.
    Voices along the corridor. No-one, he told himself, was coming to see him. No-one. Indeed, he did not want to see anyone. Certainly not Miss Myra! He was of no more use to her. No more tea parties, with his weekly ration of boiled egg , four minutes precisely, given to her, and also his sweet-meat ration. He did not want anyone to visit him. If only he had died when the Zeppelin bomb had blown him across the road, his clothes and beard covered with powdered glass. So Master Phillip, according to Elizabeth, was planning to write a family chronicle, was he? And, no doubt satirize his own people, as Thomas Morland had done in The Crouchend Saga! Would he write that he had not allowed his children to see their grandfather? Oh no—Master Phillip would not show himself up like that!
    Footfalls along the corridor. Not for him. The footfalls would go past, and a good thing too.
    Tap on door. A voice, who could it be. “May I come in?” and a face peering.
    “Who is it, pray?”
    “Phillip, Father!”
    “Well, this is a surprise, I must say!”
    “Glad to see you looking well, Father. The flowers are from a friend of yours I met outside, Myra. I remembered her from my visit to you during the war. She asked me to give them to you with her love.”
    “Oh did she now!” Richard felt a glow of hope. So little Myra did care after all! He lay back, and sighed with happiness, his eyes closed; then drew a deep breath, smiled at Phillip, and the weak voice, hollow and reedy said, “How kind of you to come to see me, old man.”
    I must make another will, with something for Myra. Phillip should have the family plate, and other lares et penates, whatever happened. Oh, if Myra would marry me! For that was Richard’s dream. In the young girl’s company the cark and care of the years fell away, as a London plane tree shed its sooty bark every year with the rising of the sap. Other men had re-married at his age, and even given their young wives children. Was there not the great Coke of Norfolk, made a widower when he was over eighty, who had married a young girl of eighteen and lived to raise another large family, and die at the age of one hundred and ten?
    “What did you think of little Myra, old chap?”
    “I like her, Father. She’s as pretty as she’s intelligent.”
    Poor Father. Shrunken arms, drawn face, thin white beard, scraggy neck, blue eyes almost faded of colour. Was he dying?
    “Have you seen your sister Elizabeth?”
    “Yes. I stayed in your cottage last night.”
    “Am I going home, Phillip?”
    “She did say something about getting a nurse, Father.”
    “Thank God!”
    Richard lay back on the pillow, looking less haggard. He breathed deeply, respiring as slowly, and smiled at his son. “So I’m going home at last,” he said. He raised himself on an elbow. The room had lost its menace. The Michaelmas daisies suddenly took on a deeper mauve colour.
    “I wonder if they came from my garden, old chap. Perhaps Elizabeth asked Myra to bring them. But I suppose you would not know.”
    “I’ll come down and see you and Elizabeth, Father, if I may, from time to time. You will forgive me if I don’t stay this time very long, won’t you? I’ve got to get back to London before dark. My battery is rather dud, it’s gone all through the war, and you can’t buy new ones yet.”
    “Well, don’t let me detain you, old man. Oh, before I forget,did you see Matron downstairs, before you came up?”
    “I walked straight in, Father. Your friend Myra told me the number of your room.”
    “Well, I must warn you that the matron here is not always in a pleasant mood, Phillip. So if she says anything about me, take it with a grain of salt, old man.”
    Matron was waiting in the hall. “Who let you up?” she demanded .
    “I didn’t see anyone here, and knowing my father’s room number , I walked up, Matron.”
    “Well, don’t do it again, if you please. I am in charge of the patients here, and Mr.