The Healing Stream by Connie Monk

I’ll walk up there with you. It’s a good idea leaving them together. What is there about being with Aunt Naomi that makes it so hard to be miserable? Bet you that when we get back we shall find a very different Deirdre.’
    But even they weren’t prepared for what they found: Deirdre had her chair pulled close to a side table where the morning’s egg collection had been waiting in a large basket. Absorbed in what she was doing, she was packing them into cardboard egg-trays, two dozen in each, then stacking them one on another.
    ‘What a woman!’ Richard laughed. ‘She didn’t waste much time getting you working, Deirdre.’
    ‘I’ll be ready to go to the village in no time at this rate,’ Naomi said. ‘You girls must look in more often.’
    ‘May we?’ Deirdre asked hopefully. ‘You know what? This is the best morning I’ve had for ages, even better than when we went to Deremouth to choose my new make-up, Tessa. You never told me there were things like this to do. When you said it was a farm, I expected fields of corn or whatever it is farmers grow – and animals, of course.’
    ‘If you want to see the rest Tessa can take the car as far as the high field. We only have animals, cattle, Cotswold sheep, pigs, poultry – but clearly you know we have poultry.’
    ‘Horses?’ Deirdre wanted to know. ‘I loved riding. I had my first pony when I was four. I had Jasper for my sixteenth birthday. The accident happened when we were jumping a hedge and he landed with one foreleg in a hole in the ground. I suppose it was a rabbit hole. Anyway, that’s how I got thrown. Poor Jasper broke his leg and fell on me. Daddy had him put down, he said he had done internal damage as well as his leg. I thought he was jolly lucky being got rid of like that.’ Until those last few words she had been chattering in a friendly, relaxed way, as if she had known them all for ages. Instantly her manner changed.
    ‘I bet you did, too,’ Naomi answered, just as if she hadn’t noticed the girl’s change of mood. ‘So would any of us if we were faced with a shock like you had to face. But life has its own way of turning things around. Your life will never be the same as it was before, but you know what they say: “When the Lord shuts the door, he opens a window.” I remember thinking the same sort of thing during the war – not this last one – the one before. Oh, not about myself. I was safe at home. But I had two brothers; both of them were killed. And I remember thinking they were lucky compared with my cousin Bertie. He was in the Flying Corps. His plane was shot at and caught fire when it crashed. He was most dreadfully burned, it was awful to look at him. For ages after he came home he wouldn’t meet anyone or even go out. Then he started to paint. He didn’t paint models, or copy photographs; he painted what he saw in his mind. Dreadful things. But it was as if in putting the images on to canvas he was freeing his spirit. Gosh! Hark at me. Why doesn’t somebody shut me up?’
    ‘Go on, Mrs Pilbeam. What happened to your cousin?’ Deirdre encouraged.
    ‘He found a sort of peace. You could see the difference in his pictures. Then he met a girl, a sweet girl, shy, talked with a stammer. But not with him. That was what was so . . . so . . . miraculous. When she was with Bertie she could talk the same as you or me.’ Then, with another smile at her young visitor who sat holding an egg in her hand as she listened, ‘And like in all good romances, they married. He made a modest living from his paintings, she made delicious cakes and opened a tea room in their cottage. Not much money coming in, but I bet there was no happier couple.’
    ‘Bar one,’ Richard put in. ‘Now then, lady, I’ll start stacking the van, shall I? Butter and eggs, that’s the lot for a Monday.’ Then, to Deirdre, ‘No one wants cream and mushrooms after the weekend, just bare essentials.’
    Deirdre was at a loss to understand why