Page 73 of A Fresh Start at Bramble Cottage
He chuckled as he took her arm to walk up the path. “That was a compensation. But, really, all I wanted was to come home.”
Vicky opened the door for him. Inside it wasn’t as bad as she had feared it might be — just the sort of mild neglect to be expected from an elderly widower with failing eyesight. A faint musty smell in the hall, dust-bunnies beneath the telephone table, a ragged cobweb in the corner of the ceiling.
She took him into the sitting room and settled him in a comfortable armchair. “There — you sit down, and I’ll make a cup of tea.”
She nipped out to the car to fetch his suitcase, then put the kettle on and made two cups of tea, which she put on a tray with a plate of Bourbon biscuits, and carried them through to the sitting room.
It was a cosy room, if a bit cluttered and faded, the chintz upholstery and curtains and the extensive collection of china cats evidence that a woman had once reigned here.
Several framed photographs were lined up along the tiled mantelpiece. Vicky moved closer to study them. “May I look?”
“Of course, dearie, if you like.”
She picked up one of them — a proud young Arthur in his wedding suit, his darling Betty at his side in her long white dress and veil, clutching a bouquet of roses and lily of the valley, gazing up at him in open adoration. “Well, weren’t you a handsome chap!” she remarked.
He chuckled. “Oh, ah — I was that.” He took the photo from her and gazed at it, a smile of wistful reminiscence curving his mouth. “And my Betty, she was a real beauty.”
“She was.” She picked up another photograph — a lad of about twelve, proud as punch in his Scout uniform. “And this is Simon?”
“That’s right.”
Another photograph. “And his wife and kids — your grandsons. They’re nice-looking kids.”
He nodded, beaming. “Take after their grandmother.”
The couple in the picture looked to be in their forties, the two boys in front of them early teens. “This must have been taken a few years ago?”
“Oh... yes — maybe. I don’t remember.” He waved his hand in vague dismissal.
“And that’s Niagara Falls in the background?”
“Mmm.” He was busy dunking his biscuit in his tea. Vicky smiled to herself — he never liked to admit that his memory sometimes had gaps in it.
She wandered round the room looking at the pictures on the walls — mostly rather kitsch pictures of cats, clashing with the flowery wallpaper.
“Betty was fond of cats?” she asked, amused.
“Oh, ah — allus had cats when she was alive. I didn’t mind ’em — could be a bit smelly, some of ’em, but they was mostly right enough.”
“You don’t have one now?”
He shook his head. “Last one took itself off somewhere after she was gone. Never saw it again. They have a way of finding themselves a cosy billet, do cats.”
She just hoped that was true, and that the poor creature hadn’t met a more unfortunate fate, but she didn’t say anything.
There were more family photographs on the oak sideboard and on top of an upright piano. But it was a framed portrait that caught her eye — a charcoal sketch, recognisably by the same hand as the portrait of Molly. In the bottom left-hand corner was the same rabbit-ears signature.
“Oh!”
Arthur looked over, smiling. “Ah, yes — that’s my Betty, God rest her.”
She gazed at the sketch, feeling a small surge of excitement. The portrait was very similar to the one of Molly, while still being undoubtedly the woman in the wedding photograph. It took a clever hand to do that.
“Do you remember who drew it?”
“O’ course I do!” Clearly indignant that she might think he had forgotten. “It was John. Foreign guy. That wasn’t his proper name, o’ course — it was some funny foreign name. But I always called him John — that was near enough.”
“He was... a friend of my Aunt Molly’s?”
