have been terribly weak for years I am afraid.” Sir Philip sounded unlike his usual reserved self. He seemed to want to tell May every detail of his wife’s condition, as if to reassure himself that everything was being done to help her.
“I know John Hunt through the old boys’ network at Balliol. He’s already a distinguished man of medicine, even though he must still only be in his early thirties. He is just about to move to the neurological clinic at St. Bartholomew’s and we have had several talks over the years about Joan. You know, the way she is about her younger sister’s death?”
May nodded.
“Well, John understands that Joan is still unable to recover from the tragedy. He is one of those few people really interested in that sort of psychological condition. It is such a relief he could come at such short notice and see her. Oh, forgive me May, I am going on a bit aren’t I?” He buried his head in his hands. “As if the loss of her sister has not brought her enough suffering already. And now this,” he half whispered to himself.
The following day a still unconscious Lady Joan, accompanied by a uniformed nurse, was driven down to Cuckmere Park in an ambulance. If she was to stand any chance of recovery, Hunt considered absolute inactivity and peace to be an essential ingredient for healing. The nurse was to take up permanent residence and would attend to all of Lady Joan’s basic medical needs, Sir Philip explained, unless his wife’s condition showed no sign of improvement, in which case she would have to be admitted to hospital for closer monitoring.
During the next few days the rest of the staff at Cuckmere vacillated between subdued discussion about people they knew who had been struck down with something similar, and the good news at least that the date for the coronation had been confirmed for next May, less than a year away. In the kitchen Mr. Hooch held his cup of elevenses coffee in hands ingrained with engine oil and grease and shook his head slowly from side to side. His pessimism at the prognosis for the much-loved mistress of the house was all too evident in his face. Cooky advised everyone to try and look on the bright side. She was certain that her ladyship would be fully recovered in time for the big coronation celebrations in St. John’s Wood next summer. Cooky would probably be asked to help London Cook with the preparations.
“I will agree for her ladyship’s sake but only if London Cook can manage to keep her temper under control for two whole days,” she said, pursing her lips in and out in quick little movements. “I remember my mother telling me about the red and blue jellies she made for the old king’s coronation street party in Battersea in 1911. God bless his soul.”
And Cooky picked up the corner of her apron and wiped a tear from her eye, a gesture which May considered a trifle theatrical given that it was now six months since George V’s death and May had heard the story at least half a dozen times before.
Getting up from the kitchen table, she excused herself and went outside into the garden. At last a pattern of sunshine had established itself, bringing with each successive morning long stretches of warmth that allowed sweaters to remain in drawers unmissed for days on end. At the far end of the lawn, near the large fig tree, Vera was busy tying up the trailing ends of a purple clematis that were tumbling over a wicker archway. She raised a hand to May in greeting. Severely dressed in her habitual dungarees and fearsome beneath her distinctive earth-smeared cheekbones, Vera’s magic fingers brought the chalky flowerbeds of Cuckmere to life.
Sir Philip’s reading glasses and the newspaper lay in a deck chair that had been placed against the shady curve of the long flint wall. The green and white patterned chair, with its own little fringed canopy, had been Sir Philip’s gift to his pregnant wife during the summer their son was born and the sag of the fabric on the seat showed the evidence of much use. The garden looked like the juxtaposed brushstrokes of an impressionist’s canvas, with the flowers packed so closely together in the earth that it was impossible to distinguish where one bloom ended and the other began. Roses flung themselves over flint walls and the pink