Lamb in Love by Carrie Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

though, I suppose?” Vida asked.
    â€œOh, we’ve never enough help. Can’t keep them, you know. They’re all off to London, the young nowadays. Don’t want to stay in the village.”
    â€œManford, here—he loves the bakery,” Vida said then.
    â€œWell, we’ll have to give him something special then, today,” Mrs. Blatchford said. “A jam doughnut in the bag for you, Manford.” And she turned, a bit of tissue in her hand, to lift one from a tray, put it in the paper sack.
    â€œOh, Manford,” Vida said. “Look at what Mrs. Blatchford’s given you. Such a kind thing. A jam doughnut. You know,” she went on after a moment, “Manford is a steady soul. Completely tireless, in fact. Not like myself. I’m getting on now, Mrs. Blatchford. I can hardly keep up with him anymore.” She laughed a little.
    â€œOh, Vida. Now, how old are you?” Mrs. Blatchford looked her up and down. “What is it? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”
    â€œOh, no! Forty-one, Mrs. Blatchford! I’m forty-one now!” Vida said. And then she brightened, deliberately. “But isn’t it fortunate,” she said, “our having this conversation this morning?” She waited a moment, allowing her gaze to travel over the place, its sweet smell of bread rising, the sugared buns, the iced cakes. “For I’ve been looking for a place of employment for Manford, Mrs. Blatchford. Something useful for him to do during the day. We all need to feel useful in the world.”
    â€œWe do,” Mrs. Blatchford said, standing still, staring at Manford.
    â€œHe could be most useful to you,” Vida said.
    â€œCould he,” Mrs. Blatchford said slowly.
    And it was done.
    H E STARTED THE next Monday. And once they saw that he could take care of himself all right, spend a penny on his own, come out buttoned up properly, not bother anyone, they took him in as if they’d been waiting for an opportunity like this all along. Vida could have told them this, if they’d asked, how he would make them feel happy.
    But once he’d begun at Niven’s, in that first week, when the days without him seemed so long and empty, she had time on her hands, time in great quantity.
    During one of those empty mornings, she’d set about going through her mother’s things. She’d been putting it off for a long time. It made her feel sad to look at the boxes; she missed her mother, whose last months had been painful and unhappy. Nursing her own mother, along with looking after Manford, had been a strain on her. While it was going on, she stopped by Dr. Faber’s one day to have him look at a funny toenail of Manford’s for her. But Dr. Faber had instead looked
her
over with studious concern, noting the tired shadows on her face. He’d wanted to give her something to help her relax, sleep better at night. But she’d worried about not being wholly alert—one might be needed at any moment, she’d pointed out to him—and so had declined.
    She had, though, decided she could wait to go through her mother’s things until she felt recovered. So three days into Manford’s first week at Niven’s, after doing as much housecleaning as she could contrive for herself, she carried the boxes with her mother’s belongings from a spare room into the sitting room offthe kitchen, where she and Manford spent most of their time. And among the papers and mementos, she found her uncle Laurence’s letters to the family from over the years.
    Vida had been nineteen when Laurence left, just after the end of the war. Over time, he’d become in her mind a figure so improved in stature that she could scarcely feel her relation to him. She’d seen him only three or four times since his move to Corfu, most recently at her mother’s funeral, but he had always written regularly, and he was good about remembering important occasions such