The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch Read Free Book Online Page B

least had only cared for me out of a sense of duty, he was the only person who had ever acted as if I had some value as a human being. I thought of the vast numbers of people he must know, the numerous claims on his time, his busy life in the heart of London. Yet he hadn’t hesitated to set aside part of his evening to help someone who constantly found herself written off as a fat nonentity.
    That reminded me of how badly I did at interviews and that in turn made me peer fearfully into the future. I was going to lose my home and there would be hardly any money left to inherit. I’d have to get a live-in job—probably in some institution so desperate for help that they would even employ a fat nonentity who hadn’t had a full-time job for a while. However, I knew I’d be fortunate to have free accommodation, no matter how dreary the circumstances, so I said to Aunt: “I’ll manage. I’ll be all right.”
    Aunt’s breathing changed before dawn. I almost called the doctor but I thought he might be angry, summoned from his bed when there was nothing he could do, so I never picked up the phone. Instead I held Aunt’s hand. I wasn’t frightened. Death was coming as a friend. He was wanted, welcomed. Aunt was ready now.
    The breathing became much stranger, so I knew the end was near. That type of breathing had some special name; I’d read about it somewhere, probably in the medical column of a magazine or newspaper. Aunt had always taken
The Times
, but newspapers nowadays were so expensive that I had decided even the
Daily Mail
was an extravagance I couldn’t afford.
    Death came—and to my surprise Aunt looked different afterwards. She had been corpse-like for so long that I’d assumed no further change in her appearance would be possible, but although I still felt her presence in the room I saw the body had been abandoned. That was now just an arrangement of matter which had somehow lost its familiarity.
    There were no tears—and no sleep either; I didn’t feel tired any more. I felt as if I were on some drug-induced high, very peculiar it was, but wasn’t morphine produced naturally in the brain in certain circumstances? I thought I had seen that too reported in some medical column. I liked medical matters. If I hadn’t been so stupid I would have wanted to become a doctor—like Val, working alongside Nicholas at St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall.
    At eight I phoned Aunt’s doctor, and while I waited for him to arrive I called Val to tell her what had happened. She was very kind. After she had said all that needed to be said she added: “Nick’s always out of town on weekends, but I’ll phone his colleague, Father Lewis Hall, and I’m sure he’ll want to get in touch with you.”
    I’d forgotten it was Saturday and that the Guild churches of the City would be closed for the weekend. I wondered where Nicholas went. I pictured him in a beautiful country house with his elegant wife. What would he do with himself on weekends? Work in the garden? Play cricket on some village green? Read novels? Take the children on outings? (Of course there would be children.) I found I couldn’t imagine him having anything so ordinary as a family life. And there was no point in day-dreaming about him anyway. I started to think of Aunt again.
    Going to her desk I removed the will, which I had found after the first stroke, and broke the seal of the envelope. I knew she would haveleft everything to me, but I wanted to find out if she had left instructions for her funeral. She had. That militant non-believer who despised clergymen had written in a note attached to the legal document: “I hereby give instructions that my body is to be cremated after a
short
service conducted according to the rites of the Church of England. Every English person, regardless of religious belief, should observe the tribal custom of being buried by the English church. This is what being a member of Our Great Island Race is all about. (Churchill understood