Free A Kind Man by Susan Hill Page B

for it. She drank a little of the water herself and it tasted of the spring fromwhich it came up on the peak, cold and clear and sweet.
    He took the beaker from her in steady hands and drank it slowly down to the last.
    ‘Ah, Eve, that’s the most wonderful drink I ever drank.’
    His voice was so heartfelt that she laughed. ‘It’s only water.’
    ‘I never tasted water like it.’
    ‘Are you still so hot?’
    ‘Not so much.’
    ‘How’s your stomach? Do you need any medicine again?’
    He leaned forward a little. ‘It’s not painful now.’
    ‘Those tablets must last a long time then. Only tell me if you need more.’
    He lay down on his back. ‘It was like being in the sun. The heat of it.’
    ‘Maybe that was the tablets as well.’
    ‘Maybe, but I know it’s better being warm than cold.’
    ‘How are you now?’
    He paused, as if checking himself carefully. Then he said, ‘Tired. As if I fought the war and all on my own.’
    This time, she undressed before she lay down. She had been terrified that she might have to go and getBert to fetch the doctor, or bring Mary in to be with her, she had believed he would die at any minute, but as he seemed quieter, and his pain had eased for now, perhaps she could sleep better herself.
    She switched off the lamp and reached to him again. His skin felt as it always used to feel.
    ‘You were so hot I could have dried the washing by putting it by you,’ she said.
    ‘Yes. How long did it last, Eve? Feeling so warm.’
    ‘I know it woke you and you were pushing the clothes off trying to get cooler. But I don’t think it was long. Like a sudden fever.’
    ‘And it burned itself out.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. And remembered, as she knew that he remembered. But his illness and Jeannie Eliza’s had been quite different.
    She felt his body go heavy as sleep came over him and so, after a little while, she herself slept too, to the gentle patting of the rain and the soft movement of the curtain.
    She slipped out of bed and downstairs before six. Tommy was very still.
    The rain was over and the sky clear, but when she opened the door onto the garden and the first clucking sounds of the chickens, she could still smell the dampness on leaf and grass and earth and see how it hadbrought out the fresh green in everything. She filled the pan and took it down to the birds.
    She liked this time alone and felt better for sleeping, but in her mind was only the worry of how Tommy would be when he woke, whether his pain would have come back and increased, whether he would again be cold as stone or burning hot. How much longer he would go on living. She had thought he would die the previous night and so did the doctor, she had told that from everything he had said, the look on him, the way he had touched her arm. How could you go on waiting for someone to die, knowing that they surely would, but not knowing when? How could any person?
    It was so quiet when she went back into the house that rather than disturb Tommy’s sleep she riddled out the range and filled it, set the kettle on and took one of the warm eggs she had just picked up from the straw and put it on to boil. She felt guilty, enjoying all of it, the quiet movements, the small sounds, the smell of the air coming through the open door, but she needed the time to gather her strength again, for who knew what was to come that day.
    Upstairs, Tommy woke. For a moment, after he opened his eyes, he was troubled, sensing something different and strange and not understanding what it was. Eve had gone down. The house was quiet, butthen he heard the sound of the spoon scraping against the tin and the hens clucking in their scramble for the food. He lay still. He had no pain. He felt quite at ease and when he moved, first his limbs and then his body, there was still no pain or even the discomfort he had grown used to over the past months. He put his hand up and touched his finger to the swelling under his neck which had been hard and