A Summer Promise Read Online Free PDF Page B

eat. Mrs Grundy gave us some lovely cheese, and Alice is cutting a couple of slices off the loaf; she’ll cut three, if you’re hungry. Then there are the pickled onions you and I made last year and a few apples from the orchard.’ She smiled encouragingly at her grandmother. ‘It’s a feast! Do say you’ll eat your share, Gran.’
    ‘What?’ Gran said vaguely. ‘Help me up!’
    Maddy shook a chiding head. ‘You mustn’t get up. You sprained your ankle, don’t you remember? You told me not to call the doctor, and the market folk agree the best cure for a sprained ankle is to keep it up. So just you stay there.’
    Gran heaved an enormous sigh, and fixed Maddy with a basilisk glare. ‘I want to pee,’ she said loudly, and Maddy trembled for fear Alice would get the giggles and Gran might think herself mocked. ‘Fetch me the perishing chamber pot, girl!’ Poor Maddy’s mind whirled. She could not imagine that Gran would find it easy to perch on the large chamber pot which adorned the old woman’s bedroom, and eyed her grandmother’s bulk doubtfully. Gran looked puzzled. ‘I want to pee,’ she repeated insistently. ‘What’s the matter with you, girl? Catchin’ flies, are you? Don’t you know a body has to pee after drinking a full mug of tea? And who’s this Alice?’
    Maddy, thoroughly confused, began to explain that Alice was her friend, that they had been at the market together, but she got no further. ‘Oh,
that
Alice. She’s the new nursery maid, isn’t she?’ Gran moved on the sofa, trying to rid herself of the blanket which Maddy had tucked around her, and gave an impatient sigh. ‘Get this bloody thing off me,’ she commanded. ‘And call the nursery maid; if the pair of you give me a hand I dare say I could reach the privy in the yard easier than I could balance me bum on that old jeremiah.’
    ‘Right,’ Maddy said. What on earth made Gran think Alice was a nursery maid? But she ran across the parlour and beckoned to her friend, who was sitting in one of the old kitchen chairs with Talon, the cat, on her lap. ‘Can you come?’ she asked urgently. ‘Gran wants to have a widdle and I can’t lift her by myself. We need to help her out to the privy in the garden. Are you game to take her left side whilst I cope with the right?’
    Alice looked scared. She removed the cat from her lap with obvious reluctance and stood up, shaking the creases out of her beautiful smock. ‘All right, I’ll have a go,’ she said.
    Back in the parlour the old lady had already heaved herself up and was disentangling her legs from the blanket whilst muttering curses too low, Maddy hoped, for Alice to catch. She smiled tentatively at Gran as she darted forward to take the old woman’s weight, gesturing for Alice to do the same.
    Alice essayed a bright smile, though Maddy saw that it was a bit wobbly. ‘Good morning, Mrs Hebditch, or should I say afternoon?’ Alice said in a small voice which she clearly strove to make pleasant. ‘I’ve come to give Maddy a hand, so you must lean on me and I’ll do my best to help you.’
    Gran, now upright and balancing on one foot, sniffed. ‘If you’re the nursery maid then it ought to be you holding me up,’ she said disagreeably. ‘Come along, come along, let’s be having you!’
    Alice giggled and Maddy realised she had probably never been spoken to in such a manner before. But she did not comment and presently the three of them crossed the parlour and were actually in the yard when, as Maddy put it to herself, their journey became unnecessary. Gran had held on as long as she possibly could, and when at last she lost the battle a positive river splashed around her bare and dirty feet.
    Instincts cannot be helped, perhaps. Both girls leapt back and Gran teetered, shrieked and fell. The girls began to try to heave her to her feet, and Maddy realised that despite her efforts Alice could not prevent a stifled giggle or two from emerging. Maddy herself, on the