Alfred and Emily Read Online Free PDF Page A

leave the farm to you, without a moment’s worry about it. But you aren’t, and so we must make the best of it. If Bert were thinking of getting married, then…but he doesn’t seem to have plans.’ Aloud: ‘Betsy Somers, hey? Isn’t that a Kentish family? Why don’t you bring her down for the weekend? Perhaps for our annual do. Does Betsy like cricket?’
    â€˜I hope so,’ said Alfred, laughing. ‘She’s going to have a bad time of it if she doesn’t.’
    That was how Alfred’s future was decided. And Alfred liked to think of Betsy sitting in a chair beside Mrs. Lane, watching him play.
    And what had not been said aloud? ‘You must see we want to look her over. Is she going to fit in with us?’ And so it goes always with a well-settled community when a son is bringing in a bride. Will she become one of us?
    â€˜Are you going to want thatch or slates for the roof?’ said Mr. Redway.
    â€˜Slates,’ said Alfred. ‘Better for fire.’
    He would ask Betsy to marry him, when the house was done, but there was no hurry. He thought he probably loved her, but his life as a bachelor was really so very pleasant. And then Fate took a decided turn. He was up in London, and actually in the girls’ flat, having supper, when a pain in his side felled him groaning to the floor. They were walking distance from the Royal Free. Daisy ran to the hospital and brought porters and a stretcher while Emily was taking Alfred to the front door. Off he was whisked to an operating theatre, just in time to save his life. His appendix had burst. He was in hospital long enough for him to decide that, yes, he really did love Betsy. They were engaged to marry. Meanwhile, Emily McVeagh announced her engagement to Dr. Martin-White from Cardiology. There was a small party, in the office of Sister McVeagh’s ward. Alfred was there, on crutches, in a corner, watching, with Daisy. Betsy was on duty somewhere.
    â€˜He looks a really nice chap,’ approved Alfred to Daisy.
    Dr. Martin-White was very different from the people Alfred was surrounded by most days, all farmers, labourers, country people. He was tallish, perhaps too thin, with a hesitant manner, as if he felt he presumed, with a thoughtful, sensitive face.
    This happened in 1916.
    In life, my father’s appendix burst just before the battle of the Somme, saving him from being killed with the rest of his company. He was sent back to the trenches where shrapnel in his right leg saved him from the battle of Passchendaele. ‘A pretty lucky thing,’ he might say. But, later, ‘That is, if you set so much store on being alive.’
    Now things moved fast. Betsy said she would not mind missing the last year of her training, if that meant she could marry her Alfred now. Alfred, who had imagined getting married at a quite comfortable time ahead, heard Betsy say she could not bear to be separated from him, and found himself agreeing with her. ‘Why wait?’ she said, and then so did he. But where were they going to live? Their house was nowhere near being finished. So, after all, that meant they would start married life in the Redways’ house. And meant, too, that the looking-over of Betsy could not be postponed. ‘Of course they have to give me a good looking-over,’ she said, confident that this would go well: Betsy knew people liked her, so why not the Redways? But Alfred was more concerned that Mrs. Lane should meet her, and at once. If Mrs. Lane did not approve, then…Would he be prepared to give up Betsy? The question did actually present itself to Alfred, and forcefully. No, he wouldn’t. And that was how Alfred learned that Betsy was indeed essential to him.
    No one need have worried. Mrs. Lane, expecting her favourite Alfred’s chosen, stood by her window, waiting. At the gate stood a plump fair girl ‘all of a tremble’, as Mrs. Lane described it to Alfred.