More Tales of the West Riding by Phyllis Bentley

come round the corner in the far distance, watch it grow larger and larger and finally steam into the platform, enormous. Edward felt quite pale with excitement at this crucial moment and even his mother looked a trifle wan as if she felt excited too. Then his father came down the steps from a first-class coach and walked steadily towards them, smiling, and then he took them both strongly in his arms. That was splendid.
    So that now to imagine that his father and mother were quarrelling was really quite absurd.
    All the same, some odd things seemed to be happening in the house. His mother began to look pale and almost haggard, so that her beauty was decidedly diminished. His father appeared cross and abrupt, and two vertical lines began to show down the centre of his forehead, giving him an angry and resentful air. They talked very little, so that meals were eaten almost in silence. Then there came an afternoon during Edward’s Easter holidays. His father being at the mill asusual, his mother said she had a headache, and sharply bidding Edward leave her, went to her bedroom to lie down. The rain was pouring down outside and Edward had finished his library book, so he wandered slowly along the landing after his mother’s rebuff, wondering what to do. Observing a little-used bedroom door standing open, he strolled in for lack of any better occupation, and saw the single bed made up and his father’s hairbrushes lying on the dressing-table, his father’s dressing-gown hanging on the hook at the back of the door.
    The shock was very great. He did not know what this separation of his parents meant, but knew it was something awful.
    Sure enough, next morning Annie came to him before he was up, and said he must rise at once, as they had to catch a train at half-past nine.
    â€œWhere are we going?” whispered Edward. His sense of disaster was so strong, he dared not speak aloud.
    â€œTo your grandmother’s.”
    Dazed and frightened, Edward did not even venture to ask which of his grandmothers was meant. He did not care for either of them much. Mrs Lacy was handsome and elegantly dressed, with beautiful white hair, but there was never much to eat in her flat, and she was rather hard and a bit of a liar. Mrs Milner was a good deal older; she always gave one plenty to eat and she was not sarcastic, but her iron grey hair, her clothes and her morals were all decidedly grim. They were both widows, and lived in widely separated seaside resorts on the south coast.
    Edward’s father, looking really very ill, drove Edward and Annie to the station, and kissed Edward goodbye with a kind of despairing warmth, as if he never hoped to see him again. Edward’s mother was not visible that morning, and Edward dared not ask for her. In the uneasy rush his bear was left behind.
    It turned out that Mrs Milner was to be his hostess. She met her guests at the station, and though looking extremely unhappy, greeted them very warmly. Her house in South-stone was a large old-fashioned affair, well situated near the sea, well appointed, well kept, with an old neat maid in the kitchen, who turned out to be Annie’s sister. Annie was to stay at old Mrs Milner’s to assist in the burden understood to be caused to the household by Edward’s presence.
    This was reassuring, for Edward was attached to Annie, and after a few days he settled down fairly well. The spring proved warm and the sea was a pleasure, often agreeably rough and with plenty of ships passing up and down. The beach was pebbly, but Edward was too old for a bucket-and-spade routine nowadays, as he told himself proudly. The holidays went, term-time approached; to Edward’s surprise he learned he was not to return home yet, but stay in South-stone and go to school there. His grandmother told him that his mother was not well, and had been advised to spend some months in Switzerland.
    â€œShe’s not
ill
?” said Edward, alarmed.
    â€œNot