The Far Country by Nevil Shute Page B

really get much further than the Windsor Hotel.
    “I’m sending with this letter a little bank draft for five hundred pounds, with our dear love. It doesn’t mean anything to us now, because we have more than we can ever spend. If you don’t need it, will you give it to some charity in England for us? But we’ve been really worried about you since reading that letter about your vest, and Jack and I owe so much to you for all you did to help us thirty years ago. So if this will make things easier for you, will you take it with our very dearest love?
    “Your affectionate niece,
“J ANE.”
    The girl laid the letter down. “It’s all right, Granny,” she said a little unsteadily. “She’s got all the money in the world. They’re making twenty-two thousand pounds a year—at least, I think that’s what she means.”
    “Nonsense, my dear,” the old lady said weakly. “She’s only a farmer’s wife. Stations, they call them in Australia, but it’s only a big farm and not very good land, I’m told. She’s made some mistake.”
    The girl wrinkled her brows, and glanced at the letter again. “I don’t think it’s a mistake—honestly. It’s what she says, and I was reading something about this in the paper the other day.” She laid the letter down. “Look, drink your milk before it gets cold.”
    She held the old lady upright with one arm, and raised the cup to her lips. She could not get her to drink much, and the effort seemedto tire her, because she lay back on the pillows with her eyes closed, disinclined to talk. Jennifer removed the letter and the envelope to a table at the bedside and put the bankers’ draft upon the dressing-table, carefully weighted with an embossed Indian silver hand-mirror.
    She went downstairs to get her own supper. Meat and eggs were out of the question, of course, but she had got herself a piece of cod and some potatoes and carrots. She put the cod on to boil because she would not encroach upon her grandmother’s fat ration or open the tin of lard, and she peeled some of the potatoes and carrots to boil those. This insipid meal was normal to her life and she thought nothing of it; she had bought a pot of jam and some buns and a piece of cheese to liven it up a bit. She started all this going on the stove, and slipped upstairs to see how her grandmother was getting on.
    The old lady had not moved, and she seemed to be asleep. Her breathing, if anything, was worse. To Jennifer as she stood motionless in the door, looking at her, she seemed smaller and more shrunken, further away. The room seemed suddenly a great deal colder; she shivered a little, and went in softly and turned on the second element of the electric stove.
    As she ate her supper at the kitchen table she wondered what could best be done for her grandmother in the new situation presented by this five hundred pounds. Her father was coming down next day and he would decide what was the best course; she was rather ignorant about the practical points of illness and of nursing, but she knew that this five hundred pounds would make a difference. Perhaps it would be possible to get the old lady into a nursing home, or clinic. She knew that her parents had no money to spare; it was only with difficulty that they could keep up her father’s considerable life insurance and endowment premiums; they had their own old age to think about. It had probably been a real difficulty for her father to send her ten pounds at a moment’s notice, as he had that day.
    She went up once or twice to look into the bedroom, but she did not speak; better to let her grandmother rest quietly till it was time for her next cup of milk food and brandy. She took that up after a lapse of two hours, and spoke to the old lady. “I’ve made you some more Benger’s, Granny,” she said quietly. “Are you awake?”
    The old eyes opened. “I’m awake, Jenny. I’ve been thinking about so many things.”
    The girl sat down beside her and raised her in