Lesson To Learn

For a long time nothing happened, and she was just about to wonder angrily if Gray Philips had given Mrs Jacobs instructions not to admit her, when the door suddenly opened to the extent of its safety chain and a small, familiar voice asked uncertainly, ‘Is that you, Sarah?’

‘Robert…Where’s Mrs Jacobs?’ she asked the little boy as he reached up to release the safety chain.

‘She’s gone home,’ Robert told her when the door was open and Sarah went inside. ‘She said she wasn’t paid to look after the likes of me and that I was getting on her nerves,’ he added woefully.

The hall was low-ceilinged and beamed, with a polished wooden floor and an enormous cavern of a fireplace. It was immaculately clean and yet somehow unwelcoming.

The oak coffer against the wall cried out for a pewter jug full of flowers, the floor for a richly coloured rug, and stairs with barley-sugar twisted and carved posts and heavily worn oak treads led to the upper storeys of the house. A window set halfway up them in their curve let in a mellow shaft of sunlight, and, even while she admired the heavy wrought-iron light fitting that hung from the ceiling, Sarah was wondering why no one seemed to have thought to fit the window-seat with a comfortable squashy cushion, and thinking how bleak the house looked despite its shining cleanness.

‘Are you here all on your own?’ she asked Robert as he took hold of her hand and started to tug her in the direction of one of the doors leading off the hallway.

‘Yes. My father’s gone to work.’

‘And Mrs Jacobs has left. Is she coming back?’

‘No.’ Robert shook his head. ‘She said she wasn’t going to set foot in this place again. At least not while I was here. Children are a nuisance, she said, and there are plenty of places she can work where she doesn’t have to put up with them.’ Tears suddenly brimmed in his eyes as he turned to look at her. ‘My father is going to be cross with me, isn’t he? But it wasn’t my fault that I spilt the milk. I slipped on the kitchen floor.’

Sarah felt a mingling of anger and disgust. How could any father leave his child in the sole charge of a woman as plainly unsuitable as Mrs Jacobs, and how could any woman walk out on a six-year-old child when she knew there was no one to take charge of him, and when she must also know how vulnerable he was?

Robert pushed open a door which Sarah saw led into the kitchen. Her frown deepened when she saw the pool of milk marking the stone floor, its surface ominously broken by shards of glass. Had Mrs Jacobs really left without cleaning up the broken glass? It seemed that she had.

Quietly telling Robert not to go near the broken glass, Sarah set about cleaning up the mess.

While she was doing so he started to explain tearfully to her how the milk had been spilt when he was pouring it into his breakfast bowl of cereal.

The fridge from which he had taken the milk had a freezer section beneath it, and a handle surely far too high for the easy reach of a child of six.

When she heard how he had dragged a stool across the floor and climbed up on it to open the door, apparently while Mrs Jacobs was sitting down drinking a cup of tea, she was so angry both with Mrs Jacobs and with Robert’s father that she felt it was just as well that neither of them was there for her to vent her anger on them.

Surely the older woman must have realised the potential danger of a child of Robert’s age climbing on a stool to open a fridge door? And surely in any case the little boy should not have been left to get his own breakfast?

Not wanting to pry and take advantage of his innocence, Sarah nevertheless had to ask him why Mrs Jacobs had not poured out the milk for him.

‘She said it wasn’t her job to feed me,’ he told Sarah. ‘And, besides, she was very cross. She said I didn’t deserve any breakfast after what I’d done yesterday. She said I ought to be whipped and locked in my room.’ His face grew shadowed and fearful. ‘You won’t…you won’t tell my father about the milk, will you, Sarah?’

‘Not if you don’t want me to,’Sarah assured him, mentally crossing her fingers. She had every intention of making sure that Gray Philips knew exactly what she thought of a man who left his child in the sole charge of a woman like Mrs Jacobs.

It was almost lunchtime, and when she discovered that because of the accident Robert had not had any breakfast she opened the fridge and stared in disgust at its meagre contents. The freezer section below it was packed with microwave dishes and TV dinners, but there was nothing, as far as she could see, nutritious enough for a growing child…no fresh fruit, no fresh vegetables, nothing in the fridge that could in any way constitute the ingredients for a well-balanced healthy meal.

The bread-bin, when she found it, held half a loaf of dry, unappetising white bread, although the biscuit barrel was well stocked. Sarah turned away from this in disgust to announce firmly, ‘Robert, you and I are going to do some shopping.’

It was warm enough for Robert to go out in his shirt and shorts, but before they left Sarah found an envelope in her handbag and wrote down a brief note on it, leaving it propped up on the kitchen table in the unlikely event of Mrs Jacobs’s alerting Gray Philips to the fact that she had left Robert on his own and his coming home to ensure that he was safe.

Since she had no keys to any of the doors, she had to leave the back door unlocked, and as they drove away she prayed that no one would break into the house while she was gone.

In their nearest market town they had a good selection of food stores, so there was no need for her to drive as far as Ludlow.

After they had parked the car and collected their trolley she asked Robert what he liked to eat, and was pleased to discover from his answers to her questions that his mother had obviously been very strict about a healthy diet.

However, when she made some comment about his mother, he shook his head and told her, to her surprise, ‘But I didn’t live with Mummy and Tom. I lived with Nana. There wasn’t room for me at Mummy’s house, and besides…’ He scowled and dragged his toe along the floor, telling her gruffly, ‘Tom didn’t like me. Peter’s father liked him,’ he added wistfully, causing Sarah to cease her inspection of the shelves and pause to look at him, asking questioningly,

‘Peter?’

‘He was my friend at school,’ Robert told her. ‘He lived with his mummy and his daddy. His daddy used to play with him. He was teaching Peter to play football,’ he told her enviously.

Poor little scrap. Sarah ached to pick him up and hug him and to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that he had just been unlucky in the adult males in his life, because she could see the fear in his eyes, the belief that it was somehow his fault that first his mother’s lover and then his own father had rejected him.

It seemed odd, though, that, after going to all the trouble of obtaining sole custody of him and refusing to allow his father to see him, his mother should then allow him to live full-time with his grandmother.

She was frowning a little over this as she scanned the shelves. She had plenty of cash with her, money she had brought with her when she had arrived from the city and which so far she had had no need to spend, thanks to the generosity of her cousin. According to Sally and Ross, Gray Philips was a wealthy man, and certainly wealthy enough to provide his son with a proper diet, so there was no need for her to scrimp on her purchases.

She could only marvel at the quality and training of a housekeeper who apparently was content to feed a grown man and a growing child on pre-cooked frozen microwave meals. There was nothing wrong with such things for emergencies or days when cooking was inconvenient or impossible, but as a sole source of food…

As she paused to ask Robert if he liked fish she tried not to contemplate how Gray Philips was likely to view her interference.

Her shopping complete, she and Robert headed back to the car. He was chattering to her about his grandmother as they did so, and Sarah could tell how much he missed her—more, it seemed, than he missed his mother, but then, if he had lived with his grandmother…It would account for that oddly old-fashioned air he had about him at times, that grave, almost too adult manner that set him apart from the other children of his age that she knew.