Dead In The Morning by Margaret Yorke Page B

said Betty, able to speak more calmly now that her immediate panic had been dispelled. “I felt sure Tim must be in trouble of some sort.”
    He is, thought Patrick, but his mother need not know about it yet. The apprehensive devotion which Betty Ludlow clearly felt for her worrying child was no new manifestation to Patrick.
    “We’ve never met when you’ve been visiting Timothy at Mark’s,” he prompted her.
    “No, we haven’t. Oh, how rude of me, do come into the house, Dr Grant,” Betty said, recollecting herself.
    “Well, if you’re sure I won’t be interrupting,” Patrick said, with every intention of doing just that.
    “Not at all. It will do me good to stop,” said Betty. “I find gardening such a relaxation, don’t you?”
    This was a contradictory statement, and anything less relaxed than her own late occupation it would be hard to find, Patrick thought.
    “I’m afraid I don’t do much of it,” he said. “But you must let me show you the Fellows’ Garden when you come to Mark’s next term; we have some very rare autumn-flowering shrubs.”
    “I’d like that,” Betty said vaguely. She was not really listening.
    She led the way into the house, apologising for taking him in by the back door, and paused in the lobby to shed her boots, exchanging them for a pair of shabby pumps.
    “Would you like a cup of tea?” she offered.
    Patrick thought she needed one herself, as shock treatment, and making it would help to soothe her, too. His plan of action for the next half-hour was one his sister would deplore. He grinned to himself, thinking of her reaction. Betty took him into the sitting-room and settled him down with the Daily Mail while she went to put the kettle on.
     
    Left alone, Patrick at once got to his feet and inspected the room. It was large and comfortable, with shabby, well-worn chairs and a big, loose-cushioned sofa. There was no book in sight. Some knitting lay on a table, and there were photographs on the mantelpiece and on a large oak dresser by one wall. Patrick recognised Tim in adolescence, and more recently, before he grew his hair and adopted sideboards. There was another boy, too, a fairer, slimmer young man with a sensitive, anxious face; this one was like his mother. A second one of him, a wedding picture, showed him smiling with self-conscious pride beside his bride outside a church. Poor boy, no wonder he looked embarrassed; Patrick, well accustomed though he was to pageantry in Oxford, and to processing through the streets in his cap and doctor’s robes of blue and scarlet, nevertheless considered any man who underwent the ordeal of the Church of England wedding ceremony in full regalia to be a hero. He was still looking at this photograph when Betty returned with a tea tray.
    “Your other son?” he asked. “He’s very like you.”
    “Oh, do you think so?” Betty was pleased. She put the tray on a low coffee table and they both sat down. “Yes, that’s Martin. He’s been married just over a year.”
    “What a very pretty girl,” said Patrick.
    “She’s a model. She’s kept her job on,” Betty said, rather sadly, for unreasonably she had expected to become an instant grandmother. “They live in Chelsea. I’m sure she needn’t work. Martin does quite well. He’s with an advertising firm.”
    “Most young wives carry on with their jobs these days until they have a family,” Patrick said. “It’s sensible. They get bored otherwise.”
    “I suppose so,” Betty said. She had become pregnant with Martin on her honeymoon, and those early years after the war had been a nightmare of contriving, with food, soap and clothing all rationed; it was a time when anxiety and overwork went hand-in-hand with motherhood, so different from today when parents could enjoy their babies.
    “I expect you often see them?” Patrick asked.
    “No, we don’t,” Betty said. “They’re busy. They have their own friends. They don’t come down to Sunday lunch at Pantons