She couldn’t say anything else. Douglas sat beside her. He fingered his taped ribs and felt sudden pity for Joe Tavish, one of hundreds overwhelmed by misfortune not of his own making. And if he was honest, and why not, he could remember some heavy drinking after he lost three amputees in a row.
Bless Olive Grant’s kind heart; she seemed to know what he was thinking. She nudged him. “Everyone has reasons,” she said.
“Yes, but my ribs still ache and my eye is almost ascolorful as yours,” he teased. “Still, I wonder where Joe has taken himself.”
No one had stopped by his surgery, but he tacked a “Returning Soon” sign to his front door because he was conscientious. The fishing fleet still stood off the mouth of the River Dee, but the afternoon hour told him that soon the little boats would dock at Edgar and the women who cleaned the fish would arrive in force. After what Olive had told him, he wondered how many of the women were Highland cattle herders’ wives, transplanted unwillingly to strange southern shores.
The Tavish house looked even worse, with the front door flapping open, and someone’s chickens wandering through like spectators judging one family’s misery.
He knocked on Mrs. Cameron’s door.
“Come!” said a cheery voice.
He opened the door and saw what he had seen before, with one difference: There was food on the table, which had been covered with a neatly patched cloth. A loaf of bread sat almost proudly in the center of the table, with a knife placed just so, and a jam jar.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your meal,” he began, but Mrs. Cameron hushed him with an upraised hand.
“We’re eating later,” she said. “T’bread is there in case someone should stop by—thou, for instance.”
With sudden, blinding realization, he knew what he was looking at, and it humbled him. The coins he had left with Mrs. Cameron had been turned into Highland hospitality.
“You have other loaves and maybe some herring?” he asked, hopeful there was more.
“A wee dab of butter too,” she said, beaming at him. “Some eggs and some mutton and potatoes for a stew.”
He took her hand and she did not try to pull away. “Mrs. Cameron, you are a providential housewife and a kind neighbor to Mrs. Tavish. Where is she?”
She patted his hand and pulled him into the next room, where Tavish mother and son sat close together on the bed. Occupying the room’s only chair was Mrs. Aintree. His tail wagging hard enough to nearly overset him, Duke leaned against Tommy.
This was more than he had dared hoped for, considering that Olive had told him of bitter feelings of Edgar’s long-time citizens, trapped in their own more genteel poverty, against the Gaelic-speaking, mostly illiterate Highlanders dumped on them.
Neither a look nor a glance suggested that Mrs. Aintree suffered embarrassment to be found in such a place. A casual visitor who didn’t know better could have been forgiven for thinking that the two women were the dearest of friends.
Mrs. Tavish might not have considered herself a patient of his, but she offered no objection when Douglas touched her wrist to feel her pulse, and then rested the back of his hand against her forehead. He saw that she was clean and her hair tidy. She wore a nightgown that looked well worn, but came with a delicate sprinkle of embroidered flowers on the yoke. He turned inquiring eyes on Mrs. Aintree, who blushed.
“How many nightgowns does a widow need?” she asked. “Tommy said his mam had n’more than a shift, and that will never do. I found some other things, for when she feels better.”
“You’re a good neighbor,” Douglas said.
“It’s overdue,” Mrs. Aintree said simply. “Besides that, I had to tell Mrs. Tavish what a fine job her boy is doing of milking my Lucinda.”
Tommy smiled at that bit of praise. “Mr. Bowden, Mrs. Aintree says that I am ready to milk all by myself.”
Mrs. Aintree held up her hand with the fused fingers. “Mr. Bowden, you let me know when you are ready, because I will be too!” Her face fell and the worry returned. “I don’t know about Tommy lifting the milk pail, but …”
“We’ll find someone,” Douglas assured her. “Give me another day or two to make things right in my surgery, and we’ll do the thing.” He turned his attention to Mrs. Tavish, who lay in bed, her face composed and the strain gone from her eyes. He even thought her face looked less pinched and hungry. “You’ll be up soon, too.”
She nodded and said something in Gaelic, which made Tommy beam. It needed no translation. Douglas nodded to them all and returned to the front room, where Mrs. Cameron held a slice of bread—glory, but it was still warm—slathered with plum jam. She held it out to him, and he took it, enjoying the bread and jam, but even more, the kindness.
When he finished, he left more coins on the table. “Keep up what you’re doing, Mrs. Cameron. Your kind of nursing is the true balm.”
Satisfied, he left the hovel, wondering at what point it had turned from a miserable pile of boards barely holding its own against rain and wind into a home. He took a good look and understood what had changed.
He had.
He sauntered slowly past the row of hovels, suddenly understanding that inside each wreck was a family. Some had already been to see him in his temporary surgery in kind Miss Grant’s sitting room. Many more probably needed his help, but pride and poverty kept them indoors.
“Wait up there, lad.”
