CHAPTER XX
TITTY ALONE
Once the others had gone off to Wild Cat Island Titty was alone, other than Roger in his room, so Beckfoot was quiet. She and Dick had finished the breakfast washing up before they all left, and so there was only the putting away of crockery and cutlery for her to do. Daisy had asked her to lay the dining table for the evening meal she would cook on their return, except she had not told anyone what she was preparing; so Titty decided to wait for her to come back and ask her what she expected to see on the table.
Walking out of the kitchen in to the hallway, she climbed the stairs, made her way across the landing to the room next-door to what had once been Nancy and Peggy's but was now used by Nancy and Daisy. Through the open door of his room she could see Roger in an armchair looking out of the window, his breakfast tray finished with on the side-table beside the chair.
She knocked lightly on the door, only to warn him she was there. He turned.
"Hello Titty." Then he once more turned and looked out of the window. She entered the room, picked up the tray and went back to the landing and put it on a side table ready for when she went back down stairs. She returned to the room.
Moving the dressing table chair next to Roger's armchair she sat down.
"How are you today?"
"Good, good today." His reply was short and concise, since his return all the years before he had lost the ability to construct full sentences. What had they done to him? Even when Susan had taken over the bulk of his care from mother there was little they could find out about his ordeal in the Far East. Susan had even tried to use her position to find out more, but even that failed, until Roger himself could give an account of what had happened all those years ago it would remain a mystery.
She tried again to make conversation with him.
"Did you see the others?" From the window you could see the lawn and the boathouse.
"Yes, saw them all, good today." Titty had second thoughts about mentioning where they were going.
"Daisy's cooking tonight, a special meal for all of us."
"Good cook, good today." He continued to stare out of the window, Titty knew that this was not the best time of day for Roger, he would, she hoped, become more sociable by the evening, she suspected he might as he often did, so for now it would be best to leave him.
"I'm going downstairs, call me if you need anything." She got up and left the room, picking up the breakfast tray from the table on the landing and she went downstairs and returned it to the kitchen.
Other than the death of father, Roger's condition, still the same so many years after the war, was a great sadness to her and the others. In recent years, thanks to changes to his medication, he was far more sociable and easier to deal with than he had been in those early years. She felt sorry for Susan, who being single and retired from the navy, felt it was her duty to take over the care of him once mother had died. But thanks to Susan's forthrightness Roger now had regular therapy, which helped, but on a day-to-day basis they never really knew how he was going to be.
Titty thought of her own good fortune, surviving the war partly through a hedonistic lifestyle and the support of Dot, then years later realising the man of her dreams had been a childhood friend and the brother of her best friend. They had so far had fifteen years of happiness, but now the repercussions of Dot's life had to be dealt with; the money, and this was something she and Dick had very different views on.
She thought Dot deserved it, she deserved the happiness it could possibly bring having failed to find permanent happiness with Timothy. Yes, Timothy loved Dot, she knew that, but he had been weak, he should have dealt with that awful wife years ago, in fact he should never have married her. He really had been tricked, she knew at the time, but once again nobody else seemed to see what she did, but what could she have done? But why did Dot not want the money? Did she feel guilty? She surely didn't care, she had deceived the wife, or thought she had, for fifteen years, and that woman had much more money to waste.
A mutual acquaintance of Titty's and the wife, thankfully not a close one, had told her the woman was already spending and living a high-life with seemingly no issues of the possible suicide that she had spent years blackmailing Timothy with. Spend it Dot!
Dick, as Titty knew all too well, thought otherwise. Actually he disagreed that Dot should keep it and spend it, but had yet to come up with an alternative option for her. Titty wondered if deep down he really disapproved of Dot's affair, or was it just that it was his sister? Had it been anyone else maybe he would have looked upon it differently.
It was still quiet upstairs, Titty knew that Roger would still be watching out of the window, probably waiting for the return of the others.
Putting on the kettle she decided to make herself some tea, and while she waited for it to boil she went to the bookshelves in what was Captain Flint's study on the other side of the hallway. John and Peggy had kept the room pretty much as they had been when he was alive, so there were lots of old books on the various subjects he had been interested in all his life.
As Titty looked along the shelves one of the books caught her attention, it was slightly newer than all the others, the dust wrapper still intact and undamaged, she carefully eased it out from between the others. On the cover the title she thought she had read on the spine was confirmed
Mixed Moss by a Rolling Stone
She had never read it. This was despite her finding the manuscript of the book, well the trunk it was in, after the robbery at the houseboat many years before the first time they had visited the lake. Hiding in the Amazon near Cormorant Island she had watched the burglars ineptly bury it. Captain Flint had been grateful to her for the rest of his life, and particularly during the war years when he was very helpful to her with money. But she had never read the book. She couldn't even remember having ever seen it or being given a copy. She placed the book on the desk, scared of damaging it, opened it and began carefully turning each page. After the title page there was a dedication
To
Titty Walker
Without Whom This Would Have Never Been
She was shocked, in all the years she had never been told, did the others know? She sat down in the desk chair in the study just looking at it. She would read it, but before starting she got up and went back to the shelves, there were no other copies, she wondered if it was even still in print and if it was did the royalties go to Nancy and Peggy? She would ask them on their return from the island.