From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 39)

I have the beginnings of a cold and am due to arrive at White Orchards this weekend. It is the celebration of Hope’s third birthday and I am in two minds about whether to go or not.

It is most unlike me to come down with an ailment. I am far more likely to be shot, stabbed, or the victim of a half-successful strangulation than I am to be brought low by a sniffle. I keep physically fit, and while not as agile as man in his early twenties, I temper my age (early thirties, though I rarely admit this) with my experience. Overall, I consider myself a prime specimen of manhood and, as such, I should not succumb to sickness!

Worse still, if I arrive with a mild cold, Euphemia will attempt to coddle me and take care of me. A practice I find entirely revolting. Previously, when we were in the field, and I’d sustained an injury, she might nag me to ensure I’d not reopen a dressed wound, or even, when I felt I was far too busy to bother, forcibly tighten my bandages. But she didn’t fuss. If I sneezed, she would say ‘Bless you’ and leave it at that.

Now, caring for a husband who has becoming increasingly an invalid, and having a small child who, like most small children, goes from one illness to another with carefree ease, she has become a fusser.

Once, when it was cold and wet out, she even put a hot water pig in my bed, as if I were a child and she were a doting mother. She knows better than anyone that I can weather the vilest of environments, as we have often done so together. The next thing that’ll happen is that she’ll send the maid to my room with hot milk when I retire, and while I have no objection to a hot maid, I draw the line at hot cow extract.

On more than one occasion I have had to sternly remind her that before her entry into my life I managed to take care of myself - and still remain up to the task. Indeed, since I was nine years old, when my mother passed away, I had been sheltered and fed, but no one was particularly interested in my health.

I can’t bring to mind exactly when it happened, but I do recall the first time Euphemia enquired into my wellbeing. I felt rather touched. It was a novel query, and I took it to mean our professional relationship was well forged. Oh, but I should have knocked it on the head there and then. Give Euphemia an inch and she will take the whole bloody yard.

But Hope will only be three once. I have also invested a ridiculous amount of money in a fine stuffed bear that I hope she will heartily approve of. In fact, I am rather looking forward to the expression on her face when she opens my parcel. Euphemia will have bought her something educational, and Bertram will doubtless have invested in a first edition of something, for when she is older (I sometimes wonder if Bertram was every really a child himself). So, really, I am the only one who will be giving a gift she will actually enjoy. Damn it! I shall have to go. But if there is so much as a whiff of solicitude for my wellbeing, I shall become the most insufferable house guest until she desists.

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