A Winter's Child (77 page)

‘Yes.'

‘The trouble is, I miss him.'

She began to cry, making no noise about it, just tears gathering on her eyelashes and then spilling one after the other down her cheeks, a sorrow which she allowed to flow free for a moment and then, with a few quick smiles and a cambric handkerchief, put an end to it.

‘I shouldn't do that now, because of my baby. I love my baby – I can't tell you. I don't know what he looks like or who he is or whether he's a boy or a girl and I don't care – except, just perhaps, I might like him to be a girl.'

‘Why, Polly?'

‘Oh –' She shrugged, smiling brightly, ‘One grows up thinking of babies as boys, I don't know why. Copies of their fathers. That's what I thought this one would be at first – which turnsit all into too much of a guessing game, you must admit. And then I thought why not a girl, a copy of me, except
not
me. Not spoiled, I mean, and neglected both together, like me. I'll do a lot better than that for my daughter. And Arnold won't mind what I do. So far as he's concerned, a baby is just another toy for me to play with. And he's quite kind, really, you know.'

‘Yes.'

‘Claire – the thing is –'

‘Yes. What do you want?'

What was it that Arnold couldn't give her?

‘I'd quite like to see my mother. Do you think they'd throw me out if I turned up at High Meadows?'

‘Oh, Polly.' She shook her head. ‘I honestly don't know.'

‘With Toby gone she had no one to keep her informed on the state of play at High Meadows. She realized, not for the first time, that she missed him too. I never hear from them, Polly.'

‘Well, I'd have to be sure, you see. I couldn't risk Eunice trying to do me grievous bodily harm now, could I, because of the baby. And I don't want to upset mother and bring on another attack. But if she'd agree to see me and was really prepared for it –? I won't be in Faxby again until after the baby and – well – one never knows. I just have this superstitious feeling that if I don't see her now –. Well. You know what I mean. You couldn't go up there could you and just ask –?'

No. Claire could not. But Polly, who knew of no real reason against it, was not ready to leave it at that. While Arnold Crozier, whose policy it now was to please his ‘pretty Polly'in all things, expected everybody else to do likewise. It was quite natural that a girl in Polly's condition should want to see her mother. Arnold Crozier, in fact, would quite like to see Miriam himself, being strictly a man of peace when it came to family settlements and trust funds. Not that he stood in the slightest need of Polly's money. Far from it. Anyone could see that just by looking at her hands. But since the money was there, it offended his commercial instincts just to ignore it. Might it not be a sensible idea to settle it on Polly's first child? But, most of all, he didn't want his ‘pretty Polly' to be upset. In her condition, was it wise? Did Claire have some definite reason for her reluctance to visit High Meadows? Or was it simply – caprice? And one could not really afford to be capricious – my dear young lady – when dealing with
his
wife.

‘I think you have to go,' said Kit.

‘No I don't. You can tell him to go to Hell.'

‘He has nothing to do with why I think you ought to go.'

For a moment she was thoroughly dismayed.

‘I've never been sure you knew, Kit.'

‘About Benedict Swanfield. Yes. I know.
Not
the best move you ever made.'

‘Call it battle fatigue –“neurasthenia” since I was nursing officers.'

‘All right. Now go and face up to him. And while you're about it, ask him to release your capital to invest in Wansfell Howe.'

Suddenly she was laughing, as thoroughly delighted as she had been downcast a moment before.

Although now, of course, she had no choice.

No time to waste either in brooding about it and no point in telephoning for an appointment since Miriam and Eunice were both permanently at home. Yet she telephoned, leaving a message for Benedict to warn him of her intention to call.

His car was in the drive and, parking John David's Talbot beside it, she felt herself to be liquefying almost with nerves. She had hoped he would not be there. Yet the hope itself was an act of self-betrayal. Was it also a breach of faith with Kit? Very likely. But she wasn't sure how much Kit would mind about that. He had not asked her to love him with passion, at a level where her mind could be uplifted or cast down, irretrievably shattered or made gloriously whole by his absence or his presence. Kit would not be comfortable with that kind of love. Was she? What he asked, and what he gave, was a stimulating, free-wheeling companionship, enlivened by shared labours and plenty of them, spiced by imaginative, good-humoured love-making and plenty of that too. Her shoulder to the wheel alongside his.
His
wheel perhaps, but always a bracing, invigorating experience to take her turn at steering it, as she had been doing these past few months, devoting every scrap of her spare time and energy to the fixtures and fittings of Wansfell Howe. Life with a good friend, the best friend one had, who happened also to be one's lover. That was Kit. And in the sense of enjoyment, straightforward pleasure, a sense of enterprise and a sense of fun, she had been happier, far happier, with him than with Benedict. Or with Paul. With anyone.

The butler, a new man, received her as a stranger, informing her with a deference his predecessor would never have accorded to ‘young Mrs Jeremy'that ‘madam'would see her in the drawing room, after which Mr Swanfield asked if she would spare him a few moments in his study.

She nodded, her smile going in and out like a flickering candle, aware already that the house was no longer the same. Not neglected precisely, polished and dusted as usual every morning, but uncared for, lived in only in patches, sick women in their sick rooms, Benedict behind his study door, separate meals on separate trays, uprooted children for whom the servants, growing idle in a household without supervision, would do the minimum. The plants on the hall table all dry and dead. High Meadows, Miriam's luxurious, carefully constructed nest, her life work, acquiring the stale air and odour of an impersonally maintained institution.

But Miriam herself, even in defeat, had retained too much cleverness to greet Claire with reproaches, as Dorothy might have done, knowing full well that an instant tirade of ‘So you've condescended to come and see me have you? High time. How is it you haven't come before?' would not produce the desired effect. Satisfying, perhaps, to one's understandably hurt feelings. But not wise. Therefore, she smiled and said in a small breathless voice which was now, indeed, all she could manage, ‘My dear – I am so
glad
to see you.' She meant it. She had never felt so desperate in her life.

Illness had changed her. Claire had expected that. But it did not lessen the shock of finding Miriam so small and so old, just a child's frail body dressed up in a dowager's lace
peignoir,
sizes too large, the wedding ring of an eighteen-year-old bride slipping loose on a finger as brittle as a dried-out twig, a face emptied of its vivacity, drained of all its tea-rose softness and colour, a mind which had concentrated all its artful scheming into the one frantic effort to get well enough and strong enough to scheme again.

‘Pretty Mimi'no more.

Claire sat beside her and held her hand, aware, once again, of the changes in the room around her, Miriam's drawing room, the warmly beating heart of her house, in spiritual dust-covers now, the air chill with disuse, vases once vibrant with every season's flowers empty and slightly askew, ornaments not quite in their accustomed places, some of them no longer there at all, several pictures hanging at an awkward angle and left there by a maid whose job it was to dust, not to set the family portraits straight.

Claire, knowing how this must irritate Miriam, got up and straightened them.

‘Thank you, dear. How kind. I am quite helpless as you see.'

But relatively serene until Eunice came into the room, or a caricature of her, Eunice who had never fitted easily into her clothes now looking as if they were pinned on her and more than likely to come apart at their seams, Eunice who had always been flustered bringing with her now such a seaweed trail of clinging, crawling anxiety – of frenzied search and frantic hurry, of turning out drawers, rooting through cupboards like a burrowing rabbit – that Claire's own nerves were at once affected by the strain.

So were Miriam's.

‘There
you are, mother.'

Miriam shuddered and closed her eyes.

‘Eunice – how are you?' Claire did not know what else to say.

‘Extremely busy.'

‘Oh-good.'

‘Yes, there is so much to do.'

And she began to wander around the room, moving ornaments a fraction this way or that, looking under the cushions, twitching the curtains, suddenly pouncing on a pile of newspapers she had in fact brought into the room herself and taking them to the window-seat where she proceeded to hold each one up to the light, checking the contents of one page against another with enormous concentration. What was she looking for? Reasons? A purpose? Forgiveness? And she would need a great deal of that.

No one had ever paid any special attention to Eunice but now she filled the room, overpowering it with the rustling of newsprint, the acrid weight of her sickness, a quicksand into which Claire's sound mind and Miriam's failing nerve were slowly absorbed, smothered, sucked in.

Miriam's hand descended on Claire's arm, her mouth approaching Claire's ear so that she was suddenly surrounded by Miriam's ageing, medicated breath.

‘She follows me everywhere,' hissed Miriam, a prisoner whispering hoarse complaints behind her gaoler's back. ‘And she follows Benedict too. She's always waiting in the hall to pounce on him, or else she's
hovering
outside my bedroom door – I can hear her there, breathing and creaking the boards, even when I've told Nurse not to let her in. Elvira Redfearn thinks she ought to go away somewhere for a while –
you
know. But then – what am I to do with those boys? It's too much for me, Claire. And they get on Benedict's nerves so much and he lets it show, which makes her cry – and cry – you wouldn't believe how much. My goodness. And Nola still bringing those odd people to the kitchen door, so that the servants are always leaving, or threatening to leave which is just as bad. And I can't interview staff any more. Benedict managed about the butler, but it takes a mistress to choose maids, if you see what I mean – and I'm not up to it. The house is going to rack and ruin. I lie in bed listening to it happen. Is it any wonder that I'm not getting on as fast as I should?'

Noise erupted through the hall, heavily shod feet scarring the precious parquet, a sound of scuffling and giggling, a shout of warning, ‘Look out, Simon'and then a sizeable crash of china: a guilty silence.

Miriam closed her eyes again and shuddered.

‘Eunice –,' she said feebly.

But Eunice, her own mind intent on the perusal of last week's newspapers, paid no heed.

‘Eunice – the boys.'

What boys? She raised blank, lack-lustre eyes. She had spent years of her life, the greater part of it, caring for them, planning for them, defending them. But it had been Justin who had handed her Toby's letter. Justin and Simon together who had made it clear to her that they expected their own lives to go happily on and hadn't seen the need – as she had – to give up their summer holiday. Even the little boys had been difficult about not going to Grange-over-Sands. She knew they were, all four of them, quite ready to forget Toby. In which case, why shouldn't she forget them?

Let Benedict handle them.

Let him handle Nola too who, just then, came tearing up the drive in her car, her arrival heralded by the coughing and sneezing of her engine and a great slamming of doors as she Sew through the house, tweed-suited and purposeful. ‘Miriam,' she shouted, appearing briefly in the doorway, ‘there's broken glass all over the hall. One of those little monsters again.'

Eunice, who had just decided she did not like her sons, now burst into tears.

‘Control yourself,' said Nola who, compassion being a tool of her new trade, had none to spare. ‘Think it over carefully, Eunice, and you'll see, dear, that although you may be crying because you have lost your shoes – as it were – there are a great many, all around you, who have lost their feet.'

Nola smiled briskly, her bearing erect, soldierly almost now that the stalwart Miss Pickles was due for retirement, leaving a place in All Saints'Passage which would have to be officially filled. Nola wanted that place and in her efforts to obtain it seemed to think it necessary – as Miss Drew had playfully pointed out – not only to apply for Miss Pickles'job but to
become
Miss Pickles.

‘That's the spirit, Eunice.'

Eunice continued to cry, rather more loudly, dropping her newspapers all over the window-seat and knocking over a plant-pot.

‘Would you tell Nurse,' murmured Miriam, ‘that I would like to go back to my room.'

Claire spent a mournful half-hour upstairs with Miriam as she was tucked into bed by a nurse who treated her like a child and, therefore, wished her simply to ‘eat up her supper', ‘take her nice medicine', ‘have a little sleep', ‘be good and
quiet.
‘

‘I do believe we've tired ourselves out,' said Nurse, smiling knowingly at Claire in a manner which told her that, in Nurse's opinion, she was entirely to blame for it.

‘Just a moment,' she said, indicating by her coolness that she would leave when she was ready. Although it did not take her long to ascertain that while Miriam herself would be overjoyed to see Polly again, it seemed hardly fair to Eunice. Hardly safe either, with Polly, regrettably, in
her
condition and Eunice, even more regrettably, in hers. Perhaps when she was better she could go herself to Bradford or Manchester or wherever it was that Polly was living and pay a visit. How terrible that she didn't even know her own daughter's address. Her favourite daughter too.