“I’ve planned it all,” said Lucilla. “You know that pretty little cottage near Hilary’s vicarage, Lavender Cottage, where Miss Marble lives? Miss Marble is getting too old, now, to do for herself, and she wants to go and live with her niece at Bournemouth. She’s given me the first refusal of her cottage. I thought it would be nice for Margaret to have just a small place to look after, for she has worked much too hard for us all in this great house. And Lavender Cottage has a lovely little garden for her. And then in my last illness she’ll have Hilary handy, only just across the road. And when I die she can either stay in the cottage or move across to Hilary, just as she fancies.”
“But Grandmother,” gasped Nadine, “won’t it break your heart to leave Damerosehay and all your treasures?”
“No,” said Lucilla. “It was for my children’s and my grandchildren’s sake—and especially for David’s sake—that I came to Damerosehay. For their sake I’ve lived here happily and for their sake I’ll leave happily. I’ll take a few of my things with me to Lavender Cottage and the rest I’ll leave here for David and his wife.”
“I only hope, Grandmother,” said Nadine, her pent-up pain surging out in sudden bitterness, “that this wife of David’s will appreciate Damerosehay and its treasures. You know, it’s all a bit out of date.”
It was a cruel thing to say, and the moment she had said it Nadine could have bitten her tongue out. She dared not look at Lucilla’s face, but she saw her brace her shoulders and saw her fingers fumbling over the raisins. It was a comfort to have Margaret appear at this moment with the eleven o’clock cups of tea. When she went away again they talked of other things until the raisins were done, after which they went indoors to wash their hands and Nadine went up to her room.
— 2 —
She stayed there writing letters until the sound of a car’s wheels crunching on the drive and then a wild commotion of barking dogs and shouting children told her that her family had arrived; even then she lingered a little that Lucilla might have the joy of welcoming them without her; that much reparation for her cruelty she could make. She gave them ten minutes and then she went downstairs.
They were all with Lucilla and the dogs under the ilex tree: George, Ben, Tommy, Caroline, the twins, Jeremy and Josephine, and Mary the Pekinese, and they were all, George included, behaving as though this were the first day of the holidays and they were just home from school, with Lucilla the center of their joy. . . . And Lucilla looked utterly, radiantly happy. . . . But not too happy to see Nadine approaching and to yield to her instantly the place that was hers by right.
“Look! There’s Mother!” said Lucilla, and put a twin off her knee and turned aside to pick up a fallen ball of wool.
And Nadine, after twenty-four hours’ rest from her family, looked upon them with a sudden warming of the cockles of her heart as they surged about her. She put her hands on George’s shoulders and raised her face for his kiss with sudden pride in him. He was a good-looking man. He had kept his upright trim soldierly figure, and his iron-gray hair was still thick, with a crisp wave in it. Though his face was tired and lined there was no slackness about it, and his eyes as they smiled down at her were infinitely patient and kind. He was a good man, and she remembered that it was for his solid worth that she had originally married him, and not for the sensitiveness and intuition that she now so unreasonably demanded of him because she loved them in David. And Ben had them. Turning to her eldest son, seeing his sudden smile flash out like light over his thin dark face, she noticed for the first time the likeness to David that Sally had realized almost at the first glance, and for the first time it occurred to her that she might in the future find great comfort in her eldest son.
And then the violence of one of Tommy’s bear hugs enveloped her and she forgot Ben. For Tommy was her favorite child. She adored his beauty, his vitality, and the love of adventure that he had inherited from her. His toughness, too, was to her a restful quality, making it impossible for her to hurt him, as she so often hurt Ben and Caroline. And the simplicity of his self-seeking, not tangled up, as was hers, with a hampering sense of duty, also rested her. You knew where you were with Tommy. He meant what he said and did what he wanted to do and hid from you nothing whatever of his likes, dislikes, and distresses. Not that he had many of the latter. His health was of the rudest, and nothing except the thwarting of his will had any power to put him out.
“Mother?” whispered Caroline, and Nadine put Tommy forcibly from her and turned to kiss her plain, precise, anxious little daughter. How she had come to have such a child she never could imagine. Caroline wasn’t like her, and she wasn’t, in looks, like George. She wasn’t like anybody in the family. She was a mixture of Queen Victoria when young and a tabby kitten, and Nadine could never manage to feel for her anything more than the natural affection of a mother. Though she found her very useful. Her conscientiousness and motherliness made her invaluable in caring for the twins.
The twins! She felt tired again at the very sight of them, though a glow of maternal pride went through her as she looked. They were taking no notice of her. Jerry had climbed up into the ilex tree, where he was greening the seat of his new turquoise-blue pants and making the most earsplitting noises. José, set down from her grandmother’s knee, had betaken herself to the iris bed with Mary in her arms.
“Jerry,” said George, “come down out of that tree and kiss your mother.”
“I can’t,” said Jerry. “I’m an air-raid siren.”
“Do as I tell you, Jerry,” thundered George, who expected military obedience from his children but seldom got it from his youngest. Jerry’s only reply was an excruciating up-and-down wail.
“I think, dear,” said Lucilla gently, “that you had better sound the all clear and come down. There’s raisin tart for lunch.”
Jerry shrieked wildly upon one note and fell from the tree, hooking his white shirt on a branch and ripping it from top to bottom. Arrived upon the ground he did not kiss his mother but made a beeline for the dining room.
“José!” commanded the thwarted George. “Kiss your mother.”
José raised her lovely little flower-like face above the spikes of the iris leaves and smiled at him tolerantly. “Just a minute,” she said. “Mary, stay there. You’re Moses. Lie down, Mary. Lie down. Mother, you’re Pharaoh’s daughter. Come and find Moses.”
Nadine found Moses and was kissed. José was on the whole an easier child than Jerry. If you did what she wanted then she would do what you wanted, whereas Jerry, like Tommy, regarded the attainment of his own will as a dead end.
As everybody was hungry and the food was good the luncheon hour was irradiated by the harmony that comes when everybody is doing what he wants to do. Lucilla waited until the children and George were well into their second helpings of pudding before making her next move for their good.
“I think Nadine looks rested already, don’t you, George?” she inquired.
George wiped his mustache with his napkin and considered his wife, the kind lines crinkling round his eyes. “Breakfast in bed?” he inquired.
“Margaret always spoils me,” said Nadine.
“I think, dear, that a rest on your bed would be nice for you this afternoon,” said Lucilla. “I’ll rest too, and Margaret has a meeting, I believe. George will look after the children, won’t you, George? You might run them over in the car to the Hard, dear, and look at the old inn I told you about, the Herb of Grace. It would be nice for the children to see it, for it has great historic interest.”
“Will tomorrow do as well?” inquired George, who had been driving all the morning and was tired. “Looks as though it might turn to rain this afternoon.”
“Oh, no, dear, the glass is quite high still, though rain is foretold for tomorrow. The children would enjoy it, I think. There’s not only the inn for them to see but dear Jill, who was so good to Ben and Tommy and Caroline when they were l
ittle. And then there’s the river. . . .”
At this there was a whoop from Tommy, and Ben’s face kindled with delight.
“Very well, Mother,” said George.
“I rather think I’ll come too,” said Nadine. “I should like to see Jill again. There are a few things I forgot to say.”
“You could write her a little note, dear,” said Lucilla. “And George will take it, won’t you, George? Nadine really does need the rest very badly.”
“By all means,” said George. “I’ll take the elder children and any number of notes, but I do jib at taking the twins. They get underfoot in the car to an astonishing degree. Couldn’t they play in the garden?”
“They could, dear,” said Lucilla, “but I think it would be paying a pretty attention to Jill to take them to see her, since she is to be their nanny.”
“Put her off entirely, I should think. Better keep ’em out of sight till she’s committed to it.”
“Oh, no, dear. Jill will love to see dear José and dear Jerry.” Lucilla’s hand trembled a little as she helped herself to toast. The way in which modern parents discussed their offspring in front of them chilled her to the bone, especially if the remarks were of a type to make the darlings think they weren’t wanted. Not that the twins appeared to have taken their father’s remarks to heart. They were completely absorbed, Jerry in raisin tart, and José in spilling lemonade down her blue smock with what appeared to be deliberate intention.
“I’ll take them,” said George resignedly. “You have a good rest, Nadine. I’ll manage.”
Nadine did not fight it. The memory of the cruel thing she had said was with her still. She did not know why Lucilla was so bent upon keeping her from seeing the Herb of Grace, but it was not in her to hurt Lucilla any more that day.
— 3 —
The twins had not taken their father’s remarks to heart for the very good reason that they never paid the slightest attention to anything that he said. They never paid any attention to anything anybody said. Separated by a considerable gap of years from Ben, Tommy, and Caroline, they lived together in the bright world of their own imaginings as though inside a rainbow soap bubble, and had only a casual glance to spare for the people and things outside. They were kindly disposed towards the people and things outside, but nothing and nobody was very real to them until he, she, or it had been drawn inside their bubble and metamorphized by their imaginations into something that though the same was different, like the beast in “Beauty and the Beast” when he became a handsome prince. When they were drawing someone into their bubble in this way, as a spider draws a fly into his web, they would become suddenly most endearing, as though a little sugar were necessary for the enticing of the victim. And then the latter would think himself popular with the twins. . . . But he would be entirely mistaken. . . . All the affection of which the twins were as yet capable was given only to each other.
But though they never listened to anything he said they liked their father. Of all the people outside the bubble he was the one to whom they were most kindly disposed. Not only was his bulk useful to them, as being easily transformable into that of an elephant, a policeman, or a gasoline pump, but it gave them a feeling of safety. He was the rock from whence they were hewn, and when some wind of the outside world caused the walls of their bubble to shiver and quake, presaging that dread day when the bubble would cave in altogether and stark reality be forever with them, they would seek shelter beside George like chickens beneath their mother’s wing. They did not feel this way about Nadine. To them she was still no more than that which she had been from the beginning, the source of nourishment. It was only at mealtimes that she was important. George unconsciously resented this on Nadine’s behalf and was always trying to make them pay a more courteous attention to their mother. But it was no good. The twins were at all times entirely allergic to good influences. A good influence is no good at all as a protagonist in an imaginative drama.
“I’m going to sit by Daddy!” yelled Jerry, as he came tearing down the stairs after lunch arrayed in the sunshine-yellow outfit which had replaced the ruin of the blue knickers and white shirt of the morning. The car, seen beyond the open front door, had become for him in the moment of descent down the stairs a goods train. Father was the driver, himself the stoker, José the coal, and Ben and Tommy and Caroline the goods.
“Me too!” yelled José, knowing without being told that she was now coal, and making the kind of noise that coal does make falling down a chute. She also, now, was arrayed in sunshine yellow. She had spilled lemonade on the blue smock with deliberate intention. If Jerry made a mess of himself she always made a mess of herself too, because she could not endure to be dressed in colors different from what her twin was wearing.
“Young toads! You sat by Daddy coming down,” said Tommy bitterly, he having earmarked this post of honor for himself, because by watching George he was teaching himself to drive the car. A smile flickered across Ben’s face, not his lovely living smile but the deprecating shadowy smile with which he confronted life’s minor disappointments. . . . One can see the country so much better from the front.
Caroline said nothing, but slipped her hand into her father’s. She wanted to sit by him because she loved him more than anyone in the world. George pressed her hand and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. Her devotion touched him very deeply, and because of it she was his favorite child. . . . Though he would have been considerably astonished had he known that her love for him was less that of a daughter for her father than of a mother for her child. . . . Lucilla, sitting on the hall seat with Nadine to see them off, and watching the little drama, was well content. Caroline was unlikely to marry, too plain, poor child; she would stay with George always and be the prop of his declining years. Lucilla felt that she could die happy, leaving George in Caroline’s capable hands.
“I’ll have my Elf,” said George, this being his particular name for his eldest daughter.
But at this the twins exploded into such a passion of grief and rage that the old house all but rocked with it. “Stop that noise at once!” shouted George, unheard above the din.
Nadine put her hands over her ears and hoped to goodness Jill would know what to do about these awful passions of the twins; they were simply getting on her nerves.
“In royal procession,” said Lucilla, who understood her grandchildren better than anyone, “the king and queen always sit in the back of the car with outriders to either side. Tommy and Ben would make splendid outriders. Sit to the left of them, Ben, and you’ll be the first to see the pond where the red and white water lilies grow, and then the turning to the Hard, and the river. Tommy, those woods to the right, opposite the pond, are still full of the shell cases they hid there in the war. Miles of them, they tell me, looking just like bones, rows and rows of vertebrae. You’re so fond of bones, dear. Caroline, my darling, give me a kiss before you go.”
Somehow, in spite of the noise, her gentle voice reached the ears of all five of her grandchildren. The twins’ yells ceased as though a tap had been turned off, and in no time at all the family had settled themselves in the car in the positions she had indicated. . . . Nadine dropped her hands thankfully to her lap, then picked up Mary, her Pekinese, and went upstairs to rest. Lying on her bed, with Mary stretched sweetly upon her chest, she fondled the little dog’s silky ears and thought how much easier dogs were than children, and wondered how on earth Lucilla did it, and if she’d be any more efficient as a grandmother than she was as a mother, until she fell asleep.
CHAPTER
5
— 1 —
George, as the car slid down the drive through the oak wood, felt suddenly happy and at peace. Those three worries that nagged at him night and day like toothache, the state of the world, his inability to be to his adored wife the husband that she wanted, and the unsatisfactory state of his own health that made him fear he might die and leave her to g
rapple singlehanded with all these children, found ease. The beauty of the spring flowers growing in the grass beneath the old oak trees, the scent of the gorse blowing in from the marshes, the warm sun, the sea wind, these things were not affected by the state of the world. Though apparently so fragile, their quality was more durable than the quality of anything that man could make, and encompassed by them George felt that he too would last out, at least until the children were well launched in life, if he could live always in this country air. The children! The success of his paternity was very obvious to him at this moment, and comforted him for his failure as a husband. Here was his funny little Elf beside him, giving him that loving trustful smile of hers whenever he looked her way, that smile that always made his protectiveness swell like a balloon inside his chest, and his two fine sons behind, still disgruntled because they had not been able to sit next to him. And the twins! Though their roars had ceased there was still a backwash of sobs from them (not grief-stricken now, merely automatic), and all because they had not been allowed to sit next to their father.
George squared his shoulders as they swung into the road and hummed “Onward, Christian Soldiers” through his teeth, as was his habit when happy. The twins bowed to right and left with shattering dignity. Caroline kept an eye on her father’s driving, for she did not really consider him safe with a car if she were not there to look after him, and was always careful to warn him of anything approaching round the corner. Tommy, who had decided to be a surgeon when he reached man’s estate, was occupying himself making a sketch of his stomach on the back of an envelope until such time as they reached the shell cases in the wood.
Only Ben was aware that this drive was not just another of the many drives they had with Father, but something that had a special significance. This wasn’t just a drive to see Jill and an old inn; it was a drive to some important change in their lives. He did not know how this idea had come to him. Perhaps from Grandmother. Ever since the days when as small children he and Tommy and Caroline had lived at Damerosehay he and Grandmother had been very close to each other. . . . He often knew what she was thinking about. . . . This sense of expectation thrilled him, keyed him up, gave him that glorious feeling of being in the right relation to everything and everybody near him, so that the touch of the sun on his face, the pressure of José’s warm little body against his thigh were not just sensation, but a claiming of him that locked him into his place in the pattern of things and banished that feeling of futility that so often made his life a misery to him. Happy and excited he flung an arm round little José and smiled down at her. . . . Outraged, José removed his arm, as though its presence about her were a sort of sacrilege, drew herself up stiff as a ramrod, and bowed to a rabbit scampering beneath the hedge. Beyond her, Jerry raised his hand to the salute as they passed a cow looking over a gate, and beyond Jerry, Tommy was gazing with knitted puzzled brows at the envelope held in his left hand, while with his right hand he violently prodded his chest as he tried to remember exactly what happened at the junction of the stomach and the small intestine. . . . Ben decided, not for the first time, that all his family were quite mad, and turned his attention, as Grandmother had advised, to the view.