“Father,” he inquired, “where shall I have my lessons in this new town?”
“Why, my dear,” Brande replied mildly, “ I shall give them to you, as before.”
“No, Father. I want to go to school.”
Brande, despite himself, started slightly.
“But, Nicholas …”
“To school, Father … where I shall meet other boys, and play games … and perhaps make friends with them.”
There was a pause.
“Well …” said the Consul in a subdued voice, “we shall see about it, my dear.”
A short silence followed; then, as though nerving himself to speak, Nicholas gazed at the Consul and drew a quick, deep breath.
“There’s something else, Father. I’ve … I’ve had a letter from Mother.”
“What!”
The exclamation, torn it seemed from Brande’s heart, made Nicholas blink a little, but he went on, a trifle unsteadily.
“You knew I had written to her, didn’t you? What’s more …” With a courageous rush, the words came out: “I wish to see her … soon, Father … as soon as possible.…”
Speechless under this unexpected bludgeoning, Brande stared at his son. Before he could recover himself, Nicholas rushed on:
“After all, she is my mother.… I have a right to be with her. And she has a right to be with me. There are ships which go from this port to America … large ships … we passed one as we came in today. And I am quite big now, able to travel by myself.…”
For an instant a surge of the old violent anger swelled in the Consul’s breast like a serpent uncoiling itself to strike. But it was quickly over, lost in this new, this pitiful defencelessness—the certitude of his own vulnerability. He moistened his lips, at last found his tongue.
“Do you mean that she …”—he hesitated, almost gave way—“ that she has asked you to … to stay with her?”
“Yes, Father.”
“For how long?” He had to grope for the words.
From under the boy’s lashes slipped an indefinable look, a mixture of sadness, triumph, and inflexible obstinacy.
“That depends on you, Father,” he answered temperately, with unsuspected tact. “And on me, I suppose. But there is no doubt I should spend some time with Mother. That is only fair … to all of us.”
In an access of distress, Brande pressed his hand to his brow, masking his eyes with trembling fingers, as though retreating from some crude hallucination. It was true, in a sense, that he had suspected an exchange of letters between Nicholas and his mother, had even, in a numb and distant fashion, envisaged the danger of their reunion. Yet the sudden presentation of the fact overwhelmed him. Dully, in a kind of daze, he asked himself how it had come about, how from that first unheeded moment, twelve months before when he had engaged a simple Spanish lad to work his garden, this incredible result had sprung. Marion … his wife … resurrected from the dead and buried past … to share … perhaps even to steal the affections of his son.
It could not, must not be … no, no, he would never permit it. And yet, in the silent struggle which must now ensue, this gamble in which his sole remaining happiness was the stake, he could not infallibly foresee himself the victor.
“You do agree, don’t you?” Nicholas was saying, in that same tone, persuasive, yet tempered by a new stringency. “You promise to make arrangements?”
Another pause. The Consul, still with bent head, striving to stiffen his will, made a blurred murmur which might have passed for either refusal or assent.
A long silence followed. Then, straightening, freeing himself from the phantoms of his meditation, swallowing down his pain, Brande laid his damp hand, entreatingly, on his son’s arm.
“Nicholas,” he said, with some return of his lofty manner, “many things have come between us in these past months. Although, God knows, my conscience is clear, if I have been in any way to blame, I am sorry. But don’t let mere mischance … or unmeant mistakes … destroy our feeling for one another. We still have the future. If we try I am sure one day we can recapture … these intimacies of heart and mind … which I prize above all else.…”
Again, at the end of that sad monologue, there was a lengthy silence, during which, against the dark back-drop of the uncurtained window, the lights of the aurora flashed and flickered—a flight of souls across the inscrutable sky. The Consul sighed heavily, rose to his feet in a half-hearted fashion, and was moving in resignation towards the door, when, at a thought, he stopped short, turned wistfully, though not with hope, towards the bed.
“You wouldn’t …” As he spoke, in a low voice, he continued to watch his son with that sidelong anxious glance. “ You wouldn’t care for me … to read to you tonight?”
The boy withdrew his eyes. He was about to refuse, brusquely—the hard words had already formed on his lips. Then something overcame him. Abruptly he turned his head away.
“All right,” he muttered. “If you wish.”
A smile of gratification so strangely pathetic it was almost foolish spread over the Consul’s distraught and haggard face. Clumsily, with undue haste, he went into the other room, rummaged in his valise, returned with the familiar red leather-bound volume. He cleared his throat.
“Let us take the chapter that deals with the characteristics of some of the larger Audubon birds—it’s really most interesting … and instructive. Oh, it’s so long since we had this little treat together.”
Seating himself on the bed, he adjusted his spectacles, and in a suffused voice began to read:
“The turkey, a large domestic fowl, with a plumage which vies in splendour with the peacock, was in the first instance a native of the American continent, but has since been transported to many other lands. It is by nature a peculiar bird—assertive and self-sufficient—yet because of this inordinate vanity, liable to grave discomfitures …”
All at once he broke off.
Nicholas, turned sideways on the pillow, gazing with eager eyes at the woman’s photograph upon his bedside table, this strange yet sweet-faced woman who was his mother, who would soon take his head between her hands and press it to her breast, was not paying the least attention. He wasn’t listening … no, not listening to him at all.
Copyright
First published in 1950 by Gollancz
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © A. J. Cronin, 1950
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A. J. Cronin, The Spanish Gardener
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