There stood my grandfather with his baby in his arms.
Seeing his servants standing idly about, he glared at them and his voice boomed out: ‘Is a baby left to starve in this house?’
From that day on George Angelfield took personal charge of his daughter. He fed her, bathed her and the rest, moved her cot into his room in case she cried of loneliness in the night, fashioned a papoose so that he could take her riding, read to her (business letters, the sports pages and romantic novels), and shared all his thoughts and plans with her. He behaved, in short, as though Isabelle was a sensible, pleasant companion and not a wild and ignorant child.
Perhaps it was her looks that made her father love her. Charlie, the neglected older child, nine years Isabelle’s senior, was his father’s son: a lumpen, pasty, carrot-topped boy, with heavy feet and a slow expression. But Isabelle inherited her looks from both her parents. The ginger hair shared by her father and brother was burnished in the girl child to a rich, glossy auburn. The pale Angelfield complexion was stretched, in her, over fine French bones. She had the better chin from the father’s side, and the better mouth from the mother’s. She had Mathilde’s slanting eyes and long lashes, but when they lifted, it was to reveal the astonishing emerald irises that were the emblem of the Angelfields. She was – physically at least – perfection itself.
The household adapted to the unusual state of affairs. They lived with the unspoken agreement to behave as though it were entirely normal for a father to dote on his baby daughter. It was not to be considered unmanly, ungentlemanly, or ridiculous that he kept her constantly by him.
But what about Charlie, the baby’s brother? He was a slow-witted boy whose mind turned in circles around his few obsessions and preoccupations, but who could not be prevailed upon to learn new ideas or think logically. He ignored the baby, and welcomed the changes her arrival introduced to the household. Before Isabelle there had been two parents to whom the Missus might report instances of bad behaviour, two parents whose reactions were impossible to foresee. His mother had been an inconsistent disciplinarian: sometimes having him spanked for bad behaviour, at other times merely laughing. His father, although stern, was distracted, and the punishments he intended were frequently forgotten. Catching sight of the boy though, he would have the vague sense that there might be some misdemeanour to correct, and he would spank the child, thinking that if it wasn’t actually owed it would do in advance for next time. This taught the boy a good lesson: he stayed out of the way of his father.
With the coming of the baby Isabelle, all this changed. Mamma was gone, and Papa as good as, too busy with his little Isabelle to concern himself with hysterical reports from housemaids about mice roasted with the Sunday joint or pins pressed by malicious hands deep into the soap. Charlie was free to do as he pleased, and what pleased him was removing floorboards at the top of the attic stairs and watching the housemaids tumble down and sprain their ankles.
The Missus could scold, but then she was only the Missus, and in this new, free life he could maim and wound to his heart’s content, in the certain knowledge that he would get away with it. Consistent adult behaviour is said to be good for children, and consistent neglect certainly suited this child, for in these early years of his semi-orphanhood Charlie Angelfield was as happy as the day is long.
George Angelfield’s adoration of his daughter persisted through all the trials a child can inflict on a parent. When she started to talk he discovered her to be preternaturally gifted, a veritable oracle, and he began to consult her on everything, until the household came to be run according to the caprices of a three-year-old child.
Visitors were rare, and as the household descended from eccentricity into chaos, they became rarer. Then the servants began to complain amongst themselves. The butler had left before the child was two. Cook put up for a year longer with the irregular mealtimes that the child demanded, then the day came when she too handed in her notice. When she left she took the kitchen girl with her, and in the end it was left to the Missus to ensure the provision of cake and jelly at odd hours. The housemaids felt under no obligation to occupy themselves with chores: not unreasonably they believed that their small salaries barely compensated them for the cuts and bruises, sprained ankles and stomach upsets they incurred owing to Charlie’s sadistic experiments. They left, and were replaced by a succession of temporary helps, none of whom lasted long. Finally even the temporary helps were dispensed with.
By the time Isabelle was five the household had shrunk to George Angelfield, the two children, the Missus, the gardener and the gamekeeper. The dog was dead, and the cats, fearful of Charlie, kept outdoors, taking refuge when the weather turned cold in the garden shed.
If George Angelfield noticed their isolation, their domestic squalor, he did not regret it. He had Isabelle: he was happy.
If anyone missed the servants it was Charlie. Without them he was lost for subjects for his experiments. Scouting around for someone to hurt, his eye fell, as it was bound sooner or later to do, on his sister.
He couldn’t afford to make her cry in the presence of his father, and since she rarely left her father’s side, Charlie was faced with a difficulty. How to get her away?
By enticement. Whispering promises of magic and surprise Charlie led Isabelle out of the side door, along one end of the knot garden, between the long borders, out through the topiary garden and along the beech avenue to the woods. There was a place Charlie knew. An old hovel, dank and windowless, a good place for secrets.
What Charlie was after was a victim, and his sister, walking behind him, smaller, younger and weaker, must have seemed ideal. But she was odd and she was clever, and things did not turn out exactly as he expected.
Charlie pulled his sister’s sleeve up and drew a piece of wire, orange with rust, along the white inside of her forearm. She stared at the red beads of blood that were welling up along the livid line, then turned her gaze upon him. Her green eyes were wide with surprise and something like pleasure. When she put out her hand for the wire he gave it to her automatically. She pulled up her other sleeve, punctured the skin and with application drew the wire down almost to her wrist. Her cut was deeper than the one he had given her, and the blood rose up at once and trickled. She gave a sigh of satisfaction as she looked at it and then licked the blood away. Then she offered the wire back to him, and motioned to him to pull up his sleeve.
Charlie was bewildered. But he dug the wire into his arm because she wanted it, and he laughed through the pain.
Instead of a victim Charlie had found himself the strangest of conspirators.
Life went on for the Angelfields, sans parties, sans hunt meetings, sans housemaids and sans most of the things that people of their class took for granted in those days. They turned their backs on their neighbours, allowed their estate to be managed by the tenants, and depended on the good will and honesty of the Missus and the gardener for those day-to-day transactions with the world that were necessary for survival.
George Angelfield forgot about the world, and for a time the world forgot about him. And then they remembered him. It was to do with money.
There were other large houses in the vicinity. Other more or less aristocratic families. Among them was a man who took great care of his money. He sought out the best advice, invested large sums where wisdom dictated and speculated small sums where the risk of loss was greater but the profit, in the case of success, high. The large sums he lost completely. The small ones went up – moderately. He found himself in a pickle. In addition he had a lazy, spendthrift son and a goggle-eyed, thick-ankled daughter. Something had to be done.
George Angelfield never saw anyone, hence he was never offered financial tips. When his lawyer sent him recommendations he ignored them, and when his bank sent him letters he did not write back. As a consequence of this, the Angelfield money, instead of expending itself chasing one deal after another, lounged in its bank vault and grew fat.
Money talks. Word got out.
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‘Doesn’t George Angelfield have a son?’ asked the wife of the near bankrupt. ‘How old would he be now? Twenty-six?’
And if not the son for their Sybilla, then why not the girl for Roland? thought the wife. She must be reaching a marriageable age by now. And the father was known to dote on her: she would not come empty-handed.
‘Nice weather for a picnic,’ she said, and her husband, in the way of husbands, did not see the connection.
The invitation languished for a fortnight on the drawing room windowsill, and it might have remained there until the sun bleached the colour out of the ink, had it not been for Isabelle. One afternoon, at a loss for something to do, she came down the stairs, puffed out her cheeks in boredom, picked the letter up and opened it.
‘What’s that?’ said Charlie.
‘Invitation,’ she said. ‘To a picnic.’
A picnic? Charlie’s mind turned it over. It seemed strange. But he shrugged and forgot it.
Isabelle stood up and went to the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To my room.’
Charlie made to follow her, but she stopped him. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
He complained, took a handful of her hair and ran his fingers over the nape of her neck, finding the bruises he had made last time. But she twisted away from him, ran upstairs and locked the door.
An hour later, hearing her come down the stairs, he went to the doorway. ‘Come to the library with me,’ he asked her.
‘No.’
‘Then come to the deer park.’
‘No.’
He noticed that she had changed her clothes. ‘What do you look like that for?’ he said. ‘You look stupid.’
She was wearing a summer dress that had belonged to her mother, made of a flimsy white material and trimmed with green. Instead of her usual tennis shoes with their frayed laces, she had put on a pair of green satin sandals a size too big – also their mother’s – and had attached a flower in her hair with a comb. She had lipstick on.
His heart darkened. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘To the picnic.’
He grabbed her by the arm, dug his fingers in, and pulled her towards the library.
‘No!’
He pulled her harder.
She hissed at him, ‘Charlie, I said no!’
He let her go. When she said no like that, he knew it meant no. He had found that out in the past. She could be in a bad temper for days.
She turned her back on him and opened the front door.
Full of anger, Charlie looked for something to hit. But he had already broken everything that was breakable. The things that were left would do more harm to his knuckles than he could do to them. His fists slackened; he followed Isabelle out of the door and to the picnic.
The young people at the lakeside made a pretty picture from a distance in their summer frocks and white shirts. The glasses they held were filled with a liquid that sparkled in the sunlight and the grass at their feet looked soft enough to go barefoot. In reality, the picnickers were sweltering beneath their clothes, the champagne was warm, and if anyone had thought to take their shoes off they would have had to walk through goose droppings. Still, they were willing to feign jollity, in the hope that their pretence would encourage the real thing.
A young man at the edge of the crowd caught sight of movement up near the house. A girl in a strange outfit accompanied by a lump of a man. There was something about her.
He failed to respond to his companion’s joke; the companion looked to see what had caught his attention and fell silent in turn. A group of young women, eternally alert to the doings of young men, even when the young men are behind their backs, turned to see what had caused the sudden silence. And there followed a sort of ripple effect, whereby the entire party turned to face the newcomers, and seeing them, were struck dumb.
Across the wide lawn walked Isabelle.
She neared the group. It parted for her as the sea parted for Moses, and she walked straight through it to the lake edge. She stood on a flat rock that jutted out over the water. Someone came towards her with a glass and a bottle, but she waved them away. The sun was bright, it had been a long walk and it would take more than champagne to cool her down.
She took off her shoes, hung them in a tree and, arms outstretched, let herself fall into the water.
The crowd gasped and, when she rose to the surface, water streaming from her form in ways that recalled the birth of Venus, they gasped again.
This plunge into the water was another thing people remembered years later, after she left home for the second time. They remembered, and shook their heads in a mix of pity and condemnation. The girl had had it in her all that time. But on the day it was put down to sheer high spirits, and people were grateful to her. Single-handedly Isabelle brought the whole party to life.
One of the young men, the boldest, with fair hair and a loud laugh, kicked off his shoes, removed his tie and leapt into the lake with her. A trio of his friends followed. In no time at all, the young men were all in the water, diving, calling, shouting and outdoing each other in athleticism and splash.
Quick thinking, the girls saw there was only one way to go. They hung their sandals in the branches, put on their most excited faces, and splashed into the water, uttering cries that they hoped would sound abandoned, while doing their utmost to prevent any excessive dampening of their hair.
Their efforts were in vain. The men had eyes only for Isabelle.
Charlie did not follow his sister into the water. He stood, a little further off, and watched. With his red hair and his pallor, he was a man made for rain and indoor pursuits. His face had gone pink in the sun, and his eyes stung as the sweat from his brow ran into them. But he hardly blinked. He could not bear to take his eyes off Isabelle.
How many hours later was it that he found himself with her again? It seemed an eternity. Enlivened by Isabelle’s presence the picnic went on much longer than anybody had expected, and yet it seemed to the other guests to have passed in a flash, and they would all have stayed longer if they could. The party broke up with consoling thoughts of other picnics to come, a round of promised invitations and damp kisses.
When Charlie approached her, Isabelle had a young man’s jacket arranged around her shoulders and the young man himself in the palm of her hand. Not far off a girl loitered, uncertain whether her presence was wanted or not. Plump, plain and female, the resemblance she nonetheless bore to the young man made it clear she was his sister.
‘Come on,’ Charlie said roughly to his sister.
‘So soon? I thought we might go for a walk. With Roland and Sybilla.’ She smiled graciously at Roland’s sister, and Sybilla, surprised at the unexpected kindness, beamed back.
Charlie could get his own way with Isabelle at home – sometimes – by hurting her, but in public he didn’t dare, and so he buckled under.
What happened during that walk? There were no witnesses to the events that took place in the forest. For want of witnesses there was no gossip. At least, not at first. But one does not have to be a genius to deduce from later events what took place under the canopy of summer foliage that evening.
It would have been something like this:
Isabelle would have found some pretext for sending the men away.
‘My shoes! I left them in the tree!’ And she’d have sent Roland to fetch them, and Charlie too, for a shawl of Sybilla’s or some other item.
The girls settled themselves on a patch of soft ground. In the men’s absence they waited in the growing darkness, drowsy from champagne, breathing in the remains of the sun’s heat and with it the beginning of something darker, the forest and the night. The warmth of their bodies began to drive the moisture from their dresses, and as the folds of fabric dried they detached themselves from the flesh beneath and tickled.
Isabelle knew what she wanted. Time alone with Roland. But to get it, she had to be
rid of her brother.
She began to talk, while they lolled back against a tree. ‘So which is your beau, then?’
‘I don’t really have a beau,’ Sybilla admitted.
‘But you should.’ Isabelle rolled on her side, took the feathery leaf of a fern and let it run over her lips. Then she let it run over the lips of her companion.
‘That tickles,’ Sybilla murmured.
Isabelle did it again. Sybilla smiled, eyes half shut and did not stop her when Isabelle ran the soft leaf down her neck and round the neckline of her dress, paying special attention to the swell of the breasts. Sybilla emitted a semi-nasal giggle.
When the leaf ran down to her waist and beyond, Sybilla opened her eyes.
‘You’ve stopped,’ she complained.
‘I haven’t,’ said Isabelle. ‘It’s just that you can’t feel it through your dress.’ And she pulled up the hem of Sybilla’s dress and and played the fronds along her ankles. ‘Better?’
Sybilla reclosed her eyes.
From the somewhat thick ankle the green plume found its way to a distinctly chunky knee. An adenoidal murmur escaped from between Sybilla’s lips, though she did not stir until the fronds came to the very top of her legs, and she did not sigh until Isabelle replaced the greenery with her own tender fingers.
Isabelle’s sharp eyes did not once leave the face of the older girl, and the moment the girl’s eyelids gave the first hint of a flicker, she drew her hand away.
‘Of course,’ she said, very matter of fact, ‘it’s a beau you need really.’
Sybilla, roused unwillingly from her incomplete rapture was slow to catch on. ‘For the tickling,’ Isabelle had to explain. ‘It’s much better with a beau.’
And when Sybilla asked her newfound friend, ‘How do you know?’ Isabelle had the answer all ready: ‘Charlie.’
By the time the boys returned, shoes and shawl in hand, Isabelle had achieved her purpose. Sybilla, a certain dishevelment apparent in her skirt and petticoat, regarded Charlie with an expression of warm interest.