The Solitary Child Read online

  Before we went back to the house James took me to the garage and switched on the light. It was the old stable; the wooden partitions had been knocked down but the place still smelt of leather and hay. There were three cars, the white, long-bodied Delage we used every day, a Land Rover for driving across the fields, and an ancient, upright car, painted yellow, with a wooden steering-wheel. James said it was a 1905 Darracq; he patted its sides and rubbed lovingly at a tiny smear on the brass.

  “She’s a beauty,” he said, “aren’t you, Lily? We must take a photo of the missus sitting at the wheel in an Edwardian hat.”

  We ate dinner by the fire and watched a quiz on television which James liked and I hated. We talked rather fast and laughed rather too much, as if happiness had suddenly become precious and precarious, a tight-rope over a pit of solitude and fear.

  Chapter Six

  Maggie said, “Do dogs know that they’re dogs?”

  Her face was serious. Leaning against the window of the cowshed, she played with a strand of her hair. The Boxer bitch jumped up at me and tried to lick my face. The cow rattled its chain and lunged at the milking thing: the nozzles slipped and air rushed into the vacuum with a sucking sound. Evans appeared from the far end of the shed and adjusted the machine.

  “I’m sorry, it was the dog.” I dragged at its collar and pushed it out into the yard.

  “Shouldn’t be allowed in the shed,” he grumbled, and then gave me a reluctant smile. “You’re not doing so bad for a beginner.”

  Maggie repeated her question. I dabbled my hands in the bucket and dried them slowly, thinking it over.

  “It depends what you mean. If you mean, ‘do they know they’re not human, but a lesser order’ …”

  But she had lost interest. “Ann’s here. She says she wants to see you, but I think she came to see Uncle Cyril.”

  I ignored the archness. “I’d better come, then. What does he say about your pony? Will you be able to ride soon?”

  “I don’t know,” she said lightly.

  A week ago, I might have said, “But you were so anxious to ride.” Now I knew that it was useless to reproach her. Her enthusiasms were short-lived and fragile. She painted quite cleverly but she never finished a picture. She played the piano intelligently but she practised spasmodically and her technique was bad. She was anxious to be helpful but she would abandon small, domestic jobs in the middle. I would find her, duster in hand, sitting quite still on the window seat, staring out at the sky.

  I saw that this morning she had dressed herself neatly and brushed her hair; I took a certain pride in the achievement. I had pinned a notice on the door of her room with printed instructions for the morning ritual: Wash, Brush Teeth, Dress, Comb Hair. Before I did this she had, not infrequently, appeared at breakfast in her vest.

  She was always inconsequential but somehow it was never an irritation. She was so lovely that sometimes she seemed less a part of life than a painting, each pose was perfect. She was young for her age, sunny-tempered and gentle. Occasionally she acted and spoke with embarrassing directness.

  Now she ran ahead of me, up to Ann, who was standing by the stable door, talking to Cyril. She was smiling at something he had said; the smile smoothed the tired lines from her face and made her look young and pretty.

  Maggie said, in a clear, high treble, “Is Uncle Cyril asking you to marry him again?”

  Cyril looked up from the pony’s leg and grinned. The tufted brows arched comically above his eyes.

  “It’s you, Monster, is it?” He winked at Ann, who stared carefully at her feet, the slow tide of colour rising up her face and neck. Then he changed the subject. “Harriet, I want to see that husband of yours. I fancy he may be having a bit of trouble with his pigs.” He added delicately, “Evans spoke to me about it.”

  I hesitated. James had been quiet at breakfast. When I told him Cyril was coming to see Maggie’s pony he had said that he didn’t want Sully poking about his pig-styes.

  I said, “I don’t think there’s anything the matter with them.”

  He looked annoyed. “You mean James wants to keep it quiet? It may not be anything, but there’s swine fever at the other end of the valley. Got to be careful.”

  “You’d better talk to him,” I said warily. “He’s putting the milk through the cooler, I think.”

  “All right.” He didn’t smile. “I’ll have a word with him.”

  He patted the pony’s rump and walked towards the yard.

  Ann said, “I came to get some eggs. Mrs. Evans isn’t around, is she?”

  “She’s gone to town,” Maggie said. “I’ll get them for you. How many do you want? Have you got a basket?”

  “A dozen. It’s in the car.” Ann smiled; it was impossible to scold anyone so gay and obliging. She ran off, her legs long and slim in navy jeans.

  We looked after her. “She’s sweet,” I said.

  Ann grunted non-committally and in the perverse way with which one approaches the wrong person on a difficult subject, I said:

  “I wish she got on better with James.”

  She looked at me with her prominent, blue eyes. “What’s the trouble?” She sounded as if she didn’t very much want to know, then, as if conscious of her unresponsiveness, added, “Does he bully her?”

  I explained. There was nothing positive in his attitude towards the child, no dislike, merely an apparent absence of feeling. When we were all together, he became silent. If she spoke to him directly, he would answer her, otherwise he behaved as if she were not there. Sometimes she would go about the farm with him and he accepted her presence as he would have accepted a dog’s. He never obviously avoided her, but he never suggested there was anything she might like to do or see. I found myself holding the balance between them like a juggler. At mealtimes, I talked rather too much to cover up the leaden silence, using exaggerated words and phrases to create a kind of spurious excitement, often near to tears. I had grown nervy and inclined to fidget with my hands and told myself that it was my pregnancy.

  I said, “It’s not too bad at the moment because she goes to bed as soon as we’ve had dinner. The doctor says she needs a lot of sleep. So it’s all right in the evenings.…”

  The little mare fidgeted in the darkness of her stall. We moved out of the shadow of the stable into the warm, winter sun on the other side of the courtyard.

  “Aren’t you making too much fuss about it? Is Maggie worried?”

  Evans had turned the cows out of the shed and the redheaded man, the one they called Bill, was driving them down the lane. The lane led past the house and the stables to the farmyard. I watched the cows thoughtfully; I had learned their names and they no longer looked alike.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think she notices at all. It’s odd, isn’t it, because children are usually so sensitive. Sometimes she seems quite out of touch with the ordinary world, almost as if she were blind or deaf.…”

  Bill was whistling “How Much is that Doggie in the Window.” The sound died away, lingering faintly in the clear air like an echo.

  Ann said, “They’re usually like that.” She spoke half to herself and then she looked distressed, as if she wished she hadn’t spoken.

  “Not all young girls, surely?”

  She felt in the pocket of her camel coat for a squashed packet of Weights. Her fingers fumbled as she struck the match and she coughed over the cigarette, spluttering smoke until the tears came to her eyes.

  “I don’t know.” She was deliberately off-hand. “I don’t know much about children. Don’t worry about Maggie, anyway.”

  “But I feel so responsible for her.”

  “You poor dear.…” There was pity, sudden and unexplained in her voice and eyes. She added, “I was so pleased when I knew she was staying here, it seemed best for her. I didn’t think that it might be a worry for you.”

  Maggie came back with the basket of eggs, she gave it to Ann and then ran off on some errand of her own. We walked towards Ann’s car
.

  She said abruptly, “You’re about the farm too much. You ought to go and visit people, have a party.”

  “James doesn’t want to see anyone.”

  “Then you must make him. It would be good for you both. A lot of people would like to be friendly, you know.”

  I said, “We did have an invitation—from a Colonel something or other. But James wouldn’t go.… I haven’t met anyone except the doctor. And the Vicar. He called.”

  “What excitement. What did you talk about?”

  “Herbaceous borders.”

  “It’s a gay life, isn’t it?” She clicked her fingers, thinking. “There’s someone you must see before she calls on you. She’d have been before only she’s been in bed with bronchitis. You’d better come with me this morning. I promised to have coffee with her.”

  “Must I?”

  “It would be good for you.” She looked at me critically. “You look pale. Go and get your coat and put some colour on your face.”

  Maggie was in the lane with Charlie. He was learning to walk. He waddled towards her on stumpy legs, cackling and scarlet. As the car turned out of the gateway, she picked him up in her arms and hugged him.

  “Isn’t he clever?” There was a pale rose colour in her face, her grey eyes shone. “There’s my clever baby.” He struggled, kicked against her restraining arms. She looked at us with a faint, disturbed frown. “He doesn’t want me to carry him any more.”

  “Good thing too,” said Ann. “He’s too much of a lump. You’d better wipe his nose.”

  She bent over him. The heavy, blond hair swung across her face like a curtain. Ann let out the clutch and the car jerked forward.

  “Does she spend much time with Charlie?” The hint of disapproval in her voice was so slight that I might almost have imagined it.

  I said defensively, “She’s good with him. No one else has much time.…” Even with Charlie she was vague. She would leave him in the middle of a field, splashing in a cow pat, until someone noticed his absence and went to find him.

  Ann said, “She’s an Honourable. We’re not allowed to forget it.” She grinned. “She’s a scourge.”

  “Where does she come from?”

  “London. She came during the war to get away from the Kensington bombs. She spent one night in an air-raid shelter and dined out on the experience for years. Her sister had married a local man and so she came to live with them. The sister died from exhaustion a few years ago. Now she stays (she says) to look after her brother-in-law. He’s too old to fight back, poor devil. We think she sucks his blood.”

  “She sounds delightful.”

  “Attack is the best means of defence. She’s a gossip. If she’s seen you she can’t be too outrageous in what she says about you.” I made a face and she laughed at me. “In the country you have to live with your neighbours. You may as well start from the bottom and work up.”

  The Honourable Mrs. Dennison was plump. Draperies of silk clung to her bathed and perfumed body. She tittuped across the drawing-room on stiletto heels, her elegant ankles clothed in grey silk. Her face was pink and white and healthy, her hair, delphinium blue. Her voice was high and clear and emphatic.

  “Dear Ann. How very kind of you to come. Mrs. Random, you must think us all very neglectful. Country manners, you know. I would have called but, really, I have been quite ill. I have to be ridiculously careful of my chest.”

  She was painted to a doll-like prettiness. She sat daintily on the sofa, china blue eyes watchful behind the coffee cups. As she talked she twitched her neck like a bird.

  “My brother-in-law is resting. He will be so distressed to have missed you. Cream?”

  The drawing-room was cluttered with small tables, photographs and china ornaments. Victoriana, she said, was so fashionable just now.

  “I like to keep in touch,” she said. “I go-up to town every month. I shop, see a show and go to my hairdresser. It’s no excuse, I think, because you are buried in the wilds, not to take an interest in yourself.”

  Her nails were long and painted with shiny, pearl-coloured lacquer, the fingers, tiny and claw-like, crooked with arthritis. We talked about London and the theatre. She had read all the latest books. Did I hunt? No? How refreshing. Blood sports were so unfashionable nowadays, weren’t they?

  She gave me a second cup of coffee. Her voice crooned with delicacy.

  “You know, Mrs. Random, everyone will be fascinated to know I’ve met you.” She turned playfully to Ann, sitting upright on a satin brocade chair. “It’s really very naughty of you to have kept her to yourself. Still—we all know how difficult it is for you.…”

  She smiled expansively. “We’re all quite terrified of your husband, Mrs. Random. Whenever I’ve met him I’ve always felt that he quite despised poor, foolish little me. He looked so grim and so moody.… But then, poor, dear boy, he’s had such a terrible time. You mustn’t think he hasn’t got everyone’s sympathy, because he has. When it happened, my brother-in-law said that not a voice in the county would be raised against him.”

  Ann asked for more cream, but the interruption was temporary. The clear voice went on indomitably:

  “We’re all so glad for him now. After all those years and years of misery, being married to you must be like having the sunlight in his world at last.…”

  There was quite a lot more, along the same line, but in the end she got tired of it and asked us to admire her china ornaments. She handed them to me, one by one, to be inspected and exclaimed over. There was one which I was able to praise without effort, a pink, spotted dog with an innocent grin.

  “Do you really like it? Then you must keep it. I insist.” Her hands fluttered like moths. It was impossible not to accept; I enthused over it for slightly longer than was necessary and held it awkwardly on my lap.

  She showed me a photograph of her mother and one of herself at eighteen.

  “You’d never think, would you, that I was supposed to be a beauty? That ugly hair and those fantastic clothes…”

  She took a framed portrait from the mantelpiece. Her voice became soft and giggling and coy.

  “And this is Archie. My nephew.” She sighed gently. “Not so bad, really, as people thought him. Only silly and foolish and young.”

  I took the photograph. He had been looking straight at the camera when the picture was taken, his eyes wide and smiling. It was a boy’s face, laughing and extravagantly handsome. There was a dimple in his chin.

  Ann stood up clumsily, knocking against a small table. Her voice was high and cracked, trembling on the edge of anger. “How could you, Bettina. She doesn’t know.”

  I looked up, uncomprehending. I said stupidly, “He’s a nice-looking boy.”

  Mrs. Dennison was standing close to my chair. I could smell the powder on her body.

  “He wasn’t altogether to blame, you know. He was little more than a child.” Her voice was sharp with malice. “I’m surprised that they haven’t told you about him.”

  The harsh light from the window fell upon her pretty, painted, cruel face. Beneath the pancake make-up you could see the lines of vindictiveness and folly.

  Understanding came like a blow between the eyes. I couldn’t move or think or speak. And as I sat there with my heart sick within me the Honourable Mrs. Dennison began to laugh, a pretty, tinkling cold sound like the notes from a musical box.

  Ann slammed the gear lever into top. “I’d always thought she was just a local joke. But that was calculated savagery.…”

  “Is he really her nephew?”

  “There is some sort of relationship. He was Dr. Lane’s nephew—Lane’s retired now. And he was a cousin of Dennison’s brother-in-law. Anyway, Bettina always made a fuss of him, had him to stay and that sort of thing.” She wrenched the wheel and we turned into the lane. She stopped the car and wound the window down. “Give me that thing.” I was still holding the pink china dog. She took it from me and hurled it out of the window. The twigs cracked as it tore a passage
through the hedge, there was a soft thud, then silence.

  “He was Eva’s lover, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” She was quiet for a little as if she had spent her anger. The weather had changed, the sky had clouded with storm. The light was hard and grey, the colour of steel. The hedges were black and spiky, the ploughed fields on the hill empty and dead. Only in the pastures on either side of the lane was there any life, the cattle, turned into the wind and the grass, wrinkled in long lines like the surface of the sea.

  Then she spoke. “Harriet, don’t torment yourself because of a silly, spiteful woman. I shall never forgive myself for taking you there.” Her right eyelid twitched mournfully. “Of course he was always about the farm but I thought nothing of it. He was only a boy, not much older than Maggie. He seemed so charming, so frank and open, it seems impossible that there should have been such wickedness in him, such depths of depravity. And yet, apparently, it was common knowledge.” She went on painfully, “He came to the house on the afternoon that she was killed. Otherwise he would never have had his brief moment of importance. James admitted that he had seen him leave the house. But there is nothing that wasn’t reported in the papers.”

  “I didn’t read them.”

  It was only half a lie. I had hung around outside the reference library for a long, wet afternoon, frightened that I should be seen and bitterly ashamed. In the end I had glanced briefly at one report, hastily turning the pages as if I had been looking for something else that wasn’t there. I had felt dirty, as if I had betrayed every trust that had ever been placed in me.

  She said thoughtfully, “I suppose he must have known all along about Archie. Or perhaps he had only just found out. And seeing him, that afternoon, was the last straw.”

  The world turned over slowly. I seemed to be speaking through a mask of cotton wool.

  “What do you mean?” Her hands stroked the wheel. Timidly, as if begging my forgiveness, she turned her face towards me.