A Winter's Child (74 page)

No. She had no idea where Toby had been going at that hour of the morning. Perhaps Eunice, when sufficiently recovered from the shock, would be able to throw some light on the matter. No one else knew anything about it.
Most
distressing, the more so since Toby had spent his last evening here, in her house, at High Meadows. Yes indeed. He had come specially to cheer up Polly who – well, perhaps it was no longer a secret – had good cause, alas, to feel down in the dumps. A shocking business. How could they, she wondered, have been so mistaken in that young man? She could only feel that Edith Timms, his mother, had a great deal to answer for. But there it was, and she saw no point, now, in being other than brutally honest about it. Her daughter had been
wronged.
What other word could one use to describe it? The young man had promised marriage and had then jilted her in the most humiliating fashion, had gone off with a
person
about whose reputation all that seemed certain was her lack of it. Perhaps Edith Timms would know how to deal with creatures of that class. Miriam rather prided herself on the fact that she did not. Polly, of course, had been distraught. Utterly and absolutely shattered. Her mother had found her, in the early hours of yesterday morning, pacing about the upstairs corridors in her dressing gown, staring and wringing her hands and weeping – such tears, good Heavens – looking for all the world like that tragedy queen – whoever she was – oh yes, Lady Macbeth. Such grief. One wondered, really, how
any
man could possibly be worth it. Particularly someone so – well –
ordinary
as Roger Timms. And she had kept it up throughout the day, pacing and moaning and staring so that Miriam had been quite worn out by it and rather grateful when Toby had arrived at about five o'clock to take the strain. Miriam remembered the hour because it had been her teatime and such a relief, after that long day of storm and tempest, to be able to drink her Earl Grey and eat her buttered scone in peace, and then close her eyes for half an hour or so while Toby bore the brunt of Polly. The dear man. He had always been so kind to Polly and so understanding, so ready to put up with her whims and fancies and those occasional little tantrums, Polly's mother being quite ready to admit that Polly could be difficult. When she had woken up, with rather a start, about an hour later it was to find that he had taken Polly for a drive, an excellent idea she'd thought, the very thing to distract her and draw her out of herself. But when they came back – oh, she supposed about eight o'clock – Polly had looked worse than ever and Toby himself a little strained, which was not to be wondered at surely, after a three-hour exposure to Polly's heartbreak? Miriam, having endured a whole day of it, had felt much inclined to sympathize, had thanked him for his trouble and stood, waving at the doorway, until his car was out of sight.

That he had gone home then was quite certain, all the boys had seen him and presumably Eunice herself, although she was too incoherent at present to say so. He had gone up to his room without speaking to anybody, presumably to change for dinner. And then, at five o'clock this morning, his car had been found horribly smashed to pieces in a Pennine quarry. No. No one knew for certain. His car had left the road at a particularly dangerous bend and had been spotted by another motorist – hours later one supposed – who had noticed that the quarry fence had been broken down. He had alerted the local constable who, very fortunately, had in turn alerted someone in the Faxby constabulary who had had the good sense to inform Benedict, not Eunice. He had gone at once to confirm that it
was
Toby – unnecessarily painful, she'd thought – and then, of course, Eunice had had to be told. Benedict had brought her back to High Meadows in a state bordering on insanity. Miriam, for as long as she lived, would never get over the sound of those terrible cries. They had pierced her – how else could she express it? – through the heart. Indeed, she had had a pain in that region ever since. And then Polly, too, falling down right there in the hall by the main staircase and banging her head, over and over again, against the banisters. What a spectacle! Miriam, as perhaps her friends would readily admit, rarely encountered a situation she could not command. But standing there, watching Polly smash her head repeatedly against solid wood, she had not known what to do. It had shocked her deeply. The memory of it shocked her still. Yes, she was rather tired. How kind of everyone to notice. Perhaps if she could just close her eyes for a while, dab a little cologne on her forehead, she would be quite refreshed.

Claire attended the funeral not as a member of the family but as an employee of the Crown, preferring, since it was there she had known Toby best, to stand at his graveside with Kit and Mrs Tarrant, MacAllister and Mr Clarence, and the considerably subdued Adela Adair who had got much more than she'd bargained for by accepting a lift home from Roger Timms. Under the circumstances neither Edith Timms nor Roger were present, the family being represented by Mr Timms who stood about awkwardly, clearly feeling at a serious disadvantage in the presence of the girl his son had jilted and the woman – definitely over thirty – Roger had so suddenly taken it into his weak head to marry. Greenwoods and Templetons and Redfearns were there, quite naturally, in force, along with the departmental managers of Swanfield Mills and certain other gentlemen of a more sporting appearance, Toby's bookmaker among them, sincerely mourning the loss of a favourite client.

‘A bad business.' Everyone said it, agreeing absolutely with each other, declaring him to have been an excellent fellow, no one wishing to be the first to wonder just what he had been doing on that lonely road.

It was a bleak March day, a cold wind blowing. A bad business. Bury it then, quickly, and get it over. Much better so.

Claire, her arm through Kit Hardie's, raised her eyes and looked across the open grave at Benedict, seeing him, for the first time in months, surrounded by clutching, clamouring women as he had always been; Miriam, invisible beneath her old-fashioned mourning veils, leaning heavily against him at one side; Polly, likewise invisible, collapsed against the other; Nola hovering just behind, unsuitably dressed in a tweed suit and cape and a strange deerstalker hat, refusing to interest herself in any grief which did not emanate from All Saints'Passage, her conversation liberally peppered now – to the dismay of Greenwoods and Redfearns and Miriam – with references to ‘one of my prostitutes', ‘one of my pickpockets', ‘a girl of mine who was so brutally raped by her father at thirteen'.

Eunice, shocked by laudanum into silence, stood rigid and ghastly, propped up like a tragic wooden doll between her elder boys, Simon embarrassed by grief, Justin embarrassed by his mother. He had heard of women – only in books perhaps, but nevertheless – who threw themselves into the grave when the coffin was lowered, refusing to be parted from their husbands. Might his mother do that? The suspicion that she was quite capable of it haunted him. And if it happened – with Uncle Benedict's hands full of Polly and Grandmother – would he, as her eldest son, the senior male of the family now present after Benedict, be expected to cope with it, go down there and get her out? With everybody who was anybody in Faxby watching him? If she did that to him he would never forgive her. He would hate her, like poison, for the rest of his life.

But, to his infinite relief, when the ceremony was over and those terrible shovelfuls of earth had started to fall, she came away with him jerkily, but obediently, blank eyes fixed and unblinking, looking quite demented he thought,
dangerous
even – someone he might actually be scared of if she weren't ‘just Mother' – but at least not making a fuss, leaving it to Polly, who had always upstaged her, to fall down very suddenly, the moment Benedict let her go, and there, kneeling at the graveside, to be violently sick.

‘My goodness – the poor child.' There was an immediate thrill of interest, curiosity, speculation, running from Temple-tons to Redfearns to Greenwoods, ending at the embarrassed figure of Roger's father, Mr Timms, and the bowed, flame-coloured head of Adela Adair.

They had broken Polly's heart, between them. Whoever would have thought it? Whoever, if it came to that, had ever credited her with a heart to break? Yet seeing her now, her silk stockings and fine musquash coat daubed with graveyard mud, vomiting and shivering and howling, no one could possibly doubt it.

‘Polly.' Claire made a move towards her but Kit, tucking her arm more firmly in his, said, ‘Leave it, love.' And it was Benedict who picked her up and carried her through the cemetery to the waiting car, her pale head hanging over his arm like a broken lily.

Eunice returned to her own home that night, her decision to ‘start as she meant to go on'unopposed by Miriam who really was very tired and who knew that Eunice's departure would also include her noisy sons. Delightful boys, of course, but only in small doses, smaller than ever just lately when she had not been feeling
quite
so well as usual. And their presence in the house, these past four days,
had
been irksome. They were always so hungry for one thing, demanding enormous teas and suppers as well as those terribly inconvenient cooked breakfasts, at a time of sorrow when Polly was apparently intent on starving herself to death, Benedict had made his own arrangements, and Miriam herself would have been content with something tight and easily prepared, on a tray. Neither she nor the servants ought really to be troubled with steak and kidney pies and suet puddings at a time like this and she made no objections, therefore, when Eunice decided to take her hungry boys home.

‘Much better, dear – that's the only way to get over it.'

But Eunice's purpose was not to ‘get over'Toby but to build him a shrine, thus causing considerable disappointment to Justin who had expected to be given the first choice of his father's wardrobe for himself. Toby, in his eldest son's opinion, had been a ‘natty' dresser and it gave Justin great offence to think of those silk shirts and pyjamas, those superbly cut blazers, those Oxford bags and Cashmere sweaters mouldering in a cupboard to suit his mother's peculiar fancy that her husband's room must remain exactly as he had left it. She had even refused to clean his hairbrush. Peculiar was the word for it. Justin could think of no other until she flew at him, a morning or two later, spitting fury, and tore from his back one of Toby's pullovers which he had pinched, in fact, several weeks ago. As she cradled it in her arms the word in her son's mind was ‘crazy'.

He realized, without shock, that he did not like his mother. But, just the same, when he found the letter, he would not have given it to her – he was sure of that – if her ‘craziness'had not compelled him.

It was in the pocket of the camel-hair overcoat he had always coveted, largely because his arrogant Uncle Benedict wore one with a swagger Justin had often tried to emulate. And although Toby had never swaggered, the coat had been a symbol, somehow, of Swanfield authority, a seal of worldly approval. Justin wanted it. Cowing across it hanging on a hook in the now empty garage, realizing his mother had missed it because she could not as yet bear to come here and look at the space where Toby's car had been, he put it on, finding his father's driving gloves in one pocket – rather odd perhaps – and the letter in the other.

Toby had been wearing this coat, Justin remembered, when he came home from High Meadows the last time Justin had seen him. He had gone up to his room, the coat around his shoulders, and for it to be here, in the garage, meant that he had also been wearing it when he went out again. Perhaps, on that second occasion, the car had refused to start and Toby, taking off his coat to look under the bonnet, had simply forgotten and driven off without it. No one would ever know. And Justin, excited by his find, did not think it really mattered. Nor in his haste to conceal the coat from Eunice, would he have been likely to read the letter had not his fingers, locating the crumpled sheet of paper, in the depths of the pocket, mistaken it for a five-pound note. And then, from the first word, there was no stopping.

‘Polly, my darling, I have loved you so long. As a brother I thought, or even a father – my Princess Polly, my best girl. I forced myself to believe that. But we know, how can we fail to know now how very far from the truth it has been. I would never have touched you – never – you know that – had you not turned to me in your distress, asking for love without knowing it, innocent as you have always been yet needing me, clinging to me as if you had been drowning. I rescued you and destroyed myself. I made love to you. Even writing the words brings it back to me. I made you clean of what had been done to you. Remember that and forget all my pleading of today. I was mad to hope you would consent to it. You have no cause to blame yourself. Polly – you lit up my life. My existence has been bearable, these five years past, only because of you. And now I have no wish to live in the dark. Polly, my darling –'

It was too much for Justin.

‘Justin-?'

Seeing the garage doors open – having found it necessary to watch her son like a hawk this last day or two – Eunice was waiting on the garden path.

‘Justin – those are your father's things in there,
his
property – come out.'

‘Oh Mother – for God's sake.'

He did not know what to do. It was as simple as that.

‘Justin, stop poking and prying into what belongs to your father and me.'

She saw the coat and flew at him again to strip it from him, tugging at the lapels, the sleeves, until she saw the letter in his hand. Toby's handwriting. Toby's words.
Her
Toby. How dare this little thief who had been her adored son take that from her? Frantic – when was she not frantic now? – she began to slap him across the face and head, looking demented again like the woman who would have badly scared him had she not been his mother.