A Winter's Child (79 page)

And Benedict was laughing.

‘You can't do this,' said Benedict's sister, wringing her hands in sorrow. ‘You can't be like this – the same as
them.'

‘Oh Lord, so that's the way of it,' said Benedict's wife, forgetting to be Miss Pickles and slipping back, refreshingly, to being Nola. ‘But I can't divorce you, you know. Sorry and all that, but the Probation Committee would never stand for it.'

All Benedict's mistress saw was the family circle advancing towards him, ready to close in.

‘Keep away from him,' she shrieked, standing in front of him, arms outstretched, sheltering him.

‘Shall we go into the study?' said Benedict, still laughing, and lifting her slightly off her feet, carried her across his threshold and set her down, with something of a thud, in a leather chair.

‘Oh dear God,' she said. ‘What have I done?'

‘Rushed to defend me, I think. No one has ever done that before. I found it unnecessary, of course, but very sweet.'

‘Benedict, will you stop laughing please. I can't bear it.'

‘Can't you? I'm sorry.'

‘I really thought you might have …'

A vision of Toby flooded her mind.

‘No,' he said. ‘I couldn't kill anything, Claire. I am, by nature – believe it or not – quite shy and not at all hard-hearted. Had I lived in the Middle Ages I would have gone into a monastery. Oh yes. Not for religious reasons. Just to avoid being a knight. That's what shy, good-hearted lads did, in those days. Much better than all that jousting and hunting and hanging one's enemies from the battlements. Yes, I'd have spent my time on a Scottish island, with a bracing sea view, illustrating learned chronicles or making wine. It would have suited me very well.'

‘What – just
what
– are you telling me now?'

‘My father had no use for a shy boy and one learns, fast enough, how to appear aloof instead. My father had no use for a coward either.'

‘You're not that.'

‘Yes I am. I never liked being hurt and I
was
hurt rather badly in childhood. Not so much by what was done to me as by what no one had the time or the inclination to do. What I remember about that time is being cold – just that – nothing to do with lack of affection, just an absolutely biting physical chill. My father was very careful with his money before Miriam came, mean about heat and light, and High Meadows uses up a lot of that. Just one small fire in the kitchen, that's all he'd permit. Good enough, he reckoned, for the housekeeper – and me – since he went out every night to warm himself somewhere else. So that's what I remember, the housekeeper pulling her chair up to the fire, as you'd imagine, taking what warmth there was – punishing me because my father was neglecting her – and me, shivering and whining, trying to coax a kind word out of her and hating myself for it. The only solution was to learn to stand it, and that way, although it didn't make her like me, she stopped treating me with contempt.'

‘Did you want her to like you?'

‘Of course. I don't remember her name or what she looked like. I was a child. She was the only other person in my life besides my father, who seemed totally remote. And terrified me in any case. Of course I wanted her to like me. She didn't. Christ – the poor woman had problems of her own. I see that now. Very likely she had nowhere to go and knew my father was getting sick of her. She may even have been in love with him. And since she can't have been very young she was probably desperate. All I saw at the time was that she didn't like me. And I may have drawn the conclusion that it was because, quite simply, I wasn't likeable – in which case I'd better not try it again with somebody else. And all I really remember is that whenever I tried to get near the fire she gave me a clout and pushed me away. Occasionally I still dream about it. Nola – or her Miss Drew – would probably tell you that the pain and humiliation of those blows made me afraid of the very warmth I desired. Miriam, in her way, would say the same. I think they are quite right. I have avoided human contact all my life, beyond a certain level, because the pleasure of having it never seemed to compensate me for the fear of losing it. I think we – ought to call that cowardice, don't you? And worse. I have drawn back from Nola a dozen times, in our early years, not because I was afraid of loving her but because I didn't want the bother of having her in love with me. When my father died I drew back from Polly, who
was
lovable, and who would have found a better father in me than in Toby or Arnold Crozier. I could have had a good friend in Eunice, if I'd had the guts to let myself care for her, and she'd have had me to lean on now – could have taken refuge in me, her brother, instead of this madness she's hiding herself in, if I'd ever been a brother to her. And what did I ever do for Toby but terrify him? If I'd been approachable – well, then I'd have been the obvious person to talk to, wouldn't I, man to man. And Toby's boys, of course, and mine. I intimidate them too, deliberately, because I have always found it – oh not easier –
safer.
Agreed – agreed – my father made it worse, setting me up as judge and jury – and gaoler. But I make no excuses. It suited me. Claire – I have always known these things about myself. This is the first time I have ever felt either willing or able to change them.'

‘Why now?'

‘God knows. Better not ask. Just pray it continues. I found myself smiling at your foolishness in thinking I could ever be so base as to impose all my cripples – including myself – upon you. I found myself moved by your generosity – very moved. Well – that has happened before, of course. But somehow, this time, it absolutely failed to scare me. Perhaps I'd stopped resisting. And if it was the resistance that caused the pain – Well – Who knows?'

He smiled at her.

‘Poor Claire – have I confused you utterly?'
‘Yes. You have rather.'
‘Very well. Then just answer me this –'
‘Yes Benedict.'
‘Who needs you most Claire?'
She returned his smile.
‘I do,' she said.

Claire installed her mother in the Tangerine Suite for Christmas that year, the Croziers being unlikely to need it with Polly so near her time, giving birth in fact to a daughter, Cassandra, on Christmas Day.

‘Cassandra Crozier!' Dorothy clearly found the words clumsy on her tongue. ‘Cassy! Poor little mite.'

Yet, when Claire finally had a moment to drive up to High Meadows with a basket of leftover Swiss pastries, the name, to Miriam, had a distinctly imperial flavour.

Queen Cassandra. She liked it. Although she was still somewhat puzzled by a letter from Polly, received this morning, in which her daughter had gone into raptures – my dear, positive raptures – about the whole sorry business of childbirth.

‘Good Heavens.' And Miriam, being delicately bred, gave a slight shudder. ‘She says she can hardly wait to get started again. How terribly – well, one could almost call it
primitive.
And what about her husband? He can hardly wish to father a tribe of children – one would have thought – at his age. Poor Arnold. One must hope he has not taken on rather more than he bargained for with. Polly.'

But Polly had sent her mother a wonderful lace shawl for Christmas, was always sending her little gifts of flowers and chocolates and perfume and sweet little notes on scented paper, pale pink with deckle edging – very smart.

Polly, in fact, was in the process of being forgiven; Eunice, since her departure for an ‘hotel'as Miriam insisted on calling it, on the south coast, in the process of no longer being thought of at all.

Naturally, she had had nothing to do with it herself. One could hardly expect
her,
Eunice's mother, to take the decision to – well, Claire must realize that it would have been far too painful, much too much to bear. And so Benedict had seen to it. And if it did seem so terribly expensive, and if Benedict himself had carried it rather far, writing letters to Eunice quite often she believed, and for ever going down to see her – such a complicated journey – well, one must only hope, as Benedict insisted, that she would eventually get well.

Eunice had certainly been strange. And the boys completely out of hand. What a brilliant idea of Benedict's to get Justin into such a famous regiment where he could learn to do all those brave athletic things – polo and tinkering about with flying machines – which had so interested Toby. And the little boys into that very good school somewhere alongside the New Forest, so they could be near their mother. Now there was only Simon left at High Meadows who really was no trouble, particularly since Benedict had found dear, clever Mrs Bishop to run the house.
Such
a treasure. So cheerful and so happy to be of service. Always putting herself out and taking trouble. Wonderful woman. And her daughter, Amy, always ready to sit and chat. A sweet-natured child, rather simple perhaps but
willing.
And so absolutely indefatigable when it came to reading aloud.

Yes, Benedict had put himself out, she couldn't deny it, to find Mrs Bishop and Amy. And Nurse Evans, too, who was not stiff and starchy at all like that other creature – no, who
cared
what her name was? – but a pretty young slip of a thing with such pretty auburn curls and a most infectious laugh. Her husband would have been very pleased to see the trouble Benedict had taken, on her behalf, although what Aaron would have made of his son's move to Lawnswood Hill, the house they had been building for Polly, she dare not even imagine. Quite true of course. The house
had
just been standing there, all forlorn. Polly had never taken the slightest interest in it. All the Timms family ever wanted from it was their money's worth. And so Benedict, unable to get either Polly or Roger to decide what kind of a house they wanted, had built it to suit himself. And one had no option but to believe he had grown fond of it. Nearer to the Mills too, he'd said. Far more convenient for an early start and much quieter in the evenings when he brought work back with him. One had really no option but to believe that either. And she had quite definitely decided to take at its face value Nola's statement that her new professional responsibilities required her to spend five nights a week – or was it seven? – at the home of that insufferably prim and proper Miss Drew. They were embarking upon a course of study together, it seemed, attending lectures and writing dissertations on those terribly indelicate, in fact downright messy topics Nola was so keen on, how little girls went around wishing they had the – er – well – the biological equipment of little boys – you know what I mean, dear – and imagining they'd been maimed, or were unworthy or something, because they hadn't. Such nonsense. And really, with Amy Bishop and Nurse Evans both so young, it
was
a relief to be spared the worry of Nola suddenly enlivening the dinner table with those tales of little boys growing up to be
strange
– you know – because they hadn't been properly breast-fed, or impotent because they'd caught a glimpse of daddy at a rather private moment and were quite sure they could never compete.

Yes, it was all breasts and – er – biology – with Nola. Not dinner-table talk at all Not at High Meadows, at any rate, although she couldn't answer for the conversation around the apparently genuine Queen Anne table at Miss Drew's. Not, of course, that there was the least cause for scandal. Faxby's Probation Committee could only appoint persons of good character to its service and the fact that Elvira Redfearn and Arthur Greenwood were both members of that committee indicated – surely – that any irregularity in Nola's character would have come swiftly to light.

Miriam certainly intended to think so.

‘To think I used to be afraid of her,' said Dorothy, reclining on the tangerine
chaise longue,
her most pressing anxiety of the moment being which of two dresses – one bought by herself at Taylor & Timms, the other a present from her daughter – to wear for dinner that night.

Dorothy was happy. She had her own home, no one to please but herself, she was younger than Miriam Swanfield, much healthier, and
her
daughter had not run off with a man – or was it two? – old enough to be her father. Therefore, Dorothy was happy and would be happier still on the day her daughter married Kit Hardie.

Amazing, really, when one thought how absolutely terrified Edward had been, and how he had terrified her, that Claire might'sink'as he had called it, to a servant. And the Swanfields' servant at that. Not that Dorothy herself could remember Hardie taking hats and coats or waiting at table at High Meadows. That had probably been in the days – before Claire and Jeremy – when Edward had not cared to risk, being ‘let down'by his wife in front of his important friends. But they had not really been his friends had they? How many of them had taken the trouble to come to his funeral? Only Eunice, who had ended up losing her never precisely powerful reason. And Toby, who, whatever anybody said, had been done to death by her and her sister between them. No wonder Mrs Miriam Swanfield had had a heart attack and was living now in that great, lonely house with only a nurse and a paid housekeeper-companion, pretending, for all the world, how glad she was that Polly had married – in the very nick of time – her elderly millionaire; that Eunice was staying in a rather jolly little south coast hotel; that Benedict and his wife were really living together because they had attended the Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner and the Lord Mayor's Banquet when everybody knew that he had taken up residence in that atrocious modern matchbox on Lawnswood Hill, with plain white walls, she'd heard, and black carpets and peculiar assortments of chrome and copper and steel that were light fittings, or that he was passing off as works of art. While Nola had taken to tweed suits and Russian cigarettes and female company.