by Jenny Eclair
‘Oh,’ replied Benedict. ‘My father shot himself through the head the night before my twenty-first. The things some dads will do to get out of buying their only surviving son a gift, eh?’
Poor Clive had looked mortified and his face went scarlet as they pulled into a small dead-end street.
Benedict had always used jokes to deflect from the reality of unpleasant situations. It wasn’t that he wanted people to laugh when he told them about Teddy, it was more that he couldn’t bear the feeling that he was meant to be ashamed, that there should be this code of secrecy. It reminded him of when Ivor died and no one would let him talk about it. The frustration of not being able to share his feelings had made him light matches under the bedclothes and burn small holes in the sheets, had made him want to break things.
Both deaths had been hugely shocking; his brother’s because it should never have happened and his father’s because not only was the man dead, but he had taken everything with him, leaving Natasha and Benedict with precisely nothing.
Cudlip and Bird, the family solicitors, spelt it out for them in black and white, or rather red and white, at an emergency meeting in the firm’s offices. Copies of Teddy’s overdrawn bank statements were spread out on the desk in front of them and papers showing investments gone wrong and shares sold cheap were waved under their noses.
All Teddy had left them was a mountain of debt. There were hundreds of IOUs stuffed into teapots and vases back at Chester Square, and it was only thanks to an unexpected intervention from their mother that Benedict now had somewhere to live.
‘Home sweet home,’ Benedict muttered as he opened his front door and glanced around the miniature house before walking the entire ten feet from the sitting-room-cum-diner into the kitchen and reaching for a bottle of cold Sancerre from the fridge.
At least he’d managed to lick the place into some kind of shape since he first moved in. Benedict had a brief flashback of sitting on the floor of his empty new home less than two years ago and staring in dismay at the only item left behind by the previous owners: a large rubber plant in an ornate wicker stand.
His own possessions at the time amounted to a record player, a tennis racket, a trunk of unironed clothes and, of course, The Farm.
Benedict looked at his windowsill – it was still there. People always laughed at it, they couldn’t understand why a grown-up man-about-town had a children’s toy displayed so prominently in his sitting room for everyone to see.
It was old man Cudlip’s fault. He’d let slip that the Chester Square sale of goods was to be held in the house itself. ‘The most sensible solution, save carting everything out. Sell everything in situ, as it were,’ the solicitor had mumbled.
After that, it was only a question of finding out when the sale was to take place and, knowing there were only a handful of likely candidates, Benedict had simply phoned around a few auction houses until it turned out that the job had fallen to one of the less established names.
This information added salt to Benedict’s wound. A bankruptcy sale would have been easier to swallow had it been someone from Christie’s bringing down the gavel on his lost inheritance.
Nonetheless, he’d gone. Arriving early in a black raincoat and fedora pulled low, he felt like a child dressed up as a spy. Silly to have to resort to a disguise to enter one’s own home.
What shocked him was that everything was ticketed; the entire contents of the whole house were up for sale. He picked up a catalogue and reeled as he realised that every bone china plate he’d ever eaten off, every ivory-handled knife and fork, every tablecloth and napkin was itemised.
His eyes swam as he took a seat at the back of the drawing room and watched a short fat man in a greasy waistcoat cajole strangers into buying his family history, the Victorian cast-iron beds that he and his brother and sister had slept in, his father’s walnut shaving stand . . .
Oddly, it wasn’t the larger, more expensive items that caused the lump in his throat, it was the smaller personal things – a set of golf clubs bought for his mother and used once. She’d hated the game, but he remembered his parents coming home and laughing about it, his mother threatening to take Teddy’s head off with the five iron if he ever suggested they played again. He must have been very young, maybe five or six. It hadn’t all been awful, they’d loved each other once upon a time. In between the arguments there had been periods of calm when they all had fun together, the five of them; there had been card games in the drawing room and games of hide and seek when even his father would join in. He had found him once behind a pair of curtains, trying to kiss his mother.
Taking a break from the stuffy clamour of the drawing room, Benedict had stepped out into the hallway and found himself pausing outside his father’s study. He checked the handle: it was locked. No matter. Crossing the marble floor, Benedict opened the belly of the grandfather clock and, taking care not to interrupt the swing of the pendulum, reached for the duplicate key his father kept on a secret hook inside.
To his surprise, behind the spare study key hung another set of keys, unfamiliar and rusty, attached to a luggage label on which his father had written ‘Kittiwake’.
The sight of Teddy’s handwriting had made Benedict’s heart twist and instinctively he lifted both sets of keys. The grandfather clock was lot number 364. The unfairness of it kindled a spark of indignation in Benedict. Whoever bought the clock wasn’t getting access to Kittiwake as well – that still belonged to his mother. Hurriedly he pocketed the Kittiwake keys then re-crossed the hall, unlocked his father’s study and slipped inside.
In hindsight, he wished he hadn’t gone in. Whoever had cleaned up his father’s mess had done the job hastily. Emptied of its furniture, the place had an air of desolation about it and Benedict wished he could have seen his father alive one last time, shared a drink, maybe even choked down a cigar with him, hugged each other and said goodbye. Surely his father could have given him something before he went, something that was for him alone. Even his battered old hip flask would have been better than nothing.
The room stank of Jeyes Fluid and the bottle-green painted anaglypta wallpaper was in the process of being stripped. The dark gold velvet curtains, which had hung from a heavy fringed pelmet for as long as he could remember, had been removed. Without them, the room was lighter, light enough for Benedict to notice what looked like a series of rust spots on the dado rail behind where his father’s desk should have been. For some reason he found himself licking his finger and rubbing at one of these rust spots. Blood, of course; his father’s blood. He had put his finger in his mouth, wondering for a split second if believing in God would help, and then he locked the study up, hung the key back on its secret hook and returned to the auction.
He still has no idea why he put in a bid for it. It was the silliest thing. Perhaps it was the taste of his dead father still fresh in his mouth and that sudden fury at the waste of it all, but he had found himself raising his hand and bidding for something no one else wanted. It was such an absurd item, such an inconsequential thing, but in the heartbeat of the moment, the thought of anyone else having it incensed him.
A small titter and a scattering of applause met his successful bid. ‘To the man in the hat at the back, one toy farm, beasts included.’
The paint had worn thin on some of the animals. Ivor had liked the horses best, Natasha’s favourites were the chickens. As for Benedict, wandering over to the windowsill, his hand closed proprietorially around a fat pink metal pig. ‘Hello, Georgie Porgie,’ he muttered, surprised to find that tears were rolling out of his eyes.
Benedict wiped his face with his sleeve. He needed to concentrate, he couldn’t wallow in the past when he needed to sort out the future. What the hell was he going to do with Baby Annabel? If Bren took her to the police she would disappear into some orphanage and he might never see her again. And the fact was, the child could be his. She could be as entitled to these metal animals as he was.
So far, the trail for Serena
had reached a dead end. There had been sightings all over the country – Suki Cunningham was sure she’d seen her at Adam Fairfax’s wedding in Wiltshire, Billy Southern swore blind he’d seen her getting out of a cab in Edinburgh, while Evie Pinner was convinced she was working as a clippie on the number 9 bus. But there was nothing concrete, no trail he could follow. The girl obviously didn’t want to be found. Anyway, for all Serena knew, her child had suffocated to death in the drawer of an old wardrobe. She didn’t deserve her.
Natasha, on the other hand . . . Benedict knew that Hugo was worried about her, the doctor had given her some pills. She’d been having some odd moods, crying on the floor of the empty nursery, refusing to get out of bed and generally being ‘out of sorts’. Too much time on her hands, Hugo imparted. She needed something to occupy her. Well, Benedict had the very thing.
Natasha could look after the baby. Annabel couldn’t stay in the farmhouse with Bren for much longer. Benedict didn’t know when babies started talking, but if she was his child, he didn’t want her yattering on in that dreadful Cornish accent. Much better that the girl should live in Barnes. Not that Benedict was a fan of Barnes, it was a bit suburban for his tastes, but at least Claverley Avenue was a five-minute walk from the river and it had a garden. However the real clincher was that Natasha was quite possibly the girl’s aunt.
Benedict was convinced it would be better for the child to be cared for by a blood relative. As for Natasha – surely taking in Annabel would be the next best thing to having a baby of her own?
By the time Benedict had finished the nice cold bottle of Sancerre and made himself some cheese on crackers, he was convinced that not only was the child his, but that Natasha and Hugo adopting her was a stroke of genius.
‘One day,’ he slurred slightly, running his finger over the farm on the windowsill, ‘when she’s older, she will come to Uncle Benedict’s house and play with the animals.’
16
Natasha Gets Her Baby
London, May 1963
Natasha sat in the yellow nursery at Claverley Avenue and stared at the baby lying comatose behind the bars of her cot, a disgusting small green bubble of snot pulsing from her left nostril.
Baby Annabel? Natasha wasn’t sure that she even liked the name. It hadn’t been on the list of possibilities she’d chosen when she’d been expecting her own child, but then Sarah or Rupert, Victor or Juliette, Nathan or Louisa had all slipped away and at least this one was too big to fall down a plughole.
It had taken a couple of months to get the paperwork done, but considering no one else wanted her and the birth mother still hadn’t been found, no one saw any reason to stall the proceedings. And now she was here, in this sunny nursery with its frieze of ducks endlessly chasing each other around the walls. Her daughter, wasn’t this what she wanted? Natasha surveyed the room, surprised to see how much space a small baby could dominate. Annabel had only been in residence for a matter of weeks and already there was a changing table complete with a nappy bucket reeking of ammonia tucked underneath it, a chest of drawers filled with socks, vests, baby-gros and tiny little matinee jackets courtesy of Hugo’s sister and mother.
There were muslin cloths and tubes of nappy rash cream and talcum powder and a dish to keep the nappy pins in, and then there were the nappies, the endless pile of terry towelling cloths, that had to be folded and fastened just so, around the tiny stranger’s body.
Natasha liked it best when the baby was fed and dressed and she could take her out for a walk. She found it easier to feel like a proper mother when she had her hands firmly wrapped around a cream plastic pram handle and the wheels were making that confident spanking noise along the pavement. She also liked it when other mothers, women she had never met in her life, nodded and smiled as if to say, Oh you too, how lovely, welcome to the club. She was relieved that they couldn’t tell she was faking it and they didn’t smell the impostor in their midst.
As for the neighbours, if anyone thought it strange that Natasha Berrington should be pushing a huge ‘newborn’ baby around when only last month she’d been wearing figure-hugging slacks with not a trace of a bump on her, no one mentioned it.
It was 1963 and middle-class women didn’t discuss childbirth publicly, it was a private thing and no one would have dreamt of peering into the Silver Cross Balmoral pram and asking Natasha, ‘How many stitches and are you breastfeeding?’
Those who were more intimately acquainted with Natasha and Hugo knew the child was adopted. Some were even aware of Benedict’s involvement, and none of them were remotely surprised – Benedict was such a naughty boy. There was however some speculation about who the mother could be, with rumours ranging from minor royalty to Kathy Kirby.
The baby herself was blissfully ignorant of all this gossip. And if she was surprised to find herself in this sweet-smelling buttercup-coloured place rather than the farmhouse kitchen with its smoke-stained distempered walls and the smell of damp collie sleeping next to her by the fire, she didn’t show it. She slept, she fed, she puked and soiled her nappy.
Natasha occasionally found her slightly repellent. Sometimes she couldn’t believe how much mess one small person could make. She thanked her lucky stars every day for Mrs Phelan the home help, who could remove a disgusting towelling cloth without gagging at the contents.
As far as Natasha could glean from ‘other mothers’, the nappy business was cope-able with because ‘it’s natural when it’s one’s own child doing it’. This, Natasha suspected, was the root of the problem. Annabel wasn’t her own child. She was very fond of her, she was quite sure of that, she particularly adored her when she wore a certain pink bonnet with a frill around the edge, but for much of the time Natasha viewed her adopted daughter as if she were an animal escaped from the zoo, a small unpredictable hairless monkey that needed constant cleaning and changing.
Hugo, on the other hand, had taken to fatherhood quite easily. He even carried a picture of Annabel around in his wallet and didn’t mind pushing the pram around the Serpentine on a Sunday afternoon.
But he refused to be inconvenienced by her. If she was whiny and tiresome, he told Natasha to remove her from the room and place her in her cot where she could cry all she liked.
‘I’d better go to her, Hugo.’
‘No, Natasha.’
‘I think I should.’
‘I said no. Babies have to know who’s boss.’
And then Hugo turned the volume up on the record player, or the radio, or the television, and after two martinis, Natasha found it quite easy to forget there was such a thing as a baby in the house.
It was important to remember that she was as much a wife as a mother. And as a wife she had duties to perform. Hugo had needs too and it was her duty to keep him happy. Because if Hugo wasn’t happy, he could be mean. Once, when she had left their bed to attend to the child in the middle of the night and fallen asleep in the armchair next to the cot, he poured tea from the pot over her hand while she was eating breakfast the next morning. Luckily it wasn’t scalding hot, but it was a warning, and she had learnt her lesson.
The doorbell rang and Natasha staggered to her feet, hoping that the baby wouldn’t wake up. It was Mrs Phelan’s day off and she was on her own with the creature until Hugo came home and gave her the confidence to ignore her.
‘No child ever died of crying, Natasha,’ he would say. ‘It’s good for her lungs. But Lord knows it’s boring, so shut the door and come and sit down.’
Benedict was on the doorstep. He visited quite regularly, at least once a week, and never arrived empty-handed. Thanks to her uncle, Annabel had built up quite a menagerie of soft toys in the nursery, but today’s gift was a wind-up musical mobile to hang above her cot.
‘I did ask the girl if they sold one that played songs from the hit parade instead of all that soppy nursery rhyme stuff, but apparently this is what they like.’ And he demonstrated, by taking the mobile out of its box. As he wound it up, Natasha wondered how many times she
would be able to hear ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ before she went mad.
Benedict left the mobile on the floor and made himself comfortable on the Berringtons’ new Heal’s sofa. ‘Nice,’ he whistled appreciatively, patting the sage green bouclé wool.
‘I’m not allowed to sit on it with the baby,’ she laughed.
She was pleased to see him. He was wearing some new, rather fashionable Chelsea boots and a narrow pair of black-and-white checked trousers. Benedict could wear what he liked, he hadn’t got a proper job like Hugo, who left the house looking weirdly like his father. Her brother worked part-time for an antique dealer in Fulham, where he was employed to ingratiate his way into elderly people’s houses and persuade them to part with valuable antique furniture for mere shillings. Benedict was good at his job; he’d been brought up sitting on Regency sofas under gleaming chandeliers, so it came naturally to spend his afternoons sipping Lapsang Souchong with little old ladies who once upon a time had known his grandparents and who dabbed their eyes when they mentioned his father. (‘Such a good-looking man, such a tragic waste. And your mother was the American woman.’ At this point they would invariably sniff, as if to say, Well, what could you expect?)
Benedict insisted on getting the baby up. He hadn’t come all that way to miss out on seeing his special girl. And as she watched Annabel docile and gurgling on Benedict’s knee, Natasha felt again the pang of wanting to love her more than she did.
Not that the baby showed any signs of neglect. She was a sturdy thing with stocky thighs and bracelets of fat around each wrist and she beamed with pleasure as Benedict bounced her up and down.
‘Have you told Peggy?’ Natasha asked.
‘No,’ her brother replied. ‘I don’t think it’s anything to do with her.’
‘Annabel’s her granddaughter, sort of . . . ’
‘What do you mean “sort of”?’
‘Well, you’re not entirely sure, are you – you know, if . . . ?’ Natasha found herself colouring, the conversation was getting too personal for comfort.
