The Hardie Inheritance

by Anne Melville

  ‘I’ve got a dance to show her. I made it up specially. Everything’s ready, but I can’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘We’ll send out scouts. Dan and Boxer, run round shouting her name as loudly as you can, will you?’

  Within a few minutes she answered the summons and arrived hand in hand with Terry, looking reassuringly cool and uncrumpled. But there was something different about the two of them, all the same. Grace’s eyes noted it even while her lips were explaining what Max had in mind.

  ‘A birthday dance? Terrific. I bet not many people are offered anything like that.’

  ‘It’s not just for your birthday,’ Max explained. ‘It’s for your room.’

  ‘Oh, so I’m not good enough to have a dance, only my room!’

  ‘I went round the house in the Easter holiday. Sitting in each room and trying to think what sort of music was right for it. And your room was one of the easiest, because of the way you’ve painted the wall.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to dance black and red spots?’ asked Terry teasingly.

  ‘You’ll see. I’ve put the record on the radiogram.’

  While the scattered guests were assembled with shouting and hallooing, Max changed into a sleeveless white vest and a pair of long baggy black trousers, tied tightly at the ankles. He set the record going, stood still while the first vigorous chords were played, and then, pointing his feet neatly, embarked on a display which began as a kind of hornpipe, quickened into a vigorous Cossack dance and ended with a series of leaps and cartwheels which owed more to gymnastics than to dance. Merely watching him made Grace feel breathless, but as the record came to an end Max himself was able to steady his balance and stand still once again in perfect physical control.

  Grace thought the performance a piece of showing-off; but it suited the party mood and was greeted with cheers and applause. It also served as a finale to the party. Two by two Trish’s friends began to drift away, until only the birthday girl herself and the three Travises remained, preparing to travel back to London together in Terry’s battered van.

  ‘Time for me to give you my present,’ said Grace.

  ‘The party was present enough.’

  ‘Nonsense. Come this way.’

  She led them all to the coach-house and watched Trish’s face as she opened the double doors.

  ‘A car! For me? Grace, you shouldn’t!’

  ‘I hope I’ve chosen right,’ Grace said. ‘It was difficult. I did wonder whether you might like a sporty two-seater, but then I thought you’d want to drive Terry and the boys around sometimes, so a saloon seemed more sensible in the end. Andy told me which models were supposed to be more reliable. My only contribution was to decide that it ought to be red.’

  ‘It’s marvellous! The whole day, and then this.’

  Grace found herself being hugged and kissed. She had never encouraged Trish to display affection for her, even as a little girl, but today she was glad to be assured that they were still friends. ‘You have got a licence, haven’t you?’ she checked.

  ‘Oh yes. I share the driving of the van.’ Unexpectedly Trish blushed. ‘I’m going to share a bit more than that in future. The whole business. Terry’s going to let me be a partner in the firm. A working partner.’

  ‘Is he indeed? And what’s the firm going to be called? The Shed?’

  ‘We haven’t had time to think –’ began Terry, but Trish was ahead of him.

  ‘We ought to call it TT for Terry Travis. And for Trish-Trash, which will be my contribution. And Tempera Transformations as well.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Dan, wrenching his attention away from the car.

  ‘Painting walls as a fun thing. Tempera is a way of painting on plaster, and Tempora gives an impression of something temporary, so whichever way you spell it, it’s appropriate.’

  ‘What a lot of Ts,’ Dan said, and Trish swooped on the comment.

  ‘That’s it. Why don’t we call the business Tease?’

  ‘Because it would make any customer think that we weren’t going to deliver, that’s why not,’ answered Terry, laughing. He turned towards Grace and looked her steadily in the eye. ‘There’s one more thing that TT stands for, though. The thing that matters. Terry and Trish.’

  Grace did not need Trish’s second flush to understand what he meant. She was tempted to ask whether they had marriage in mind, but bit the question back. Terry, who had done his best to act as mother and father to his two young half-brothers, could be trusted to act responsibly by his own standards if not by society’s. Besides – the thought of Andy came into her head – who was she to act as a guardian of morals? Instead, she turned towards the new car and stroked her hand along the roof.

  ‘Take it gently for a little while, won’t you?’ she said. ‘These things need to be run in.’

  As the car and the van made their cautious departure down the steep, winding drive, Andy was already hard at work returning chairs and tables to their proper places in the house. Grace went to help, but was waved away.

  ‘You’ve done enough for one day. Sit down and put your feet up. Lady of leisure, like.’

  She found herself glad to obey. A social day had proved to be far more tiring than the same number of hours spent hammering a chisel into stone. After a visit to the kitchen to thank Mrs Barrett and her helpers, she flopped, exhausted, on to a sofa.

  Andy joined her there later, and they dined off left-overs before making their way early to bed,

  ‘Why don’t you stay?’ she asked later, when he began to dress again. As long as he was there, lying beside her, she could keep her mind off Trish.

  He shook his head. For some reason it was a point of honour with him always to return to his own home. ‘Love you, though,’ he said, bending over to kiss her again.

  Grace raised her hand to stroke his skin, so brown and freckled where the sun had caught it, and the rest so soft and pale. ‘Love you, too,’ she said. Neither of them was accustomed to be passionate in words.

  After he had left she began to stroke her own body, prolonging the night by feeling her skin as Andy had felt it. It had become a soothing habit, but on this occasion, as her hands curved over her breasts, she felt her throat tightening with anxiety. Were Terry and Trish now, at this very moment … was he hurting her? Was she happy?

  Stupid, to put such unanswerable questions to herself, but no doubt all mothers shared to some extent in the tension of a wedding – or not-quite-wedding – night. Her hands tightened. Her fingers pressed down into her breasts, exploring the muscles as though she were studying anatomy, prodding until it hurt. That was when she discovered the lump.

  The room had been quiet before, but suddenly it was as though the sound of a roaring, shouting crowd had filled the air with noise before being abruptly cut off. A different kind of silence. Dead silence. With her eyes now wide open in the darkness she pressed her probing fingers hard down again.

  It was the tiniest of lumps, insignificant, unimportant. Probably it was nothing but the beginning of a boil, a minute spur of bone, a small and hitherto unnoticed muscle – or so she tried to persuade herself. But Grace’s fingers were the tools of her trade, able to identify a knot in a piece of wood or a flaw in a stone even when neither was visible on the surface. They knew what they had found.

  1951

  Chapter One

  The year began badly. Even before she opened the thick brown envelope Grace felt sure that it contained unwelcome news.

  It was not every day that the postman needed to extend his delivery round to Greystones, and as a rule those letters that he did bring revealed their source at a glance. There had never been any mistaking Max’s handwriting on his compulsory Sunday-afternoon letter from boarding school; but now that he had joined a touring ballet company they kept in touch by telephone. A twice-yearly correspondent had taken his place. Grace’s brother Kenneth, after many years of silence, had learned from his son how much the family in England longed to have news of him
and an air mail envelope bearing an Australian stamp now arrived regularly on her birthdays and at Christmas time. On other air mail envelopes, edged in red and blue, a Los Angeles postmark indicated that they carried news from the Californian expatriates, Ellis and Jay.

  Trish preferred to chat on the telephone, but another correspondent was the agent who had taken over the handling of Grace’s work from Ellis. He came to Greystones every two or three months to see her new pieces and discuss possible sales, but his cheques always arrived in envelopes with bright green borders: green for good luck. There was nothing like that today to keep company with this grimly official communication, which she opened with foreboding.

  The council, she read, wished to inform her of its intentions with regard to the area marked in red on the enclosed section of the ordnance survey map. Mrs Faraday would doubtless be aware that it was intended eventually to encircle the city of Oxford with a ring road, some sections of which were already in use. Plans were now being drawn up for the building of the eastern section, and a valuation officer would be happy to attend at the property to discuss the land which would be required and to negotiate its purchase. Should it not prove possible to come to an arrangement by mutual agreement, the council would seek powers of compulsory purchase.

  Grace was so disturbed that she could hardly focus on the details and had to read it all through again. The long thin rectangle of red on the map enclosed the stream which ran through the lowest point of the Greystones estate, part of the wood on one side of it and an area of open ground on the further side. Was it really possible that this could be snatched away without her consent? And if that did happen, her land beyond the road would be cut off from the rest, so that she would really be losing far more than the designated area.

  There was a lot to think about, but it would have to wait, because she had a New Year’s Resolution to keep. She had promised herself that before the first week of January ended she would see a doctor.

  As a child she had suffered regular bouts of ill-health. She now knew them to have been caused by asthma, but at the time her breathless, chesty wheezing had been assumed to be bronchial. It was because the swampy air round the riverside house in Oxford where she was born seemed to have brought her so near to death that Greystones had been built for her on a hill. Even after the move she suffered occasional attacks, but when it was realized that these were triggered by exposure to specific irritants, like horses, she had learned what to avoid and grew into a strong, healthy adult. No doctor had been summoned to the house on her behalf since the birth of her baby almost twenty years earlier.

  All the same, Dr Murray, who had taken over the practice in Headington Quarry just before the war, was no stranger. The children had all had their share of childish ailments and accidents. The doctor smiled in recognition now as she entered his consulting room.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Faraday?’

  Grace was not one to beat about the bush. ‘I feel very well,’ she said. ‘But I have a lump in my breast.’

  ‘We’d better have a look, then.’ He motioned to her to go behind a screen and waited while she took off her blouse and vest. ‘Which side?’

  ‘The right.’

  ‘Put your hand on my shoulder, will you?’ He did not need to ask exactly where to feel. Three and a half years earlier Grace had needed to probe deeply with her fingers before becoming suspicious, but within the last few months it had become easy to trace the outline of the lump beneath the skin which dimpled above it. She looked straight ahead as, pinching it gently, he measured it with his fingers, first in one direction and then the other. Next, with a firmer touch, he pressed into her armpits.

  ‘Any other swellings or discomfort anywhere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get dressed again, will you, Mrs Faraday.’

  By the time she emerged from behind the screen he was writing his notes, but looked up with a serious expression on his face.

  ‘When did you first notice it?’

  ‘Some while ago now, but it was tiny then. It’s just in the last few months that it seems to have been growing at a great rate.’

  ‘I wish you had come to me straightaway. Or even a few months ago.’ He reached forward to the telephone.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Grace. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Make an immediate appointment for you at the Radcliffe Infirmary. No point in my giving you a fuller examination here when they’ll just do it all over again when you get there.’

  ‘What will they do?’

  ‘Blood tests. X-ray. And a biopsy on the lump itself to find out whether it’s malignant.’

  ‘Do you have any doubt about that?’

  Dr Murray looked at her steadily.

  ‘It’s the strongest possibility. You realize that yourself, don’t you? If it were smaller, we could hope that it might be a cyst, easily and permanently removed. But from what you say about the rate of growth …’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that they’d cut out the lump, discover whether it’s malignant – and then what?’

  ‘The biopsy is normally done very quickly, while you’re still under anaesthetic. If carcinoma is confirmed, it would be necessary to remove the breast. It’s a very safe operation. Nothing to be frightened of.’

  Grace had known what he would say, but still felt herself paling. She was determined, though, to press the discussion to a conclusion.

  ‘And would that be the end of it?’

  ‘We would hope so.’

  ‘But suppose our hopes are not realized. What’s the worst case, Dr Murray? I mean, people die of breast cancer. If the operation itself is a minor one, what else goes wrong?’ She could tell that he was reluctant to answer. ‘I’m not going to let anything happen until I understand why. I have to rely on you to tell me the truth. I realize that I’ve been foolish and that I shall have to pay for it. I must know what the price will be.’

  He hesitated a moment longer before giving in to her determination.

  ‘If you had come to me when you first noticed a tiny lump,’ he said, ‘then I could have given you a more optimistic opinion. But as it is … What happens, you see, is something called metastasis. The cancer doesn’t confine itself to the lump that you can see and feel. The malignant cells start to spread through the lymph nodes and into the bloodstream. They cause other tumours to grow. And whereas it’s easy enough to operate on the breast, there are other parts of the body where it’s more difficult. That’s why it’s urgent that you should attend the Infirmary as soon as possible.’

  ‘Do you think that this process you describe may already have begun?’

  ‘Only a specialist with all the proper test equipment can answer that question.’

  ‘Let me have your guess, then. The balance of probabilities.’

  ‘It would be grossly irresponsible to hazard an opinion without having any evidence.’ But for a second time he submitted to her wish for a truthful answer. ‘All I can say is that the consultant will be bound to ask you whether you have lost weight recently. Or noticed any unusual tiredness or lack of strength.’

  Grace considered the hint in silence. She had no idea how much she weighed now or had ever weighed, but certainly she had noticed a loss of strength in recent months. It was one of the reasons why she had at last plucked up the courage to come to the surgery.

  The previous year, with a particular carving in mind, she had acquired a large piece of rosewood. She knew before she set to work that it was harder than the walnut or oak which she chose as a rule, but was appalled, when she embarked on the process of roughing out the shape, to find how often she had to stop and rest. In the early stages of any large carving it was necessary to spend hours at a time hitting a large gouger with a mallet until most of the outside was cut away and an approximation of the final shape was left. This had never caused her any problem before.

  She had wondered at first whether the lump itself, and the swelling under her arm, was distorting her action an
d putting an unusual strain on her muscles. And if that was not the answer, it had seemed reasonable to accept that, as she grew older, she was bound to become less strong. But now it appeared all too probable that Dr Murray’s suggestion came nearer to the truth. She stood up, pushing back her chair.

  ‘I’d like to think about it,’ she said. ‘Please don’t phone the Infirmary just yet. I’ll be in touch with you again.’

  Dr Murray also stood up. ‘You come here to ask my opinion and you must understand what it is. You are in urgent need of treatment and it would be foolish of you to waste any time before taking it.’

  ‘I’ve been foolish already.’ Grace managed to smile. ‘When I’ve delayed for so long, a day or two can’t make much difference.’

  ‘When the tide comes up against a barrier of sand, there is one second when it’s restrained, another second when the first small wave trickles over or through, and only one more second before the tide sweeps on and covers it completely. The point of no return in your own case could fall between one day and the next.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Grace repeated. ‘Thank you very much, doctor.’

  The walk from the village to Greystones was uphill all the way, but it was a journey which she had been making without effort for fifty years. Today, though, her legs felt heavy and her body lethargic. She walked slowly, wearily, back to the house and into her studio.

  The piece of rosewood, clamped to her work table, seemed to look at her reproachfully. This was a piece of work which she had intended to enter for a competition. The subject was political prisoners, and Grace had envisaged the hollowed-out shape of a skull, with slits cut out of its casing to reveal something – its shape not yet decided – struggling to escape through what would resemble prison bars. All possibility of finishing it in time for the competition had already vanished, but that did not mean that she intended to abandon the project.