Wise Child
Page 29
'Nor I,' Isobel said, breathing softly, merriment gone.
And all at once, as spontaneously as the laughter had overcome them, Ian stretched out his arm along the grass in invitation. His blue eyes and her grey ones met and held. Slowly Isobel rolled over into the crook of his arm. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she put her arms up and drew his face down to feel his mouth moving, locked into hers as they held one another fast, bodies close, melting.
She could taste the sweetness of his mouth after he pulled away and looked into her eyes. His blue eyes were alight with the same passion that had set her ablaze. Then his cheek was against hers and his firm, tender hands were sliding inside the navy-blue jumper and touching her bouncing round breasts, where they stood proud of the fine wool vest that was being slipped down until the shoulder ribbon straps were pinning her arms close to her sides.
The breeze was cool on her bare breasts as they rose and fell under the touch of gentle fIngers and an enveloping warm mouth. And she was quickening, melting inside as he rolled on top of her, hard and urgent through the layers and layers of serge and tweed that separated them. Then her hands fastened behind his neck and his mouth was sealed into hers again and all her senses became one sweet longing to be loved. She didn't want it to end.
It could not have been the first time he'd kissed a girl - and he must see female bodies every day - and yet it felt as if it were a new discovery to him. Quickly then he pulled away and they lay side by side, Ian breathing very fast. She heard him say, 'My sainted aunt. This is it!’
She lay very still, eyes closed because she could not bear any more without crying out; struggling to calm the fast breathing and banging heartbeat she was sure he must hear thundering around her body. It had left her shaken to her core.
It felt like eternity before he sat up, took hold of her hand and said softly, 'Isobel?' For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her again and a great aching was in her arms. She opened her eyes slowly and gazed into those blue eyes that were narrowed against the glare of the sun, making him appear serious and vigilant. She was on the point of tears and he bent over her, stroked her cheek and said, 'I've fallen in love. With a beautiful girl called Isobel Leigh. And if I kiss you again I'll be lost.'
She couldn't control the catching breath that was almost a cry as she said, 'I've been in love with you since I was twelve.'
He smiled and gently brushed the tears from her face. 'Fourteen,' he said. 'You were thirteen or fourteen when we first met. Remember?' He held her hands and tugged her up into a sitting position.
'Eleven,' lsobel said. 'Nearly twelve.'
'So now you are ... ?' A frown of disbelief crossed his face.
'Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.'
He closed his eyes and put his hands up to his face. 'My God!' he said. 'Sixteen! I'm twenty-two.' He sat for a few moments, his hands covering his face. Then he stood, put his hand out and helped her to her feet. 'You are much too young. I'm sorry. I wouldn't have done ...'
'But I love you. I love you just as much as before.' She had to make him understand. 'I'm not too young to be in love with you.'
He put his arms around her and clasped his hands at the back of her waist, smiling at her ingenuous declaration of love which, Isobel realised, might sound forward or brazen. He said, 'You're sixteen. You can't know, at sixteen. Let's walk. And talk.' He kissed her on the forehead and held her close. 'Tonight we'll spend an hour at the piano, shall we? Come to Archerfield early. I want to get to know you. If I have to wait two years to kiss you like that again, we'd better find some other passion in common.'
They went into the green silence of the pine woods, hand in hand, and as they walked on the springy needle-strewn ground that muffled every sound, she found that she could talk -and talk -and talk to him. All of her secrets came spilling out, the secrets of her heart - that she had been born without a legal name or a legal right, that she was afraid for her beautiful diabetic mother, that she would forever feel herself to be an outsider and a nobody until she knew who her father was, for she was certain that the stepfather she mistrusted was not her real, true father. She couldnt stop talking though she had never spoken as openly before.
She could not tell him why she mistrusted her stepfather. She could not talk about such things. That was something she had to bury, for Mam's sake as well as her own. But she told him that many of her heart's desires had come with Mam's marriage, and she told him that she no longer had a vile pink record card that followed her from one council school to another. She was adopted, legitimate. She had chosen a name she loved. He listened intently to her outpourings. They were out of the pine woods, dropping through fields of clover and mayflowers, over ancient stiles to the River Dean, past stone-walled farms to the turnpike road to Derbyshire. She kept on talking and talking…she and Mam had been baptised at a little midweek ceremony at St Michael and All Angels 'Publick Baptism of such as are of Riper Years' it was called and soon they would be confirmed and able to take Holy Communion. She ought to be happy that she was, in the eyes of the church, 'a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven.'
But there was something missing. Something was wrong.
When finally she finished she was exhausted. They were sitting on a drystone wall by an old mill pond. Ian put his arms about her again and said, 'Oh, Isobel! It was your father you were seeking - not legal status. It won't go away, the need to know. I hope you find him one day but it's what kind of a person you are, not the mistakes your parents made, that matters. We can't blame our parents, our background, our past for everything. Life goes forward and we're all going in the same direction, no matter where we came from. We have to look ahead. Not back.'
'I've talked too much,' she said. 'I'm usually the one who listens.'
'I'm glad. I know what has made you what you are.' He slid his arm round her waist and held her close. 'You're the girl I want.'
They walked on in the spring sunshine, and as they went he told her about his own life. He said it had been just as hard when he was a child, having no mother, as it had been for her without a father. It was hard to live up to a father you loved and admired. He loved the challenge and the freedom of sailing. He'd have liked to join the Royal Navy but his father had refused his permission. His father had insisted on his studying medicine. Ian was glad; glad he'd been made to study in his early years because out of that had come self-discipline. He needed to use his brain. Great achievements were expected of him - and of his dear sister, who had no mother to teach her womanly graces. Rowena, he said, was an odd mixture of enthusiasm, tactless confidences and long silences. He said, 'My father's not to blame for the stout-hearted way Rowena and I behave, any more than your Mam is to blame for the way you are.'
He was absolutely right. Isobel said, 'I don't blame them.'
Ian helped her down, laughing, 'I sound like a blinking preacher.'
They went along the stony cart tracks, side by side, hands free. Isobel said, 'What will you do? When you are a doctor? Specialise or be a family doctor like your father?'
'I'm drawn to genetics - what's in the blood, as you might say.' 'Because of Magnus?'
'Because Magnus's haemophilia comes from the Mackenzie family. I don't have it, and as long as my wife doesn't carry it my children will be normal. But Rowena may be a carrier. Sylvia almost certainly is. Magnus dare not risk marrying arid having children. I want to know more.' He went quiet, then he said, 'I may not get the chance.'
'Why not?'
'Our generation’s not going to have an easy ride. There will be war. And we'll be in it.'
A shiver went down Isobel's back. 'Someone's going to have to stand up to Hitler. Don't you think?'
He took her hand again. 'The French want us to stand up to him and we do nothing. We've let his Nazi jackbooters march into the Rhineland.' He went along, silent for a few more paces, before he said, 'Sorry. I do go on a bit. What about you?'
'The law.' She
held tight on to his hand. Perhaps it was a dream - a dream of escape, just as her adoption had been. 'I used to say that all I wanted was to be married; to have a happy home - a big house in the hills - married to a good man and with loads of children.'
Ian's eyes were bright with approval. 'I think that's a wonderful ambition. It's my goal in life. To be the father of a big, happy family.'
They fell quiet, embarrassed. They were approaching Archerfteld but high above it; Isobel said, 'Are you hungry?'
'Ravenous.'
'Then we'll have a picnic. In White Nancy.'
Inside the round picnic room of White Nancy Ian said, when they had eaten, 'It's going to be the best party ever. I'll come for you in Dad's car.'
'I can walk!'
'I'll come for you. It will give us an excuse to be alone.'
Chapter Seventeen
Sylvia had sent down to Lindow three dresses, silk stockings, artificial flowers and ribbon. She had also sent her spare pair of gold sandals, knowing they both took size five.
Isobel chose a long dress of bias cut amber silk that had one shoulder bare and the other tied with wide silk bow straps. It was a much older style than she'd worn before, but Sylvia was taller, and with this one she could adjust the straps to make it shorter. She pinned on to the shoulder a little bunch of velvet violets and silk snowdrops with trailing stems of green silk.
At six o'clock she was dressed and ready and sitting patiently in the living room while Nanna brushed her hair. 'If I could take my head off,' she said, 'I'd try a Grecian bun.'
'Impossible!' Nanna went on brushing it, back and up. 'These curls will spring back again in no time. I'll get it smooth and fasten it with my ivory clasp.' She went on brushing with long strokes for another five minutes while Grandpa sat watching from his armchair by the fire.
'There,' said Nanna when she'd finished. 'Eeh! Spit’n image of your mother. Isn't she, Dad?'
Grandpa nodded. 'Pretty as a picture.'
'Take a peep.' Nanna held up a long-handled mirror.
Isobel was startled by her reflection; milky-white skin with a sheen, high cheekbones touched with Nanna's ancient rouge. Her naturally thick eyelashes were silky from a feathering with Vaseline. Nanna had told her that when she was young one of her beauty secrets was, of all things, soot. So Isobel blackened a mole near the outer comer of her eye into a beauty spot, then dipped her toothbrush in soot and scrubbed her teeth until, with all traces of black gone, they gleamed against her naturally red lips that were full and sharply defined.
But it was the shining grey eyes, with the amber flecks dancing when she glanced this way and that, that made her see that her looks were out of the ordinary. She had a light in the eye, a turn of the head that could bewitch and beguile. She was as pretty as Mam.
'That's enough primping, miss.' Nanna took her hand-mirror away. 'Put your other shoes on for going down the lane in.'
Grandpa said, 'I'll walk down with her.'
'Ian's coming for me.'
Grandpa said, 'I don't approve of a young lass being alone with a man. Make sure he treats you with proper respect.'
'Grandpa! I'm sixteen,' Isobel said as lan's knock came on the back door and she leaped to her feet.
'All right. All right.' Grandpa was smiling as he went to open the door. 'I'm an old-fashioned old man!'
Then Ian was inside, filling the little room because he was so tall and full of life and presence, shaking hands with Grandpa and promising to take care of her, asking Nanna if it was she who played the piano. Nanna and Grandpa were won over. Nanna began to flutter and dimple with pleasure as he admired her piano, asked, 'May 11' and sat down and played 'Over the Sea to Skye' for them, remarking on the fine tone.
When he had done, Nanna said, 'Will you stay a little while?'
'No. But may I come tomorrow?' Ian took Isobel's hand. 'It will give me another chance to see Isobel ...'
'None of that! Don't hold hands with a girl until you're courting her properly,' Grandpa said. Then, seeing embarrassment on lan's face, he said, 'After moming chapel tomorrow. Come at two o'clock. You'll be able to meet Isobel's mother and father as well.'
Isobel went hot and cold. She hadn't thought so far ahead. The web of lies was growing. 'Oh! I don't think I'll be here by then, Grandpa. I have to get an early train ...'
'Never mind,' Ian said. He had not been embarrassed by Grandpa's rebuke because he lifted her hand, this time for all to see, gave a little bow and said, 'Your carriage awaits, ma'am!'
In the car he said, 'What was all that about your going back to school? I thought you said Monday ... ?'
'No.' she said quickly, ashamed that she was having to lie to Ian. 'Sunday. I have to be back for Monday.'
'I can drive you, if you like. We could leave early in the morning and be in Southport for two. It's about sixty miles, isn't it?'
'Would you?'
The driveway was not long, and Sylvia and Magnus were waiting at the open door. Sylvia, fair and ethereal in white, with a camellia clipped into her bobbed hair, came down the steps. 'You look marvellous in that colour, Isobel,' she said. 'So glad you're here. It's going to be a wonderful evening ...'
Magnus, who was lounging against the doorpost, gave an appreciative whistle.
'Magnus! Don't whistle!' Sylvia chided him, and took his arm. 'Mother and Father will be down later. We'll have an hour to ourselves in the drawing room before the guests arrive. Rowena is in there already -arranging everything to her liking.'
The room was ready. The piano stood in its position, where the band would play in an hour's time. Rowena was setting out glasses, fruit cup and cocktail shakers on the high semi-circular bar in the far comer of the room. 'Goody! You're here!' Rowena called out before coming to the piano. 'Give us something lively, will you, Ian?'
First Ian played 'Three Little Maids' from The Mikado, while Sylvia, Rowena and Isobel tried to sing and act it out. But he stopped and said he'd have to cover his ears, they were making such a caterwauling. He played jazz for a few minutes, then stopped and said, 'Isobel, I saw your music on the piano. Play the Chopin waltz for us.'
'I've never been able to get it right,' she said. 'I'll have a go but my playing sounds mechanical compared with yours.'
She played it through, then Ian drew up a chair beside the stool and said, 'You start off a bit fast. Try it with less speed and less pedal ...' She tried again. He said, 'Good Do it again. Up to the tenth bar. Go on. Make it exciting !' Excitement was mounting in her. She was concentrating on the music but aware of his face close to hers, his breath near her cheek. 'Don't scramble those big skips ... Go on ... Good ...'
He was a natural teacher. She was playing better than she'd ever done and her mouth was pushing in and out, and when she got to the Cantabile her eyebrows were going up and down and she knew she looked silly, but Ian was tapping his foot 'Meno mosso! Make that piano sing!' He was singing in tune with the music, 'Come on ... I'm going to there ... to there ... to there ... to there! I'm going to there! ... I'm going to there!' Then, 'Sh! Tempo one. Molto vivace! Keep that fingering clean and crisp. Brilliant!' When she ended she felt as if she'd run a mile.
Ian put his arm across her shoulder and said to the others. 'What a performance!'
Then Isobel heard Mrs Hammond's voice, clear and haughty. 'Is that my daughter's dress you are wearing, Lily Stanway?'
She whirled round Mrs Hammond was behind her. lsobel's face flamed as she got to her feet: Not knowing how to answer, she could only look in desperation at Sylvia, who quickly came to her rescue.
'Mama! I'm furious with you.' She faced her mother. 'I told you that I was going to lend my dress ...'
Ian blazed, 'Aunt Catriona! I know it's your house, but ... !'
Magnus, in a fury shouted. 'Don't you dare upset Isobel, Mama!'
And Isobel hung her head in shame, just as she had as a five-year-old; forcing back tears and wishing for the ground to swallow her.
'Oh, dear! I didn't mean to be rud
e. I thought I was being witty,' Mrs Hammond said, 'I was taken aback, seeing Lily ... Isobel in the dress I bought for Sylvia.' She gave a careless laugh. 'Please accept my apologies, Isobel.'
'Yes. Yes,' Isobel stammered. It would take ages for her to calm down. 'Good. Let's go to the door. The guests will be here at any minute. Your father is waiting.'
There were fifty guests, young people and friends of the Hammonds, and of course Ian and Sylvia couldn't talk only to her all evening, but at last Isobel's embarrassment began to dissolve. The band started to play and couples took to dancing. The lights were low, and although hard drink was not served, the cocktails had a punch and the Pimm's was delicious and the guests became noisier. Isobel chatted and laughed and sipped the fizzing iced fruity drinks that made her head light.
Magnus, unable to dance, settled himself behind the bar and was happily shaking cocktails and making Pimm's for everyone who asked, trying to be the sophisticate he'd never be, saying, 'I say, old boy!' to the men and, 'Dah ... ling, you look di ... vine!' to the girls. And they all knew that it was a wonderful act of his, because he had just read The Great Gatsby.
An hour later Rowena and Isobel sat on high chromium plated stools, facing Magnus. Rowena leaned both elbows on the bar, urging Magnus to pour a double helping of something or other into her glass. Isobel swung her crossed legs like film stars did, holding a coolie-hat cocktail glass by the stem, dipping the cherry in to suck the sharp martini cocktail off slowly while Magnus went on with his nonsense, making them laugh, saying that he was ready for marriage and soon would propose to the prettiest girl in Mace, and inviting them to guess who she might be.
There was a tap on the shoulder. Isobel looked up into the handsome face of a redhaired young man with a devilish smile: Ray Chancellor.
'Magnus,' he said. 'Don't keep all the pretty ones to yourself.' He put his hand on her bare shoulder. Isobel felt his fingers moving gently, tightening over her collar bone so that she nearly lost her hold on the glass.