Billy did indeed look quite the thing in his grey flannel suit, white shirt and new blue tie.
‘You scrub up something lovely,’ Marjorie teased him when he came downstairs wearing the solemn expression of a boy who had never worn such a smart suit before, after which they all opened their presents. Dinky toys for Billy from everyone – ‘so they make up a set, Billy dear,’ Aunt Hester kept saying. A beautiful pale blue cardigan and a pair of silvered shoes, placed under the tree after she had gone to bed, were Marjorie’s surprises, and last of all Aunt Hester’s bracelet – with love from Majorie AND Billy – was taken out of its box. Billy had added the AND as well as his name, underlined two or three times, as if anxious for Aunt Hester to remember who he was exactly.
‘Oh, dears, this is so sweet of you.’
Aunt Hester held out her wrist and Marjorie did the bracelet up for her, realising as she did so that Aunt Hester was more than a bit moved by its prettiness, so quite grateful for the distraction of Mr Arnold and Mavis’s oohing and aahing, and opening their own small gifts, which were teaspoons with place names on them for Mavis, and a pair of thick wool socks for Mr Arnold.
Christmas lunch was a golden roast and stuffed chicken, succulent butcher’s sausages, roast potatoes and bread sauce, the whole served up with a thick golden gravy poured liberally over everything. Billy was so transported he never said a word, other than to leap up when offered a second helping.
Mavis and her husband had arrived a little later than asked, flushed and happy, and they seemed to laugh inordinately at things that neither Marjorie nor Billy could understand, helped no doubt by pre-lunch sherry and the bottles of beer they consumed with their meal. Home-made plum pudding with a thick yellow custard followed, after which they all pulled their crackers, put on their paper hats and generally behaved as people always do when they have enjoyed a Christmas lunch that was as happily memorable as it was delicious.
After lunch and listening with reverence to the King’s speech, Aunt Hester produced a gramophone from under the stairs and a stack of records. Still full of joyous energy, she wound up the gramophone and put on Myra Hess playing ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ half a dozen times, followed by an Irish tenor singing ‘Bless This House’, a record that also got more than one airing, and then they all sat down and played Happy Families with a deck of engagingly illustrated cards. Later Mr Arnold fetched a bottle of port wine from his house which he offered to both the ladies, who tried to refuse but then accepted with alacrity, and the next thing Marjorie knew the carpet was being rolled back, and what with Billy Cotton’s Band playing on the gramophone it wasn’t long before everyone was dancing.
Marjorie and Billy didn’t know how to dance properly, but by watching the grown-ups they started to learn, and after a great deal of giggling, not to mention clumsy, left-footed efforts, were soon aping their elders to the sound of a singer called Alan Breeze crooning the tender lyrics of the latest popular songs. It was the most perfect day of both of their young lives, although as they finally climbed the stairs to bed Billy very nearly spoiled everything.
‘I suppose I’ll be going back soon, won’t I?’ he asked, as they reached the landing.
‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know, really I don’t, just don’t ask me.’
‘No, I know,’ Billy agreed, combing his straggly hair with his fingers. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’
‘Why don’t you just keep to wondering then? Long as you keep your wondering to yourself. And happy Christmas one last time. Night night, Billy, don’t let the fleas bite, eh?’
Marjorie sighed as she sat on the edge of her truckle bed, unbuckling her shoes and beginning to get undressed. Of course Christmas couldn’t last for ever, which was why she’d found herself getting tetchy with young Billy, because of course, Billy being Billy, he’d have to ask the question that was on both of their minds. It had been kind of Aunt Hester to invite him, but they couldn’t expect any more of her, and they both knew it.
But as the time passed from Boxing Day to the day after Boxing Day, to the day after the day after Boxing Day, Marjorie began to regret her decision to be patient. She found it increasingly difficult to enjoy Billy’s visit as much as she wanted to, feeling that at any moment it could be ended as abruptly as it had begun.
As days passed Marjorie began to see that the question hung so heavily over the house that despite Marjorie and Aunt Hester’s home cooking, Billy could barely swallow his food. They both started to delay going to bed for as long as was reasonable, sitting at the table doing a jigsaw or playing highly competitive games of Snap or Pelmanism, while Aunt Hester sat by the fire knitting yet another of her endless supply of garments which were despatched from the house almost the moment she cast them off her needles.
Still nothing was said. When they both came to say their goodnights each evening, two pairs of eyes begged Aunt Hester to give them the news, but even if she was aware of the pleading she paid no attention to it, allowing both children to kiss her cheek lightly while she rummaged in her knitting bag for fresh balls of wool or a new pattern, before sending them off upstairs.
New Year had come and gone, and the shops were doing a brisk trade in everything from bootlaces to blackout material, when Aunt Hester made an announcement.
‘Billy,’ she began, not looking up from her knitting. ‘I should have mentioned this earlier, but it wasn’t possible.’ She looked up at him.
‘Yes, Aunt Hester?’ Marjorie promptly answered for Billy.
‘Dear me, I didn’t know your name was Billy, Marjorie dear,’ Aunt Hester said with a smile, putting her knitting down. ‘No, it’s about Billy’s being fostered.’
‘What’s fostering?’ Marjorie enquired.
‘It means coming to live here. As part of the family. It’s not possible to adopt you, not yet anyway, what with me being a widow and that, but it would give you and me a better chance of becoming acquainted, if I fostered you, and then we can see whether or not you might want to make the arrangement more permanent. That would be entirely up to you, do you see?’
She was no longer looking at him, holding up the back of the dark red garment she was making in front of her as if to examine it for flaws, giving Billy and Marjorie the chance to exchange looks.
‘Are you saying, Aunt Hester,’ Marjorie began carefully, ‘you’re not saying, are you, that Billy doesn’t have to go back to Mrs Reid’s, are you?’
‘I’m not saying anything, Marjorie. That’s entirely up to this young man here. It’s for him to say, Marjorie dear.’
There was a long, uncertain sort of silence, not just because of the continued uncertainty as to the precise definition of fostering, but because neither Marjorie nor Billy could quite believe what they thought they were hearing.
‘I don’t want to go back to the Dum— to Mrs Reid’s, Mrs Hendry,’ Billy said finally. ‘Not never.’
‘Ever, dear,’ Aunt Hester corrected him. ‘Not ever.’
‘Exactly, Mrs Hendry. I really don’t.’
‘Then – neither shall you.’
Once again the knitting was held up for inspection as once again the two youngsters exchanged looks, this time of unabashed glee.
‘This mean I been called for by you, Mrs Hendry?’ Billy asked, struggling to keep looking grown up and able to cope while his face lost all colour. ‘’Cos if it does, I don’t know what to say. Really I don’t.’
‘I hope maybe you’ll say yes, young man,’ Aunt Hester replied. ‘And if you do, you can stop calling me Mrs Hendry, and begin by calling me Aunt Hester.’
‘Yes, Mrs Hendry.’
Billy stared at her, the import of what she had just said gradually sinking in, but Aunt Hester only continued her knitting, frowning slightly at her fingers as the needles clicked and clacked.
‘Now if that’s all done and dusted,’ she said, finally, ‘I suggest you both take yourselves off to bed.’
‘Aunt Hester—’ Marjorie began.
‘Bed.’
‘I just wondered—’
‘Tomorrow, Marjorie. I promised I’d finish this pullover last Saturday.’
‘Couldn’t we just know a bit?’
Aunt Hester sighed and put down her knitting.
‘Well, if you really want to know, Billy’s father did a bunk, quite a few years back. I’m sorry, Billy – very sorry I’m the one to tell you, but there it is.’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Hendry. I mean Aunt Hester,’ Billy replied, glancing down shyly at his feet.
‘He left enough money in the bank for you to stay at the boarding school, may God help you, till now. Till you’re fourteen or so, I think it was. Any old how, since the people that run the Dump, as you like to call it, since all they’re interested in is being paid, any offer to take a hungry boy off their hands is more than welcomed. Far as fostering goes, the people in charge couldn’t have been more helpful, which says something, although what I’m not sure. Now – off to bed.’
‘Blimey,’ Billy said as Marjorie and he climbed the stairs. ‘Blimey.’
‘You shouldn’t say that, you know,’ Marjorie said from behind him. ‘It means God blind me.’
‘Strewth, then.’ Billy stood stock still as he reached the landing. ‘It means strewth, I don’t have to go back to the Dump. Not never.’
‘Not ever.’
‘Not ever!’
Chapter Five
Knowing her father had now returned home, Kate kept resolutely out of his way, remaining outside on the lawn tennis court with Robert, her elder brother, playing a less one-sided game than was customary. In fact much to Robert’s astonishment he found himself two sets all and two one up in the final set, having broken his sister’s first service game.
‘You’re not concentrating, Kate!’ he called from the back of the court, collecting the balls for the next game. ‘Wake up, woman!’
Kate gave yet another nervous glance up to the house.
‘Quite frankly, it’s a wonder it’s this close, knowing what’s going on in there,’ she murmured in her oddly deep voice, as her long, slender bronzed legs in their white tennis shoes moved easily towards her brother.
They both came to the net to collect the three or four balls that were lying there.
‘It can’t take him that long to read the blasted thing,’ Robert groaned, sharply tapping one of the grounded tennis balls with his racket so that it bounced up into his hand.
‘It’s not the reading that’s taking the time, Bobby. It’ll be the endless arguing about what’s in it. Worse than anything.’
‘At least Mother’s on your side.’
‘Mother doesn’t pay the fees, in case you haven’t noticed, poor old darling. She just runs the house.’
‘Come on,’ Robert urged over-cheerfully. ‘Half a crown says I’ll beat you.’
‘Hardly surprising if you do,’ Kate returned, banging the gut of her racket against her forehead as she returned to the baseline. ‘The way I’m playing.’
‘OK – so let’s have five bob on it, shall we? Make it a bit more interesting?’
‘You’re on.’ She stared at something in the distance. ‘After all, if I’m going to have to do a bunk, I shall need every penny that comes my way.’
Robert glanced up at her, delaying his first service, wondering whether or not his sister was teasing. Realising she wasn’t, he shook his head, and prepared to serve. Poor old Kate, she was always in hot water.
His first serve cut back from left to right as it sped over the net and kicked up the chalk deep on the centre line. But now the money was down, it wasn’t good enough to beat his sister. She was in position before the ball had swung back on to the line, despite its keeping very low. Astonishingly she had even found the time to go round on her forehand and pick up the shot, half-volleying it across the court, well out of her older brother’s reach.
‘Shot!’ he called, tossing his blond fringe out of his eyes. ‘We’ll see you at Wimbledon yet, Kate Maddox!’
‘This is just as I expected,’ Professor Maddox said quietly, taking his glasses off and folding them up precisely before placing them on the still immaculate small chamois strip that lay on the bottom of the plum-coloured spectacles case. ‘These nuns are stupid. They encourage girls in such a way as to turn them into nothing more and nothing less than a bunch of suffragettes. Bad enough that Kate has the voice of a boy, and the figure of one too, but now they’re encouraging her to strike out in a way that will mean she never snares a husband. Men simply don’t like educated women. Nuns, really, I ask you – what do they know about the world or anything in it?’
Helen Maddox nervously adjusted the hair to one side of her neck and wondered as she so often did whether she was expected to agree with her husband’s remark, or simply make some sort of sympathetic noise. Harold was a brilliant man, but he was also a very difficult and demanding one, sides to his character that had become particularly apparent once it had become all too obvious that not just one but both of his children might be going to be at least as gifted as himself.
‘In all fairness to the nuns, Harold,’ Helen said quietly, as she began to clear some of the papers from the table in order to make ready for dinner, ‘to be perfectly fair, Kate’s results are just as good as Robert’s. In fact in some instances they’re considerably better—’
‘Attend to the point, Helen,’ her husband interrupted, without looking up from the list of notes he was making. ‘Robert needs to be bright, while Kate has no such need.’ He looked across at his wife with unconcealed despite. ‘And while we’re on the subject of our children, perhaps a little less emphasis on them when we entertain? Or are being entertained? As far as your small talk goes, Helen, sometimes I feel I do not even exist.’
‘That isn’t very fair, Harold. Friends ask after one’s children, just as we do after theirs. It’s only natural.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Harold said dismissively, as if what his wife had to say was really of no importance. ‘To return to the problem of Kate.’
‘I didn’t realise there was a problem. Not with a report as glowing as that, surely?’
‘You don’t seem to understand, Helen. But then why should I find that so unusual?’ Harold looked at his wife and shook his head slowly, sighing before he continued. ‘I am really not interested in her intellectual growth simply because it is a waste of money educating a girl any further. I keep telling you this, and you keep ignoring this remonstrance. What’s the result of your ignoring me? Reverend Mother, some over-educated religious crank who has never properly tasted life in the outside world, is trying to convince us to send Kate to Oxford.’
‘And you think there isn’t any point.’
‘None whatsoever. Whatever her teachers may say – or may think.’
‘I don’t think perhaps you’re being very fair, Harold.’
‘There is no point in sending girls to university, Helen, because what do girls do when they leave university? They get married. And there’s no point in arguing. There is no point in your trying to tell me otherwise – for instance that Kate will prove to be the exception to the rule – because I maintain otherwise. It would be akin to pouring money into a drain to send Kate to Oxford. She would skitter through academe, playing tennis and going to dances, the way all girls do at university – and we simply cannot afford to burn money in such a fashion. And there’s an end to it.’
‘I think we should at least go and discuss the matter with her teachers. And with Reverend Mother, surely?’
‘There is absolutely no point, Helen. I intend to take Kate away from the convent. I have already written to Reverend Mother to signal my intentions.’
‘You have what?’ Helen returned, unable to keep her voice from rising and earning a look of stern disapproval from her husband.
‘There is no need to shout, Helen, I assure you,’ he scolded. ‘There is absolutely no need at all.’
Helen felt like telling him there was all the need in the world, but she fell silent
for a moment or two instead, knowing that if she started taking issue with Harold the person to suffer finally would be Kate.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t really believe you have made this decision without consulting me. I don’t see how you could,’ she said, finally.
‘Then I’ll tell you how I could, as you put it. I have made this decision because I pay the fees. For your information I am not wasting my hard-earned income sending a girl to university on the whim of a bunch of nuns. Kate will leave the convent school when term ends and she will then go to be trained for some suitable job that will tide her over and help her keep herself, until such time as she gets married – which will not I pray be too long in coming.’
‘This is a waste of Kate’s ability, and you know it.’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Harold replied, his mouth tightening. ‘It’s going to be hard enough having to pay for a wedding in this day and age, so just imagine – if you can – how stretched our somewhat limited finances would be were we to have wasted the little money we have in the bank on a university education, only then to have to spend out even more on a wedding. It simply does not bear thinking about.’
Helen turned away to look out of the window for a moment at her two children playing tennis on the grass court laid at the end of the garden. Kate was so elegant and talented. She knew just from watching them that Robert must be losing heavily by now. The longer she observed them, the more her heart sank at the thought that Kate was about to be deprived of an interesting future, purely because of her father’s meanness of spirit.
She also knew that there was nothing she could do about it. Because of the way their marriage was, because of the way she had let life go, Helen knew that whatever she wanted for her children and however much she wanted it, Harold would simply go his own not so awfully sweet way.
‘Do you know what her school means to Kate, Harold?’ she wondered, still looking out of the window, vastly preferring the sight of her handsome, athletic children to that of the back of her husband’s now fast balding head. ‘Kate’s been so happy there. She’s made such friends. And she’s done so well there—’
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 10
