Little sister

by Mary Burchell

  CHAPTER ONE

  ALEX supposed that it all really started the day she had the discussion with Jenny.

  Until then she had always imagined that the whole of her personal world was bounded by Grandma and the pleasant little house in which they lived. When she was very small no doubt she had asked why she had no mother and father, as other children had. But Grandma must have given a completely satisfactory answer because she could remember no doubt or wondering on the subject in her childhood.

  Grandma was like that, of course. She had a calm air of infallibility which gave complete finality to any statement she made. An unquestioning calm which she shared with one other person only, and that was the white-haired old gentleman sitting on clouds who represented God on the, first page of Alix's school bible.

  Indeed, for the first ten or twelve years of her life she cherished the firm belief that, while God probably knew best, Grandma certainly did.

  Life in the Sussex village, with Grandma and the housekeeper, Betty, and her dog, Terry, had seemed all that any girl could want. And certainly Alix had not been a child to demand over-much.

  She cycled every day to school — three miles there and three miles back. It was a good, even exclusive, school, and several of the day pupils who, like Alix, had to come some distance, used to arrive in cars. But Grandma possessed no car, and, in any case, her very firm conviction that young people should be brought up in a simple and healthy way would certainly have made her rank a bicycle above a car as a suitable means of getting to school.

  Alix didn't mind. She liked her bicycle ride on fine blowy mornings when, if the wind was behind her, she seemed to skim along like a jolly little ship in full sail, and she liked coming home on warm summer evenings too, when all the shadows were growing grotesquely long and the heat of the day seemed to have brought out every sweet country scent from the fields and hedges.

  Oh ves, there were lots of things which were fun in the healthy life" prescribed by Grandma, and very little temptation to make inquiries into mysteries which nely showed themselves from time to time.

  The school which Alix attended specialized in a "good home background" for the pupils who were boarders, and greatly favoured by people who had to spend much time abroad, leaving their children in England. Consequently, many of the girls whom Alix knew seemed very little better provided with parents than she herself, and she saw no special cause for comment in the fact that she had only her grandmother.

  Her particular friend, Jenny Denver, actually was an orphan. She had a guardian, and solicitors who looked after her financial affairs, and altogether a very official ground to her life. This seemed to Alix an entirely different state of circumstances from her own, and the idea of their being very similar never struck her until the day when Jenny remarked casually:

  "It's odd that we should both be orphans, isn't it?"

  They were lying on a grassy bank at the side of the school playing field, in that pleasant half-hour which intervened between lunch-time and afternoon school. The day was warm, and the slight breeze blowing in from the not very distant sea scarcely stirred the branches of the trees behind them. Only occasionally a silvery ripple seemed to pass over the grass and the one or two stray poppies bowed extravagantly low.

  "Well—" Alix's brown eyes opened rather wide. "Of course I've got Grandma. It isn't like being a real orphan."

  "No," Jenny agreed, "even a grandmother makes a difference."

  At this time both girls were at the leggy, coltish age of fifteen, but Jenny was actually much more self-possessed in manner than Alix. A slim, tall child, who would probably develop later into a very graceful woman, she had smooth, black hair, eyes of an extraordinarily clear grey under strongly marked eyebrows, and a very red, very pretty mouth.

  She was clever, and should easily have been head of her class, but, being incurably lazy, she never quite attained that dignity. All the same, she was the kind of girl who

  inevitably became a prefect, exacted an easy but unquestioning obedience from the younger girls, and even inspired "crushes" to which she was supremely indifferent.

  Alix was a much warmer, softer type. She would never be radiantly beautiful or wonderfully distinguished, but she was dear and pretty and lovable. Her thick fair hair was in marked contrast to her wide brown eyes, and her short, pretty, slightly impertinent nose really suited her face much better than the long, elegant nose which she ardently desired.

  The girls were a very distinct contrast as they lay there, propped on their elbows.

  Jenny broke off a blade of grass and chewed it thoughtfully.

  "What did happen to your parents, Alix? Did you ever really know?"

  "No. Except that they died when I was quite a baby," Alix said, slightly surprised to find that was all she did know.

  "I think you're a funny girl not to want to know more," remarked Jenny.

  Whereupon Alix immediately and very naturally became aware of the fact that she did want to know more.

  "I'll ask Grandma," she said aloud after a moment. "Only — I know it sounds odd — it's rather difficult to ask her very personal things."

  Jenny nodded. She knew Alix's grandmother and didn't think it was odd at all.

  "It's not that she's stern exactly," Alix hastened to add, as though the silence implied some criticism of her.

  "No." Jenny conceded that. "It's that you know quite well she'd never tell anything but the truth, and if it turned out to be something you had no right to know, you'd feel a worm, after all, for forcing it out of her."

  Alix looked admiringly at her friend.

  "I should never have thought of putting it that way, Jenny. But it's quite right"

  Jenny shrugged.

  "Anyway, there couldn't be anything about one's own parents that one ought not to know."

  "No." Alix agreed, as they scramb 1 ^ w in answer to the school bell. "No. I shall ask her tonight."

  But when she was cycling home later, Alix turned the matter over in her mind again and wondered if there were something a little mysterious about it all — something which Grandma thought perhaps she ought not to know.

  She had not settled the point to her satisfaction by the time she reached home, but the sight of the green-shuttered house with its white painted window-frames was so reassuringly familiar that the very word "mystery" seemed silly.

  The opportunity came after tea when, leaning back in her garden chair, Mrs. Farley surveyed her grandchild with a good deal of pleasure and said:

  "Well, how did things go today?"

  Although over sixty, she was still an extremely handsome woman, with bright blue eyes, a singularly unlined skin and a beautiful way of holding herself.

  Alix smiled. She thought Grandma very good to look at and, of course, she really signified all the security and happiness of Alix's life.

  "Oh, very nicely, thank you. That geometry problem was right after all."

  "Was it? Well then, I suppose I was right to let you sit up to finish it."

  "I think so." Alix laughed. "The girls whose parents stop them from finishing their homework don't really like it, you know. But then you practically never interfere with anything like that, Grandma, do you?" She came and sat on the grass at her grandmother's feet, and leant affectionately and unselfconsciously against her.

  Mrs. Farley patted her head.

  "Not if I can help it."

  "You're almost better than parents," Alix said. And then, as she received no answer to that, she suddenly saw her opening. "Grandma, what was my mother like?"

  'To look at, do you mean?"

  Grandma's voice was so calm that it made the question seem very ordinary. Alix hadn't been thinking specially about her mother's personal appearance, but now she felt overwhelmingly
curious.

  "Well — yes."

  "She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw," Grandma said dispassionately. And it was almost imposible to realize that she was speaking of her own daughter.

  "Was she?" Alix twisted round to stare up into her grandmother's face. "How, Grandma? You never told me about her.'*

  "No. I think I rather hoped you would not ask me for some time longer."

  Alix thought that was the most extraordinary speech she had ever heard from Grandma. It was the first time it had ever been implied that Grandma's wishes were not the last word to be said on any subject.

  "Then please" — Alix was affectionately remorseful — "Please don't tell me if you don't want to talk about it. I'm sorry I asked."

  It almost seemed as though the matter might rest there, but, after a short pause, Grandma said:

  "No, Alix. Perhaps you have reached the age when you should know a little more. And, anyway, once you have started on a line of inquiry, it isn't very just to refuse to discuss things."

  That was exactly like Grandma, of course. Whatever was just had to be done. Then Alix turned once more, a sudden idea cutting right across her thoughts.

  "Grandma, you never said so in so many words, but — I suppose my mother is dead, isn't she?"

  A very slight tightening of Mrs. Farley's mouth gave the answer before it came in words.

  "No, Alix. She is still alive. That is why I have to tell you about her."

  Alix said nothing. There was nothing whatever to say. The safe, narrow bounds of her life had suddenly broken away, and she felt as though she were being rushed out into the open sea.

  "I know it is hard for you to think so." Her grandmother's hand very lightly smoothed her hair. "But actually, this need make practically no difference to you. Nina — your mother — is a singer — a very famous singer. She spends her life travelling all over the world, and I suppose never has a fixed home of any sort. It isn't a life which you could — or should — share in any way."

  Still Alix said nothing. She was struggling to evolve some definite impression of this woman who meant everything and yet nothing in her life. Then Grandma went on speaking, a little hurriedly and with a hint of agitation.

  "She married your father when she was very young, and then they separated almost at once. I never saw him and she told me very little about him. When you were bora she was at the beginning of a great career, or so she believed—"

  Grandma paused, but Alix only said: "Yes? Go on, please."

  "It was so much better, my child — we both saw it — that you should come and live a quiet, simple life with me, rather than that she should try to fit you into fhe strange, raffish, bohemian struggle which her life was bound to be, at any rate at first."

  "You mean she didn't want me?" Alix whispered.

  "There is such a thing as doing what is best for everyone, Alix dear. I am trying to show you the circumstances as they seemed to her — to us — at that time."

  "Yes, yes, of course." Alix took her grandmother's hand and pressed her oheek rather nervously against the back of it.

  "One thing I have always considered essential to a happy childhood," Grandma went on gravely. "And that is stability — a sense of security. I agreed to take you and bring you up as my own child, provided that you remained my concern only, and that I should use my own discretion as to when and how much you were told of your real circumstances."

  "Grandma," Alix said timidly, "wasn't that rather hard on — her?"

  The firmness in her grandmother's face became something more than sternness at that moment.

  "You will find, my dear," she said dryly, "that there are times in your life when you must be hard, even with people you love."

  "And did you love her?" It seemed almost an impertinence to ask about Grandma's inmost feelings, but the question refused to be suppressed.

  "Yes, I did love her. She was my daughter, you know, ell as your mother."

  "You said 'did', Grandma. Don't you love her any more

  re was a long silence, and then Mrs. Farley said slowly:

  "I think I would rather not say any more about her, Alix. One day you may meet her yourself, and it would be fairer that you should know her and judge her for yourself. One thing I will say, however, because it is absolutely true. I know that I never quite understood her."

  This was another utterly revolutionary statement for Alix, who had always supposed that her grandmother understood everything.

  "And Grandpa?" Alix suggested in an awed tone. "Did he understand her?"

  "Well, he died, of course, before she grew up, but perhaps she didn't seem quite such a strange, alien spirit to him. To me it always seemed that she could not be our own child. She wasn't like the daughter of two ordinary English country people."

  "But Grandpa wasn't entirely English, was he?"

  "No, though he always seemed like it. His mother came from one of those queer Balkan countries. I never saw her, but he used to laugh and say that in her own village she was believed to be a witch. Perhaps Nina took after her. I don't like to think so, but perhaps it was so."

  "But what was so unusual about her?"

  "Partly the quality of her beauty, which was — timeless."

  "And partly—?" Alix pressed.

  Her grandmother didn't reply at once, but when she did, she said something which Alix remembered all her life.

  "I think I shall never again see the struggle between good and evil so clearly outlined in any human being."

  Alix sat there on the grass, very still. She could hear the clatter of Betty washing up in the kitchen, and the heavy hum of a bee quite close at hand. Away in the distance was the sound of a car coming along the road in front of the house. It grew louder and louder, passed, and faded away in the distance. But still Alix sat there, her eyes on the bee and her thoughts far away.

  Her mother — who was a famous singer.

  A famous singer — who was her mother.

  It didn't make sense whichever way you put it. But one must try to adjust oneself.

  "Grandma," Alix moved at last, "have you a photograph of her?"

  "No, my dear. I kept nothing that would remind us of her. .And though I shall never use. any compulsion in the matter, I would very much rather that you make no ^pt to come in contact with her."

  Why, of course not, if you say not," Alix exclaimed, use the idea was very far from her thoughts just then.

  But perhaps it was at that moment that there was born in her the first overwhelming desire to see her mother — touch her — know her for her own.

  It seemed to Alix at first that this talk with Grandma must revolutionize her life, so that she would not be able to think of anything else.

  But of course, nothing of the sort happened. At fifteen, the most real thing in the world is ordinary, everyday routine, and Alix found life going on very much as it had before. Only at night would she occasionally lie awake, watching the moonlight and trying to visualize a person and a life which were beyond any knowledge of her own.

  She told Jenny a little of what her grandmother had said — under the strict seal of schoolgirl secrecy.

  Jenny was impressed, and wanted to investigate further.

  "Goodness, I should want to watch the newspapers and see if there were any mention of her. Fancy having anyone famous for your mother," was what she said.

  Alix was not quite sure that Grandma would want her to do that, but at least she had not definitely forbidden it. So, for a while, Alix searched anxiously for any reference to a famous singer called Nina Farley. But as nothing materialized, she gave it up after a time, though she was slightly annoyed with Jenny for observing practically: ps she's not really so famous, after al

  Nothing seemed definitely to change between Alix and her grandmother during the next two years, and to an outside observer, they would have appeared as all-in-all to each other as they always had been.

  But, actually, a subtle change had taken place. Just a

/>   little bit of Alix's heart and Alix's imagination no longer

  belonged to her grandmother. They made a secret chamber

  where the image of her mother — whom Grandma herself

  . alien spirit" — came and went.

  OCiated with her was an odd sense of

  longing that was sometimes happy and tender, and sometimes hurt most strangely.

  It was on Alix's seventeenth birthday that Grandma had the idea of having her photographed. A very well-known photographer had just opened a studio in the nearest town, and Grandma said:

  "Alix, I think vv. ought to have your photograph taken. I should like to have a picture of you before you are quite grown-up."

  So the appointment was made, the photograph was taken, and even the photographer himself was distinctly impressed with the result.

  "A very clever photographer," Grandma remarked to Alix when they reached home. "The portrait is simply charming, my dear." And she kissed her granddaughter as though the photograph had somehow revealed that she was even more lovable than she had thought.

  Alix examined it afresh, with an innocent pleasure from which vanity was genuinely lacking.

  "He's brought out all my best points and somehow smoothed over the others, hasn't he?" she observed with some truth.

  "It's very like you all the same," Grandma said with a certain air of reserved pride in it. "It is how I would choose to have people see you."

  "Oh, Grandma dear, how nice!" Alix laughed and hugged her. Then she suddenly fell curiously silent for, quite unbidden, had come the thought: "It's how I should like Mother to see me."

  It was odd how that idea persisted, forcing itself into Alix's thoughts at the strangest and most unexpected moments. And as disguise of her feelings was an accomplishment quite beyond her, Alix went quite frankly to her grandmother in the end, and:

  "Grandma," she said, more nervously than she knew, "I want to ask you a very great favour, but I'm afraid it will seem very peculiar to you. Do you mind if I — if I send — Mother one of my photographs?"

  There was dead silence. Then Grandma said in a slightly strained voice:

  "Have you thought a great deal about this, Alix?"

  "Yes." Alix realized with surprise that this was true.