Little sister

by Mary Burchell

  "1 suppose you know that I would much rather you did not?"

  Alix was silent, and after a moment her grandmother said:

  "Don't you think, my dear, that things are much better as they are? You're rather young, you know, to start trying to alter a peculiar state of affairs."

  There was sadness as well as sternness in Grandma's tone, and Alix could not imagine how she stuck to her point. Only something quite outside herself seemed to urge her on.

  "I didn't think of — changing things," she said in a choked voice. "But can't she at least know — what — I look like?"

  And suddenly, to Grandma's horror and her own, Alix began to cry.

  She so seldom shed tears over anything that they were both profoundly shaken.

  "My dear!" Grandma put her arm round her. "I had no idea you felt so deeply about this." Alix had had very little idea of it herself until that moment.

  "It's only that I feel — it's so unnatural that we should know nothing, nothing of each other, Grandma," she got out at last.

  "You do realize, don't you," her grandmother said, "that she herself makes no attempt to come in contact with you?"

  "But didn't you urge that?" Alix countered quickly.

  "Well—" began Grandma. And then she didn't go on with the sentence. Perhaps she was realizing that, for the very first time, Alix's tone implied criticism of herself, and faintly resentful criticism at that.

  "You are very, very anxious to do this?" she said at last.

  Alix nodded.

  "Very well, then." Grandma seemed to take the decision quite calmly. "But I think, my dear, it is better that I should do the actual sending. You can put some message, if you like, on the photograph itself."

  1 here seemed no reasonable objection to this, and, in any case, Alix had got nowhere near thinking out any of letter.

  Indeed, when it came to the point, it was sufficiently ide what might be written on the photograph.

  You couldn't send your love to an entirely unknown person, Alix supposed, even if she happened by some queer chance to be your mother. And, in the end, she simply wrote on the back of the photograph the literal truth: "I thought you might like to know what I am like — Alix."

  Grandma, who was strictly honourable in these matters, didn't even glance at the message as she received the photograph from Alix's hands. She only said:

  "You mustn't be too much disappointed if there is no reply, Alix. And in any case, it is bound to take a very long time. I can only write to her at the address of her London agents, and they must forward it to wherever she is at the moment."

  "Have you — any idea where she is?" Alix asked rather timidly.

  "South America, I believe," Grandma said crisply. And Alix wondered very much how she knew.

  So the photograph was despatched and, curiously enough, Alix was quite satisfied and tranquil after that.

  She was in her last year at school, and generally enjoyed her position as one of the almost grown-up, senior girls. She still made a good many confidences to Jenny, and felt it was only natural to tell her about the photograph.

  "Your grandmother hated the idea, of course?" Jenny said.

  "Well, yes, I'm afraid she did. But, Jenny, I don't really know why she should."

  Jenny was much older for her age than Alix, and she glanced at her friend with a little kindly cynicism.

  "Don't you? Well, of course, with all her considerable qualities, your grandmother is a very possessive type."

  "She's nothing of the sort," Alix retorted indignantly. Jenny was unmoved.

  "Mind, I like Mrs. Farley and I think she's a very remarkable person. But you can't expect her to have no faults. And after all, in a way it's understandable that she should be possessive about you. You're just like her own daughter, and from what she says, your mother must be a peculiarly attractive woman. I think it's quite natural that she should feel nervous at the thought of your meeting her. Particularly as Mrs. Farley doesn't seem to approve of her very much."

  "But we're not at all likely to meet," Alix's thoughts clung round that one phrase.

  "I suppose she comes to England sometimes?"

  "I suppose so," Alix said. "But she never — I mean, I don't expect she'd ever—" She stopped abruptly because she was suddenly aware of the strange desire to cry which always seemed to assail her when she talked much of her mother.

  "What do you expect then?" Jenny wanted to know. But Alix found difficulty in answering that, because, really, she had no idea herself.

  Then the weeks began to slip by, one after the other. Alix ceased to watch for the postman before going to school in the morning, and her heart scarcely bounded at all now at the sound of his knock in the evening. It had been absurd to suppose that her childish effort to stretch out her hand to some vague and distant part of the earth should really result in news of her mother.

  Spring came early that year, and, even in March, Alix already cycled home through what might have been early summer sunshine, to be greeted by Betty's inevitable: "Hello, Alix. Have you had a nice time?"

  So invariable was it that Alix was conscious of something almost like shock on the evening that Betty remarked instead:

  "Hello, Alix. Hurry along in. Your grandma's got something for you."

  "What is it?" Alix wanted to know.

  But Betty only said: "I couldn't say, I'm sure, but it came by parcel post after you'd gone this morning."

  Trembling a little with sudden hope and excitement, Alix went through into the bright little sitting-room which looked out on to the garden.

  It was not Grandma's way either to prevaricate or to conceal things. She greeted Alix and then said at once:

  "I had a short letter from Nina this morning, my dear. She enclosed that for you—" Grandma indicated a flat brown paper parcel which was lying on the table.

  With shaking fingers Alix began to take off the paper.

  "Did she — did she say anything about me?"

  "Only that she liked the photograph," Grandma said dly.

  Alix thought of Jenny's remarks about Grandma — and then she thought of nothing at all. Because she realized what her parcel contained.

  The last tissue paper wrapping came off, and she was holding a photograph of her mother in her hands.

  "Oh no — oh no!" Alix said a little wildly. Then she sank down in a chair, because her legs would hold her no longer, and gazed and gazed into the sad yet laughing eyes of the woman who had borne her.

  She was beautiful, just as Grandma had said. But it was more — so much, much more — which groped at Alix's very heart. That wonderful mouth, with the odd, one-sided lift at the corner; the shape of her face, with width across the cheekbones and laughter-hollows beneath; the wide-set eyes that looked candour itself, yet held a thousand secrets — they were all things over which Alix might linger later. What held her now was that heartwarming expression of smiling tenderness which seemed for her, and her alone.

  She realized that her grandmother had come over and was standing behind her now, looking at the photograph too.

  "Oh, Grandma, Grandma — she's so beautiful! I had no idea how beautiful." Alix turned to look up into her grandmother's face and was shocked at the sternness of her expression. "Is it — like her?" she asked timidly.

  "In many ways — yes."

  Alix turned back to the photograph, and very lightly passed her hand over it.

  "She looks so — tender. Just as one would want a mother to look."

  "I imagine," Grandma said very dryly, "that the photograph was taken with that exact intention."

  "Grandma!" Alix sprang to her feet. "How dare you say such a thing of her!"

  And then there was a strange, strange silence.

  Grandma uttered no word of reproof for the extraordinary thing which Alix had said. Only the silence seemed to shriek its comment on the gulf which had suddenly been torn open between them.

  The next moment Alix was trying frantically to bridge it. She flung
her arms round her grandmother.

  Tin sorry. Dear, dear Grandma, I'm sorry. I don't know why I said it. Please forgive me."

  Her grandmother stroked her hair gently, still with no suggestion of reproof.

  "All right, my dear, we will say no more about it. I should not want us to quarrel over your mother. There, take your photograph now. I think it has something written on it, hasn't it?"

  Still extremely agitated, Alix picked up the photograph and looked at it again. Across the corner was written in firm, rather foreign-looking writing: "To little Alix, with all my love. Nina Varoni."

  Nina Varoni!

  Alix's faint disappointment that it was not signed "Mother" was swamped by her utter astonishment at the sight of that signature.

  "V-Varoni," she stammered. "Is my mother Varoni?"

  Grandma inclined her head.

  "But — but I've heard of her. I mean, everyone's heard of her. She's world-famous, isn't she? Like Callas and— "

  "Not at all like Callas," Grandma said with great firmness and some truth. "She is a very well-known soprano, but she is not exactly a legend. Now come, and have your tea, my dear."

  Alix came.

  It was hard though, terribly hard, to concentrate on toasted tea-cake and small talk, while all the time she was thinking:

  "My mother is Varoni. Varoni! And I used to look for news of Nina Farley. No wonder I found nothing. Oh, and she sent her love — Varoni sent her love — Mother sent her love . . . Doesn't she want to see me? Grandma won't say what was in the letter. But she would tell me if Mother really wanted to see me. I know that ... I suppose Grandma showed pretty plainly that she wouldn't have it . . . Was Jenny right about her? Could it possibly, possibly be that Grandma is possessive? . . . jealous?"

  Directly after tea Alix escaped upstairs to her own room, taking the photograph with her.

  She propped it up against a pile of books, and examined it with loving attention again, from every line of the face itself clown to the firm signature in the corner.

  It gave her a funny little feeling to remember that that name must adorn a thousand photographs in many parts of the world. It would be preceded by such expressions as "With cordial greetings", "Very sincerely yours", "With kindest thoughts". Even "In happy recollection of a wonderful performance" when addressed to some favourite conductor or a fellow-singer.

  But no one, Alix felt certain, of all those hosts of admirers, had a photograph which said "With all my love".

  How could they? Varoni's love was not for them. It was

  — all of it — for her little unknown daughter, Alix. With an exclamation, Alix covered her face with her

  hands, scarcely able to contain her joyous excitement. She sat quite still for a long time, very, very happy. And the smiling-eyes of the photograph never ceased to watch her.

  Afterwards, Alix used to try to remember all the good things which happened in that last year and a half with Grandma. There were many of them, and really it was unnecessary to dwell on the fact that there were also a few breaks in the perfect understanding which had existed once.

  It was not so much that there were actual upsets as that some slight happening — even some chance remark

  — would suddenly reveal the fact that in many ways now they stood a very long way apart.

  Alix was nineteen now, and she had left school some while. She and Jenny had exchanged vows to write every week, and to a certain extent they kept that up. But Jenny was away now, travelling abroad with her guardian, and the letters were fewer and more spasmodic. . Life was singularly quiet for Alix. She said something once about wanting to have a job, but that was the only time Grandma mentioned Varoni in any personal sense.

  "Your mother's solicitors pay a perfectly adequate sum into my account for your maintenance and allowance. There is no need for you to earn your own living, and I should like to have you with me for as long as possible."

  Alix coloured with emotion.

  "Mother does — that for me? It's very sweet of her."

  "She is a very wealthy woman, Alix," Grandma said, with that peculiar dryness which always crept into her tone when she spoke of her daughter.

  "Yes, I suppose so," Alix agreed. B,»t it did nothing to diminish the warmth at her heart. So much at least existed between her and her mother.

  It was not very long after this that Alix saw the announcement of Varoni's name in connection with the opera season which was just opening in London, and the fact excited her frantically.

  i must speak to Grandma about it," Alix told herself feverishly. "I must make her understand. Surely, surely I can go to hear a performance, even if nothing eke. I don't want to hurt her, but she's being unnatural about this. It's my life as well as hers. She mtist give way."

  All good arguments, of course, but how hard to express!

  Alix glanced across the pleasant room now to where her grandmother was sitting, looking thoughtfully out of the window. She had been reading, but her book was lying idly in her lap now, and her bright blue eyes were busy with something in the twilit garden.

  Her expression was as alert as ever and she sat up very straight, as always. But something in the stillness of her figure and the fact that her hands scarcely held the book in her lap made Alix think with sudden tenderness:

  "Grandma's really quite an elderly lady. One never thinks of that, somehow, but she can't be so very far off seventy. And she's given nearly twenty years of her life to making me happy and carefree and secure. I can't force something on her now that would upset her dreadfully. It would be different if she suggested it herself. But to plead and insist now would be like a declaration that she'd failed to make me happy. I can't do it."

  Getting up abruptly, Alix came over to her grandmother and hugged her.

  "Why, AlLx dear!" Grandma looked exceedingly pleased and touched. "What is this for?"

  "Nothing special." Alix kissed her. "I was just thinking how dear and good you've been to me all my life. One m't often think to say these things, but one should." Lodma patted her cheek very affectionately.

  "My dear, I consider I was fortunate to have you. I should have been very lonely without you. And if I needed any reward — which, of course, I didn't — it has always enough to know that you were happy."

  "Yes," Alix said slowly. "You make me happy all the time, Grandma. I don't think many girls can look back on their schooldays and growing-up days and remember such happiness as I can."

  "It gives me great pleasure when you say that, my dear," Grandma said in her rather formal way, and then the subject was closed. But Alix realized, from her good-night kiss later, that she and her grandmother had never been closer together than they were now. Not even in the old days before she knew about her mother.

  "And I'm glad," Alix thought, as she went to bed. "Even if it makes me feel wretched about Mother, I'm glad I made Grandma happy." And she fell tranquilly asleep, not knowing that, for the rest of her life, she was to be thankful for that evening's impulse.

  Fortunately it was not Alix herself who made the discovery in the morning. It was Betty who, surprised at her mistress's unusually late rising, went into her room to see what had happened.

  Calmness and a peculiar dignity had ruled Grandma's life until the end. She had died quietly in her sleep during the night.

  To Alix, the next week seemed like some strange, incomprehensible dream.

  Grandma, who had been both the guide and yet the centre of her existence, was no more. And in her place there was — nothing.

  Betty was sympathetic and helpful, of course, and the one or two neighbours whom they knew well were exceedingly kind. But the motive power of Alix's life seemed gone for a while, and it was as though she could neither go back into the past for reassurance, nor grope forward into the future.

  It was Jenny — with her letter which came some days after the funeral — who started the wheels of Alix's life slowly turning again.

  "It's you I'm sorry for, Alix dear," she w
rote. "For one cannot feel sad over anyone who died so quietly and gently as your grandmother. But I'm afraid in your case the shock must have been terrible, particularly as you were so much to each other. What do you propose to do now? Are you going to your mother—?"

  And at that point Alix put down the letter and gasped.

  There was her mother, of course. Varoni — who was in England.

  The overwhelming shock of her grandmother's death had driven almost everything else from her mind. But now she remembered, with a joy and relief out of all proportion, that there was someone else in the world who belonged to her and to whom she belonged. There was her mother — and she could go to her.

  It was not disloyalty to Grandma, because, in any case, now that she was dead, something had to be done. With a little shock, Alix realized that she ought really to have let her mother know about Grandma's death at once. Only, of course, it was so difficult to remember that she was in any sense one of the family.

  During the last few days Alix's one emotion had been her grief for her grandmother's loss. But now the passionate longing to see her mother, which had been growing for years, broke into flood and swept everything else out of the way.

  "Tomorrow," Alix told herself. "Tomorrow I'll go to London and see her. And if Grandma knows, I don't think she will mind. Because she must understand now — what I've been sure of all along — that Mother really loves and wants me."

  It was a little difficult to get away the next day, because neither Betty nor the kindly neighbour who had been staying with her since Grandma's death could quite understand why she should wish to go to London.

  The vague explanation of "business" surprised but finally satisfied them, and Alix made her escape.

  It was a beautiful afternoon in late May, and the shadow which had been lying heavily on her heart for the last few days lifted insensibly. She was not alone, after all. She was going to her mother — her mother, who had watched her from the photograph with smiling, tender eyes for nearly two years now.

  It was a strange and moving thought. And for her mother, too, it would be terribly moving. The daughter whom she had not known — had not even touched — since she was a tiny baby was coming to her now, grown up, almost a woman herself.