By the time Ralph joined them, tears were pouring down his wife’s face and the man, his hand still on the youth’s shoulder, was walking toward her. He was speaking. Ralph heard the words and the tone of voice and his heart almost stopped.
‘Mother — forgive me for arriving without warning. I couldn’t find the right words for a letter, so there seemed no other way.’ His hands propelled the boy forward. ‘Miguel, my son, come and meet your grandmother.’
CHAPTER 12
In the solitude of her room Olivia could still feel the current of shock which ran through them all; she was still aware of her grandmother’s inarticulate joy and her grandfather’s choking disbelief as he stared at the big, florid, corpulent man who was her father risen from the dead, and she could still recall Max Freeman’s self-consciousness, yet his evident gladness to be back. Dominant above all was the pride he took in presenting the son who looked as foreign as his name.
To a lesser extent she also recalled her mother’s hysteria, for Phoebe, coming on the scene in time to hear Maxwell’s words, promptly screamed and fainted, but no one heeded her. Agatha, at first rigid as a statue, had suddenly gasped, ‘It can’t be! You can’t be Max. You’ve been dead for years!’ at which the man had said wryly, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Aggie, but I’m very much alive. I’d like to say ‘alive and well’, but as you can see, I’m a bit of a wreck now, due to a bloody earthquake years ago. You look the same as ever, only bigger.’
He had forgotten his sister then and scarcely noticed his wife. Everyone was too absorbed in the new arrivals to heed Phoebe’s swoon, which she had conveniently performed on grass rather than on gravel. Not even the servants, standing afar with eyes agape, spared a thought for her. Then the housekeeper hustled the women to order, and the senior footman marshalled the men, and the staff trooped off to the servants’ quarters with many a sneaking backward glance.
It was funny that only now did details like that spring to mind. It seemed that in moments of shock many things registered which were dredged up only later — such as the boy called Miguel, waiting at his father’s side. A handsome boy, dark-eyed, blackhaired, dusky-skinned, and patently shy.
Then Charlotte was reaching out to her son, scarcely aware of anything he said, her shocked mind fastening solely on the fact that he was actually alive and standing there before her. Even his words seemed not to register; only the incredible reality of his coming. She was stunned, as was her husband who nevertheless managed to hold out a shaking hand and to murmur incoherently, ‘Your mother has always believed you’d come back … always believed it … ’
‘But not you, Father.’
‘No, not I. How can a father have a mother’s intuition?’
No prodigal’s welcome could have broken the ice between father and son more effectively, but it still seemed that no one had really taken in Max Freeman’s introduction of the boy until at last Ralph jerked, ‘Your son, did I hear you say?’
Charlotte then turned and looked at the lad, tried to speak, and failed. Inarticulately, she had held out a hand to him, the other still clutching Maxwell’s sleeve, and Miguel had shyly kissed it and said, ‘Señora, I am honoured.’
Perhaps it was the distinctly foreign gesture which triggered Phoebe’s outrage. Fully recovered from her swoon, she spat at her husband, ‘I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it! You can’t have a son, damn you, you can’t! I am the only wife you ever had!’
Max Freeman looked at her long and hard, then answered, ‘But you are not the only woman I ever loved. What I felt for you, what we felt for each other, wore out pretty quickly. And you don’t appear to have changed much; still the same Phoebe despite the years, and I don’t mean only in looks. In that respect you have worn a great deal better than I.’
‘I can see that. Everyone can see that!’
At her eloquent glance, he had shrugged. ‘I have changed in other ways than physical, and in ways for the better, thanks to Miguel’s mother. Conchita Quintana was a wonderful woman and I had eighteen years of happiness with her.’
At that, Phoebe had swept away in a storm of fury and outraged tears, but again to little effect. The entire household was too accustomed to her hysterical tantrums to heed yet another. Olivia stood transfixed, vaguely aware that her grandmother had rallied and was saying, ‘You have a daughter too, my son, and this is she.’
But Olivia, overcome by the unexpectedness of the scene, had found herself unable to approach him. It was he who came slowly to her and, looking down at her but not touching her, said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll welcome me, since I left your mother before you were born. I was never much of a husband to her and I’ve not been a good father, either.’
At that, Miguel had burst out, ‘Sir, you are the best father anyone could have!’
‘But to my daughter I’ve been no father at all. Will she forgive me, do you think? Will she let me try to make amends?’
Grandfather Ralph’s familiar bark cut into the moment. ‘You’d damn well better, sir. You’d damn well better.’
Later that day, Phoebe sent for her daughter. Olivia found her prostrate, so white beneath her paint that rouge stood out in poppy-red blotches on her cheeks, her mouth a scarlet smear. Tears had etched channels through the layers of Chinese paste and powder, and spread the black kohl about her eyes. Her false side curls lay askew against a badly smudged pillow.
She looked a sorry sight, and no one felt more sorry for her than herself, but her tears were plainly of rage, not of joy as some might have expected from a woman reunited with a long-lost husband.
Hannah hovered near, waving hartshorn beneath her mistress’s nostrils which, Olivia noticed, were unbecomingly swollen, so that her nose no longer looked retrousse but bulbous and ugly. The undaughterly thought that weeping did nothing to enhance a woman’s looks and that it was a pity her mother didn’t realise it, flashed unbidden through Olivia’s mind.
Throwing her daughter an accusing look, Phoebe sobbed, ‘Of course, you would abandon your mother when she most needs you! Did ever a woman have so callous a daughter? Hannah, you stupid woman, don’t thrust that thing so close! Do you want to give me the sneezes?’ Blindly, she knocked the harshorn out of her maid’s hand, screaming at her to go away. ‘You are useless, absolutely useless!’
She continued shouting until the door closed behind the woman’s hastily retreating figure, whereupon she dragged herself upright and commanded Olivia to bank her pillows.
‘Even if you have no concern for your mother’s shock and grief, at least try to make yourself useful.’
‘Your shock is understandable, Mother, but few people will expect you to feel grief, since the common belief is that no woman can live without a man and should therefore welcome a long-lost husband.’
‘You horrible girl! I swear you are devoid of all feeling! How else could you leave me to fend for myself whilst you rushed to your grandmother’s side? It was I you should have attended to.’
Patiently, Olivia pointed out that, like everyone else, she had not known the identity of the newcomer, or what his coming heralded. ‘I only knew that his arrival shocked poor Grandmother, so naturally I went to her.’
But Phoebe was not to be appeased. Fresh floods of tears were accompanied by more reproaches.
‘Can’t you even imagine how terrible it is to have a deserting husband come back into one’s life after all but a quarter of a century?’ Ignoring the exaggeration, Olivia answered carefully, ‘I’m afraid people won’t see it as terrible. After years of widowhood, many might expect you to welcome an end to it.’
‘Well, I don’t and I won’t, and in view of the way that man treated me, which you well know about, even a grain of pleasure is more than should be demanded of me. And don’t you realise what this turn of events means for both of us? We will have to vacate the heir’s wing, for Max will expect to move into it again — and with his bastard. Neither you nor I can be expected to accept such a situation. It’s intolerable, insulting
! What’s more, we may be robbed of all we are entitled to, if we don’t watch out. Luckily, that boy is illegitimate and therefore cannot inherit.’
To that, Olivia said nothing. She was remembering her father’s pride in his son and the boy’s evident love for his father.
Phoebe prattled on, ‘And of course Max’s doting mamma is sure to kill the fatted calf in his honour. He could never do any wrong in her eyes. Even when he got drunk at our wedding she told me to overlook it and to remember only the good things in married life. I swear that if she offers me any further misguided advice I shall speak my mind. And now, help me to change — I’ve had enough of Hannah’s inattention. Her mind is only on that dreadful scene outside. She even had the impudence to comment on it, saying what a terrible shock it must have been for me. Sympathy from servants is the last thing I want, so I put her firmly in her place. But I can imagine the gossip going on belowstairs!’ Phoebe took a valiant breath. ‘However, I shall be brave, as always. I shall meet the rest of the family head high, wearing my most elegant gown, and that will show my unwelcome husband how little his homecoming means to me. Nothing demonstrates a woman’s indifference to a man more than an elaborate toilette, letting him know that her appearance occupies her thoughts more than he does.’
Phoebe’s fears of being evicted from the heir’s wing were partially justified, for not even Charlotte’s joy in her son’s return could render her oblivious to the fact that after so many years of separation he and his wife would be strangers to each other. The threads of a permanently broken marriage could never be picked up, therefore it seemed wisest to accommodate Max and the boy in the main part of the house for the time being. This arrangement he seemed to accept with relief, and yet with a hint of complacent expectancy, as if taking it for granted that the heir to Tremain, and his son, should be housed with honour in the best suite available until such time that he could take up residence in what was rightfully his own.
That Max had harboured no doubt of a welcome was apparent, as was the fact that the years had certainly changed him. Despite his mother’s euphoric reaction to his return, she was well aware that the man who had at last come home was by no means the man who went away. Both physically and in personality he was scarcely recognisable; only his voice had betrayed him, striking at her heart, but when he smiled something of the old Max had shone through, for the same bravado was there, the same confident belief that he would meet with neither anger nor reproach.
But more than twenty years’ absence from his place of birth had encompassed more than twenty years of unknown experiences, many of which, as Ralph pointed out, would remain unknown to all but Max himself, and the remainder would take time and effort to bridge.
‘Meanwhile, Charlotte my love, we must accept every moment as it comes, ask few questions, and wait for him to reveal as much as he wishes, whenever he chooses. The situation will be difficult for everyone. Phoebe as well, remember.’
‘And the boy — what of him?’
‘We accept him, of course. You did so the moment you held out your hand to him. I was watching, and sometimes I know what goes on in your mind better than you do yourself. You felt an underlying joy because your son had produced another male member of the brood, illegitimate though he is. That the boy cannot therefore inherit should pacify the others.’
‘Phoebe will be aghast, even so. Afraid, too, for she dislikes me and therefore mistrusts me, and now she will fear that I may revise my thoughts yet again, favouring Max’s son above his daughter when I die. And of course Agatha will have even greater cause for discontent where Lionel is concerned, for both believed the day was not far distant when he would become Master of Tremain.’
‘I doubt if there will be much fear regarding an illegitimate child. Being born out of wedlock, he isn’t a member of the family, nor bears its name, so any major bequest could be contested. But we are jumping ahead. Let us not anticipate trouble. We must live in the present, and as for Phoebe — give her time.’
For what? mused Charlotte. For choosing between her lover and a husband she has never loved at all? And how will the man react, whoever he may be, now her husband has returned?
On the face of it, everyone was beautifully civilised.
‘You must welcome your long-lost uncle,’ Agatha said to her son, ‘even though your expectations must be delayed a little longer.’
‘A little longer! Hell’s teeth, the man could live to be a hundred!’
‘Nonsense, dear. No one lives to that age. And from the look of my brother, I’d say he was far from strong.’ She added hastily, ‘Naturally I hope his return home will improve his health. He will at least be eating more wholesome food than in foreign parts. His complexion is positively sallow.’
‘Swarthy.’
‘Due to hot suns, I expect.’
‘And what of his brat’s? Tinged with the tar brush?’
‘Well, he’s very Latin-looking. His mother’s name sounded Spanish.’
‘So my dear dead uncle hopped off abroad, sewed a crop of wild oats, rose from the dead and brought the harvest back home. Let’s hope one offspring is the extent of it.’
‘Don’t be hard on him, dear boy. He is my brother. Many a man is guilty of indiscretions without accepting responsibility for any outcome. I think Maxwell is noble to shoulder it.’
‘How broad-minded of you, dear Mother.’
Lionel couldn’t conceal his anger. After a night’s carousing it was bad enough to waken with a thick head without facing up to shock on top of it. Sauntering down for a late breakfast, clad in a morning robe of maroon velvet faced with matching satin and frogged with silver braid, he had found his mother waiting for him, keyed up with expectancy. Promptly, she had burst out, ‘Thank goodness you have taken the trouble to rise at last! I have been waiting at least two hours.’
Grumbling, he had pointed out that it was the Sabbath, so what was all the fuss about? ‘I suppose you’re angry because I didn’t put in an appearance at those dreary morning prayers. Have a heart! Yesterday’s news deserved a little celebration — ’
‘ — and today’s does not,’ she had snapped, to which he echoed stupidly, ‘Today’s? What news can there possibly be on a Sunday? The mail coach only comes mid-week.’
‘But visitors don’t, and this morning an unexpected one appeared out of the blue, someone we’ve believed to be dead for years.’ When he stared without comprehension she had finished impatiently, ‘I mean my brother. Your uncle Maxwell.’ When he could still only stare she had sighed and said, ‘I know, my son — it is hard to believe. I didn’t believe it myself, at first, for he is almost unrecognisable, but yes, it is he. They were arriving as we walked home from chapel.’
‘They?’ he had echoed yet again.
‘Do listen to me! You don’t seem to be taking anything in. Perhaps some coffee will help.’
He had accepted the coffee mechanically. The full significance of his mother’s news was sinking in, but the final acceptance of it was like an explosive shock. ‘Good God, it can’t be true! How can a man, dead for heaven knows how many years, come to life again?’
‘Obviously, he wasn’t dead. Everyone just assumed he was.’
‘And you said “they”. Don’t tell me he has brought back a wife!’
‘How could he, having one already?’
‘Then who — ?’
‘A son. He has brought back a son.’
Lionel’s coffee cup clattered in its saucer. He stared at his mother, mouth agape, whereupon she hastened to assure him that he had nothing to worry about. ‘The boy is a bastard.’
‘And your brother brings it home, here to Tremain?’
Agatha had shrugged her ample shoulders. ‘We can forget about the boy. My parents would never be so foolish as to accept him.’
It was then that she told him to welcome his long-lost uncle even though his own expectations might be delayed a little longer, but Lionel wouldn’t listen to reason. Fury vied with disgust. No man,
he declared, had a right to abandon hearth and home for so long that he was presumed dead, and then turn up expecting to carry on as before and even to inherit all he had rejected.
‘But he never rejected it, dear boy. He simply went away, no doubt expecting to return, and fate took over.’
‘A strange kind of fate, if it can be prolonged to suit a whim. Since he’s brought a child with him presumably some woman got her claws into him and wouldn’t let go, though why he had to saddle himself with her brat I cannot imagine. In such an event I would take good care not to be lumbered. How old is the child?’
‘He isn’t a child. He’s a young man, and from the way my brother introduced him I’d say he is actually proud of him.’
‘Hell, what a damnable situation! But for my uncle I would be Master of Tremain in the not too distant future, for Grandmother Charlotte cannot last all that long.’
Agatha sighed. She had anticipated this reaction from her son and had spent the interval in thinking up ways and words with which to comfort him. Now she said, ‘There is one consolation, at least. The Drayton Pottery is still there, and so is the tradition that Drayton sons inherit.’
‘You’re not suggesting that I should now wait to step into limping Martin’s shoes?’
‘I’m suggesting you should bear in mind that you have a right to a share in the place, and perhaps the time has come to claim it.’
‘By participation? By working there? No, thank you. I’m not soiling my hands with any form of trade, particularly a dirty one. Even my uncle sometimes goes home looking like one of his workers, covered in clay dust. Olivia tells me he lends a hand when orders are rushed, working alongside his men as if he were one of them, and sometimes helping to load the kilns because he enjoys it! Do you imagine a life like that is a life for me, and isn’t it enough to have one member of the family — from Tremain, I mean — descending to the level of a potmaker? I associate myself only with the Tremain-Freeman clan because I have been brought up here. I never think of myself as a Drayton.’
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