Fleming, Leah - The Captain's Daughter

by The Captain's Daughter (mobi)

  The house was high up in the West Hill district, ornate with coloured bricks, statutes in the garden and a paddock and orchards. It was not nearly as big as the Seiberling mansion, or Elm Court, where the Marks family lived, but he’d never seen anything so big in Lich-field.

  He had his own suite of rooms, as did Granny Harriet at the far end of the house. His father seemed to work day and night these days and when he came home late he was always snappy. The promises he’d made on board the Olympic , all those things that they would do together as father and son, were long forgotten and never discussed.

  Nothing here was quite as he had expected but he’d made friends at school with a boy called Will Morgan. None of the others had lived abroad and weren’t interested in his life before coming to Akron. All they were interested in was the progress of the Akron Pros in the National Football League. They were studying hard for good grades that would lead to most of them heading to the coast to Harvard or Yale. Roddy couldn’t think that far ahead. He’d had too many changes in his young life already.

  He just knew he’d done a terrible thing in trusting his father and he still couldn’t quite understand how he had got from the London theatre to the Olympic in Southampton. It was all a blur. But he was here now and his presence was a matter of great pride to his father, even if he wasn’t around very much to take him out.

  Not that his days were empty. There were riding lessons, driving lessons from the chauf-feur in the new automobile that sat on the drive, extra tuition in science and chemistry so that he might join the Diamond Rubber Company in due course. It was as if his whole life was being mapped out for him and he was just sleepwalking through it.

  Standing by the lone statue of the Indian with a canoe on his back, he thought of their lonely treks on foot from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscarawas River, when all around them were woods. He felt sometimes as if he too were tracking with a big weight on his back, bending him low.

  His grandma kept telling him to straighten up and stop slouching or he’d grow a hunch-back. She was a stickler for what people thought. The Parkes family were society. They mixed with the wealthy rubber barons and their families, and he had been absurdly glad of Mom’s old refinement classes when they were entertaining and he had to talk politely to a line of old biddies. ‘Remember, always ask a question. Show interest in your guest, put them at their ease.’ His mom’s words rang in his ears, words from his Washington days, which made him sad. At least on these occasions he wouldn’t let her down. He tried to hold on to his English accent but that annoyed his father no end. ‘You’re a Yankie boy, get rid of those vowels!’

  But others loved his accent, especially the girls at church and old ladies. They asked him to repeat phrases over and over until he felt like a performing monkey.

  Everything he could possibly want was spread out before him: a beautiful home, a horse and buggy, a fine education, beautiful scenery to explore. So why was he so miserable? There was something missing amongst all these trappings of wealth and success, something important, and Roddy couldn’t quite work out what it was.

  Whatever the answer, it sure was leaving a big hole inside. ‘Mrs Forester, can you take on the Stratford clients?’ enquired Safara Fort on the telephone.

  ‘Of course, I’d be delighted,’ Celeste replied to the doyenne of the Universal Aunts Agency. ‘These Americans are from where?’ she added, hoping that they might be from Ohio. Celeste sat at the foot of the stairs, clutching the earpiece and smiling. Applying to be a ‘Universal Aunt’ had been a lifesaver. It was a new organization based in London, which offered chaperonage, home furnishing services, care of children, research work and respond-ing to all sorts of unusual queries. It was a haphazard sort of career. Sometimes the task was mundane, taking a wealthy lady’s pet to the veterinary surgeon to have its claws clipped, for instance, or helping a newly married wife choose furnishings from Rackhams or Beatties stores. Escorting tourists to Stratford and Anne Hathaway’s cottage was a regular feature of the season. There were splendid Tudor coaching inns with four-poster beds and oak beams that the American visitors loved, along with the hearty English fare.

  ‘They’re from the Great Lakes somewhere . . . Ann Arbor . . . very keen on Mr Shakespeare so they want the full tour, a good hotel, a tour guide – the usual – but only for two or three days. They also want to do Edinburgh and York Minster. Then Paris, of course, and what with your living in America in the past . . .’

  ‘Leave it all to me, Miss Fort,’ Celeste replied. ‘I’ll book everything ahead by wire and plan an itinerary to suit their budgets.’

  ‘There’s no budget; only the best for the Stimpsons. He is big in cereals, I gather. I’m so glad we have you up north to see to things, Celestine. You’re proving to be quite a find. When I interviewed you, I sensed you’d be versatile. You’re a gem. Many are called but few are chosen, my dear. You’ve no idea how many applications for Universal Aunts are so unsuitable. We are very particular about who we take on, but so far your assignments have been impeccable and reports say the children are now asking especially for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Fort,’ Celeste beamed. She loved the work. It kept her busy and pre-vented her from wondering too much how Roddy was faring with his father. Not that her son was ever far from her thoughts.

  ‘Mustn’t keep you from your planning. I look forward to your report.’ Celeste had turned up at the Universal Aunts offices near Sloane Square in her best

  tweed suit. They’d asked her questions about her life and professional experience, but when she told them she was a survivor of Titanic , a friend of Margaret Brown, and on the Wo-men’s Relief Committee, the interview had come to an abrupt halt.

  ‘We’d be honoured to have someone like you work for us.’ So far she’d escorted dozens of nervous children from Birmingham, Wolverhampton or

  Stafford to their new boarding schools in the country, and vice versa. She’d done it all be-fore with Roddy, making sure their tuck boxes were full, that they had plenty of travelling games and snacks, comics and magazines handy for the journey, which she hoped would take their minds off their final destinations.

  She had had to pay a quarterly booking fee of half a crown to have her name on the Universal register, but it was money well spent. It got her out of the house and mixing with strangers who didn’t know her circumstances. In every child she met, though, she saw something of her own son.

  She couldn’t believe it was nearly a year since that terrible day when Roddy had left, a year of stilted correspondence, of polite, careful enquiry to Harriet. She would never write directly to Grover again, not after what he had done. She couldn’t trust herself not to let rip in a way that might make things even worse.

  Roddy’s letters were short and muted. She sensed he was struggling to readjust to Amer-ican life, but the photographs he enclosed showed her how fast he was growing up. He was now out of short trousers and his legs were sprouting. She ached to visit him but knew that would only unsettle the uneasy truce she’d made with Grover. She must tread carefully, bide her time and keep Grover sweet. She felt such a failure as a mother. Her son must have found her wanting indeed to choose the very person she’d shielded him from all those years ago, or did he have any choice in the matter once he was in his father’s clutches? If only she’d not let him go unescorted.

  Through all these months, May was there, quietly standing by, a shoulder to cry on. And so was Archie, but their relationship must remain a secret.

  Archie was a single man in a theological college, where standards were high, and she was still a married woman, if separated. He was presented as Selwyn’s friend, not hers, so his continued presence at Red House would not be commented upon, but everyone knew he was in love with her. There was always that look of admiration in his eyes that gave her the courage to keep going when the pain of Roddy’s absence stung too deep.

  He always sensed her distress, gently touching her hand for reassurance. He’d lost his wife and had known te
rrible suffering in the Great War. He was her ‘Rock of Ages’, as the hymn went. Yet there was no future for them, not unless Grover released her or she tried to petition for divorce herself. She couldn’t risk losing contact with her son; her own happi-ness depended on that. One day he’d come back to her. One day this nightmare would be

  Until then she’d go on helping other families whose children were in transit. No child would ever go missing on her watch. What she couldn’t do for Roddy she would do for her young clients. Besides, there was always the hope that one day Miss Fort would be look-ing for someone to escort a client over the ocean to the United States. That would be her chance, but until then she was making the best of what was on offer.

  Ella loved watching the stonemasons at work. In Quonians Yard the Bridgeman & Sons re-stored masonry and carvings, and re-created broken tracery for the roofs of churches and cathedrals. They’d restored the front of the cathedral, with its fine statues and carvings. She sensed the skill and craftsmanship of generations coming from that workshop as she ex-amined the beauty of the pieces standing in the yard waiting to be packed and shipped across the country and abroad.

  Sometimes she would dawdle with her shopping just to catch glimpses of how they dressed the stone, how they prepared it using ancient tools. She longed to be able to do something so physical herself.

  The girls at the High School teased her about her collection of photographs in her scrap-books, pictures she’d cut out of posters, magazines and newspapers. Now she had a little Brownie box camera she could take pictures of anything that took her fancy. She’d visited the churches in town, bought postcards from Birmingham Art Gallery where she was study-ing women in the art world, including the Victorian stonemason who’d helped carve the statues in the front of the cathedral west wall. She’d written about Kathleen Scott and Cap-tain Smith’s statue until Hazel got sick of standing in front of it.

  Hazel was still her best friend. They’d gone up to the High School together, although Hazel was into science and biology and couldn’t see the point of art. She stared at Ella, eye-ing her figure. ‘You’ll get arms like a boxer doing sculpture,’ she warned.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Ella said. She’d become a sculptor if it was the last thing she did. First, though, she must find out about the great masters, learn about artists of the past and how they worked, as well as the new ones who sometimes exhibited in the art galleries. There were anatomy lessons to master, reading skulls and musculature. It was all a big mystery but one that filled her with increasing excitement. Would she ever make it to Rome or Florence, or Paris to see Rodin’s work?

  Ella was impatient to be out of school and into the real world, where people lived their art and had the freedom to experiment. Her own feeble efforts in the shed at the bottom of the garden were stupid, inferior models of faces that she wanted to smash up in frustration. But materials were expensive and her mother hated waste.

  She loved faces: the power and the magic of worn faces, cheekbones, crooked noses – all those distinctive features that changed a face from plain to majestic. She marvelled at how a lump of plaster could be turned into something that would last for ever.

  She loved paintings too, but it was the portraits of faces that she loved the most. She asked for a skull for her birthday but had to make do with a sheep’s one. It was important to feel the bones and the shapes inside a head, to build from the inside out.

  It was scary how desperate she was to have the chance to study art and make things for herself. Would she have the physical strength to help cast bronzes and bigger pieces? She was wiry and slender but not very tall, and probably more suited to be a dancer than a sculptor or a stone carver.

  More than anything she wanted to leave school and go to art college, but her mother was having none of it.

  ‘You must stay on and get your certificates after all the fees and education you’ve gone through. You must have a good profession behind you in case we fall on hard times . a schoolteacher, a secretary or comptometeress working an adding machine.’

  ‘But I don’t want to work in an office.’

  ‘Well, maybe a nurse then . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to be a nurse. I’d kill all the patients.’ ‘Don’t be funny with me. You’ll do as you’re told, my lady. There’s been enough people

  in this house who never knew when they were well off,’ Mum sniffed, looking at the por-trait on the mantelpiece.

  Roddy was never mentioned by name. He was the silent ghost in the corner of the room ever present but never spoken of. He’d been disobedient and broken his mother’s heart. The warning was implicit: she must not do the same to hers.

  Mum and Uncle Selwyn ruled Red House now, an odd alliance, if ever there was one. Aunt Celeste was always off on one of her trips, leaving them bickering or sitting down for supper like an old married couple. Uncle Selwyn had come out of his shell a bit but he still liked to do his soldering in the barn. It had been on one such occasion that Ella had the bright idea of making pictures out of odd bits of metal. If only she could solder metal into shapes.

  Selwyn had said no at first when she asked him to show her how to do it but finally, after a lot of pestering, she persuaded him to show her the basics. He’d insisted she watched from behind a protective visor, standing well back as the sparks flew. It was hot, gruelling work, but good practice for working molten metal into moulds if she ever wanted to do proper busts or larger work.

  Then her mother had come in with a mug of tea and seen them both working and flown into a rage with him. He’d sworn at her for interrupting.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, can’t you see the kid’s got spark and imagination? She’s got some big ideas. What’s a few burns on her hands . ? Let her learn anything worth making costs blood, sweat and tears. Don’t be stupid and limit her dreams.’

  ‘Don’t you call me stupid, Selwyn Forester! I know she’s got brains and beauty and tal-ent for the two of us put together. You’ve no right putting her in danger. That’s not a girl’s work.’

  ‘It was in the war, or have you forgotten the steel makers and munition workers we all depended on then?’

  Ella left them slugging it out in the garage. She hated it when they argued over her. Roddy would have marched her up the garden to cool off and made her laugh. She missed him.

  Storming off to her shed she found her last piece of clean paper and drew from the white-hot heat of fury a picture that was in her mind: Selwyn’s broken face bent over the sol-dering iron, her face aglow watching from behind the shield. In her mind’s eye she saw a strange shape emerging. Two figures with arms raised in despair while the third squashed in the middle of them was forcing them apart. Her hand flew over the paper until she was spent.

  If she was going to college they would want to see her work. She had to start somewhere, so what was wrong with right now?

  Ella felt her head was bursting with ideas and, at the same time, her body was changing too, filling out, softening and curving. As part of the crocodile of High School girls march-ing along the pavements each morning, Ella passed boys on their bikes on their way to King Edward’s Grammar School, who winked and whistled at her. She blushed, knowing they were admiring her shape, and her black hair woven into a plait to prevent it from springing into curls.

  Hazel would stare back at them and giggle. ‘He likes you.’ ‘Stop it,’ Ella snapped, trying not to look pleased, though Lichfield schoolboys were so

  ordinary, all legs and pimples with sticking-up hair, not a bit like Michelangelo’s beautiful creatures or Burne-Jones’s portraits of the Knights of the Round Table. She stuck her nose in the air, pretending not to notice their whistling.

  ‘You only make them worse,’ Hazel moaned, nudging her. ‘I wish Ben Garratt looked at me like he looks at you.’

  ‘I haven’t time for complications in my life. I’m going to be an artist. We must pour our feelings into our work not waste them on spotty sixth formers,’ she sneered.

  ‘L
isten to you, Ella Smith! From what I’ve read, artists have very complicated love lives. Look at that Miss Garman, the one who gave us that talk. My mum says she lives with a married man in London now, a right scandal.’ Hazel looked so funny when she was trying to be sniffy, Ella thought; her nose twitched like a rabbit’s.

  ‘Oh, you mean Jacob Epstein, the sculptor, her lover.’ ‘And she’s had his baby . . .’

  ‘So? Artists do things differently.’

  ‘I think his portraits are so weird and ugly. You don’t want to be like him, do you?’ Hazel looked shocked.

  ‘I don’t know what my style will be,’ Ella confessed. ‘You’ll have to watch saying things like that or you’ll have Miss Hodge on your tail.’ ‘No fear, my mum would skin me alive if she heard us now,’ Ella laughed. ‘I want to

  start my career now, not be stuck at these boring books.’ ‘You can never have too much education, my stepdad says.’ Hazel’s mother had just

  married George, the soldier.

  ‘But learning to be an artist is an education too. I want to do it all the time, not just for two periods a week.’

  ‘Then go to art college. Cynthia’s brother goes there,’ she sighed. ‘He’s so good look-ing.’

  ‘Where? I can’t leave home.’ Hazel was voicing one of Ella’s own thoughts. ‘There’s Walsall, Birmingham, loads of places. You could go by train.’ ‘But college costs money and things have always been a bit tight at home, though it’s

  easier now we live at Red House. I suppose there’s the ship money.’ ‘What ship money?’ Hazel asked, intrigued.

  ‘The cheque from the Welfare for my dad. I saw it once and it has a ship in the corner. I would ask Mum but I don’t like reminding her about my dad. I was only a baby and we don’t talk about it at home. Mum gets upset. It was ages ago, and what with the war and everything . . . You don’t get anything for your dad, do you?’