The Unfortunates

by Laurie Graham

  ‘These are for Aunt Bobbity,’ she told me, dumping one pile into the trunk. ‘And the others are for the daddies.’

  Accustomed to the idea of two mommies, she had decided that Reggie and Sir Neville came as the same kind of package.

  Murray hung back while Reggie and I embraced.

  ‘I hope it’s all going to be all right,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it will, old sausage,’ he said. ‘Welcome home!’

  He had brought photographs of two Shetland ponies that hardly stood higher than Bullyboy Beluga.

  ‘They don’t have names yet,’ he said, ‘so you’d better put your thinking caps on.’

  He was most fascinated by the girls, studying their ways, asking them about the Berengaria.

  ‘Uncle Murray missed dinner,’ Emerald told him, ‘every night.’

  It was neat seeing them together, father and child.

  Murray was sitting up front beside Reggie. They had slipped right into an easy, friendly manner.

  ‘Did you really?’ Reggie said. ‘You must be famished! We could stop at a hostelry? We might be able to find you some cheese and pickles. Or we can just press on for home? I believe Bobbity has one of her soups on the go.’

  The smile on Murray’s face as he turned to look at me suggested he was on the mend.

  Weary after days of motherhood, I fell asleep, with a daughter either side of me and Beluga curled on my lap, and when I opened my eyes we were just turning onto the gravel sweep.

  ‘See what I mean about the size of the yard?’ I said to Murray.

  He gazed around him.

  I said, ‘Reggie honey, I do believe my stepbrother is lorst for words!’

  Emerald took immediately to her pony, which she elected to name Brown, after its color. She sat aboard it without hesitating and would have led it into the house and upstairs to the nursery given half a chance. Sapphire named hers Coffee Milk, but she preferred the wooden type of horse, a sign to me that she had inherited some of my good sense, even if later in life she didn’t always show it.

  They were awestruck by Bobbity, possibly because they thought she spoke a foreign language, and they kept a respectful distance from Sir Neville.

  He never troubled them by speaking to them, but there was the horrid magnetism of his empty sleeve. The girl who had been drafted in place of Nanny Faulds told me they often discussed it before they fell asleep. Whether there was a tiny hand up inside his shirt, or a nice smooth shoulder. And whether an arm could just disappear.

  They very much liked their girl. They allowed her to brush their hair, they swallowed down their cod liver oil, and they never tinkled in their beds again.

  Above all though, they loved Angelica Bagehot and the highlight of their week was the day she came to play. Sometimes they played in the kitchen, making peppermint candy. Sometimes they played Hide and Seek. Once, after I had told her about my war work and Cousin Addie and all, they played at hospitals. Even Brown and Coffee Milk had their tails bandaged that day.

  Murray spent a great deal of time pacing about outside, writing in a notebook.

  I said, ‘Are you writing haiku verses by any chance?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m designing a paradise garden.’

  There was an outdoors man who kept tidy what could be seen from the house, and the rest was coppices and pasture.

  I said, ‘Does Bobbity know?’

  ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  That was the dreamer in Murray. He didn’t understand one couldn’t go around just designing paradises.

  But Bobbity said, ‘If Murray chooses to make himself useful with a pair of secateurs I’m not going to stand in his way. He’s staying on, then?’

  This was a question I didn’t care to ask. Sapphy and Em had made the tricky transition, his job was done and Judah’s generosity was probably more than used up, but I didn’t want him to leave.

  I said, ‘Do you mind? If he stays on a bit longer?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I think we’re all rubbing along rather well, don’t you? Even the small fry. I think they show signs of promise, and I’m a pretty exacting judge, you know? If a puppy’s not right I draft him immeejutly.’

  I said, ‘Bobbity, I’m so glad I brought them here. This is the nicest house and the nicest family I ever knew.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said. ‘How extraordinary.’

  I believe I had embarrassed her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, pushing butcher’s scraps vigorously through her Spong mincer, ‘you’re not the only one heppy with the new arrangements. Angelica seems smitten, don’t you think?’

  Angelica Bagehot was signaling her romantic interest in Murray by visiting Kneilthorpe at every opportunity and then ignoring him.

  ‘Should I say anything?’ I asked Bobbity. ‘To Murray?’

  ‘I think not,’ she said. ‘When I decided to marry Merrick, I found it better to keep the blinkers on until I’d led him into the box.’

  And so began Angelica’s stealthy five-year courtship of my stepbrother.

  Murray was earning his keep by totting up figures in the estate ledgers, renovating the gardens and generally lending Sir Neville, as Bobbity put it, a very necessary hand. Only Murray and I ever seemed to find this turn of phrase comical.

  The old rose beds were grubbed up, and a quantity of privet hedges. A tree house was built, and an arbor. A white garden was planted and a perfumed grove, and a wild meadow where there had once been a very serviceable lawn. Sapphire began to study the pianoforte, Emerald rode out with her first hunt, and eventually the letters of inquiry about the date of Murray’s return changed to monthly digests of life as seen from East 69th Street.

  ‘Oscar is helping with the Civilian Conservation Corps,’ Ma wrote, ‘teaching the unfortunates forest-craft. And Little Abe has found a very good position with the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. What a comfort he is to us, kept at such a distance from our loved ones.’

  I called her bluff.

  ‘Dear Ma,’ I wrote. ‘No one is keeping you from your loved ones. You can set sail next week. God knows we must have a hundred bedrooms here. And stop calling Sherman Abe. It must drive him crazy.’

  ‘How sad it makes me,’ she replied,

  to be corrected by my own daughter. I am unable to set sail, as you so gaily suggest. I am sixty-two years of age and the tragedies of my life have taken their toll. Your sister is under the care of a new doctor, for irrigation of her system. I pray that this will help her to reduce, where all else has failed.

  I hope you are persevering with the ear bandages, in particular for Emerald. She will thank you for it some day.

  Your loving mother

  PS: Mrs Schwab passed over.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Angelica’s experience with horses persuaded her she must never do anything to startle Murray. When there were point-to-point races to be attended, she was careful always to travel in the other brake. When Reggie’s chums came for the shooting, she laughed in an especially bell-like way whenever Archie Vigo expressed any kind of opinion.

  Murray noticed none of this. He was absorbed in ever larger plans for the garden, and he was uneasy in himself, too, about staying on.

  ‘I suppose I should go back,’ he’d say from time to time. ‘I expect I’ve worn out my welcome.’

  ‘No,’ I always said.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he’d say. ‘And if my Pa really needed me, I think he’d have sent for me, don’t you?’

  Judah Jacoby was having trouble with communists.

  I said, ‘What if someone here very specially wanted you to stay?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose the girls would miss me.’

  ‘Not just the girls,’ I said. ‘A little bird told me there’s someone here who thinks you’re rather a dish?’

  He flushed scarlet.

  ‘Yipes!’ he said, scraping mud off his gardening boots. ‘Look at the time! I’m late for Neville.’

 
I did everything I could to promote the match. I liked the idea of having Angelica at Kneilthorpe and began grooming her for romance. I created a set of dinner gowns in silk acetate, with squared shoulders and gored skirts that fell gently to ankle length and drew the eye away from her rather solid prow.

  I had once heard Archie Vigo remark to Reggie that a well-rounded chest was something to look for in a bitch, and I believe he may have been opening the bidding for Angelica’s hand. But it never went any further.

  It was during the course of one of Angelica’s gown fittings that certain confusions came to the fore, creating bad feeling between myself and my daughters, just when we had grown quite affectionate.

  ‘Look at those two noddles,’ Angelica said. ‘Could two sisters have hair more different? Em’s is exactly like Reggie’s.’

  Sapphire was handing me pins. Emerald was making a pony rosette out of scraps.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I guess it is.’

  ‘Sapphy’s papa …’ Angelica said. ‘Was he handsome?’

  I was aware of the pricking of two pairs of small ears.

  ‘Fairly,’ I said. ‘Sapphire, please go to the kitchen and say we need more tea.’

  She said, ‘But I’m helping with the pins. Why not ring the bell?’

  ‘No more tea for me thanks, Poppy,’ Angelica said. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Gilbert,’ I murmured, jabbing her with a pin.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, noticing nothing. ‘There are Gilberts in Harborough. Any connection, I wonder?’

  Angelica knew everyone.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Now wouldn’t you like to run upstairs and see yourself in my mirror?’

  ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I absolutely trust your judgment. And did he come to a tragic end?’

  ‘Who’s Gilbert?’ Sapphire asked.

  ‘Oops!’ Angelica whispered. ‘Have I put my hoof in it?’

  ‘Gilbert was your daddy,’ I said. ‘Now I’ve finished pinning, so will you please carry the tea tray to the scullery before we have a mishap.’

  ‘What kind of mishap?’ Emerald asked.

  ‘But the girl always fetches the tray,’ Sapphire said. ‘Where is Gilbert now?’

  Angelica groaned. ‘Sorry Poppy,’ she said. She jumped down off the stool, still pinned into the rust-brown, and put her arms around Sapphire.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. The time had come. Otherwise I foresaw a long list of unanswerable questions about gravestones and dates and other tricky details.

  ‘Poppy,’ Angelica said, ‘I think the truth is best. Small fry can be awfully brave about these things.’

  I guess I chewed my lips a moment too long. I guess Angelica believed she was helping.

  ‘You remember how my cocker grew terribly old and smelly?’ she said, gathering Sapphire to her ample front. ‘You remember how Aunt Bobbity’s Hector broke a leg out with the Belvoir?’

  ‘Did they shoot Gilbert?’ Sapphire said, leaping to a reasonable conclusion.

  ‘No,’ Angelica soothed her. ‘But he did die. Didn’t he Poppy?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, and I suddenly thought of Humpy Choate who was always armed with a vague reply. ‘Not as such.’

  The room was quiet except for the ticking of a grandmother clock and Emerald’s busy tuneless humming.

  ‘Gilbert went away,’ I said, eventually.

  Sapphire said, ‘Where? I want to see him.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Emerald piped up. ‘Reggie is my daddy.’

  I watched Sapphire and Angelica sifting their thoughts, allowing new possibilities to settle. Angelica began to look amused.

  ‘Do you mean,’ she said, ‘you are d-i-v-o-r-c-e-d?’

  ‘I know what that means,’ Sapphire said. ‘I can spell. It means you had Gilbert sent away. It means I’m an orphan. You beast. You hateful beast.’

  ‘Sapphy!’ Emerald called to her. ‘Never mind. Reggie can be your daddy. And then if Gilbert comes back, you’ll have two daddies.’

  But Sapphire always preferred to strike a tragic pose. She was ten, and this opened hostilities between us that never were resolved. Whatever happened in her life, when men left her, when friends grew tired of her, when she lost her looks, it would be laid at my door.

  ‘You sent my father away,’ she’d cry. ‘I never knew my father.’

  Angelica was completely decent about it all. She never let onto Bobbity or Neville.

  ‘Divorced!’ she whispered to me. ‘How completely modern!’

  I finished her gowns and showed her how to shape her eyebrows and rinse her hair in dark beer. I even made a gift to her of a pair of divine amber earrings but like all Englishwomen she was wedded to her cardigan, a garment I never persuaded her to leave off. Even when I loaned her my chinchilla wrap, so Murray might glimpse her powdered shoulders and find his appetite for the hunt ball unexpectedly whetted, she sabotaged the whole effect by wearing the wrap over the cardigan. Kneilthorpe was bone-chillingly cold, of course. But I was never so unprincipled as to dine in knitwear.

  On Christmas Day 1934, Angelica proposed marriage to Murray and he accepted.

  I took him to one side.

  ‘Not that I’m not delighted,’ I said, ‘but are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  I said, ‘You never told me you were in love with her.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ he said. ‘And now I can stay here and finish the garden.’

  I said, ‘No, you’ll live in the dower house at Lower Bagehots. You’ll have responsibilities to your own land.’

  ‘Will I?’ he said. ‘What do you think my father’s going to say? About my marrying out.’

  I said, ‘He’s never criticized me for marrying an English.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not that kind of marrying out.’

  I said, ‘No one bothers with that Jewish business anymore. This is the modern era. Anyone can marry anyone.’

  ‘I bother with Jewish stuff,’ he said.

  I said, ‘You do not. You go to church, same as I do.’

  ‘That’s because I’m a guest,’ he said. ‘But I don’t actually listen to any of it.’

  That was neither here nor there. No one listened to any of it.

  I said, ‘You eat lobster.’

  ‘We never have lobster!’ he countered, and it sounded suspiciously like a veiled complaint.

  ‘But if we did, you would,’ I said.

  He said, ‘Perhaps Angelica will be Jewish with me. I’ll put it to her. It would make things easier on Pa.’

  I said, ‘Don’t you dare.’

  I’ve never been afraid of creating a scandale but in Meltun Merbrey it was considered boringly bad form to harp on about God.

  The wedding date was fixed for June, and we ran into a small obstacle immediately. Sapphire refused to be a bridesmaid. This was part of her larger plan to thwart me in any way she could and to punish Murray for his complicity, as she saw it, in keeping her from her father. Even when she saw the divine blush satin I had purchased in Leicester, Leicestershire, and my witty design, with three layers and a yoked skirt, echoing the line of Angelica’s gown, she would not thaw.

  ‘Never mind, Mommy,’ Emerald said. ‘I’ll wear two dresses.’

  Then Ma wrote.

  ‘Your Aunt and I have obtained a stateroom on the April fifteenth sailing. Sadly Judah is unable to accompany us because of the communists.’

  Jacoby Furriers was still troubled by organized labor.

  ‘You see,’ Murray said gloomily. ‘He won’t come because I’m marrying out. Maybe I should call it off.’

  I said, ‘Are you getting cold feet?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just wondering if I’m going to be disinherited.’

  I’m sure it would have been no great loss if he were. The Jacoby boys had never had fortunes.

  Angelica said she didn’t care a hoot. She stuck by his side through all weathers, helping to prepare a new asparagus bed and her diamond ring, a rather old, used diamon
d ring, grew very grubby. She was an altogether cheerful girl.

  She obtained a book called Married Hygiene and studied it closely.

  Ma and Aunt Fish docked at the end of April. Reggie and I drove down to Southampton to meet their boat and by the time we arrived back at Kneilthorpe we had heard particulars of every luncheon, dinner and glass of seltzer they had enjoyed.

  ‘There are musical diversions, and bouillon,’ my aunt informed me, as though I had never crossed the Atlantic. ‘And they change the linen every day.’

  I believe she had been bracing herself for a hammock.

  ‘Are the invitations sent out?’ Ma asked.

  For nine years I had tried to impress upon my mother the remoteness of the royal family from even well-attested kin, and I had been especially discouraging when she wrote of including a tiara in her luggage.

  ‘Angelica and Murray are not known to Queen Mary, Ma,’ I sighed. ‘They are barely even known to the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Does it occur to you, Poppy,’ said Aunt Fish, ‘that if everyone were so reticent Queen Mary would sit at home and never be invited anywhere?’

  ‘See what I mean?’ I growled to Reggie. But Reggie couldn’t see. He was always notionally on my side because I was his wife, but he never joined battle.

  I felt let down by the way he got along so amiably with my old enemies, having an extra table set up in the Drawing Rum so they could enjoy their jigsaw puzzles without straining their backs, driving them across to Archie Vigo’s so they could examine a bed slept in by some earlier monarch. But that was nothing to the betrayal I suffered when, toward the end of their first week at Kneilthorpe, Neville announced that Their Majesties were coming to Melton, as part of their Silver Jubilee journey.

  ‘You see!’ Ma said, growing pink in spite of the cold of the dining room. ‘I knew it must be easier than you pretended. Thank goodness we brought our tiaras, Zillah.’

  ‘Yes,’ said my aunt, ‘thank goodness we knew better than to depend on Poppy’s word.’

  I wasn’t going to be seen as incompetent in my own house.