But first there were a few things she had to do.
Nancy and Hilda were having their elevenses, huddled over a magazine on the table—which they quickly closed and turned over when Daisy walked into the kitchen.
“Is Mrs. Jessop about?” Daisy asked, glancing upward and rolling her eyes sideways—in the way Iris sometimes did—already adopting her new demeanor.
“She’s gone to the kitchen garden with Mr. Jessop, but I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” said Nancy. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“No, not really,” she replied. “I just met Tabitha . . .”
“Tabitha Farley?” Nancy asked.
Daisy looked back at her. “I’m not sure—not sure which Tabitha.”
“You’d know if it was her,” said Hilda, wiping shortbread crumbs from her lips.
“She’s a friend of Stephen’s,” Daisy said, after a moment.
“She’s that, all right, and plenty more be—”
“She works at the Coach and Horses,” interrupted Nancy, rising to her feet. “That’s how he knows her,” she added, gathering up plates and cups.
Daisy nodded. “Oh, so are they . . . courting?”
Hilda sniggered and Nancy shot her a look.
“I’m not sure . . . Perhaps,” said Nancy, “but I don’t think it’s anything serious . . . just a dalliance.”
Daisy smiled and then nodded again. “Ah yes, a dalliance, of course,” she said, and laughed. It was another one of those things she’d normally have asked Iris about: what the parameters of a dalliance were, what was involved. But what did it matter? If Stephen wanted to dally with a Tabitha, that was fine by her. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. There was no time to waste: She needed to find her mother.
Mabel, as usual, was in her boudoir. But this morning she appeared to be having some sort of clear-out: tearing up paper, ripping pages from notebooks and dropping them into the overflowing basket by her side. Daisy stood for a minute, watching, listening to her mother’s humming; then she took a deep breath and stepped forward, into the room. “I’ve decided to go to London to live with Iris,” she said.
Mabel didn’t say anything. She glanced up, smiled and nodded.
“I’m leaving. I’m going to find a job, be independent . . .”
Still Mabel said nothing and continued to tear up sheets of paper.
“I’m leaving here,” Daisy declared, with slightly more fervor. “I’m leaving Eden Hall.”
“Yes, I hear you,” said Mabel, calmly, quietly, not at all as Daisy had been expecting.
“And you have nothing to say?”
Mabel stopped. She rose from her desk and moved toward the French doors. “I don’t think there’s very much to say. It sounds to me as though you’ve made up your mind.”
“Yes, I have . . . I’m suffocating in this place. I can’t breathe. There’s nothing and no one for me here—apart from you,” she quickly added. “And all I seem to do is wait . . . wait for something to happen, to change,” she went on, moving nearer to her mother. “But I need you to support me in this . . . and I need you to tell Howard.”
The two women stood side by side, staring out over the frozen gardens.
“In that case, we need to support each other,” said Mabel. “Because I’m leaving, too.”
Mabel joined Howard on the front doorstep. She kissed Margot on the cheek—powdered, rouged and reeking of Lily of the Valley—then she watched the woman step inside the car and saw Jessop place the rug over her lap. And as the vehicle slowly pulled away, with Margot’s gloved hand raised to them, Mabel felt her husband slip his arm around her waist.
“Well, there they go,” he said as the car honked its horn and disappeared beyond the tall shrubbery.
He turned to Mabel, but before he could say anything more, she said, “We need to talk, Howard. I have something to tell you.”
Minutes later, Mabel closed the door of her boudoir and instructed her husband to sit down.
He sat down.
“I’ve decided to go away,” she began and then paused. “I’ve been here for twenty-five years, and . . . well, I feel the need for a change.”
Howard grimaced. He raised a hand to his chest, and for a moment Mabel wondered if he might be having another attack of heartburn. But she would not be put off. Not now.
“I’m going away with your sister on a tour of the continent,” she continued. “I’ll be leaving here next week . . . to stay in London with Dosia, where we’ll sort our itinerary and do some shopping; then we’ll be leaving.” She saw her husband close his eyes. “Howard?”
He stared back at her, blinked a few times.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Did you just say something about going away?”
Mabel tilted her head to one side. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me . . . Yes, I’m going away. I’m leaving here, leaving you . . . for a while, anyway.”
“When did you decide this?”
“Oh, only recently.”
“But I wanted to talk to you. I need to tell you—”
“No,” she interrupted. “I don’t wish to talk, not now. We can talk when I return.”
“And when will that be?” he asked.
“I’m not sure . . . late spring, early summer, perhaps.”
Howard leaned forward and placed his head in his hands. “Summer . . .”
Mabel sat down. “Dosia says we need at least four or five months if we’re to do the thing properly . . . see everywhere. She says Italy alone will take far more than a month.”
“It’ll be costly.”
“I’m funding the entire expedition myself, with the money my father left me. I’ve done my sums.”
“And what about Reggie?” he asked, glancing up her. “Is he going with you?”
Mabel glanced away and affected a shrug. “He might join us at some stage . . . He thought perhaps the Riviera in late May.”
Howard lowered his head again. “And Daisy?” he asked. “She’s really far too young to be left alone here.”
“It’s all sorted. She’s going to live in London with Iris.”
“I see. But what about this place—and your mother, what about Noonie?”
“I’ve spoken with her. She’s all for it . . . insists she’ll be fine, and anyway, you will be here.”
He looked up at her: “I will be here?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you’ll have to be here, to look after my mother and to manage the place . . . just as I have these past twenty-five years.”
Standing on the little wooden bridge, halfway down into the valley known as the Devil’s Punchbowl, Daisy thought for a moment about dropping the globe into the swollen, fast-flowing stream, allowing the torrent to perhaps carry it off down the hillside. But there was every chance it would simply sink and rest there, and then she’d very possibly return to fish it out.
It was a symbolic act, she knew. But after everything that had happened during the preceding days, after discovering the truth about her father and about Stephen, it seemed a fitting gesture: not only an action to commemorate her liberation and Mabel’s, but an action to liberate every Christmas ahead and forget every one that had come before.
In the distance she heard a car horn, and she moved away from the bridge and clambered along the snowy embankment, the globe clutched in her hand.
She stepped forward onto the ridge, where the hillside fell away in a precipitous drop. The sky was pale and low. Nothing stirred. The damp stillness hung like an unspent deluge above her head, waiting. Far below, a clump of pine trees almost as small as those inside the globe in her hand seemed to beckon and a new unsettling energy swept through her. She raised her hand, took it back over her shoulder.
She threw it high, watching its trajectory as it revolv
ed through the air in a perfect arc and then fell, disappearing into the snow.
It was gone. Life had changed. It was time to move on.
Chapter Eighteen
Over the next few days a strange calm descended over Eden Hall. But beneath an atmosphere of resignation, of quiet acceptance, was the nervous energy of departure.
Outside, intermittent rain washed away the graying snow, leaving dirty peaks along the sides of forgotten pathways. Inside, Christmas was abandoned as trunks were brought down from the attics. Mabel began a new list, titled “Packing”; she pulled out sun-bleached florals and faded stripes and held them up to herself in front of her dressing mirror. She rummaged in old hatboxes, trying on straw hats, fiddling with bent brims and ribbons and silk flowers. She had not been overseas since her honeymoon, when she and Howard had spent a few days in Paris followed by a week on the French Riviera, where—Mabel was quite certain—Iris had been conceived.
And as Mabel packed bags—not to take away with her, but for jumble sales, she decided—Daisy dismantled her room; Ben Gifford returned to London with Lily and Miles; and Dosia left for West Sussex, where she was to spend the New Year with friends. Iris floated about the place, made a number of hushed, monosyllabic telephone calls and practiced her dance moves in the otherwise empty drawing room. And Howard for the most part remained in his study.
For three days Daisy avoided Stephen Jessop. When she walked into the kitchen the evening after the Vincents left and saw him up a ladder, replacing a lightbulb and mildly chastising his mother for ruining her eyesight by working in such dimness, she swiftly turned and left the room. The following day, when Hilda came to the morning room, where Daisy sat alone reading, and said, “Excuse me, but Stephen would like to know if it’s possible to have a word with you,” she told Hilda to tell him that she was “too busy.” And later that same day, when he called after her as she returned from a walk with Iris—and though Iris turned and waved to him—Daisy pointedly ignored him and marched on through the front door.
“Have you and Stephen had a falling-out?” Iris asked as they hung up their coats.
“No, not really. I just don’t wish to speak to him at the moment.”
“But you’ll have to say good-bye to him . . . He’ll be awfully upset if you don’t.”
The day before Old Year’s Night, Howard and Mr. Blundell carried Daisy’s trunk down the stairs, across the hallway and out to the car. Howard had been touched by Daisy’s request that he rather than Stephen drive the girls to the station and had told her so with tears in his eyes.
“I’ll see you both in a few days,” said Mabel, kissing Daisy and then Iris.
“But when will I see you again?” Noonie asked Daisy.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon enough . . . I’ll come and visit you.”
It was only when the car had disappeared and as Noonie stepped back into the house that Mabel saw Stephen, standing at the entrance to the courtyard.
“They’ve gone,” he said, walking toward her.
“Yes, to London . . . Daisy’s to live there, with Iris. I’m sure she’s told you . . . I hope she said good-bye?”
He shook his head.
“Oh, Stephen, I do apologize . . . How very thoughtless of her.”
“I need to speak with you, Mrs. Forbes.”
Mabel was keen to get back to her packing and had promised Noonie that on Howard’s return from the station she would get Stephen to drive them to Farnham, to the sale at Elphicks, and then for a knickerbocker glory at the new ice cream parlor. A distraction to cheer up her mother, Mabel thought. But something in Stephen’s tone made her think her mother’s treat might not happen, and as she led him into the house, toward Howard’s study, she prayed that he was not about to resign.
“I understand,” she said, after listening to him, because she did. Why would he want to stay there? There was little enough for him to do and would be even less once she had gone and Howard was there alone. “But it is rather sudden, and to leave immediately . . . well, it’s not usual, Stephen.”
“I don’t expect you to give me anything other than what I’m due, Mrs. Forbes. And of course—if you wouldn’t mind—a character.”
Mabel stared back at him. He had grown up, and yet this day he looked no different from the anxious little boy who had arrived there one summer’s afternoon as she sat in the garden holding Daisy in her arms.
“Does your mother know?” Mabel asked.
“No, not yet. But I’m about to go and explain.”
Mabel nodded. “This is your home, Stephen. You must always remember that.”
Mabel wrote more than she normally would and used all the right words and phrases: honest . . . diligent . . . trustworthy . . . reliable . . . no hesitation . . . and finally, very sad to see him go. She folded the paper, placed it in an envelope.
Then she reached for Howard’s checkbook and pen. She pondered for a moment, then wrote out the check and handed it to Stephen, along with the character.
“But this is too much . . . far too much. I’m only owed—”
“No,” said Mabel, interrupting him, “I want you to take it. Please, don’t say any more.”
He looked uncomfortable and sighed as he shifted in his seat.
“When are you leaving?” Mabel asked.
“Soon. As soon as I’ve packed my bag.”
“But Howard . . . Mr. Forbes will want to say good-bye, want to express his thanks to you . . .”
“I know and I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be persuaded to stay. I’d be grateful—extremely grateful—if you’d extend my good wishes and thanks to him.”
Mabel nodded again. “And where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. But I’ll be in touch.”
As Mabel stood up, Stephen rose swiftly to his feet and extended his hand. Mabel stared at the hand for a second or two; then she moved round the desk. And as she held him, she thought of her own son, Theo; she thought of all those boys who’d gone off and never come home; and she remembered the little boy who’d once slept on the floor of Daisy’s room and had a nightmare.
It had been during the first months of the war, that very first winter, after the pipes at the Jessops’ cottage had frozen and then burst, flooding the place. The house had been full of children, another nine orphans from London, and—once again—mainly boys. But Daisy had asked that Stephen be allowed to sleep in her room, and Stephen was different; he was gentle. When she’d heard the sobbing, Mabel had gone to the bedroom, found Stephen huddled in a corner, crying and shivering. She’d taken him down to the kitchen, made him some cocoa, then led him to the morning room, where a fire still burned and it was warm. He’d told her that he was worried about his father and had dreamed of him. “I don’t want him to get hurt . . . I don’t want him to get killed,” he’d said, staring up at her with huge, solemn eyes. They had been sitting side by side on the small sofa, and she had wrapped her arm around him, pulled him closer and done her best to reassure him. When she’d eventually taken him back up to the makeshift bed, tucking him in, securing him, he’d reached for her hand and kissed it.
“Gone?” Howard repeated, an hour later. “I can’t believe you let him go—just like that.”
“What else could I have done?” Mabel asked. “He’d made up his mind; he was determined.”
Howard sighed, shook his head. “I’d have liked to have seen him, talked to him . . . He’s been here almost all his life,” he added, looking up at Mabel.
“Yes. Which is no doubt why he wished to go. He’s an intelligent young man . . . and you and I both know he’s wasted here. There’s not enough for him.”
“I remember the night he was born,” said Howard, wringing his hands. “I remember holding him in my arms and wondering . . . wondering how life would be for him.”
The love Mabel felt for her husb
and at that moment was sudden, unexpected and complex. She said, “I know how much you care about him, but you have to let him go.”
“Let you all go?”
Mabel nodded. “Yes . . . but if you love us, we’ll be back.”
Mrs. Jessop had gone to the larder to cry in private about Stephen and to read the note he had given her, again. She hadn’t expected to find Nancy there, arranging the tins and packets and potted meats like there was no tomorrow—and with tears streaming down her face, too.
“Is it John?” Mrs. Jessop asked, closing the door, biting back her own tears and wrapping her arms around Nancy’s slender shoulders. She knew Nancy often took refuge there, to remember him.
“They’re all leaving . . . all of them. And it’s that bloody woman’s fault,” said Nancy, slamming the jar of Bovril down next to the tin of cocoa.
Mrs. Jessop slipped the folded note inside her pocket and blew her nose. She wasn’t used to hearing Nancy swear, and she had forgotten about That Woman. But surely Mrs. Vincent couldn’t be blamed for Stephen’s departure. “There, there,” she said. “They’ll all be back, you know?”
“And what about us—what are we expected to do?”
“Carry on as usual?” suggested Mrs. Jessop.
“Like during the war?” said Nancy, looking angry now. “That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it? Everyone going . . . and us left here, as usual . . . and with what?” she asked, waving about the tin plate of pigs’ trotters that Mrs. Jessop had cooked earlier especially for Mr. Forbes.
Mrs. Jessop sat down on the stool. She said, “What choice do we have? What choice do we have?” And then she leaned her forehead against the cool slate shelf and began to weep.
“I’m sorry,” said Nancy, putting down the plate and taking hold of the older woman. “I wasn’t thinking about your Stephen . . . And you’re right, they’ll all be back soon enough and so will he. Because you’re his mother, just like his own mother, and he loves you as such . . . yes, he does, he loves you as such.”
Mrs. Jessop pulled away. She stared back at Nancy with swimming eyes: “Do you think so? Do you really think so?”
The Snow Globe Page 17
