A Winter's Child

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Happy New Year.’ Polly flung her arms into the air in a gesture that cried out ‘Look at me. Look at me’, paused a moment under the light so everyone – absolutely everyone – could see the sparkle of her gold butterflies, the rich sheen of the satin as it clung to her splendid, supple – still virgin – limbs, the daring, audacious new tint of her hair, bleached several shades lighter by some ‘miracle of nature’according to Miriam, and then fell into the arms of her admirers one after the other – Rex and Roy Kington, Roger Timms, a trio of Peters and Anthonys and Stephens, even MacAllister, the barman and Arnold Crozier emerging spider-like from his corner – giving them all long, noisy kisses, biting ear-lobes, throwing back her sensational, platinum head and listening to her own laughter.

  Tonight she wanted to be kissed. For whatever one happened to be doing on New Year’s Eve as the clock struck twelve one could expect to do all year – wasn’t that so? – and 1920 was to be just not her year but a pattern for the years to come. Kisses, new clothes, everybody being kind to her, a wedding ring. And if she had not precisely made sure of Roy Kington yet – what with Sally Templeton still running after him in her shameless fashion and putting about rumours that he was thinking of going off to Ireland to join the Black and Tans – she was relying on 1920 to take care of that.

  ‘MacAllister darling – why aren’t you a millionaire instead of a barman and then I could fall in love with you? No, Mr Crozier, I suppose you are a millionaire, but I won’t come up to the Tangerine Suite, thank you very much. Roger – I did ask you to look after my bag. Now just stop that, Anthony – or Roy?’

  ‘She’s ripe for it, that one,’ said MacAllister, the barman, to Claire as they watched Polly convert the ritual of Auld Lang Syne into a scramble to hold her hand, ‘begging for it. And, by God, if she were to ask me –!’

  ‘No, old chap,’ swinging around on his bar-stool, Toby Hartwell, who should not have been there at all, fixed MacAllister with a cold eye, an unusually pugnacious set to his jaw, ‘I wouldn’t think of it – really not – if I were you.’

  ‘Just a passing remark, Mr Hartwell, sir.’

  ‘I dare say. Not one I’d repeat though old chap! Goodnight, Claire. Happy New Year.’

  ‘Goodnight, Toby. The same to you.’

  ‘Quite the Sir Galahad,’ shrugged MacAllister as Toby, having kissed Claire’s cheek, slid off his stool and walked away; and she smiled and nodded, thinking how well the role of Knight Errant might, in other circumstances, have suited Toby.

  Eunice Hartwell spent the evening at home nursing a heavy cold, feeling feverish and plain and thoroughly miserable because Toby had gone out and left her. Naturally she had told him to go. They had received half a dozen invitations to ‘see the New Year in’with friends, and she knew how much Toby loved this annual parade from house to house, a drink at every punchbowl, ‘first foot’over half a dozen thresholds, so much more fun than Christmas, which was always dominated for him by High Meadows. No reason, therefore, to spoil his enjoyment because she had a cold. Naturally, she had meant what she said the moment she said it. Naturally – to begin with – he had said ‘Wouldn’t think of it, old girl’and had offered to give it all up and stay at home. Naturally, she had insisted. And now, sitting alone in the house they had bought to suit Toby’s notions of what a family home should be – enormous – she was thoroughly wretched. She had no idea where he was. Not that she suspected him of intrigue or even of flirtation. She just wanted his company, wanted him to want hers, would have liked, for once, to be alone with him.

  She had no idea where Justin was either, nor Simon, only where they had told her they were going – a milk-and-water party at a schoolfriend’s house – which had not even sounded true. She could telephone, of course, and find out. In fact she knew quite well she ought to have telephoned earlier in the day to make sure. But if she had done that and had discovered that there had been no party, what then? If she had forbidden the boys to go out she was no longer sure they would obey her. The last time she had attempted to exert her authority and had confined Justin to his room, he had simply climbed out of the window and broken his ankle and a great deal of guttering besides. And, apart from the danger and the expense, his defiance and the fact that she seemed unable to do anything about it, had wounded her deeply. How did one discipline a boy of that age? She wished she knew. Scolding was no use. Nor pleading. She had tried both and he had either laughed or walked away. How could one punish him? She could neither slap him nor in any way physically compel him. She had stopped his allowance once and he had simply helped himself to money from her purse or taken it by force from his younger brothers. It had taken her a long time to recover from the shock of that. In fact, she never had got over it. And now, to stop it from happening again and to avoid the horrifying possibility that he might steal from somebody else who might inform the police, or Benedict, all she could think of to do – against her better judgement, well aware that she had lost her nerve – was to give him money whenever he asked for it; as much as he asked for; often a great deal.

  What else could she do? Could Toby have done better? She had no idea because she had never asked him. Knowing how deeply Justin’s pilfering would have shocked and sickened Toby, she had kept it to herself. She did not want Toby to know that his son was a thief. She did not want him, with his old-world notions of courtesy and honesty, to bear that burden. Toby might give things away, in fact he frequently did, and was often far too ready to pay the bill in restaurants and to stand round after round of drinks so that people took advantage, but he would never take a penny which did not belong to him. Ardently, she believed in that. And she had flown at Benedict like an angry cat, not too long ago, when he had suggested that by taking his lengthy lunches, his trips to York and Doncaster for the Races, his golfing afternoons, Toby was stealing time – which was the same as money – from Swanfield Mills. How that remark had incensed her. She had been so beside herself with fury that she had shrieked all manner of things at Benedict which she would not have dared otherwise to mention. She was angry about it still. How dare he? For Toby was a gentleman. His standards were finer, more complicated, different. She had always been impressed by his social superiority, although Toby himself never made much of it. But it was there. Good breeding. A heritage of good manners, a tendency – which had always charmed her – to think it only natural that one ought to rule the world. And she had never ceased to marvel at the innate superiority which had made Toby’s gentle, scholarly, penniless father think of her own father – the great Aaron Swanfield – as a tradesman, in no way different from a grocer or a haberdasher except that he had more money.

  Toby, in his heart of hearts, thought that too. To him, as to his ancestors, money was for spending, to create pleasure rather than to purchase power, to give away as largesse, noblesse oblige, assistance to the needy, rather than to accumulate in bank vaults or stocks and shares. Justin – and Simon – thought the same, except – and she had long known the difference – Justin and Simon were not, by nature, gentlemen. She must never allow Toby to discover that.

  At midnight the maid came in to make the fire. ‘Happy New Year, Madam.’ But the girl, who had wanted the night off, was sulky, had already decided to give in her notice and get a job in a factory, and did not feel that Eunice’s future happiness or lack of it, had anything to do with her.

  ‘Thank you, Betty.’ She suspected the girl would be leaving and had already started to convince herself that there would be no need to replace her. She had a cook, a girl to do the laundry, a woman who came in twice a week to scrub, a woman once a month to sew. Surely she could manage without a parlourmaid? It was quite the fashion now just to hand dishes round at dinner or to take one’s guests to a restaurant. Or at least she could say it was the very latest London thing and insist she preferred it. And Betty’s wages would be a useful addition to the money she had started to put by like a frantic, October squirrel to be used for the rescue – whenever the need arose – of Jus
tin or Simon.

  On the nursery floor above her head her two younger children, her little boys, were not asleep perhaps, had quite possibly raided the larder for nuts and raisins and the dreadful concoction of sugar and cocoa powder mixed up together which they would be bound to spill all over the bed. But at least she knew where they were. Where was Justin? Enjoying himself in a way she would have found gross in anyone else’s son. Drinking spirits, ready to repeat his misdemeanour with that chambermaid – that little slut – or with any girl foolish enough, or tipsy enough to let him. And if he succeeded, as he probably would, since he was handsome and could be persuasive as she had every reason to know, then it could only be a matter of time before he started a baby on its way. The thought struck her like a hammer blow and was followed instantly by another thought, equally compelling. She must save him, somehow, from all those little flibbertigibbets, those feather-headed, silk-stockinged girls who were nothing, when all was said and done, but temptation. Girls no longer conducted themselves as they should, as she had always done, that was the real trouble. They allowed liberties to be taken, led men on – only look at Polly! – and then, when the inevitable happened, set up such a caterwauling! She recognized her own injustice, of course. She even knew quite clearly how differently she would have viewed the matter had she been the mother of daughters. But she was not. And she would defend her boys, her own flesh and blood, through anything, always, to the bitter end. Her boys, and Toby. She had been unable to conceal from him that sorry business about Justin and the chambermaid. Justin’s headmaster had seen to that. But any further indiscretions she would do her utmost to handle alone. And if it became too much for her, if it turned into some sordid business of paying off or hushing things up in a way she could not manage, then she would rather endure the scorn of her formidable brother than upset Toby.

  Yet, where was Toby? She had told him to go out and enjoy himself. She had been glad to make the sacrifice. But, just the same, she knew he should not have left her. She knew that in his place she would never have left him.

  Miriam Swanfield spent the last evening of the year at a civic banquet in Faxby’s Town Hall where she herself had once reigned, for a glittering year, as Faxby’s Mayoress. Aaron, of course, had not wanted in the very least to take office, she fondly remembered that. He was a businessman, accustomed to what he had called the ‘real world’of gigantic profit or loss and had no inclination – he had grunted – to waste his time arguing about the siting of park benches or what to do about the odour from those pig pens on Faxby Green. But he had looked very splendid in his mayoral robes and she had brought not only dignity but graciousness and style to her position as consort. She remembered that very well. She had worn enormous French hats, tight-corseted gowns that had nipped in her waist and pushed out her bosom, had presided at this very banqueting table in all the lavish silks and satins, the billowing lace and tulle which Polly had now cut up into those scandalous chemises she called evening dresses. Ah well. The times were changing. But not necessarily for the better. And she saw no one at the Mayoral table tonight who could in any way compare with the luscious, clever woman she had once been.

  The present Mayoress, she noticed, was large and dowdy and had never learned the art of concealing her own excellent opinion of herself. The Councillors’wives were either serviceable and plain or aggressively smart; or, in two cases, indecently young; a pair of ‘old men’s darlings’wearing too much paint and too much jewellery and thoroughly bored with these pompous, self-indulgent, elderly gentlemen who had condescended to marry them.

  The wife of Councillor Greenwood was visibly younger than his unmarried daughter, Miss Greenwood, who liked it to be thought that she had lost her fiance in the war, although Miriam knew it was no such thing. Poor Miss Greenwood, sitting now with a somewhat pained expression between the newly married pair, probably worrying – thought Miriam – about who, in the event of her father’s death, would be likely to inherit his spinning mill, particularly since the other ‘civic flapper’, the new young wife of Councillor Redfearn of Redfearn’s Hardware – such a lucrative chain of shops – was expecting her first, his second child. Although Councillor Redfearn’s daughter, of course, was another matter from poor, plain Miss Green wood. A capable woman, Elvira Redfearn, a widow now of ample means and abundant energies, who would stand no nonsense from anyone, not even from her portly,-pretentious father, much less his twenty-year old wife. Yes. A clever woman, Elvira Redfearn. Perhaps even a shade too forceful. A friend of long standing – as Miriam well knew – of Benedict’s.

  He had accompanied her tonight, his position as Chairman of Swanfield Mills amply justifying his place at the Mayoral table and she was bound to admit that the dignity sat well on him, rather better, in fact, than it had on Aaron. Her husband, even beneath the gold mayoral chain, the scarlet robes, the London tailored suits she had insisted upon, had retained a certain earthiness – she did not care to say coarseness although it had been exactly that and more attractive, too, than one would ever have imagined – whereas Benedict had always possessed a natural refinement, not merely an appreciation but an expectation of the best. Elvira Redfearn had once been the best catch in Faxby. But Aaron – with his ‘earthiness’ and his certainty of always being right – had looked farther afield and discovered Nola. And what a disappointment she had been.

  ‘Happy New Year, my dears. Many, many of them.’ Miriam raised her heavy, long-stemmed wine glass, engraved with Faxby’s civic arms in gold and ruby – the civic crystal which she had had designed for her own year of office and then presented to the town – her round blue eyes shining, a sentimental tear lightly beading short, pale lashes, to be quickly whisked away by a square of embroidered cambric held in a plump, helpless little hand. An elderly lady who had been very pretty, still looked very sweet, offering to one and all a verbal overflow of seasonal good wishes as she coolly considered – since in her private thoughts she made no bones about such things – how very much it would please her should Nola be so obliging as to drive that nasty little car of hers into a lamp-post one of these dark nights, thus setting Benedict free to bring home a more comfortable daughter-in-law. Elvira Redfearn had once been her favourite. But now she much preferred Claire. She did not know for certain what had happened between them. She had simply assumed, knowing Benedict’s temperament – so like his father’s until she had tamed it – that he had taken what she archly and laughingly called ‘his evil way’. Claire’s reactions to her probing had confirmed it. And Claire suited her. She needed Claire. And if Benedict could oblige her in this – then she would be very ready to smooth away whatever needed smoothing from the path of what she preferred to call his ‘affections’.

  She was, therefore, a little put out to see him taking advantage of the dignified, civic chimes of midnight – the Town Hall clock booming out the hour from its spire directly above their heads – to make what she instinctively understood to be an assignation with Elvira Redfearn.

  ‘Benedict, my dear,’ she sweetly enquired on their way home, ‘Forgive me, but are you not in danger of becoming something of a – well, I believe libertine is the word which springs to mind?’

  ‘No, Miriam.’ He sounded in no way put out about it. ‘Not “becoming”, as I think you know – it has been ever thus.’

  ‘Yes, dear. I know. How sad. Your father was just the same until I took him in hand. You need a good woman, dear boy.’

  ‘I think not, Miriam.’

  ‘So you say now. But as you get older you will find it hard to be satisfied by these casual encounters. They will bore you and they will exhaust you. You may take my word for it. That is what your father discovered, in any case, and he had every reason to know. Nothing could be compared to the pleasure of his own fireside, he often used to say, once he had found the right woman to light the fire. And if that sounds a trifle risque then I must ask you to remember that I am simply quoting what your father said.’

  ‘Quite so,’ murmured Benedi
ct, his eyes on the road ahead. ‘Perhaps one should also remember that when my father found you, Miriam, he was no longer a married man.’

  Nola had taken considerable trouble, put herself – or so she imagined – at considerable risk to avoid Faxby’s Civic Banquet and watch the dawn of the New Year with her lover.

  She had lied, dry-mouthed, to Benedict about a visit to the Manchester Croziers which ought not to be neglected. They were not only celebrating the New Year, she told him, but a whole batch of family anniversaries which involved presents, congratulations, Nola’s presence, since one really had to say things like ‘Happy Birthday’, ‘Happy Silver Wedding’, ‘Happy Eightieth, Auntie Trudy’ in person. So she would just have to go and do her duty.