A Winter's Child

by Brenda Jagger

  Or might he too just go off somewhere, like Polly, and come back married? It rather looked like it.

  What a tragic, tumbledown world.

  It had never occurred to Edith Timms that a day might dawn when she would be unable to control her son. Yet, in the matter of Adela Adair, she knew herself defeated long before she could bring herself to admit it. No one had expected it, least of all Adela Adair herself. She was thirty-two and felt older, a woman of indifferent health, indifferent talents, indifferent looks too although, with a certain amount of touching up, her red hair looked well enough when she sat in candlelight at the piano, and she had become very skilful at powdering over her freckles. She was neither particularly ambitious nor particularly virtuous, accepting her limitations in both these directions and had seen nothing in Roger Timms but an easy source of apple brandy and Turkish cigarettes. Knowing what Polly was up to she had felt sorry for him and had also thought him a fool. And on the night when Polly had finally kept him waiting a little too long and he had offered Adela Adair a lift home, she had been expecting no more than that. Nor, once arrived at her flat, had she expected him to come inside, making an offer of cocoa and biscuits only because it seemed polite and she always liked to do the right thing. But he had settled down very comfortably at her fireside, her flat being shabby but colourful, very warm and clean, and after a while, because she was feeling lonely and because, more often than not, it was the usual outcome of cocoa and biscuits at her flat, she took him to bed.

  Roger Timms was twenty-seven, powerfully built, highly-sexed and still virgin because his shyness, his complete lack of confidence in himself, prevented him from being otherwise. He had always been clumsy, ‘ham-fisted’ his mother called it, never quick to understand how even relatively simple things should be done, much less this complicated and mysterious act of procreation. His mother had always laughed at his awkwardness. Polly had followed her example and the very extent of his adoration for her had made him even more tongue-tied and inclined to fall over his own feet than ever. That he would make a fool of himself on his wedding night he was painfully certain. The mere thought of it – and it preyed on his mind a great deal – causing him to break out in a cold sweat. He desired it and dreaded it. He was not sure how he would manage to get through it at all. Polly, of course, would laugh at him. Adela Adair, older, kinder, expecting far less from life than Polly, would never have dreamed of such a thing and although he was, indeed, every bit as flustered and inept as he had feared, giving her not the slightest enjoyment, she gave a very adequate imitation of it, taking the view that everybody has to learn sometime and the best way to teach him was by a little encouragement.

  ‘That was marvellous, Roger.’ He couldn’t believe it. She had made a man of him. And more than that she was kind to him, listened to his jokes and laughed at them, not him. He liked it. Very much. He had just never realized that women could be so pleasant, such thoroughly nice, ordinary people. And although he was not quick-witted it didn’t take him long to understand that he could never experience this ease, this freedom from self-doubt, could never have this kind of fun, with Polly.

  Events, thereafter, occurred rapidly enough to confuse sharper wits than Roger’s. There was the diamond ring for instance, which Polly, when Kit telephoned her the next morning, declared hysterically she could never bear to touch again. ‘Give it to Roger and tell him to give it to somebody else.’ And when Kit obeyed her instructions, Roger chose to believe, because he wanted to believe, that she knew where he had spent the night and had given him his marching orders accordingly. Splendid. Having already decided not to marry her, he had not the least idea how to tell her so and had been much relieved. He went, therefore, to his mother to give her the glad tidings that he had chosen himself another bride.

  ‘Nonsense, dear. Please don’t be tiresome this morning. I have a headache.’

  So, more often than not, he thought, did Polly.

  ‘Roger – really – what is all this?’

  He was not clever. But he was stubborn and Edith had underestimated him. Moreover, she had never had the least conception of his fears of being sexually despised by Polly, and, therefore, could not gauge the extent of his gratitude to Adela Adair. His reasoning was totally straightforward. Why should he go round searching in other women for what he had already found in her, taking the now unnecessary risk that one of them might laugh at him? He had found his mate. It was as simple as that.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Adela when it occurred to him to put her in the picture, ‘your poor mother. I can’t do this to her, you know.’

  Taking her firmly by the arm, MacAllister led her to the other end of the bar. ‘Are you off your head?’ he whispered. ‘He’s Timms of Taylor & Timms. Never mind his mother. Just make the poor bastard happy.’

  So it was.

  Polly returned to England to have her baby, Mrs Arnold Crozier with an apricot-coloured mink for summer, a blue one for winter, rings of good investment value on most of her fingers, even the diamond studs in her ears bigger than the solitaire she had returned to Roger, her husband’s property including several department stores, it seemed, up and down the country, of a comparable size to Taylor & Timms. And she looked very lovely, very elegant, very pregnant, when she stepped out of the Crozier Rolls and into the Crown again, paying a short visit to Faxby with Arnold who had decisions to take about the future of the hotel.

  ‘Hello, Claire. Here we are again. What fun. I think you’re expected to give me tea and keep me happy and cater to all my sudden cravings for terribly expensive, terribly hard to find things, while my husband – what a lark, eh! – and your – what do we call him? –’

  ‘Employer,’ murmured Claire.

  ‘All right. Be coy. Employer, although I’ve heard different and don’t blame you one bit. But anyway, you’re to entertain me while my husband and devastating old Hardie – not that he looks old to me any more I can tell you – discuss real, important things. You know – how to make the money we spend. That I spend, at any rate.’

  Claire had last seen her as a desperate, terrified child kneeling in the mud by Toby’s grave. Now she was brilliant and brittle, all flashing smiles and diamond sparkle, chattering, posing and watching herself pose and chatter, never still, never leaving the stage, never taking her eyes off herself, a rich man’s young wife making sure everyone noticed how much she adored his money.

  ‘Heavens – the dear old place hasn’t changed a bit.’ But now, after these months of travelling with Arnold, she had grown accustomed to palaces, the grandest suite in every Grand Hotel, champagne in her bathtub if she’d ever had a fancy to bathe in it, which she hadn’t. And clothes! Claire must come to stay with her soon – she’d send the Rolls – just to look at her clothes. Hats and coats and shoes mainly, in view of her present little encumbrance, but once she was thin again she knew exactly where she was heading. Paris. And she would have trunks and trunks and trunk loads of dresses to bring back with her. Of course Arnold wouldn’t mind. He liked to see her spending money. Or, at least, he liked to see her so dressed up and so fancy that everybody noticed. It seemed to give him quite-a thrill when people turned their heads to look at her. And he was very good about diamonds. Nanette, of course – bossy old Nanette, his brother’s wife – seemed to think she should keep them in the bank. Good Lord – what a waste. No point in having them at all. She wore hers for breakfast. She even wore them in bed when she felt like it. Why not? She hadn’t heard Arnold complain. And it made up for not having a proper wedding. Oh yes, they were legally married all right. She’d worn her apricot mink and a feathered hat and pinned a few orchids here and there. But – well –!

  ‘Let’s have a drink.’

  And gliding into the bar she held out both hands to MacAllister who, not having been asked to join the staff at Wansfell Howe, greeted her, as his employer’s wife, with appropriate enthusiasm.

  ‘What’s it to be, Pol – Mrs Crozier?’

  ‘Polly will do. Gin
and bitters. Claire?’

  ‘I’m on duty.’

  ‘You’re looking after me. Have one of those whisky sours Roger used to sit and glower into.’

  She used his name without embarrassment.

  ‘Has he married that woman?’

  ‘I think so. She gave in her notice and left last week, at any rate. I suppose they’ve gone off somewhere quietly.’

  ‘Out of the way of Old Mother Timms. I don’t blame them. At least he’ll be happier with her than he’d ever have been with me.’

  What other memories haunted her? None it seemed.

  ‘I have my own car, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And accounts absolutely everywhere – Harrods even. How about that?’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  And then, as MacAllister closed his grille and went off duty and they were about to leave themselves, she stood for a moment, the brittle, brilliant light going out of her, and walking to the end of the counter leaned suddenly and heavily against the last bar stool.

  ‘This was where he used to sit – Toby, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Night after night. Hoping I’d come, and then watching me when I did. That’s what he told me. Do you suppose it was true? Or just one of the things men say –?’

  A great wave of silence seemed to rush between them, such a weight of emotion remembered, wasted, misunderstood, that Claire’s voice, cutting through it, sounded muffled, her words very slow.

  ‘If he said it, Polly, then I think there’s a good chance it would be true.’

  ‘Yes.’ She swallowed and, smiling, quickly blinked her eyes.

  ‘So do I. Let’s go upstairs shall we to the infamous Tangerine Suite and have tea. Oh – and sandwiches, of course – smoked salmon – and cakes. Do we still have Amandine?’

  ‘No. We have a little Swiss lady – about four feet nine – who makes perfect éclairs.’

  ‘Oh good. I’ll have a dozen.’

  Sitting placidly in what had been the scene of her husband’s fairly recent debaucheries, her slightly swollen ankles on a stool, she consumed e¥/clairs and chocolate cake and currant buns with her usual appetite.

  ‘I’m eating for two, you see.’

  ‘At the very least.’

  ‘Twins? Do you think so? How heavenly.’

  ‘Do you want a baby, Polly?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have thought so, would you?’

  Claire shook her head.

  ‘Neither would I. But one learns a lot about oneself. Being married to Arnold, of course, is an education all its own. I’ve aged, I think.’

  ‘Don’t you mean you’ve grown up, Polly?’

  ‘No. I know what I mean. Aged.’

  And leaning her head against the high-backed chair, her hair no longer the tousled mop of hoydenish curls but a sophisticated cap of silver, her eyes and her mouth beautifully painted, a fortune in diamonds on her fingers, her body curving softly around a child whose father she could not with any certainty put a name to, she smiled timidly at Claire and told her with many painful hesitations her version of the events through which Toby had died.

  ‘I just wanted somebody to know how I felt, that’s all. When I started to think again, which took quite a while, I blamed myself badly for not going away with him. But oh dear – what a life I’d have led him, as I was then. It would have done him no good. That’s how I consoled myself. But just the same – did I kill him, Claire?’

  ‘Polly, you were twenty. He was forty-five. He must have known you couldn’t cope with it.’

  ‘Does that excuse me? And don’t tell me he must have been pretty fed-up with Eunice in the first place to lose his head over me. I’ve thought of that. I suppose she’s thought of it too. If all he had to live for was me, then he didn’t have much, did he? Life really had worn him down, poor old thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The trouble is, I miss him.’

  She began to cry, making no noise about it, just tears gathering on her eyelashes and then spilling one after the other down her cheeks, a sorrow which she allowed to flow free for a moment and then, with a few quick smiles and a cambric handkerchief, put an end to it.

  ‘I shouldn’t do that now, because of my baby. I love my baby – I can’t tell you. I don’t know what he looks like or who he is or whether he’s a boy or a girl and I don’t care – except, just perhaps, I might like him to be a girl.’

  ‘Why, Polly?’

  ‘Oh –’ She shrugged, smiling brightly, ‘One grows up thinking of babies as boys, I don’t know why. Copies of their fathers. That’s what I thought this one would be at first – which turnsit all into too much of a guessing game, you must admit. And then I thought why not a girl, a copy of me, except not me. Not spoiled, I mean, and neglected both together, like me. I’ll do a lot better than that for my daughter. And Arnold won’t mind what I do. So far as he’s concerned, a baby is just another toy for me to play with. And he’s quite kind, really, you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Claire – the thing is –’

  ‘Yes. What do you want?’

  What was it that Arnold couldn’t give her?

  ‘I’d quite like to see my mother. Do you think they’d throw me out if I turned up at High Meadows?’

  ‘Oh, Polly.’ She shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘With Toby gone she had no one to keep her informed on the state of play at High Meadows. She realized, not for the first time, that she missed him too. I never hear from them, Polly.’

  ‘Well, I’d have to be sure, you see. I couldn’t risk Eunice trying to do me grievous bodily harm now, could I, because of the baby. And I don’t want to upset mother and bring on another attack. But if she’d agree to see me and was really prepared for it –? I won’t be in Faxby again until after the baby and – well – one never knows. I just have this superstitious feeling that if I don’t see her now –. Well. You know what I mean. You couldn’t go up there could you and just ask –?’

  No. Claire could not. But Polly, who knew of no real reason against it, was not ready to leave it at that. While Arnold Crozier, whose policy it now was to please his ‘pretty Polly’in all things, expected everybody else to do likewise. It was quite natural that a girl in Polly’s condition should want to see her mother. Arnold Crozier, in fact, would quite like to see Miriam himself, being strictly a man of peace when it came to family settlements and trust funds. Not that he stood in the slightest need of Polly’s money. Far from it. Anyone could see that just by looking at her hands. But since the money was there, it offended his commercial instincts just to ignore it. Might it not be a sensible idea to settle it on Polly’s first child? But, most of all, he didn’t want his ‘pretty Polly’ to be upset. In her condition, was it wise? Did Claire have some definite reason for her reluctance to visit High Meadows? Or was it simply – caprice? And one could not really afford to be capricious – my dear young lady – when dealing with his wife.

  ‘I think you have to go,’ said Kit.

  ‘No I don’t. You can tell him to go to Hell.’

  ‘He has nothing to do with why I think you ought to go.’

  For a moment she was thoroughly dismayed.

  ‘I’ve never been sure you knew, Kit.’

  ‘About Benedict Swanfield. Yes. I know. Not the best move you ever made.’

  ‘Call it battle fatigue –“neurasthenia” since I was nursing officers.’

  ‘All right. Now go and face up to him. And while you’re about it, ask him to release your capital to invest in Wansfell Howe.’

  Suddenly she was laughing, as thoroughly delighted as she had been downcast a moment before.

  Although now, of course, she had no choice.

  No time to waste either in brooding about it and no point in telephoning for an appointment since Miriam and Eunice were both permanently at home. Yet she telephoned, leaving a message for Benedict to warn him of her intention to ca
ll.

  His car was in the drive and, parking John David’s Talbot beside it, she felt herself to be liquefying almost with nerves. She had hoped he would not be there. Yet the hope itself was an act of self-betrayal. Was it also a breach of faith with Kit? Very likely. But she wasn’t sure how much Kit would mind about that. He had not asked her to love him with passion, at a level where her mind could be uplifted or cast down, irretrievably shattered or made gloriously whole by his absence or his presence. Kit would not be comfortable with that kind of love. Was she? What he asked, and what he gave, was a stimulating, free-wheeling companionship, enlivened by shared labours and plenty of them, spiced by imaginative, good-humoured love-making and plenty of that too. Her shoulder to the wheel alongside his. His wheel perhaps, but always a bracing, invigorating experience to take her turn at steering it, as she had been doing these past few months, devoting every scrap of her spare time and energy to the fixtures and fittings of Wansfell Howe. Life with a good friend, the best friend one had, who happened also to be one’s lover. That was Kit. And in the sense of enjoyment, straightforward pleasure, a sense of enterprise and a sense of fun, she had been happier, far happier, with him than with Benedict. Or with Paul. With anyone.

  The butler, a new man, received her as a stranger, informing her with a deference his predecessor would never have accorded to ‘young Mrs Jeremy’that ‘madam’would see her in the drawing room, after which Mr Swanfield asked if she would spare him a few moments in his study.

  She nodded, her smile going in and out like a flickering candle, aware already that the house was no longer the same. Not neglected precisely, polished and dusted as usual every morning, but uncared for, lived in only in patches, sick women in their sick rooms, Benedict behind his study door, separate meals on separate trays, uprooted children for whom the servants, growing idle in a household without supervision, would do the minimum. The plants on the hall table all dry and dead. High Meadows, Miriam’s luxurious, carefully constructed nest, her life work, acquiring the stale air and odour of an impersonally maintained institution.