by Ursula Bloom
She was brought up with a jerk. For a moment she felt an immense relief, as if the thought of marrying him had completely faded; then she pulled herself together. ‘I owe the child something.’
‘Oh, damn the child!’ said Sarah brightly, and then, still bubbling, ‘You know, this is really funny. That old girl had the best idea of a good joke when she got cracking, and this is a case of those who laugh last laugh longest.’
Diana went to bed in a whirl. She rang up John next morning before he went to work, and told him what had happened. Somehow she felt he ought to know this. His voice was rapturous, for he saw this as the solution.
‘I shall come and see you tonight, darling. I must see you. We have got to have a talk.’
‘I don’t know that I feel quite fit enough to see people; everything has been a bit unnerving.’
‘But we must have a talk, darling. Don’t be blind to this; after all, I am in the picture, you know.’
She had been wondering all along how she could put him out of the picture, and she shrank from a meeting. But now she said, ‘All right, after dinner.’
‘About nine?’ and then, ‘I must bolt now. They are damned rude in this office if a fellow is late, and ’buses and trains aren’t all that easy.’
She could not bring herself to admit to Sarah that John was coming in tonight, until tea time. Then it was met with the reception she had anticipated from it.
‘I think you’re potty. Clean potty. Seeing him is not going to make any difference, and he is only after what he can get. You ought to realise this.’
‘Oh, don’t, Sarah! Please don’t. We were so much in love,’ and distressingly the memory of Devonshire drifted across her mind.
‘That’s about it,’ said Sarah, ever candid and always horribly truthful. ‘Were, but are not now, and that is the fact that you have got to wake up to. You just aren’t in love any more.’
It was true, of course. Sarah had a horrible accuracy with the truth and could hit hard. Diana did not mention it any more, but she put on that little black dress which she thought was proper seeing that Aunt Chrissie was dead (poor old dear), and she waited for nine to strike. He was dead punctual, just one of those people, and now suddenly she realised that there was a lot to be said for the man who is happy-go-lucky and comes in an hour late with a broad grin and ‘It’s just me, and that’s all I can say about it.’
Sarah had left the lounge free. It was a beautiful room, of the type they had never had nor could they imagine at Solihull, for already she had discovered that town and country houses are entirely different in their outlook. She heard the bell ring and her heart wobbled; she heard the man coming across the inner hall and John after him, and then he was shown in.
‘Darling!’ said he, and she saw that he had brought her flowers, a bunch of freesias, frailly lovely, soft mauve and cream, and with them the soft yellow of tender buds.
‘Oh John, you should not have brought me those!’
The door shut and he kissed her; she recognised it as being the saluting kiss of welcome, not of love, not born of spontaneity, or desire, or any vigorous emotion.
‘I say, dearest, this is a bit of luck! Poor old ducks! But she had had her day, hadn’t she? I mean, what was she, ninety? About that, and now what a wonderful thing for us!’
She came straight to the point. She had to. Somehow she knew that she had not got the strength or the time to hang back, beating about the bush and perhaps losing everything as a result.
‘John, we must be reasonable. Something dreadful has happened. I ‒ I hate putting it this way, it seems to be all wrong. Anyway we have to decide what to do now.’
‘But we’ve got to marry.’
‘I ‒ I’m not marrying you,’ she said slowly, and there was a firmness about it which alarmed him. He went pale green. He argued fiercely at first, then spluttered. It was his child, too, it was his life, and he loved her. She did not think that she could bear the argument, and then when she was at breaking point she just fainted. John brought Sarah into it, and Sarah was a lady of short shrift. He must go, and she would rather that he did not return, not for a while anyway. He had got to understand that Diana was not well and needed care and nursing up, and Sarah was going to see to this. The manservant showed him out.
She came to later on, when the very charming doctor was just going. He ordered rest. She had got to save up for the funeral, he reminded her. To herself she said, ‘What a thing to save up for! Imagine it!’ and then realising that he must have given her some narcotic, she dozed off again.
She had two days in bed, with feverish telephone calls from Solihull, and a letter from Mother, telling her that never had her father been more worried. He had greater worry to come! the girl thought, he had only got to wait for it!
There was a threatened strike at the works, and it was such a rotten time of the year for that long journey, but they would call for her at about a quarter to eleven on the day, in capital letters, and would she please be ready and waiting? They would take her with them down to Newbury in the car.
‘And that’s going to be a lovely drive, I can tell you!’ said Sarah with a giggle.
It was one of those drearily wet days, and the car was a trifle late, for the traffic had been awful. This had got her father on edge, of course, and he was in one of his worst moods. Mother was calm; how she remained so in these circumstances, Diana would never know.
They had made up the time by the time they turned into the wide gates of Tall Trees, with every blind down. Very proper, murmured her father. The house was quiet, completely peaceful, with those blind eyes of death looking out on the world. There is always something dangerously peaceful about the look of such a home.
Miss Howland admitted them, and there were flower wreaths lying along the side of the hall. Waiting, Diana told herself, for what?
‘Beautiful floral tributes,’ said her father, and was glad that his would undoubtedly be the best.
They were shown into the drawing-room, always dedicated to the ‘special occasion’, with sherry on the side, and the best wine glasses.
Trust Miss Howland to do the right thing! The solicitor was standing there. Obviously our Mr Jason was accustomed to the proper conduct of such an occasion. He was a pompous little man past the middle years, and going bald. He wore the stereotyped black suit, closely buttoned, though it betrayed the fact that he had put on weight and had much to conceal under the black waistcoat. Instinctively Diana disliked him, she swiftly summed up people, but this was a habit she could not change. She caught at her mother’s arm. Mother smiled wanly.
Mr Jason proffered his respectful solicitations, enquiring if they wished to see the deceased, and if so Miss Howland would escort them to the best bedroom. Her mother and father went, but Diana hung back. She had become formidably aware of her pregnancy, and this could be wrong for the babe. It would be crazy to go, even if her father tried to force it. He was plainly reproachful, and Mother said, ‘I really think you ought to come, dear, I do, you know.’
They came downstairs again, her mother crying a little into one of the best lace handkerchiefs kept for momentous occasions; Diana was ashamed of herself for noticing it.
‘Peaceful,’ said her father in a sombre voice. ‘Very peaceful. Always satisfactory.’
They ate a meal beautifully prepared, and at the time as given to them by the undertaker (a most formidable gentleman in a stern suit, and with a rigid expression that went with it). He did everything in the impeccable manner, leaving nothing to chance. It could hardly have been a worse day for a funeral, and Diana prayed that she would not collapse, for then the parents would insist on taking her home to Solihill with them, which would be quite unsupportable.
They had coffee afterwards in the drawing-room, and now she saw that the floral tributes had been unobtrusively removed from the hall. These undertakers, even if they were the most ominous men, and to her sinister, fulfilled their obligations very well, also extremely quietly.
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‘I think the weather is clearing,’ said her father.
It wasn’t, but he might just as well think it was. The coffee was cut short by a light tap on the door, and the undertaker appearing with some awful gentility of his own. ‘It is getting a trifle late, sir. I think we should start when convenient,’ he said to her father.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Mr Richardson, and now Diana knew that he was horribly nervous.
The carriages were waiting at the door. The three of them got into the first one, Mr Jason and Miss Howland into the next. Slowly they moved off. This is awful, the girl told herself, and how Aunt Chrissie would have hated every minute of it! There was the sound of the horses gently clopping along and the realisation that ahead of them was all that remained, something which was nothing like the woman she remembered, the gay, loving, spontaneous woman who had been able to laugh at life and accept it as something of a big joke.
‘I think it is going very well,’ said her father. ‘This man seems to know his job. Mr Jason too. Nice fellow, Mr Jason.’
She had a foreboding that he would not be saying this a little later on. She had a horrid impression of that chilly church, and somehow the ‘far-awayness’ of the coffin. There were a lot of people there, who had known the old lady and who were interested in her and sorry that she had gone. Her mother wept. She loathed the moment when they moved out to start the long pilgrimage to the cemetery, and it was rather a relief that they trotted through the town, though her father kept saying that it was disrespectful and quite wrong.
She hated the clustering white headstones in the murky cemetery, the trail to the open grave, and the unending dreariness of the service. Yet what could you expect? Perhaps if she had been asked to write it, she could not have done better. A funeral service is not easy. It was over. The undertaker motioned to them to walk past the grave and look down in passing. She couldn’t look. I shall be sick if I do, she thought, and then swiftly, That isn’t Aunt Chrissie any more. She can’t be there. It just isn’t her.
Somehow she managed to totter along with Mother and round to where the carriages waited for them. They got in and the undertaker shut the doors.
‘I think it went off very pleasantly,’ said her father, ‘well organised, everything as it should be, nice and proper. Now for the will!’
It was pleasant to feel the carriage moving on as they went through the town and up to the house beyond. Approaching it, Diana saw that now Miss Howland had lifted the blinds half way. There would be no more going into a sinister hall and that gloomy drawing-room, and she thanked heaven for that. In the drawing-room the chairs had been re-arranged, a small table brought forward, and the best winged ‘easy’ put in place for Mr Jason to sit there with the will before him.
‘Very nice,’ said father, half to himself.
She felt herself tensing, for he was going to have the most shocking surprise. How he would cope she could not imagine and only prayed that there would not be a scene, for her head had started to ache and she could not stand much more. Mr Jason now wanted to get home. He started to read the will. The house, the capital, everything, save for the few special bequests which came later, were left by the deceased to her great-niece Diana Richardson.
She saw her father half rise in his chair, his hands clasping the arms of it, and the knuckles gleaming white in the dim light. Almost under his breath he said ‘Impossible!’
Mr Jason had conducted this sort of ceremony before and knew his way through it. ‘I must ask for no interruptions until I have finished,’ he said, and went on in a dreary rather rigmaroly voice which was discouraging. A thousand pounds to Miss Howland, and Diana was delighted to hear that. Directions as to some of her jewellery and special possessions.
‘That is all,’ said Mr Jason stiffly.
Her father, still gripping the arms of his chair, said, ‘But the estate, the whole estate … She promised it to me. I was her next-of-kin.’
‘She was quite clear on the matter, and she had the right to leave her estate as and how she wished,’ said Mr Jason firmly.
In these few minutes Diana knew that her father had aged considerably. ‘The … the value of the estate?’ he asked.
‘No one can say until the death duties are paid, and everything cleared up, but it could be well over a hundred thousand pounds.’ Diana got the idea that Mr Jason was enjoying irritating her father.
‘My God!’ was what he said.
There was a nasty silence, broken only by the sound of Miss Howland crying. She had slipped into one of the chairs at the back, she was the sort of woman who would never trespass, or make herself a nuisance, and she had loved the woman for whom she had worked so faithfully.
‘You know,’ said Mr Richardson, now determined to act, ‘this ought not to have been. Someone should have guided the poor old lady. Undoubtedly at her great age and during the latter years when she was so much alone, and ill, and all that sort of thing, she was not in full control of her senses.’
Mr Jason was not having that. ‘I have every reason to believe that the deceased was in full control of her senses, and her doctor would agree with me,’ he said.
‘Then,’ and her father was determined, ‘you should have advised her. You should have explained that this was preposterous. I had a right to the money.’
Mr Jason was nothing if not firm. He explained that the duty of a solicitor was not to advise unless asked, but to fulfil the wishes of the deceased, who had been his friend; this he must do; and folding the papers he turned aside.
She heard what her father said under his breath.
They had an early cup of tea in the dining-room, a most difficult room, round an octagon table with flowers in the centre. Diana could not bear the row which broke. Her father refused to believe it, her mother wept. Fortunately the early darkening of the day, and the fact that they had a long way to go, drew down the curtain on the row.
‘This is rank heresy,’ said her father on the step.
They got into the car. ‘I ‒ I am so sorry,’ Diana said.
‘You will return home at the end of the week, I understand,’ said he, now darkly red and insistent. ‘With your vast means I shall expect you to pay for your board and lodging.’
‘Oh Henry!’ aghast, from her mother.
‘But why should I be robbed by my own daughter? Why, I ask you, why indeed?’
Diana took her courage in her hands. ‘I’m spending three weeks with Sarah, then coming down to Newbury. If I have a home I may as well live in it.’
‘But that brings us near to Christmas.’
‘I know.’
‘And,’ said he in a crisply stern voice, ‘I’ll have you remember that Christmas is a family affair.’
‘You could perhaps come and spend Christmas with me? My turn after all these years,’ she suggested.
He growled a little. ‘Most certainly not! I can still afford Christmas in my own home, even though I have been robbed. It is disgraceful.’
They drove into the station yard, and the girl got out of the car with horror in her heart. ‘Oh Dad, do take this reasonably?’ she asked him.
He seemed to have come to a momentous conclusion. He said: ‘It was her father at the back of this. The spirit of that man, that filthy black-eyed tinker! Dirt from the gutter was what he was, and that is what she has done to me. She has flung dirt from that gutter at me.’ Then he gave orders to the man, slammed the door, and drove off with poor Mother just a sadly reproachful face at the window. Diana turned away.
Chapter Three
INHERITANCE
Diana dozed most of the way back to town, and in her dreams she remembered the dark eyes of Aunt Chrissie which had been inherited from that saucy tinker father, her supple limbs; they had been supple in her ripe old age. She had had the gipsy walk, the gentle padding of footfalls, and the bright laughter which is a delight, swiftness of perception, and with it that understanding of human nature.
The car met her and took her strai
ght to S.W.1., and now she realised that she was far more tired than she had thought possible. She would never have believed that the baby could take it out of her quite so much. Sarah came out of the far lounge to meet her.
‘Well? How did it go?’
‘Pretty badly! A wet day down there, and I felt too awful. I think that funerals should be abolished, held privately, or something, but they are so vile.’ She sank down on a sofa beside Sarah. ‘I kept thinking, one of these days this will happen to me, and it is so foul!’ Then she gulped it down. ‘She ‒ she has left me the lot, everything, the house, the garden, and a Rolls with rheumatism. I am wondering if Lord Montagu might be interested?’ and she tried to laugh. For the first time in the whole of this wretched day she felt that she could laugh again.
‘I’ll get you a drink. That’s what you need most.’
‘But ought I to drink? The baby, I mean?’
‘Why not? I’d have said that it could be the only real help, and you must be wanting help badly. You are, all the same, the luckiest girl in the whole world, you can choose for yourself; you need never go home again, and also you can shake off John! You ought to do that, you know.’
‘Oh dear!’ For a single moment that lovely dream of Devonshire flashed through Diana’s memory, the hours when it seemed that their friendship had been completely transformed; changed from the ordinary affair to something so utterly beautiful she could not believe that it was true. She hesitated; she must not do the wrong thing, and at this moment in her life that wrong thing would be too easy. ‘Whatever happens, the child is John’s, and surely he has the right of being its father?’
Sarah brought the drink to Diana’s side, and sat down again on the big sofa beside her. ‘It would be better to talk this out another time. For now, too much has happened, and too fast.’ They talked of the funeral with that deadly despair and finality about it, and the feeble consolation religion gives, which somehow never seemed to bring one back to reality. Death was so unreal, and so final. When Diana had drunk the drink, Sarah made her go up to bed.
