by Ursula Bloom
‘Yes. One of the few doctors you can trust. Now spruce yourself up, because he will soon be here, and it is always just as well to present a good face to the world.’
She washed and found it refreshing, put on a new bed jacket, drank the tea which Sarah brought her, and then said, ‘I’m being a pretty awful pest.’
‘If I were in your shoes I’d be worse.’
‘What happened to John?’
‘Gone with the wind. I shouldn’t worry about him. There is the door bell, and that will be Christian. Be careful that you don’t fall in love with him, for they say dozens of his women patients do.’
‘I’m not likely to fall in love with anybody,’ she said slowly, and meant it.
He came in, and they talked of herself. She said the same thing to him. He just smiled, saying little, possibly because he realised that she had not yet recovered sufficiently to discuss it. She told him of the legacy, the house, and the wonderful fact that she had Miss Howland waiting there to care for her. The moment she could, she intended to go down there, under a pseudonym of ‘Mrs’, because she did not wish to marry John.
He said, ‘The wise thing to do is to follow your own self-directions. But what will your people say? Do they know?’
‘As yet, no. Later I shall have to tell them.’
‘I see.’ Plainly he was offering no advice, but behaving like the scrupulously dressed West End practitioner. ‘There is quite a good nursing home down at Newbury, where I could get you taken in when your hour comes. That is, if you wish it. Do you want to have the baby there, or not?’
‘I shouldn’t want to inflict the having of a baby on the best friend a girl ever had,’ she said.
‘Of course not. Sarah is a dear. Nearer the time I will do anything I can for you.’ He rose then, clipping his bag together with the sharp chink of metal against metal. ‘I admire your courage. Between us, I have never known the marriage of necessity come out as a howling success, but to some people it means a lot, to others marriage is nothing at all.’
‘I’m not thinking of going through with it,’ she said with a smile.
That evening she had a talk with Sarah about it. Sarah was more than anxious that she should come to London to have the babe, if only because of the good doctoring. There was a good home not too far away, nothing could be easier, and then Christian James could see after her. The moment she and the babe were fit, then they could go down to Tall Trees. Just for now Diana could not think how she would explain any of this to her parents. She was distressed at the thought of hurting her mother, but did not care how her father felt. He would naturally be vehemently angry about it.
A week before she left to go down to Tall Trees, the two girls sat up together very late indeed, talking. It was the day that her mother had written. Her letter was a reply to Diana’s which had admitted having gone through something of a breakdown, and her intention now of going off to Newbury to recoup. She had suggested that her mother came to stay with her, never for a moment thinking that she would. But if only she could be persuaded to do it, it would be an escape from her father, and it would be much easier to tell her mother about what had happened in her own house.
‘You know that she will try to make you marry John?’ Sarah asked.
‘I rather expect that.’
‘Will she tell your father?’
‘No, she will not. I won’t let her do that, for I shall write and tell him myself.’
‘Gosh! You’re brave.’
Diana was so enchanted that she laughed gaily. ‘It’s not that I’m brave, for that isn’t me; in fact, I’m such a coward that I daren’t look Daddy in the face, and that’s that.’
‘But won’t he come rushing down to see you?’
‘If he does, I’ll play ill! Downright ill,’ and she said it firmly. Then both of them laughed.
They talked on. She knew that the whole of her life had changed and that now she had got to rehabilitate her future. She told John over the telephone that for now she did not want to see him. She must have time to look into her own future. She must have time to find out what she wanted from life, and what she was prepared to do with it. She must have time to think.
He took it badly. His last remark was, ‘Well, whatever you say, it is my child,’ then she rang off. She looked across at Sarah waiting for the crisis which she had expected.
‘He keeps harping on that one bit. It is his child,’ she said. ‘I’m almost beginning to wish that it was someone else’s.’
Chapter Five
RESOLUTION
During the following week Christian James asked if she would care to come out and dine with him. It was something which was quite unexpected, and he asked her over the telephone.
‘I’d love it, but isn’t it encroaching on your time?’ she asked, and knew that this was a silly thing to say.
‘Oh no. I want to have a talk about your future. You must be in a bit of a pickle, and there are lots of things with which I could help.’
‘I’d love it,’ she admitted, but she was slightly breathless with anticipation.
She asked Sarah about it; Sarah said that he was an awfully nice man, who was not trying to rush into a flirtation, for he was not that sort of person, but probably meant exactly what he said, and could help her.
He called for her in his car, one of the dead reliable types, as all doctors’ cars are, ever ready to go, not to stop.
He said, ‘It’s nice of you to come. I’m going somewhere fairly quiet, where we can chat. Both of us may have lots to say, I’m thinking.’
As he drove towards the West End, he talked of Chatterworth, and her time there with Sarah. He rather thought that Sarah had been something of a problem, what the mistresses would call a ‘leader’, in the nice way they had. Diana found herself talking of the gay days, the practical jokes, the worries with old Stoggins the geography mistress who had never been outside England; M’lle, a tempestuous personality who knew everything, and nothing; the whole run of a lively public school for girls.
‘But you liked it?’ he asked.
‘It got me away from my father,’ she admitted with candid truth.
‘Tell me about your father?’
Diana had never appreciated what a help it could be to talk about him, for she had never done this before. In Solihull she always felt that her father was estranged from her. In the home, one trembled before him, and there was no escape.
‘You never thought of taking on a job?’
‘He’d have hated that. Daddy loathes the new world and women earning, thinks it is absolutely wrong.’
‘But you’d like a job?’
‘Yes, I’d have loved to get away, but it would have been something of a shame leaving poor Mummie to face it.’
‘Hundreds of “poor mummies” do face that situation. After all, they drop the first brick in marrying the man, and they must expect to suffer for it.’
She said quietly, ‘Mummie has suffered. She will go on suffering, I suppose, and she is such a darling that it is very hard on her.’
He changed the subject. ‘We’ll decide what sort of a job you could have done.’
‘I can answer that in one word, and that word is nothing,’ she said, and laughed. ‘After all, schools like Chatterworth don’t equip girls for earning. They equip them for marrying a rich young man, and having healthy children. That seems to me to be the general aim of the girls’ public school.’
He turned into a quiet side street, and brought the car to a standstill outside a restaurant there. From without it was unostentatious, with a slickly uniformed porter at the door. He greeted them amiably, and opened the door, and there came the sense of warmth, of dignity and of calm. There was no music, and somehow she was rather glad of that. Now she had the longing to talk to someone who instinctively she believed understood her. This was the man who could advise and help her, and she needed advice and help.
The maitre d’hôtel came forward, also slick, also amiable, and highly polished. Of course
a table had been reserved; maybe a cocktail first? and he indicated the foyer with the bar on the far side of it.
‘You don’t drink?’ Christian asked her.
‘Very seldom! Can you imagine Daddy liking that?’
‘But he drinks?’
She thought of the formality of the evening tray being brought in at ten every night, with the cut crystal whisky decanter, the single glass (he did not permit her mother to have a share), and a few biscuits of the variety which he had favoured ever since he was twenty years old. He had this drink to go to bed on, said the need was medical and abided by that, though nobody believed him for a moment.
Christian laughed. ‘We doctors get a lot of things attributed to us,’ he said. ‘Anyway we’ll waive the cocktails and go straight through to the meal.’
The restaurant had charm. The walls were deeply glowingly red, very welcoming, she thought. There were bronzes here and there, black and white curtains, and soft luxurious seats in black. They went to a corner seat, and she noticed that Christian seemed to be well known here. Waiters brought the menus, of such proportions that she lost heart.
‘I can never read through all that, they only confuse me,’ she said. ‘You know the place, please choose for me, remembering that I am a fairly simple eater.’
‘Home was mutton and tapioca pudding?’ and he laughed. He had an infectious laugh.
‘Home was very much that!’ she agreed.
He ordered egg mayonnaise and some soup, chicken Maryland, for he said all women loved it, meringues, and coffee. If she got through that she would not do too badly, she told herself joyously. They talked of their different homes and lives, and their holidays, but never mentioned John or the baby. It was when they came to the coffee that Christian James warmed to his subject.
He was a man who took his work seriously. He analysed his patients, and would have liked to be a psychologist, save that there was at this time still a lot of feeling against the work. He realised that this was one of those cases when the girl needed all the help in the world, and thought that he could give it. Sarah had told him that John was ‘plain awful’. She was that direct personality which was never flowery in approval nor amiable in disapproval. He possibly was plain awful, Christian thought.
‘What job would you have liked to do if you had done a job?’ he asked her.
She had no idea, and said so. The girls she knew were secretaries, trained nurses, some of them gown models, which she would detest because she felt that there was nothing to it, and the job died on you before you were thirty. She wanted a living job if she had one, a creative job. Somebody else created the dresses, the model only displayed them.
He said, ‘I see. This brings you round to the arts. You could act?’
‘I’d be scared stiff.’
‘You could write?’
‘I’d never stick it out. Books take a long time, I believe. Jane Hastings was to be an author (she was always writing at school), but I should have thought it was a dull job, and you have to do it alone.’
‘Have you ever tried painting?’
She said, ‘No.’
She would never realise how it was that she started to talk to him, save that he was one of those men who drew the best out of herself, and who seemed instinctively to understand her. One was able to talk to him. Over the exquisite coffee she told him of old Cook, and why she talked of old Cook she could not imagine.
The superstitious activities of old Cook were amazing; she never saw the new moon through glass, she never walked under a ladder lest it did funny things to her, she never risked getting astray with spooks and such.
She told him of her own innate sensation of a shadow in the room with her, a living shadow, which somehow throbbed in a dark corner, half concealed, yet the throbbing made her realise that it lived; her feeling that one day she would take that shadow and create some formation from it, perhaps find herself. Maybe if she had had the chance, she would have been an artist, maybe not. She had tried and was just a fool at drawing. No pencil could ever carry out the ideas which she would have set behind it, and she sighed deeply.
He said, ‘Let’s look at your hands?’
She brought them out of her lap, and laid them on the table. She said, ‘They are rather ugly hands, too ugly. Like a man’s hands, old Stoggins used to say.’
‘You seem to have had trouble with old Stoggins.’
‘Everybody had trouble with the old Stog,’ and she laughed. Talking light-heartedly to him, school slipped into a distant sphere and was something about which one could laugh. Looking back. But perchance in life it is always easier to laugh when one looks back.
He looked at her hands. ‘They are hands which create,’ he said.
‘Author? Artist?’ she asked.
‘Maybe. But one day you will find those hands will bring the shadow to the fore, and from it form something which will make a new woman of you, and give you fresh life.’
‘You sound like the voice of the oracle.’
He paused. Then he said, ‘I have always thought that the medical fraternity were very much behind the door when common sense was given out. Maladies are not just maladies, they have deeper roots. Those hands are your life, and I believe you will find the way out of this difficult position through those hands.’
‘But they do nothing.’
‘Maybe only because they have not had the chance.’
‘I wonder.’
‘And life does offer us chances.’ Then, quite suddenly, he changed the subject. ‘Now you are going down to the new home at Newbury, never back to Solihull?’
‘Never back to Solihull ‒ I hope.’
‘I’d keep clear of that. I’m sorry for your mother, but she chose him. Ahead lies everything. Believe me, it will come to you.’
‘I don’t want to marry John.’
‘I don’t suppose for a moment that you will marry him, and nobody save a fool would suggest it for a single moment. I’m sure of that. But don’t see him. Give yourself a space of time in which you can decide.’
‘He says that it is urgent to marry now.’
‘But why? Whatever you do, you must give the marriage as taking place a year ago. You can’t be truthful about the date.’
‘And I ‒ I don’t want it.’
‘Then don’t accept it. You have the courage to go your own way, and the means to bring up your own child. The world is rapidly changing, and is going to be entirely different for everybody. Take advantage of it and be happy with it. Tomorrow is always another day.’
He took her home quietly in the car. She got the impression that he wanted to find out her feelings on the matter, and to help her. She knew that he had helped her. She looked at her hands and wondered what he had meant by saying that they created. She wondered if the whole thing was not one of those half romantic dreams which a young girl dreams. He is a very nice man, she thought.
When John rang her up next day, somehow she felt more determined to face it out, and was more certain about it. He wanted to come round and see her.
She said, ‘No’, quite firmly. ‘I’ve been ill and the moment I am really better I am going down to Newbury.’
‘I’ll come and see you there.’
‘No, I want time to discover my real self, and my own feelings about all this.’
‘But time is the enemy. You must have the sense to see this. Look here, I’ve got to do my duty by you, we owe this to the baby. Do stop being silly. I never did like Sarah, and she is influencing you against me.’
‘Nobody is doing that. I just want time. Too much has happened, and if ‒ if you do come here, John, I shan’t see you, so don’t make it awkward for me.’
She would not have believed that she had the nerve to be so definite, and she went to Newbury ten days earlier than she had anticipated. Sarah could run down and see her there at any time, and she promised to do this. She would miss Christian James, who had been the ideal doctor for her, and whom she trusted implicitly, but
now it was time that she started her new life, and she recognised this.
Miss Howland had cleaned up Tall Trees, and even though this was perhaps the dingiest part of the winter, a sourly begrimed December, there was a touch of welcome about the fresh chintz curtains, and the newly washed paint which sparkled. The tea was awaiting Diana’s arrival, set in that funny little room which Aunt Chrissie had always called ‘the parlour’. It was small, looking out on to the garden which now was naturally dreary enough, but kept tidy by old Seth, the Quaker gardener, who told her that he had worked on this bit of ground all his life, and all he wanted was to be buried in it when he died.
Miss Howland maintained the house with only a daily help, which meant that wages were not high. The place was manageable. Diana would sell the out-of-date Rolls, she did not believe that it had done more than an annual excursion from the garage for years. She was told that Rolls always got their price, age did not worry them at all.
Diana knew that in Tall Trees she would find a treasure chest, and she started immediately on the job of ‘sorting out’. In a way it hurt her; it is always sad going through the nearest and dearest associations of someone who is dead. The bureau came first, and the next morning she began to go through the papers there. Some of the very old letters had grown so faded and so frayed that she could not hope to read them.
Working through these, she came to a bundle of diaries and letters sealed and tied with pale pink ribbon, marked ‘For my next-of-kin’. Somehow she guessed that in these she would perhaps lay her finger on the key to Aunt Chrissie’s life. In these lay the fellow feeling with her great-niece, for it transpired from them that as a young girl Aunt Chrissie had fallen in love with one of the footmen in her mother’s home. He was of course the forbidden lover.
Through the faded ink the girl read the tragic story of a deep emotion, of the hour in the arbour one summer’s night, when the two of them had lost touch with ordinary everyday life, and had stepped into sheer heaven. In the pages was her aunt’s trembling fear lest she would have a child, increased when she went to visit a grandmother, and returned only to find that the gallant footman had been dismissed. There was the shock here in the small diary, its edges curled over, and its leather shabbied by time.
