Crusoe's Daughter

by Jane Gardam

  The vestibule door was open and we both stood in the hall for a moment looking at the piece of tesselation in the porch where a letter might lie. ‘She couldn’t have written yet,’ said I, ‘it’s only tomorrow.’ I wondered if Aunt Mary was too old and good to be thinking. ‘What happened? Whatever happened? How did she do? She was with him all through the dark.’

  Mr Thwaite was sitting easily at the great desk in the study smoking when I went in. ‘A fair collection,’ he said as I slid through the doorway and sat down on a convex, cold leather chair just inside the door.

  ‘Of books. Younghusband’s books. Whose are they now?’

  ‘Well—ours. Aunt Mary’s I suppose. Like everything.’

  ‘Very valuable indeed,’ he said. ‘Some very delectable editions. Do you read them?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Very often?’

  ‘Oh yes. Most days. Part of every day.’

  ‘What—the old philosophers and saints?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Clerics? Divines?’

  ‘I’m not exactly—I haven’t started the Divines yet.’

  ‘And how old are you?’

  ‘Nearly sixteen.’

  ‘How much younger you seem.’ He made a great rough noise in his throat, ‘How would you really enjoy a visit to Thwaite? Plenty of books—more up to date than this—not my sort of thing, but they might amuse. Consider it.’

  ‘Fan and Mol used to like it,’ he said. ‘So did your mother.’

  ‘Fan and Mol?’

  ‘Your aunts. And Emma.’

  (Fan and Mol!) ‘Did you know my mother?’

  ‘Very well. I knew her mother, too. An old connection.’

  ‘You must be much younger than my mother’s mother,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But much older than the three girls.’

  It took a moment to understand that the three girls were Mary, Frances and Emma, one dead, two deeply aged—quite forty.

  ‘What do you do with your life?’ asked Arthur Thwaite.

  ‘In the mornings French and German with Mrs Woods. Then piano—I do—used to do—piano—’ and the great tears came and trickled down my face at the thought of the emptiness now.

  ‘Yes, yes. Never mind,’ he said. ‘Play Schubert with her do—did you? So did I.’

  We sat about and the Vicar’s Alice clattered round outside and the rain still whispered down. Otherwise silence blanketed all.

  ‘So now—?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll just live.’

  ‘The lady in charge of the languages sick and in bed. The lady in charge of the music married and gone. What point is there? You are alone? What shall you do?’

  I said, fiercely, that I was not alone. I was with Aunt Mary. I was needed. He puffed and scratched about in the pipe.

  ‘Not very good for you,’ he said. ‘Not very healthy. Sitting with old women. Only sixteen.’

  ‘Gather’, he said, ‘your aunt wants a break, too. Said so last night. When you had gone off to bed. The other old lady not well. Not friendly.’

  ‘She hasn’t been for some time. Well, never really.’

  ‘It’s all been rather a shock for Mary. She has not had a holiday for many years you see.’

  ‘Oh then I’ll go with her. I’ll come with her to Thwaite. Whenever you like. I didn’t know she felt that.’

  ‘Rather think Mary has—some sort of nunnery business in mind for herself. Oh just for a time of course . . . ’

  ‘But—Mrs Woods? And the Vicar’s Alice?’

  ‘I rather think that if you were to come with me, all might sort itself out very nicely here. Mrs Woods, I gather the doctor thinks, should be looked after for a time. Nursing home. And Alice can do the spring cleaning. Mary will go into a Retreat somewhere. She has one in mind.’

  ‘You mean, they don’t know what to do with me?’

  He looked angry and I liked him more. ‘Certainly not. No. Never leave high and dry. Very fond of you. First concern. There’d be no anxiety about you though if you were to come to me and my sister Celia. For a time. Just some short time.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, at once. Perhaps even tomorrow. Unless you want to wait for a letter from—Mrs Pocock of course.’

  I said, ‘Oh no thank you, Mr Thwaite. Of course not. I’ll come whenever you want. If Aunt Mary wants me to. Should it be today?’

  ‘Perhaps in the morning. Could you gather your possessions?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, I could. If Aunt Mary wants—?’

  ‘Ha.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Shall we say a month? To be extended to three if you are happy?’

  ‘Oh—yes. Yes. Is it very far? Of course, I’ll come.’

  ‘Not at all. Not at all far. Though everything does seem rather far from here.’

  And how very comfortable I was with this old fusty man. In the train the next day, trundling across the plain of York, I was able to ask—a first class carriage and us alone in it—‘Why is it, Mr Thwaite, so like after a funeral? I have never been to a funeral. But I feel I’ve been.’

  ‘Oh, it was a funeral. A sorry funeral.’

  The train ran gently into York, wheezed, fizzed, stopped and we changed platforms and set off again in a smaller train to Pilmoor Junction. ‘These books you read,’ he said. ‘Which of them would you say are of greatest—use to you?’

  ‘Which do I like best?’

  ‘That sort of thing. Love. Love best?’

  ‘Oh, Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. I read it all the time. I’m a bit peculiar about it. Especially, I think, in troubled times.’

  ‘Have you often had troubled times?’

  ‘It’s more that I’ve a discontented disposition, I think. Crusoe was so sensible. And so unimaginative. He sorts you out. I love him.’

  ‘Read Dickens ever?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Should read Dickens,’ he said. ‘Get more of a throng with Dickens. Great mistake to keep with one feller only. This is where we get out and we hope that the trap is waiting for us. Now Dickens will make you laugh.’

  A pony-carriage was waiting for us at Helperby station with a nice dog in it. A man sat dozing in the high seat at the front. A whip was stuck in a holder beside him, drooped like a plant. It was a warm sweet day and the sun shone across coloured country.

  ‘Great change in the weather,’ said Mr Thwaite.

  ‘No, no. Pretty steady,’ said the driver.

  I was handed up beside the dog who laid his chin across my knee and Mr Thwaite stepped in alongside as we clopped out of the flowery station-yard between hedges full of birds. ‘All well then?’ asked Mr Thwaite.

  ‘Wey, aye,’ said the driver, as if how could it not be.

  The lane wound round and along. The hedges stopped and seas of young green corn rippled for miles. Clumps of late primroses and fountains of cowslips stood on the verges like bridesmaids’ bouquets. There were no people about but we passed quiet farms which were well painted, red roofed and large. Horses stood in the farmyards with silky hair groomed into skirts around their ankles, and shook their heads to make the polished bridles clink. Even the chickens seemed well washed. A labourer working a pink whetstone by a gate looked prosperous and rosy. On rises in the landscape we twice passed a great house standing in a park like the paintings I’d seen at The Hall. There was the sound of streams running sweetly in the grass.

  We clopped over a wooden bridge with a white-painted railing and the water underneath ran fast and cheerful over polished-looking stones. All the leaves were out—even on the ash-trees—and the sun shone warm into my back. Everywhere there was Sweet Cecily in creamy lace and the new corn growing thick.

  Then we came to Mr Thwaite’s village—called Thwaite—after perhaps half an hour: and a pond with ducks, a cluster of red cottages and in trees, a Norman church-tower. Then we passed into a lane with a high wall along one side of it made of small dark bricks. Ivy climbed all over it and other things were spilli
ng out from inside. White and yellow lichens exploded over the bricks like stars. We passed some iron gates all netted up with convolvulus and on them two griffins holding shields, their proud faces turned sideways in disdain. The locks to these gates were papery thin.

  We turned into a stable-yard where a boy sat on a mounting-block staring at nothing and doves walked with dignity on green cobbles. Other doves paraded over roof-tops and a stable-clock struck four.

  ‘Thwaite,’ said Mr Thwaite. ‘The same name as mine and the village. Thwaite House. All it means is a clearing in the forest. Exceptionally dull. There may be cinnamon. Come along.’

  We left the trap and went through a door into a stone-slabbed passage with a hanging lantern in it and a smell of roses. ‘Scones,’ he said. ‘Cinnamon scones,’ and held another door and we walked over more stone slabs, passing statues and huge black furniture and crossed-swords and huge dark paintings and Chinese jars as big as men. Our feet made a very hollow noise and suddenly from far away there came an odd long note of somebody singing.

  ‘For tea, if lucky,’ said Mr Thwaite and opened a door into a room where three windows looked out over lawns and cornland to some hills.

  On a yellow silk sofa someone was lying. There was a blaze in the grate of a wood fire that never goes out, and there was also the smell of something else, very sweet. Pot-pourri—there was a heap of it in a great dish—but it wasn’t that. All I could make out on the sofa was drapery and a movement of white hands and a sense of eyes watching me.

  ‘’lo Celia. Back home. Polly. Polly Flint.’ Mr Thwaite did the great harumming of the throat and moved to the window. There was a valedictory atmosphere about him: I have done what I have done. I have gone through with it. He looked at the sky. ‘Splendid day,’ he said. ‘Very poor at Oversands. Continuous rain. Very disappointing.’

  ‘Polly what?’

  ‘Flint. Emma’s. Flint. Polly. Come for a little break.’

  ‘Flint,’ said the voice. ‘Well—Arthur. On your own? Arthur ring the bell. Polly Flint. Come over here.’

  On the sofa lay a tiny woman dressed in silk. Pampas grasses in a tall jar bowed over her like a regal awning. Her face was thickly painted—bright red mouth and cheeks. Her eyelids and brows were painted and her very black straight hair was pulled tight back across the skull like a Dutch doll, and looked painted, too. Her neck was not much thicker than a wrist and her ears glittering with round topazes were little and pretty like noisettes of lamb.

  Her hands were very, very old and had veins standing on them but they were soft and unused, not as small as all that. Rather determined hands. She held one bravely out—it looked ready to drop with the weight of more topazes.

  ‘But do come nearer.’

  She examined my clothes one by one–hat to gaiters. She saw my pelisse, cut down from Aunt Frances’s and very special. I had worn it at the wedding. It was draped over my childish serge coat. She seemed to count the buttons down my calves and almost ate the big plate hat. She looked lower and I remembered that there was an uncertainty about my left knicker elastic which I had meant to see to before I left.

  ‘Thought of cinnamon scones?’ said Mr Thwaite. ‘About tea-time? We arrive upon our hour.’

  ‘Polly Flint,’ said (presumably) his sister. ‘How very interesting. How pretty. Emma’s girl. Not at all like Emma. Very different—except perhaps the cheek-bones. How very sensible or you Arthur. Has she come for a visit?’

  ‘Seemed not unwise. Not out of the way.’

  ‘Not at all unwise. But how clever. You thought of it quite alone? A long, long visit? She does know of course?’

  ‘No time to say very much.’ He looked at the polish of his button-boots.

  ‘And did they—poor Frances—get away?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘No mishaps? No delays? No regrets?’

  ‘No,’ I said, so decidedly that the shawls stirred.

  ‘Well. How splendid. And the bridegroom very handsome, I’ve no doubt?’

  ‘Here’s the—cinnamon scones. Ha,’ said her brother, ‘just the three of us, Celia? Nobody else en route?’

  ‘Well, we never know. We never know, do we? You’ll find, Polly, that people come and go here. They pass through this house with total freedom. Sometimes they are with us and sometimes they are not. You will never know for sure whom you will meet upon the stairs.’

  It was difficult to reply to this.

  It had been difficult to reply to anything in fact—though not many of the things they had said had been really addressed to me. I thought, perhaps it’s some sort of hospital. Would Aunt Mary have known if it was a mad house? Would she have let me come? In all the years at Oversands she and Aunt Frances had never mentioned these people. They had never been to see us before. There had not even been a Christmas card. There were no photographs of them in the yellow house.

  Perhaps Mr Thwaite was mad. There was certainly something funny about him. All that obsession with the weather. And the silences. And this wonderful house with the gates all locked and covered in weeds. Surely even Aunt Mary would have known if this was a private asylum.

  Then I thought, oh my goodness, but she mightn’t! She’s got it muddled. Oh dear—she’s so holy and vague. It was Mrs Woods who was supposed to come here and they’ve got it topsy turvy and sent me instead. Whatever shall I do?

  But how very comfortable here. It must be a lunatic asylum for the rich. They have them in novels.

  ‘Before long’, said the sister, wiping butter carefully from her lips with a lawn handkerchief, ‘we shall find you a room, Polly. I’m sure there must be a room somewhere with nobody in it?’

  The huge house—I’d seen so little of it but already I felt I would never find my way out of it again—seemed so empty that if I listened I could probably have heard the crumbs dropping on to our plates.

  ‘We are very full at present,’ she said. ‘Hush.’

  A man came in to the room wearing red braces over a thick cotton shirt fastened with a stud, and no collar. His curly head was clipped close like a prisoner but he had not shaved. He stood staring blankly across the room. Then he snapped at the air over his shoulder like a dog after flies and went out again.

  I was right.

  Sister looked at brother. She said, ‘A bad day . . . ’

  ‘Shall I go and have a word?’ asked Mr Thwaite.

  ‘No, no. He has to be alone. He will probably go out. It is a beautiful evening. If you pass him anywhere outside you might just say “duck”.’

  ‘Duck?’

  ‘For dinner. He is fond of duck.’

  At least one was allowed outside. And the locks on the gates had been thin.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but could you please tell me . . . ’

  ‘Of course. What to call me. I am Celia—Lady Celia—there was a husband once—and so on. I kept the title—it was all there was. As you know, I am a poet.’

  ‘Oh. No—I didn’t.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read very much poetry. Modern . . . ’

  ‘Ah, that can be rectified here.’

  ‘Novels,’ said Arthur Thwaite. ‘Great novel reader. Plays piano. Speaks German and so forth.’

  ‘Ah–you are in for a great treat then. A great experience. There is to be a recital here by Grünt tomorrow. You will know Grünt?’

  ‘I’m afraid . . . ’

  ‘My child,’ she said, hauling up her hand again, ‘you are going to be wonderfully awakened here.’

  I realised (in the end) that I was meant to take the hand and caught it just as it collapsed. It was ice-cold, colder than the rings on it, and it lay in mine as dead.

  ‘How old did you say, Arthur?’

  ‘Har—harumph, sixteen.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘How very wonderful for us all.’

  Thwaite

  Dear Aunt Frances,

  I hope that you will read this before you go to India. I am sending
it to the address you gave in London. I expect that you will be surprised at the address at the head of this letter and so, in fact, am I.

  After the wedding was over Mr Thwaite asked almost immediately if I would like to come here on a visit. He said it was near where you were born and had lived when you were all little and as I was missing you I said that if Aunt Mary could spare me, yes, I’d love to come. And so we came, he and I together, yesterday.

  There is no need for me to describe it to you because I suppose that you must know every nook and corner of this house and I do wonder why you never told me about it or about Mr Thwaite. It was so strange to meet him before the wedding, walking in from the marsh in his tweeds and cape and pipe. I felt as if I had always known him. But you never said.

  The wedding was very nice. I hope that you and Father Pocock enjoyed it immensely. It was a shame that Mrs Woods wasn’t well. I thought that everyone, and especially the nuns, sang very clearly during the service, and the responses were very good. Mr Pocock sang well, too. I did not know that the bridegroom sang at a wedding but you could hear Mr Pocock’s voice ring out, as at the eleven o’clock service and his shoulder-blades were going up and down like bellows. I heard one of the nuns say that it was a very encouraging and reverent wedding.

  I did not actually sing, and I don’t know about Aunt Mary. Afterwards at the reception, I felt that everything was rather quiet. The idea of your going to India is still very strange to me and sudden and I am sorry that I cried.

  Perhaps in the six weeks of your journey to India it might be interesting for you to read about news of home. I thought that I would tell you a little every few days of what is happening to me here. You will be too busy with the vestment-buying and so on to read it now. Also I expect that being married is very interesting and distracting for you. But perhaps you may read this in small instalments on the high seas. I know that you have the Bible with you, like Robinson Crusoe, but I wonder if he sometimes wished for something a little lighter? And so here I am, in my bedroom, at a rosewood desk with a silver inkstand and blotting-paper it would be a sin to blot with. I am longing to tell you every detail.