Callie, remembering the extent of Aunt Fanny’s exertions, which never extended beyond a very slow stroll up the lane in hot weather, could not imagine either.
Just as she was going upstairs with Aunt to help in the packing, Uncle Tom appeared.
“I really don’t see how Fanny can possibly do this journey. I’ve told her that she’d better remain where she is and I’ll go with you myself.”
“It’s very good of you, Tom, but it’s a bad time for you to be away and one doesn’t know how long it might be. I can manage perfectly well.”
Uncle Tom shook his head and muttered something into his beard about “not fit for a woman,” and then Bessie and Cora descended from the attic, carrying a trunk between them.
“There’s my box, I must go and pack!” Aunt exclaimed. “And is Fanny to be packed for or not?”
Tansy, as though in answer to the question, came out of the front bedroom.
“Mrs. Ballantyne seems undecided as to whether she can go out to France or not, and I wondered if I might offer my services. I can speak French — though, of course, so can you, Miss Charlecombe — but I am quite a good traveller and should be only too pleased, if I could be of use.”
Aunt thanked her, and Uncle Tom thanked her — but neither of them either accepted or refused the offer outright.
“Mrs. Ballantyne,” said Tansy, “said she would be glad to talk it over with you, Mr. Ballantyne.”
Uncle Tom obediently walked away, but as he went he spoke over his shoulder.
“Fred would be the proper person. He ought to go out there.”
“Perhaps he will,” said Aunt.
It all reminded Callie of that time — long ago, she thought — when Uncle Fred had declared that he must go to The Grove and help Aunt about the business, and how many times he had said it, and then had put off going until everybody had felt certain that he wouldn’t go at all, and how, finally, he had arrived there unexpectedly.
It looked as though much the same thing might be going to happen with Aunt Fanny — except, indeed, that if she meant to travel with Aunt her time for making up her mind was short.
By eleven o’clock she had agreed with Uncle Tom that she must stay at home and when, at half-past twelve, she came down carrying a heavy fur cape that smelled of camphor and declared that she would go after all, it was too late.
Callie heard no further discussions but she and Tansy packed Aunt’s trunk, while Awdry received directions about the housekeeping and Juliet bicycled to the village with various notes and messages.
There was a sense of tension in the atmosphere, inseparable from the hurry and confusion of preparing for an unexpected departure. Every now and then Callie remembered, with a feeling of incredulity, that all this concerned the nearest relation she had in the world — her father.
Luncheon was early, so that Uncle Tom could drive Aunt to the station, and they all sat at the table in an atmosphere of haste and anxiety that was not dispelled by the sight of Aunt Fanny wearing the fur cape slung across her shoulders, sitting silent with tears slowly rolling down her face, looking down at her plate. Aunt came in late, said: “Oh, don’t, Fanny dear!” and took her place.
It was soon over, and the carriage at the gate. They all went out into the hall, where the door stood as usual wide open and Young Hook and Bessie carried out the trunk.
“If there’s anything I can do — —” said Tansy.
Aunt thanked her, and shook hands with her.
Callie watched her, feeling so sorry that she had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands so as not to burst out crying. Aunt looked so different — her face quite pale, and her eyes larger than they had ever looked before.
When she kissed Aunt Fanny goodbye, Aunt Fanny cried more than ever and said:
“I’ll come if he wants me. Telegraph. And give him my dear, dear love, poor boy.”
Aunt nodded.
“You oughtn’t to be going alone. It isn’t too late. I could still — —”
“No, Fanny, you couldn’t. Besides, I think Fred will join me. Tom has sent him a cable.”
“Ready, my dear?” called Uncle Tom.
The girls crowded round, and Aunt said goodbye to them. She held Callie tightly in her arms for a minute when she kissed her, but she said nothing. Then she walked down the garden path and climbed into the carriage.
Aunt Fanny retired, weeping, to the drawing-room sofa and Juliet went with her to shake up the cushions and pull the blinds half down.
“I wonder when Aunt will come back,” said Awdry, solemn-eyed, looking at Callie.
“I wonder,” echoed Callie.
Her real wonder was how she would come back, rather than when. She was acutely conscious of impending change.
3
At Rock Place they all said, “How are we going to manage without Aunt? “but in the course of a very few days Tansy and the girls had taken most of Aunt’s responsibilities upon themselves and had discovered that others might be allowed to lapse altogether. Every day life adjusted itself quite quickly and simply to her absence.
A telegram announced her arrival in Nice and added “No immediate danger,” and then followed a week without further news.
“Foreign posts,” said Uncle Tom, in disapproving tones.
Aunt Fanny, habitually silent, developed one of her rare but periodic accesses of loquacity. To the great surprise of them all she talked freely of people and things that she had scarcely mentioned for years.
Callie, in the first week of Aunt’s absence, heard more about her parents than she had ever before heard in her life, excepting during her short visit to South Wales three years earlier.
“I wonder,” said Awdry, “whether it was Aunt who didn’t want to talk about old times? She never does, you know.”
“Well, I don’t see why she should. I mean, one doesn’t talk about people who are dead, much, does one?” Juliet suggested. “And I always thought Callie’s father, if she doesn’t mind my saying so, was a Bad Hat, like the Palambo son, and couldn’t be mentioned.”
Callie admitted that the same idea had crossed her own mind.
“Though I know Grandmama talked about him in Barbados, quite often. Only I was too young then to notice what she said particularly. I only remember that she always seemed to think he’d turn up again one day, and he never did.”
“Didn’t he ever write?”
“I think so. Not to me, though.”
“What a shame,” said Juliet vaguely.
She gazed out of the window.
“Whose turn is it to ride this afternoon? Mine, isn’t it?”
“Yours and Mona’s.”
There were only two horses, besides the farm horses, at Rock Place now. The Ballantynes were, as their father sometimes remarked laconically, growing poorer and poorer.
The information sat upon them very lightly. They had, Awdry said, everything they wanted except an unlimited amount of hunting.
“Come on, slut,” Juliet commanded. “We must go and get in the horses.”
Mona uncoiled her length from the armchair in which she sat huddled with a couple of dogs. She was growing very rapidly and already overtopped both her elder sisters.
It sometimes occurred to Callie that Mona — whom they still called Plain Jane — although nobody could say that her narrow face, high forehead and half-shut eyes were beautiful, had a more arresting appearance than any of them. And nobody could deny the magnificence of her long, dark-auburn curls. She was becoming vain, too, about her hair and it no longer required brushing, because she spent hours over it every night.
That afternoon, whilst Juliet and Mona were out riding, two of the Misses ffillimore came to call — Miss Totty and Miss Isabel.
They arrived, as usual, on their battered bicycles, wearing their hard hats and neat spotted veils and their brown coats-and-skirts, admirably cut but of antique style.
“We all wanted to hear if there was any news from dear Kate,” said Miss Totty, sitti
ng, with her knees well apart, in the drawing-room near Aunt Fanny’s sofa.
“Bob was saying only last night: ‘I wonder what’s been heard of Kate. You ought to go over to Rock Place, girls,’ he said, ‘and enquire.’”
“Besides, we felt you’d be lonely, perhaps, with Kate gone. She isn’t often away, is she? We felt we’d like to come and look you up, Fanny,” added Miss Isabel.
“It’s very kind of you,” said Aunt Fanny. “We’ve only had a telegram to say she’s arrived — but there ought to be a letter any day now. She says: ‘No immediate danger.’”
Miss Totty made a sort of inarticulate sound that yet unmistakably indicated sympathy.
“I might be able to go out and join her there, you know,” Aunt Fanny said, fixing her enormous, melancholy eyes on the visitors.
They both shook their heads in unison.
“Out of the question, Fanny. Really, you know.”
“Besides,” urged Miss Totty, “it would only make things more difficult for that poor dear girl if you were to fall ill out there, as you certainly would, Fanny, with your poor health.”
“I daresay,” agreed Aunt Fanny meekly.
“I’m sure Awdry thinks the same.”
Awdry said that she did.
“Uncle Fred may go out to France, from Barbados, to be with Aunt Kate and — —”
She left the unfamiliar name unspoken.
Both the Misses ffillimore expressed their decided approval of the idea that Mr. Lemprière should go and join dear Kate at Nice.
It was clear that they retained an enthusiastic recollection of Uncle Fred, from the days when he had called at The Hall so frequently, and had hunted the pick of the horses from The Hall stables.
Callie couldn’t help feeling that perhaps they didn’t realize how extraordinarily unreliable Uncle Fred’s comings and goings always were.
“Ah, poor Mr. Frederic Lemprière!” Miss Isabel now remarked, in curtly compassionate tones. “No doubt that’s what he’ll do.”
“The very best thing for Kate, too. She’ll need a man’s help.”
The Misses ffillimore, themselves quite as capable, almost as strong and fully as energetic as any man of their acquaintance, had an ineradicable belief in masculine superiority.
“Is there any hope of your poor brother’s perhaps recovering?” Miss Totty enquired. “We don’t quite know — —”
Aunt Fanny shook her head. Tears came into her eyes.
Miss Totty patted her hand.
Miss Isabel stood up.
“I’ll leave you to have a talk with Totty,” she said, with great directness. “Will you girls take me round to the stables?”
“There’s nothing there,” Awdry said, “except Flock’s puppies. Do come and look at those.”
“Right you are,” said Miss Isabel, marching to the door.
Callie was following but Aunt Fanny called her back.
“Find me that telegram from Aunt, will you, dear? I should like you to see it, Totty.”
Callie found the telegram, which was, in fact, almost under her aunt’s hand, and gave it to Miss Totty, who, holding it at arm’s length, read it through carefully.
“ ‘No immediate danger,’ “ she repeated.
“I hope that means he knows her, poor boy. Kate was always his favourite. I always thought he’d come back to England one day, just to see Kate.”
“I suppose it was not to be,” Miss Totty returned simply.
“You never met my brother Lucy, did you? Well,” said Aunt Fanny in one of her long, deliberate bursts of speech, “you’ve seen Fred. Lucy was very like him — their voices were exactly alike, you couldn’t tell one from the other — but he wasn’t quite so tall, or nearly so heavy. And his eyes weren’t black, like ours — Fred’s and mine — but quite a light hazel and extraordinarily bright. Callie’s eyes are like his, only hers are much rounder and not so brilliant. And so are my boy Cecil’s but Cecil hasn’t got the look that Lucy used to have. I can’t describe it at all. He had a way of raising one eyebrow. People used to think Fred was the better-looking of the two, but I never did.”
“Bob remembers him,” said Miss Totty. “He was talking about him last night. Bob stayed at The Grove once or twice, years ago, when he was at home. He was telling us what a fine cricketer he was.”
“Yes. Tom thought his batting was in County Cricket class, and Fred’s too. But Lucy played a steadier game than Fred.”
“That’s what Bob said. He played a steadier game than the other fellow, is what he said.”
“Bob must have stayed at The Grove after my time,” Aunt Fanny observed. “I don’t remember seeing him there. I suppose it was after I married.”
“Kate met him there. We’ve always wished — —”
Miss Totty paused significantly.
Callie held her breath.
For a split second she was trudging up Culverleigh Hill, a small child again, and she could hear Aunt’s voice, very curt and matter-of-fact, above her head:
“Old Bob ffillimore was the only chance I ever had.”
Aunt Fanny sighed heavily.
“I don’t know, Totty. We’re all so fond of Bob, and we shouldn’t have lost her, so nice and near and everything. But there it is. Poor little Kate. I shall never forget her coming to us after the tragedy when poor Lucy’s wife was killed, and the state she was in. And afterwards, though she got well, she didn’t seem at all the same person. I sometimes think she never really got over it, you know. Shock, I suppose, and then Lucy taking it the way he did, and going off abroad.”
She began to cry, quietly.
“I’m sorry, Totty. If anyone had told me, thirteen years ago, that little Kate would be what she is now… And Lucy never coming home at all, and dying out there.”
Callie, tears of sympathy in her own eyes, looked imploringly at Miss Totty.
What could they do for poor Aunt Fanny?
“Have a nice cry, Fanny, if you feel like it,” Miss Totty said in brisk tones. “It’ll do you good.”
And she turned her back and stood looking out of the window.
4
The first letter that came from Nice was addressed to Aunt Fanny and she read it alone, but afterwards she told them all something of what Aunt had written.
“The hospital is at Nice Maritime, right away from the part where visitors go — on a hill overlooking the sea. Aunt has got a room in a pension quite close in the Rue de Sardaigne. She says it’s clean.”
Aunt Fanny, after imparting this information, remained silent for such a long time that Callie began to think she wasn’t going to say anything more at all.
She looked at Awdry and Juliet and saw that they were as much nonplussed as she was herself.
Mona, whom Callie had forgotten all about, suddenly voiced what they were all thinking.
“But what does she say about Callie’s father? Is he going to get well?”
“He isn’t going to get well. But he may live some weeks longer and he’s very glad … she’s come.…”
Aunt Fanny’s voice failed her and Awdry, with an exasperated expression, took Mona by the shoulders and gently pushed her out of the room.
Uncle Tom walked in as the door opened and said, “Don’t upset yourself, Fanny. What are you girls thinking about to let your mother upset herself?” and looked at them so reproachfully that all three — Awdry, Juliet and Callie — went away without attempting any explanation.
“We shall hear later, I expect,” said Awdry philosophically. “I’m terribly sorry and all that. But there isn’t anything much one can say, is there, when we none of us remember him in the very least?”
“And haven’t ever been told anything about him,” added Juliet. “Not even Callie.”
“I’ve been told some things,” Callie felt obliged to say. “That he looks like Uncle Fred, only not fat, and used to play cricket very well, and ride and drive, and Aunt was his favourite sister and — well, as a matter of fact, I think that’
s all. It seems frightfully little to know about one’s own father, I must say.”
“And that he was called Lucy, which I think was very odd indeed,” proclaimed Mona unexpectedly. “It’s a ridiculous name for a man.”
“Not in the least,” said Awdry, and at the same moment Juliet ordered her junior to be quiet.
Callie knew that, for her sake, they resented the implied criticism.
What did it matter whether one knew or didn’t know one’s father, when one was part of a family as loyal and affectionate as were the Ballantynes?
As the days slipped by Callie found that she was accumulating a series of strange little images in her own mind, formed from fragments — phrases spoken by Aunt Fanny, or read aloud by her from Aunt’s letters.
For she did read parts of them aloud, usually at unexpected moments and without any preliminary so that Callie was often the only person to listen.
“ ‘It doesn’t seem like thirteen years,’ “ Aunt had written. “ ‘He hasn’t altered much, and his voice is exactly the same. When I arrived he said “Hallo, Kay” — as if I’d just walked into the schoolroom at home.’”
Home! thought Callie. Then had Aunt, all these years, not thought of Rock Place as being home?
It was somehow a startling idea.
“ ‘He’s frightfully ill, of course, and the French doctor, who is quite nice and intelligent, says — —’”
“We won’t read that,” said Aunt Fanny. And she read something else instead.
“ ‘There isn’t a bed in the whole place that’s long enough for him. I’ve tried everywhere. He doesn’t seem to mind, lying there.’”
Aunt Fanny stopped, looked up from the thin sheets of paper and gazed unwinkingly at Callie.
“Lucy’s head would look so very dark against white sheets and pillows, and she says he’s quite hollow-eyed, poor boy, and terribly thin. He had a way of raising one eyebrow higher than the other.”
Once she astonished Callie by remarking that Lucy had never married again.
“I suppose — I suppose, of course, he could have,” said Callie, confused.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 497