‘I’ve never been ladylike, Pat.’ There was no smile on Nancy Ann’s face.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You were the most ladylike individual I ever came across, at least on the surface. But we’re getting from the point.’ Her voice took on a sober note again. ‘You’ve got to believe what I’ve told you. He had no hand in this. He wasn’t to blame. And there would have been nothing more to it that night I can tell you that. He was so upset and so sincere. I know when a man is speaking the truth and I’d put my life on bail that every word he said was just as it happened. And what is more he’s no fool; he knew that she couldn’t have got in there without assistance, and he dismissed Staith straight away.’
Nancy Ann’s eyes opened slightly and she said, ‘He did?’
‘Yes, he did. And when he comes back he’s going to sort out the others, too. Of course, he’ll have to stand the racket when he does return, and you will too, because this escapade will keep the county laughing for some time. Those who are abroad will regret not having been here; but the story will be renewed and extended in the telling for some time to come. And if it wasn’t for Arnold Myers’s career I would like to bet that Rene would have had you up in court, because from what I can gather, her middle…huh!…her middle was badly bruised and she had to keep to her bed for a couple of days; she even called in the doctor. Well, flesh like hers can’t be banged against iron railings without leaving some mark.’ She now put her hand out and gripped Nancy Ann’s knee, saying, ‘You are a mixture, my girl, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, perhaps I am a mixture, but…but I’m no longer a girl. At this moment I have the feeling that I will never grow older, I feel I know all about life, its façades and its undercurrents, and I detest it all.’
Pat sighed deeply, then smiled faintly as she said, ‘In the mood you’re in it would be useless to try to contradict you or dare to say you still have a lot to learn. But there, I’ve said it. The sun, the moon, and the stars are a mystery, but to my mind they are nothing to the mystery of human nature; its agonies, its ecstasies; why one is driven to strive for something, then regrets attaining it; why one loves the most unlikely partner—now that is a mystery to me—and why one can hate one or other of one’s parents. We are admonished to love our father and our mother, but I can tell you this and I have never voiced it before, Nancy Ann, I hated my mother. She is now eighty-three years old, lively and lording it over her third husband down in Dorset, but I retain memories of her in my early days, humiliating my father who was a quiet, unobtrusive man and who, I know, was glad to die. I was nineteen years old when he died, and I told her that day that I hated her and I don’t retract one word. But I ask again, why did they marry in the first place? What is this attraction between two people? Which brings me back to you. What attracted Dennison to you? Yet the answer seems simple and plain: you were so different from all the women he knew, without guile, straightforward, so young, untouched. You could say that was the attraction, but there was something deeper in this case, I feel sure. And I say again, Nancy Ann, he loves you, he needs you. Do this one big thing, give him another chance. Go back to his house, rule it as you should have done from the beginning and I’m sure now you are capable of doing just that. You have the power in your hands either to make him or break him and, knowing a little about you, if you break him, you’ll have him on your conscience to the day you die, even if you were to marry again to that nice Graham Mercer, honourable gentleman that he is. Oh’—she flapped her hand once more—‘don’t be abashed and don’t look like that, I’m no fool, and certainly Dennison is no fool, and he knows in what regard Graham holds you and why he has been so kind to the family.’
‘Oh! Pat, don’t say such things.’
‘Oh, dear, dear, dear; I thought we had reached womanhood just a moment ago. So you know as well as I do what I say is true. But even if you were to marry him you wouldn’t know a moment’s happiness because your first love would be forever there, and the fact would grow on you that this business that has separated you was none of his doing.’ She now heaved herself up from the couch, saying, ‘I’ll away now. I’ve said enough, more than enough, but know this, Nancy Ann, I’m your friend, I’m your true friend. At a pinch I’m old enough to be your grandmama. I’m one already and I have the nerve to say at a pinch. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity…By the way, what is her opinion of all this?’
Nancy Ann considered for a moment before saying quietly, ‘She hasn’t given me her opinion; she hasn’t said a word one way or the other.’
‘That’s a good sign. She’s a wise woman. Look, I’m returning to London tomorrow; what message may I take?’
Nancy Ann turned away saying, and still quietly, ‘It’s done. I told you I’ve been to the solicitor.’
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid, woman; they won’t have ordered the clerk to write a letter yet.’ She now came towards Nancy Ann and, putting her arms about her, she said, ‘Let me tell him he may come back and talk and…all right, you can make your own terms. Quite candidly, he would agree to anything as long as you return. Swallow your pride, my dear, we all have to.’ And her voice became low as she ended, ‘We all have to do it sooner or later in this life. Being women, our power lies in doing just that.’ She lowered her head for a moment; then, jerking up her chin, she said, ‘I’m away. Get out of the house; take a walk and think seriously of what I’ve said. Bye-bye, my dear.’
She bent forward and kissed Nancy Ann on the cheek before turning and walking out with the gait that spoke of authority in itself.
Nancy Ann went to the window and watched the carriage rolling away. Her mind was in a turmoil, for she believed what Pat had told her was indeed the truth of the matter, yet she couldn’t go back to that house and face that hostile staff. You can make your own terms. The words were to the forefront of her mind. Oh, if she could make her own terms, she knew what she would do over there.
But to live with Dennison again.
Yet what would life be like living without him? Pat had been right. Oh, what was she to do? What was she to do?
She started as the door was thrust open and Jessica called, ‘Come! Come quickly!’
A moment later she was standing beside her father’s bed. He was propped high up on his pillows. His eyes, deep in their sockets, gazed at her for a moment before he murmured, ‘Look after your grandmother now. Bring the children up in God. Stand up against…Promise…’
Again, she was startled when Jessica, thrusting her to the side, took up her son’s waving hand, saying, ‘There you are, my dear. There you are. Rest now. Rest.’
‘Nan…cy Ann.’
‘She will be all right. Don’t you worry.’
‘Promise. He…’
‘I promise, yes, I promise to see to the children.’
The mother and son stared at each other for some seconds. Then John Howard Hazel closed his eyes and his head drooped to the side, and Jessica made a small sound in her throat. Then she turned and looked at Nancy Ann and, tears streaming down her face, she said, ‘Well, ’tis over.’
‘No, no! Not like that, not so…’
‘Yes, my dear, like that, as quick as that. Once death calls it doesn’t linger, and it’s just as well.’
Jessica turned from Nancy Ann and looked down on her son’s parchment-skin face again; then slowly she drew the sheet up over his head, and from his half-sitting position it looked as if he were playfully hiding behind it. She turned and, taking Nancy Ann’s arm, she said, ‘Come; Peggy and Hilda will see to things.’
Nancy Ann allowed herself one backward glance before she was led from the room. When her mother had died they had knelt in prayer around the bed; it seemed wrong somehow that they were walking out like this. And…and he had wanted to say something more to her when her grandmama had pulled her away from his side.
‘Oh, Papa. Papa.’ Slowly, and hard now, she began to cry. They had not seen eye to eye for a long time, but at the end she should have given him some word, some reassurance that she knew
he had been right all the time.
Yet had he been right? Oh, what would happen next? She was tired. If it wasn’t for the children she could wish she was lying with him now.
It was forty-eight hours later. The house had become one where death lay: the blinds were drawn, shutting out the bright sunlight; people had come to the door, leaving words of condolence, some having used their sympathy as a means of penetrating the manor grounds.
Peter had been given leave to be here yesterday, and was coming again tomorrow. But it was Graham who had seen to the arrangements, even to asking Nancy Ann if she had informed her husband, and when she said no, he himself had sent off a wire to the address she gave him.
It was at the end of the day; a lamp had been lit to brighten the gloom, and as Nancy Ann looked at her grandmother sitting straight-backed in a chair in which she could have reclined, she was made to wonder yet again at the calmness she had shown over the last two days, for had she not lost her only son? Then she was further surprised by her reply to a statement she herself made voicing something that had been worrying her. ‘You know, Grandmama,’ she said, ‘I feel Papa wanted to say something more to me before he went.’ She did not say, ‘before you pulled me aside.’ And Jessica answered, ‘Yes, I know he did, my dear and I prevented him. And why? Because I do not believe in deathbed promises, and I knew that my dear boy wanted to extract a promise from you, and you being made as you are would likely have suffered for it for the rest of your life.’
‘What…what promise could I have made that would have caused me to suffer, Grandmama?’
Jessica’s voice was quiet now as she said, ‘He wanted you to promise to bring the children up in a God-fearing way and to look after me, but what he meant was that you should stay here.’
Their glances held for some seconds before Nancy Ann said, ‘Would that have been a bad thing?’
‘Yes; yes, it would, in more ways than one. I must say this to you now: no matter what has happened, and what did happen wasn’t his fault. I, too, had a talk with Pat. The point is this, your place is back in that house, by his side to help him, because what you must realise, Nancy Ann, he is not a parson like your father was, he is not a man of God, he is a man of the world and, let’s do some plain talking, he had two vices, women and gambling. Well now, I believe him and I believe Pat, that since he married you he has been faithful. Of course, there again, that might be only up to a point, but it is a fact that he has not taken a mistress. And now, having said that, this is where I come in. I love my grandchildren…when I see them from time to time. You see, you must understand that for years I’ve lived in a house without children and that, until your father became strange in his mind, there has been a sense of peace and quiet around me. And you might find what I’m saying may sound hard, even callous, but I can no longer put up with the constant, and that is the word, constant chatter and busyness that children create in a house. And it is their right to chatter and be busy-busy, and those who look after them to be busy-busy, too. But I am past being able to live in such an atmosphere. That is not to say that I feel I am nearing my end, but what I will say is that my patience is not what it used to be. Oh, please, my dear, don’t look like that. Don’t bow your head. We have been honest with each other all our years together, let us continue in that way. Peter said to me yesterday that I must go and live with them when he marries. My dear, can you see me living with Miss Eva McKeowan, as nice and as affable as she has turned out to be? He said I should likely be lonely here. But how could I be lonely with you and the children a walk away? And there is Graham. Who could want a better friend than Graham? And what’s more, Peggy and Hilda have become very important to me. They are servants, I know, but one ceases to think of them as such, more like caring friends. I say all this to you to put your mind at rest concerning me, because I know, like Peter, and like my dear John Howard, you will think it is wrong that I should be on my own. But, my dear, I am going to say something to you that I’ve never said to anyone in my life before, and that is, there has been a longing in me for years to be on my own. Even when my dear husband was alive, and I loved him, yes, I loved him dearly, there were times when I just longed for him to go out, go away on a journey so I could have the house to myself and be on my own. We are all very complex creatures, dear. We never know what is really going on in each other’s head, as I don’t know what is in yours at this moment, except perhaps that you are thinking that you have discovered I am cold-blooded, nay, even cruel.’
‘Oh, no, no, Grandmama, never that. And…and I understand, I do, I really do. But at the same time, I must tell you that…that I am deeply hurt. Oh, not at what you have said, but about the cause that brought me and the children here.’
‘I can understand that, dear. Oh yes, I can understand that fully. But there’s one way to deal with it. Treat it as a lesson and it will give you strength to face whatever happens in the future, because your life has just begun, and there could be other trials ahead of you.’
Other trials ahead of her. Nancy Ann thought of these words over the next two days for she knew that one of these trials was imminent.
Because of her grandmother’s frankness about the children she had told Mary to keep them outside as much as possible when the weather was fine. So it was towards five o’clock the day before the funeral that the first of the trials took place. Mary and Agnes were giving the children a little picnic under the beech tree at the bottom of the lawn, and Nancy Ann had joined them and they were all sitting on the grass. It was as Mary was saying to Rebecca, ‘No, my dear, another piece of bread and butter and then you may have your cake,’ that the child’s eyes sprang wide and she bounded up, crying, ‘Papa! Papa!’
Nancy Ann did not turn as the child ran past her. Outwardly her body stiffened, while inside it was as if all her muscles had become fluid. Slowly, she rose to her feet and turned to see him standing some distance away along the path that led to the gate. The child was in his arms, her arms tight about his neck, her voice prattling unintelligibly.
He was standing now in front of her, and she noticed immediately that his face looked grey and that he wasn’t dressed as sprucely as usual. His voice was low and level as he said, ‘I came as soon as I heard. I’ve just got in.’
She could find no words and was saved from embarrassment by the child saying, ‘Tea, Papa?’
‘Yes, yes, that would be nice, a cup of tea.’
It was Mary who came forward, saying naturally, ‘Come along, my dear, your papa would like a cup of tea.’
She took the child from his arms; then turning to her sister, she said, ‘Go and tell Cook that the master’s here and would like tea.’
At this, Nancy Ann turned away from them, and he followed her, and the protests of the children followed them.
In the dim light of the sitting room she placed herself some distance away from him after indicating that he should be seated. And when he said, ‘It was very sudden?’ she spoke for the first time, saying, ‘Not really. He was very ill.’
‘When is the funeral?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘All arrangements have been made?’
‘Yes.’
He did not ask who had seen to them. But now, bowing his head, he joined his hands between his knees and looked down on them as his stretched fingers interplayed with each other as if intent on pulling them apart. Then he asked quietly, ‘Have you seen Pat?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have seen Pat.’
‘Did she give you my explanation?’ He was still not looking at her.
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