He took Finch by the arm, in a jocular way, and propelled him back to the library.
“The wind,” he announced, “is straight from the south. Get some logs, Finch.” He himself knelt in front of the fireplace, crumpled a newspaper and took a handful of kindling from a small battered oak chest.
Finch brought logs from the basement, labouring up the stairs with them, as though they were made of lead. Outside his grandmother’s bedroom, which was opposite the dining room, he hesitated, wondering whether or not she would remember his birthday. Well, she made a great fuss over her own. Surely she might give a thought to other people’s. As his eyes rested speculatively on the door, the rappings of her stick sounded on the bedroom floor, and she called out — “Come in!”
He could not very well go to her with his arms full of logs, yet there was that peremptory note in her voice which took for granted that you would run at her bidding. He stood still, wondering what to do.
Again she called out, and this time more sharply — “Come in!”
Holding the six logs to his breast with his left arm, the sweetness of the pine filling his nostrils, he gingerly opened the door and put his face in the opening. In the room was a different world, the world of the very old. The heavy maroon curtains were drawn across the windows, and the still air was laden with the scent of sandalwood, camphor, and hair oil. In the dimness the pale shape of the bed was visible and a night-capped head on the pillow.
“Which of you is it?” demanded the voice, old but vibrant.
“It’s Finch, Granny.”
“Well, come in and let in the light.”
“I … I can’t. I’ll come back and do it.”
“Do it now.”
“But Gran, I’ve got an armful of wood.”
“Put it down and come in.”
Finch’s voice broke on a note of anguish. “Gran, it will make a mess on your carpet and I’m supposed to take these logs to Renny for the fire.”
That was enough for her. If there was to be a tug of war over who was to be waited on first, she was ready for it.
“Put down the wood,” she ordered, and he could perceive her struggling to sit up.
He laid the logs carefully in the doorway and went to her. She was propped on one elbow. She gave a chuckle, as of pleasure in her little triumph. “Kiss me,” she said.
He put his arms about her old body in its heavy cotton nightdress that was trimmed with embroidery, and hugged her. That was what she liked from her sons and grandsons, a good hug and a hearty kiss. It seemed to put fresh life into her. She was ninety-eight years old. Her arms, surprisingly strong, held him close.
“Now open the curtains.”
“It’s an awful day, Gran. The worst sort of day you could think of for the time of year.”
“What time of year is it — I mean what date?”
“The first day of March.” Now he had drawn the curtains wide and the window streaming in freezing rain was disclosed. The bare branches of an old lilac-tree bent before the gale.
“The first of March, eh? And coming in like a raging lion. Well, well, what a day for …”
Now she was going to say it! What a day for your birthday. But she only said — “Put my pillows behind me. Prop me up.” She gave a sniff, as though she had a cold in the head.
He placed the huge feather pillows at her back, his eager eyes on her face beseeching her. My birthday, his heart pleaded, don’t forget my birthday, Gran…. But how could he expect an old woman, almost a hundred years old, to remember his birthday?
When he had her propped up he looked down into her face. He could remember it since he was little more than a baby and it had always fascinated him. The dark eyes were so alive, the nose so finely arched, there was a look of courage, of boldness, in the very structure of the face, so that toothless as she was, dominance was enthroned there. There was craft in the face too. It might have belonged to an old empress, seasoned in the intrigues of a court. Yet her realm had been Jalna. She was little known beyond the surrounding countryside. In Ireland where she had spent her youth, and in India where, in a British Military Station, she had spent the first three years of a happy marriage, she was forgotten.
“My teeth,” she now demanded, “give me my teeth.”
The two sets were in a tumbler of water on a bedside table. Finch held it in front of her while she, with a look of pleasurable anticipation, retrieved them and, with a clicking sound, put first one denture, then the other, in place.
“Good,” she said, “now —”
But her eldest grandon’s voice interrupted her. “Finch! What the devil are you doing?” he shouted.
“Oh, gosh,” groaned Finch, “the logs!”
Renny was striding down the hall. Before Finch could intercept him he was at the door of the bedroom and had stumbled over the logs and almost plunged on to the bed. Old Adeline Whiteoak held out her arms to him.
“Bless me, what an entrance,” she exclaimed. “What a clumsy fellow you are! Can’t you see where you are going?” She knew she was to blame and so smothered his explosion of anger in an embrace. She held him close while Finch gathered up the logs. She drew strength from Renny.
Finch found the fire merrily burning up the kindling and the family group at ease. Meg was knitting something for Wakefield.
“Let me put on the logs,” begged the little boy.
Finch gruffly pushed him away and built up the fire, laying the logs carefully, almost caressingly in place. The sweet scent of these pleased him. Wakefield crouched close beside him, the flames reflected in his large brown eyes. He held up his little hands to the fire. Finch had a sudden desire to hold him close. He picked him up and pressed his small body against his own, rejoicing in its weakness, finding sensuous comfort in it.
Meg beamed up at them.
Wakefield whispered — “It’s your birthday, isn’t it, Finch? I know.” He looked mischievous.
Finch quickly set him on his feet. “Forget it,” he said.
Renny appeared in the doorway. He said, in his decisive voice — “Gran’s awake, Meg. I’ve rung for her breakfast, can you go to her?”
Meg rose at once. She would be thirty-nine in a few months but already had a matronly figure and a strand of grey in her light-brown hair at the temples. She had a particularly sweet smile but a stubborn nature. She was devoted to her brother and her young half-brothers and was held up by all the neighbourhood as the model of what a sister, a niece, and a granddaughter should be.
The spaniels were stretched in front of the fire and now two other pets entered the room, passing Meg in the doorway with a supercilious air. These were Nip, a Yorkshire terrier belonging to Nicholas, and Sasha, a yellow tortoise-shell cat, which was Ernest’s. Each made straight for its owner, Nip scratching on Nicholas’s leg in a peremptory way till he was lifted to his knee; Sasha, in a graceful bound, reached Ernest’s chest and then his shoulder, rubbing her cheek on his.
“Lucky little brute,” observed Eden, stretching his supple body to its indolent length.
“This is a perfect morning for study,” said Ernest. “You should bring your books down here by the fire, boys.”
“Good idea,” agreed Piers. “I’ll race you upstairs, Eden.” As though shot from a bow both darted into the hall and up the two flights of stairs. Eden flew up so lightly, with such eager grace, it was hard to believe that only a moment ago he had been as relaxed as the cat Sasha.
Nicholas was filling his pipe, Ernest was reading aloud something from the morning paper. Renny was putting on his mackintosh, Wragge was about to carry a tray into the grandmother’s room, from where her voice and Meg’s came, amiably discussing the weather. Grandmother was saying — “It was just such a day as this when he was born. I well remember it and his mother in labour for six hours.”
Meg interrupted — “Sh-h. He’s just outside in the hall. He’ll hear you.”
At the same moment Grandmother’s parrot broke in with vigorous imprecations
in Hindustani, directed, the old lady liked to think, against the weather. She exclaimed — “Poor Boney, poor Boney. How he does hate this climate — and so do I.”
Wragge’s voice came. “Your breakfast, madam.”
She said, with gusto, “Good — good — I’m ready for it too.”
Finch, whose heart had halted at mention of his birthday, now slowly mounted the stairs.
What was the matter with everybody? Why did they treat him with such indifference? On his fourteenth birthday they’d been very decent to him. What had happened? He had not been in disgrace or complained about by his schoolmasters. Yet not one present, not even one good wish, had come his way. Three times had it been spoken of and then hushed up as though it were a disgrace. Of course he knew he was not as attractive as the other boys, but what was the sense of rubbing it in? There was no sense — no sense in anything. The world was a senseless bewildering place. He wondered how he could endure it for fifty or sixty or — if he lived as long as Gran — eighty years more. But then he’d probably die young. Yes, he was pretty sure he’d die young.
He looked into the bedroom he shared with Piers. Bessie, the maid, was making the bed. Her round pink wrists and capable hands were moving above the sheets. He wanted her to say a kind word to him but she was smiling to herself — busy with her own thoughts. There was no place for him in the house or in anyone’s thoughts. He was alone — as perhaps few in the world were alone….
There was a long narrow box-room at the end of the attic, where trunks, old clothes, old magazines, old picnic hampers, birdcages, fishing tackle, and a thousand odds and ends were kept. There was the old brass-bound leather trunk where was kept the splendid uniform which his grandfather had worn. Every spring there was a ceremony when the contents of this trunk were carried to the grassy lawn at the back of the house, hung on a clothes-line, brushed and aired. The grandmother always presided over this ceremony, supported on the arm of one of her sons and ejaculating in her harsh old voice that had been one of the sweetest in Ireland — “Oh, but he was a fine-looking man! You don’t see his like nowadays. Nor even in his time. How the women stared at him! But I kept him for my own…. Is that a mothhole, Nicholas? Let me see … Thank God, no…. Let me feel the cloth in my fingers…. Ah …” And tears would roll down her cheeks.
Finch laid his hand on that trunk wherein was locked his mother’s wedding dress and veil. Who kept the key of that, he wondered. Meg, he supposed. And why had he never been shown these things? He had as much right to mourn over relics as anyone. His mother had died soon after Wakefield’s birth and she’d had a hard time at his own birth. Six hours in labour, his grandmother had said … on such a day as this…. He shuddered…. Why might he not see the things in the trunk? Why was he treated so? Downstairs this miserable day was being tolerably passed by the group about the fire, by Gran snugly eating her breakfast in bed, by Renny in the stables. Only he was the outsider. Alone … alone on his birthday … Not a present — not a good wish — not even the customary whacks on the back from Piers!
A little moth miller zigzagged past him and he all but put his hand to crush it, then changed his mind. Let it lay its eggs where it would. Let the worms produced devour what they would. They had as great a hunger as Grandmother at her tray and perhaps, in the sight of God, as much right to eat.
The rain thundered on the slope of the roof, made gurgling noises in the eaves. The roof leaked in one corner. There was the spot adjoining his own bedroom…. Let it leak. It was none of his business. Let the moth and the flood share the house between them…. In weary melancholy he lay down on the bare floor, resting his head on a canvas dunnage bag. Tears filled his eyes, and somehow he felt the better for them. He was alone. He was at the end of things. He did not care. He heard someone give a hoarse sob and wondered if it might be he….
When he woke he felt cold and stiff. The rain had somewhat lessened but the sky had darkened with its load of rain to come. The clear treble voice of his youngest brother came to him. “Finch,” he called, as he mounted the stairs. “Finch, where are you?” Timidly, as though he remembered stories of ghosts and witches, he opened the door and put his small pointed face and curly dark head inside.
“Why are you lying on the floor?” he asked in surprise.
“Because I’m not standing up and poking my nose into other people’s business.”
“Oh.” Wakefield now assumed the manner of his Uncle Ernest.
“Well, you’re wanted, my boy.”
“Who wants me?”
“Everybody. It’s dinnertime.” The family at Jalna still held to the country custom of dinner in the middle of the day and still drank tea at that meal. “Tea” itself was eaten at five o’clock and a substantial supper at eight.
“Why — why, it’s impossible.” Finch got up and stretched. “I’ve only been here a little while. I was studying and I …” No, he would not say he fell asleep.
“What were you studying? I don’t see any books.”
“Did you never hear of doing problems in your head? Well, that’s what I was doing.”
“It’s dinnertime. You’re to hurry.”
The sound of the rain was broken by the crescendo resonance of the brass gong, sounded by Wragge.
“There! Didn’t I tell you?” Wakefield jumped up and down in excitement. He ran to Finch and tugged at his hand. “Do hurry.”
“I ought to tidy myself.”
“There’s no time.”
Finch suddenly felt gentle toward the little brother. He let himself be led down the two flights of stairs to the door of the dining room. Strangely it was shut. With a flourish Wakefield opened it and shouted —
“Here he is! Here he is!”
Finch was dazed by what met his eyes. The family were assembled, standing about the table — Meg and Renny at either end — Grandmother and the two uncles on one side — Eden and Piers on the other, with his place awaiting him between Piers and Wakefield. Wakefield had run to his own chair beside Meg, on which was a thick volume of British Poets to raise him to a comfortable level. But why were they standing up waiting for him? And as for the table — surely it had not been made to look like this for him.
The yellow velour curtains had been drawn to shut out the weather. The heavy silver candelabrum had been set on the shining damask on the table. The candlelight glimmered in the eyes of the smiling family, made their smiles beautiful. Grandmother stood bent, her knuckles on the table, eager to sit down, the purple ribbons in her best cap trembling. She grinned up at Finch. “Happy birthday, you young rascal,” she called out. “Come and kiss me.”
“Happy birthday! Many happy returns of the day!” sang out his brothers, sister, and uncles.
It was almost too much. Indeed it was altogether too much — the transition from melancholy and neglect, to this warmth of kinship, this beaming acknowledgment of the day, this glory of candlelight, fruit, and little dishes of nuts and raisins, as though it were Christmas…. He stumbled over Renny’s spaniel Merlin, because his eyes were strangely blurred, and almost fell into his grandmother’s arms. The spaniel yelped and scuttled beneath the table.
“Steady, steady, old lady,” said Nicholas, supporting her. “What a clumsy fellow you are, Finch.”
The grandmother gave him a resounding kiss. His uncles slapped him on the back. Meg held out her plump arms and enfolded him. “We thought we’d give you a nice surprise, Finch, dear, by pretending we’d forgotten all about your birthday. Wasn’t it fun? It was all my idea.”
“Wonderful fun,” mumbled Finch, against her cheek.
“Now sit down and eat a good meal. You are so dreadfully thin. Then we shall have the presents.”
Wragge had placed a platter on which was a joint of beef, surrounded by Yorkshire pudding, in front of Renny, who, after testing the edge of the knife with his thumb, at once set about carving it.
“I know what you’re getting,” said Wakefield. “I wish my birthday would hurry up. June is a be
tter time to be born in than March.”
“Attend to your food,” said Nicholas.
“I haven’t any. No fat, Renny, please.”
“Dish gravy,” put in Grandmother. “I do like dish gravy. And Yorkshire pudding.”
“There you are, Gran. You know what’s good for you.”
When it was Finch’s turn to be served, such an enormous helping was put on his plate that even he, with his growing boy’s appetite, was a little abashed. “Oh, look here, Renny, what do you think I am? A rhinoceros?”
“More like an ostrich,” Piers said.
“He’ll be better-looking as he gets older. He has the Court nose. He cannot look quite undistinguished with that,” said kindly Ernest.
“What’s that about the Court nose?” demanded Grandmother, having herself been a Court.
“Finch has it,” cried Wakefield.
She peered across the table at Finch, a bit of Yorkshire pudding clinging to her underlip. “I don’t see it,” she said.
“He’s just wiped it off,” laughed Piers. “He’s been crying.”
Grandmother retrieved the bit of pudding with her tongue. “I won’t have the nose made fun of,” she declared.
A spirited discussion on the personal appearance of both Courts and Whiteoaks ensued. Finch was forgotten. He had, for a wonder, little appetite. Even when the birthday cake, with fifteen candles, arrived, he felt no hunger for it. When he tried to blow out the candles, with one great puff, he had to make three attempts before he managed it.
“I could do better myself,” said Grandmother.
Later he was presented with a number of quite expensive gifts. The year before he had been given a bicycle. He was a lucky boy and he knew it, yet somehow the spiritual clouds of the morning were not quite shifted by the sunshine of this hour. He had been the subject of good wishes, yet could not feel as he knew he ought to feel. He stood staring out of the library window at the rain that had become only a grey drizzle. From the hall he heard the sound of the grandfather clock preparing to strike — a kind of rattling wheeze. But, before it reached the point, the black marble clock, with the gilt face, which stood on the mantelshelf in this room, gave out its musical effortless notes. One-two-three. Instantly, as though in resentment at this forestalling, the grandfather clock struck harsh and strong. The Dresden clock in the drawing-room made its sweet response. All three eager to push forward into the mystery ahead.
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 32