‘The big shock was finding out about the money. There was hardly any left. He’d given me his Army pay, and the rest was made up from the inheritance from his mother. Then I found that that was almost gone. That’s when we moved to Mrs Burnley’s, and I went out to find a job. I started with Lucky Nolan’s when it was a very small place, and I was part of the band. Lucky went up in the world, and you went to St Columba’s. That’s about it.’ Anna shrugged slightly as she said those last words, as if a whole decade was in that gesture.
Nicole wished the maddening thump, thump of the band would stop. She didn’t understand jazz, though the girls at school were crazy about it. The sound was outside, beyond them, and here in the room was the same quiet which had always existed between herself and her mother. This hadn’t been a cosy chat, it had been a revelation and was not going to be repeated. Anna seemed ready to return to the distant place she had always occupied in her daughter’s world. Slowly, Nicole began to realize how much of a revelation it had been, what it must have cost Anna, even after these years, to admit to the defeat and hurt of that period. She had been in love, she said. Nicole didn’t know what that meant. The way Anna described it, it sounded as if two people had lost their senses. Of course it had been a mistake, that whole episode. She judged her mother from her ignorance, and still found herself admiring her. She admired the slim, beautiful woman before her, the abundant self-control, the discipline which had fashioned a way of life for herself and her daughter when so many others would have gone under. She was shaken from her self-sufficiency into a kind of curiosity she was rarely visited with.
‘Do you know what happened to him? ‒ to this Lord Manstone? Did he marry?’
Anna almost smiled at this sign of awakening. ‘Yes, I had often wondered. One day when I was passing the Fifth Avenue library it occurred to me to find out. I just went in and asked for Burke’s Peerage. It was there. John Ashleigh, thirteenth earl of Manstone, married 1911, to the Honourable Cynthia Barrington, deceased. One son, David. Just about every year since then I’ve looked up the new edition. It hasn’t changed. No second marriage. No other children. The strange thing is I can remember Cynthia Barrington. She was one of the people who frightened me most when I was at Lynmara. I don’t think she meant to frighten me. But she was just so much the sort of person that Johnny should have married that the sight of her would set me shaking. She had money, good looks, and the right background. She was very much favoured by the Countess. If I’d never appeared, Johnny would have married her just that much sooner. I was only an interruption.’
Anna looked down at her carefully-tended hands. ‘You said “this Lord Manstone”. That’s almost how I think about him now. He’s hardly Johnny in my mind. I’ve lumped him in with the rest of the English. You’ll have gathered I don’t like them. Stephen was different. He wasn’t very clever, and he had a charming way of admitting it. He said he was done with England too, until he went rushing off to save her. I’ve given a lot to England in my life, Nicole, and it irritates me to see how they conduct themselves right to this day. Still lords of the earth. Still the bland calm assumption that they’re that much better than everyone else. Look at the fools women make of themselves over the Prince of Wales ‒ a nice-looking little man, but hardly a god. He actually reminds me a bit of Stephen. But it’s a sign of the way things really are that when Wall Street crashed, England went into a depression. The ermine around the crown is getting a bit moth-eaten. You’ll say I’m bitter and prejudiced. I’ll admit it. I never would have been any good as the Countess of Manstone. That part’s hard to admit, but I do admit it. So you see …’ She stared directly now at her daughter ‘So you see why I’m telling you to forget about taking that job or any other job for a long, long time. I can’t give you a social position. But I can give you an education. Your grandfather dreamed a dream of America, Nicole. It could come true in you. Education is the only way. I want you never to feel afraid of any situation, the way I was afraid. When you’re through college you’ll have the sort of experience and confidence you can’t even imagine now that you’ll ever need.’
Nicole said slowly, ‘Are you expecting me to make up for what you missed? That’s ‒’
Anna cut her off with an impatient shake of her head. ‘That’s foolishness. You can’t live anyone else’s life for them. I won’t try. I’m not asking to live my life again through you. I just want to make sure that whatever comes your way, you’re ready. There’s some old saying about “Fortune favours the prepared”. I just want you to be prepared. To leave school now would be sheer waste. Let’s see what life throws in your way ‒ and make sure you’re prepared for it. And if you end up being a secretary, you’ll be the best god-damned secretary there ever was. Presidents need secretaries, don’t they? Don’t set your sights lower than the highest. You may always have to come down a little, but a little down from the top. is much higher than a long way up from the bottom.’
The unexpected profanity in Anna had slightly shocked Nicole. Her mother didn’t speak like that. Or did she? How much of Anna was Christmas, Easter and summer vacation façade, just like the neat little white-collared dresses? A mixed feeling of admiration and resentment for this woman moved in Nicole like a drug in her veins. She felt inexperienced and clumsy beside her, and with this recognition she suddenly was aware of the full truth of what Anna had been saying. She had been afraid this evening. She looked down at the neat pile of her coat and hat on the floor and knew at once what it represented. A gauche schoolgirl had put them there. Someone a bit more experienced would, next time, no matter where it was, find some way to intimate that she was neither awed nor frightened by her surroundings.
‘So I’ll go to college?’ Nicole said in a rush. ‘And what will you do?’ One slight gesture of her hand indicated the nightclub, Anna’s dress, the whole lifestyle she had witnessed for the first time.
‘Leave me to worry about that. We’ll leave Mrs Burnley’s. I’ll look for some other place in Manhattan. Not too grand, but the right address. Lucky will understand. He’s ambitious for his own children. He’s got a big house in Bronxville. Perhaps by the time you’re through college I won’t be working here any more. You’ll have to play a game of keeping that part of me in the background. If it weren’t for the depression and jobs being so scarce, I think I’d even have a go at learning to do office work. Well … I’ll think about that, and hope that Lucky will stick with me. Sometimes I get afraid of what will happen when I’m forty … and forty-five. But I try not to think too much about that. I try to be prepared in my own way. If Lucky will just go along till you’re through college …’
She straightened herself, and in an instant the small anxiety she had betrayed seemed to have been deliberately wiped from her face and voice by an act of will. ‘Use your youth, Nicole. Use it hard. It isn’t a time of wisdom, but learning comes easier. Learn everything you can. You’ll never have so much energy again. Don’t waste too much time in sleeping ‒ or dreaming, either. And if you’re hit ‒ I suppose I mean by the sort of thing that’s hit you tonight ‒ try not to whine about it. It’s better if the world only sees you laughing, no matter what’s going on inside. Try to ‒’ She broke off, because the absence of the sounds of the band had finally broken through to them. She looked at a little jewelled watch on her wrist. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m due to fill in again. You’ll have to wait until I’m finished here, and I’ll go back to Brooklyn with you. It could be four o’clock before I’m through. I’m sorry, you’ll just have to wait. I can’t just blow out of here. I’ve got a job to look after.’ She was rising, smoothing the folds of her dress. ‘I’ll ask Danny if he can get some coffee and sandwiches brought in to you. If Lucky wants to use the office, you’ll have to wait outside. I’d prefer you didn’t go into the girls’ dressing-room, even if Danny wants to put you there. I don’t think you’d get along with them somehow, and they already think I’m too big for my boots. I’ll come and sit with you when I’m through this break. It depend
s on how long the customers stay how long we go on. In this business, there’s no real closing time …’
She went quickly, her movements silent and efficient. Nicole waited, and very soon she caught the faint and seemingly faraway sound of the piano. She still didn’t believe it was Anna out there. It was a stranger in a silver dress with painted lips and nails. Her mind slid back over the years with her mother, the years when she had first started to remember things, to notice things. It was true, she had an almost inborn caution about asking questions. Was it right that she simply hadn’t wanted to know, that this self-protection had been deliberate? She thought of the Christmas and Easter holidays. Anna always had an arranged schedule for the few days Nicole spent with her. They ate their Christmas dinner at some good restaurant. ‘Your Christmas treat,’ Anna always called it. The rest of the time was allotted to museums and galleries and the zoo, even when she had been quite small and had become easily bored and tired. On Easter Sunday she and Anna put on their best clothes and attended Mass at St Patrick’s, watched, and were part of, the Easter parade on Fifth Avenue, ate lunch at the St Regis Hotel. Suddenly Nicole saw it all as part of Anna’s plan for her. By observing the rich, you learned how it was done. It was a slightly different impression from the one she had gained tonight. She had never observed the rich drinking and dancing before. They were different from the Easter Sunday crowd. And then she thought of the summer vacations, the two weeks a year she spent away from St Columba’s in her mother’s company. They always went to the same place, a house at Hattonville, in Maine, which received only guests who could offer references and were willing to obey the rigid rules laid down by the owner, Mrs Whalen. Anna and Nicole were acceptable; they were, above all, quiet. They were never a second late for meals, they kept their room tidy, they didn’t go out at night; they spoke little and offered no criticism of the food. Hattonville, Maine, was Nicole’s total experience of the world outside of St Columba’s and the carefully planned visits back to New York. It couldn’t have been happenstance that Anna had chosen such a place. Like the breathtaking coldness of the water off Maine’s coast, did she mean these vacation times to be a lesson in respect for the hard virtues of thrift and industry, of close-mouthedness which these New Englanders set so much store by? The vacations had not been vacations at all, Nicole decided. They were periods of exercise, hard walking, piano practice, and sleep with the window wide open to the wind from the sea. Anna didn’t believe in soft living, even for two weeks. When Nicole returned to St Columba’s to spend the rest of the vacation months as one of the few pupils who stayed behind, she was each time a little more tutored in rules of discipline and restraint. Had Anna been trying to wipe out for ever the memory of the time, there in London, when she herself had allowed sentiment, and not good sense, to rule her emotions? Nicole was beginning to understand more of what Anna had been saying that night. She had once been wildly, disastrously in love. Love was a luxury she could no longer afford. It would never again swamp her good sense.
Nicole was hungry, and her head ached; there had been too much to learn in one night. It would be many months, perhaps years, before she understood and sorted it all into some tidy place in her mind. Her eyelids drooped, and despite the heat of the room, she shivered. She was about to ease off her wet shoes, but she knew that that would outrage Anna. The sound of the piano went on. She wished her mother would come back; she wished the coffee and sandwiches would come.
She must have had her eyes closed, because he was in the room before she saw him. He was a neat man, good-looking in a dapper way, of only medium height, with hair as thick and black as Anna’s own; the sort of Irish face Nicole was used to from Brooklyn, a suit which looked as if it had been tailored for him, and immaculately manicured hands. Nicole didn’t know whether to stand because she was still a child, or remain seated because she was a young woman.
The man solved her dilemma. ‘Take it easy, kid.’ He went to the desk and took a cigarette from a silver box. ‘You smoke? No, I didn’t think so. Anna wouldn’t approve.’ His movements were neat, like his body. Nicole realized she had been expecting, and dreading, someone who looked rather like Danny. He took his time lighting the cigarette, and drew on it before he spoke again.
‘I’m Lucky Nolan. And you’re Anna’s kid, Nicole.’
‘How do you do,’ she said. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but what was the right thing to say when meeting your mother’s lover?
He surveyed her thoughtfully. ‘You’re like Anna. Very much like her. Funny, I’ve never seen a photo of you. She didn’t say you were like her.’
‘Perhaps she doesn’t think so.’
His eyes seemed to snap at her. ‘Well, listen, there’s no one you’d be better to be like than Anna. And I don’t mean just her looks. That’s the trouble with kids ‒ send them to some snooty school and all of a sudden they’re too good for you. Well, just you mind your manners. And remember that you’ve got one hell of a mother.’
His anger seemed to release something in Nicole. To her great surprise she found herself almost liking him, when she had expected to loathe him. ‘She hasn’t given me much time to learn that. She keeps me away from her most of the time.’
‘Yeah ‒ well that’s for your own good. That’s what she says. I say a kid should know something about life. Well, maybe we’re all fools about our kids. Nothing too good for them, and then one day they suddenly decide to become big shots and tell you how things should be. I hope you don’t make that mistake, kid.’
Nicole even managed a half-smile, but her hands, held tightly in her lap, trembled. This was how it was done. All the way up, no matter where on the ladder you were, you had to make friends, not enemies. ‘I’ve decided I won’t make that mistake, Mr Nolan.’
‘Smart kid. That’s talkin’ smart.’ He pulled at his cigarette, and his voice was speculative. ‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s not allowed, you know. And Anna’s all upset about you being here. Why? Why the big rush, all of a sudden?’
‘I came here because I was offered a job. I wanted Mother to agree to my taking it. It was an office job in Wall Street. But she’s told me I should try for college.’
‘College, eh? Well, that’s where the smart ones head. Myself, I think it’s wasted on a girl. Goes and gets married and it’s all wasted. But your mother ‒ I know she don’t think like that. So … college, eh? It’ll cost plenty …’
‘I know that. That’s why I thought a job …’ Nicole floundered. ‘I didn’t know, you see … about this.’
‘None of your business, was it, kid? Your mother’s got a right to her own life.’ He looked at her as if daring her to make some protest, to indicate by some gesture that she disapproved of the relationship between himself and Anna. Nicole decided that if he waited for that he was going to be disappointed.
‘Not my business at all, Mr Nolan. What’s my business is to see that the money ‒’ she hesitated for just a fraction of a second, ‘that the money you provide is well used. I’ve got to get the best marks in the class or it’s not good enough. Value for money, Mr Nolan. I didn’t know where the money came from until tonight, Mr Nolan. But now I do, I’m more than ever obliged to see that it’s used properly. Taking means giving back something. I hope I don’t cheat you.’
He stubbed out his cigarette in annoyance. ‘Hell, you’re takin’ things too far. Who said anything about giving anything back? The money I give Anna’s hers. The way she spends it is her business. No strings.’
‘I’m the string that comes attached to my mother, Mr Nolan. And you’ve always known it. And you’ve paid. Now I know. And since I seem to be accepting it all, going along with it, then I’ve got to turn in value for money. I hope it’ll be a good investment, Mr Nolan.’
‘For God’s sake, kid, shut up! I’ve always said educated women were a pain in the neck. Except Anna. Here you are, a kid. And you’re talking like an old woman who’s seen all the action. Value for money! Say, listen, how old are you?’
He shook his head. ‘Then God help the man you get hold of when you’re twenty-six. That’s all I can say. God help him.’
Chapter Three
Nicole returned to St Columba’s the next morning. She had an interview with Mother Mary Helena in which she told her that her mother wished her to remain at school, and to try, in the next year, to see if she could take college entrance exams. Her mother, she added, would be grateful for any advice as to which college might prove most suitable. Nothing more was said about a job.
The nun looked at her pupil across the desk, looked at the delicately-modelled features that were turning out to be quite beautiful, met the straight stare from deep-violet eyes. There were shadows of fatigue under those eyes, and the features. Nicole’s whole demeanour seemed subtly altered since the time she had sat there just yesterday morning. It irritated Mary Helena that with all her experience of girls, she could not quite put her finger on the precise nature of the change.
‘College? It has never been mentioned before, Nicole. I will give it thought. You know, of course, that you will have to work very hard.’
‘I will.’ Just that. No more or less than a declaration of intent, but said with the kind of intensity which Mary Helena didn’t like to hear in a girl of Nicole’s age. She wondered, but would not ask, what had gone on between the child and her mother the night before.
A lesson bell rang, and Nicole was dismissed. Mary Helena was not teaching for the next hour, and she gave herself over to her own considerations about the girl who had just left. She did it, to more or less degree, with each of the hundred-odd pupils under her charge. This was not the first time that Nicole Rainard had puzzled her.
The Lynmara Legacy Page 5