He didn’t ask her to explain. He smiled instead. ‘I’ll turn it all over to you. I’d like to hear someone who’s been studying at the Paris Conservatoire. I’d think you have to be very serious indeed for that.’ He was flicking through some of the piles of music on top of the piano. ‘Here ‒ the Beethoven sonatas. You have to be in practice on at least one of them.’
But she reached instead for Book Two of the Bach preludes and fugues. ‘Will you turn for me?’ He nodded.
She played, at first mechanically, then as the pain of the remembered little melody of ‘Für Elise’ slipped from her, she forgot her audience, and she was serious about what she was doing. She settled herself more squarely at the piano, and gave her whole attention to the music, suddenly relieved of tension as the music took over for her, the counterpoint powerfully demanding reason and logic, but with the astonishing core of poetry at its heart. Richard had risen from the seat to give her room to reach the whole keyboard; he turned the pages at her nod, but he was reading the music also. Then it ended to complete and utter silence in the room.
It was, finally, Gavin McLeod who spoke. He had closed his book and removed his glasses; he was staring accusingly at her, looking at her as if he had never seen her before. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was bloody marvellous. Now why on earth would someone who can do that be starting out on something so silly as a débutante season?’
There was no way to answer him. Nicole closed the music, stacked it tidily on the top of the piano, and turned to Margaret Fenton. ‘I’ll go to bed now, if that’s all right, Mrs Fenton. It’s been a lovely evening. What time is breakfast, please?’
After she closed the door she heard Margaret Fenton’s voice come gently. ‘You were rather hard on Nicole, Gavin.’
‘I can’t say I’m sorry, Mrs Fenton. It’s a crime when you see someone throwing away a talent. I wonder what other things that quiet little minx has tucked away ‒’
Lloyd broke in sharply. ‘Whatever they are, they’re her own. Don’t you think you should leave them to her?’
Nicole, reflecting on what she had been told about people who eavesdropped seldom hearing anything good of themselves, found herself warmed by those words. Lloyd Fenton, she thought, was displaying the New Englander’s regard for the rights of other people, privacy being one of them. But still she listened, and heard Gavin McLeod say, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Fenton. I have no right to use such language, nor speak that way about a guest. I apologize. I’ll even apologize to Miss Rainard if you think I should.’
Lloyd Fenton’s voice carried a hostile edge. ‘I’d just drop the whole thing, if I were you, McLeod.’
‘Part of the bedside manner, Fenton?’
‘Surgeons aren’t usually reckoned to have much of a bedside manner ‒’
Nicole turned away and started up the stairs. How had she managed to inject hostility into a group of people like the Fentons? Why couldn’t she ever take it the easy, the softer way?
Nicole found herself alone with Lloyd Fenton at breakfast. ‘Everyone else gone?’ she asked as she poured coffee for herself.
‘Gone, I imagine. Unless Rick is still in bed. Andrew and Allan have had their second breakfast, being farmers. Ross and McLeod have started on the day’s work. Judy’s off riding. That leaves you and me.’
‘Yes …’
‘You don’t sound too pleased.’
‘May I have the butter, please?’
He leaned back in his chair. ‘Will it disturb you if I smoke?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I think …’ He paused. ‘I think you don’t like me much, and I wonder why not. Have I offended you in any way?’
She scraped butter thinly on her toast. ‘Offended me? How could you possibly have done that? As for liking you ‒ is that important?’
‘It could be.’ He lighted his cigarette and turned his head away as he exhaled the smoke. ‘I’ve even a feeling that it’s something to do with my being an American. Is it?’
‘Why should it?’
He shrugged. ‘All right. I’ll give up. You don’t like being asked questions.’
‘Does anyone? What is it you want to know?’
‘I suppose I just want to know you. And you skirt around me as if I were a prickly pear.’
With great precision Nicole added marmalade to the toast; she wondered why she did it ‒ she didn’t even like marmalade. ‘What’s there to tell you about me? I was born in New York. I don’t know which hospital. I never asked.’
‘Look, I don’t want to pry ‒’
She cut him short. She was going to say it, and be done with it, and then, perhaps, this Lloyd Fenton would stop making her feel uncomfortable. ‘You said you wanted to know me. There’s nothing very much to tell when you’re nineteen. Nothing much has happened. So I’ll go on with the facts. My father was killed in France during the war. I was born after he left for France, so he never saw me. My mother took … took a job with a Wall Street firm of lawyers. There was some … there was some money left from an inheritance my father had from his mother. My mother used it to send me to St Columba’s, an Anglican convent in Connecticut ‒’
Lloyd Fenton nodded. ‘I knew a couple of girls who went there. Probably would have been before your time.’
Nicole sipped her coffee and hoped that he didn’t notice the slight tremor in her voice. She had recited this tale before, at Madame Graneau’s, the half-truth blended into the truth. Somehow it didn’t become easier to lie. ‘I stayed at St Columba’s until I’d finished. I sort of hoped … well, I wanted to go to Vassar. I got a scholarship there. But then my … my grandfather died and left me some money, but he wanted me to be educated in Europe, and my Aunt Iris, his daughter, and Uncle Charles were to be my guardians. So … I went to Paris, stayed for eighteen months, met Judy. And here I am. Is that enough, Dr Fenton? I told you there wasn’t much.’
‘You’ve forgotten something. Your mother … what does she think of you living over here? Why are Sir Charles and Lady Gowing your guardians?’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Oh ‒ I assumed you knew. I thought Judy might have told you. My mother died. That’s why I’m here. Now you are asking questions, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, and I’m sorry I did. I seem to remember telling off McLeod last night because he … oh, well, never mind. But here I am, asking questions, when I vowed I wouldn’t. I suppose when a person’s very quiet, and yet you know darn well they’re not dumb, you just want to get behind the barrier.’
‘Barrier? I wasn’t aware there was a barrier.’ And yet she knew there was. The last lie, the lie about Anna’s death was the biggest barrier. That was the one she wanted no one to cross. And every time she repeated that lie, Anna was gone that much farther from her. But Anna had made that choice herself. And even Lucky Nolan had known she wouldn’t reappear. Nicole excused herself, and hated herself. But what else was there to say?
‘You’re not shy,’ Lloyd Fenton continued, ‘but you’re possibly the most self-contained person ‒ for your age ‒ I’ve ever encountered. Perhaps I imagine a barrier that really isn’t there. Well, shall I ask the questions myself and answer them?’
‘What questions?’
‘I asked questions, didn’t I ‒ all about you? I’ll give you two to one, and ask and answer them myself. All about me. Will it bore you?’
‘Not at all.’ But she said it coolly. She hadn’t bargained on trading histories with him.
‘Nothing unusual,’ he said. ‘And nothing as isolated as your life. There were four kids in our family ‒ all born in Boston, and we had grandparents on both sides born in Boston. The place was alive with cousins. It almost seemed if you turned over a stone you’d find a Fenton, or a half-Fenton. Some of them would object to me comparing them with something that crawled out from under stones, since they think they’re pillars of society, all made in shiny marble. But we’ve had our share of black sheep, the less shiny ones. But our family was OK …’
Nicole thought she
could almost have recited it for him. He was a Boston Brahmin. The Fentons had been there since the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had been founded. There would be Fentons sprinkled all over the professions of law and medicine, banking and stockbroking. Their histories would be interweaved with every other long-established family of the state.
‘… three boys and a girl, Liz. Our mother was one of those champion committee women ‒ perhaps a bit like your aunt. But she thought of it as her duty to go around raising money. She was very thrifty … made us do without things just to understand what it was like not to have anything. Not a bad way to be, I suppose. It seemed an awfully lonely house after she died. We had a place out on the Cape. Most of the family had summer places there. The first summer after she died I didn’t think I could bear it. But one does. It was the Wall Street crash that killed my father. We lost quite a lot of money, but I think what really killed him was that he’d advised a lot of people on investing, and they were all just about wiped out, as he was. He felt responsible. I was qualified by then. Suddenly there seemed not much reason to stick around Boston. Sam and Peter were married, and so was Liz. There was some residue of money in trusts, so we all had some income ‒ not a lot. Sam took the house on Beacon Hill because we didn’t want it to go out of the family, and we all chipped in to handle the expenses until things took up a bit. I took myself off to Cambridge. Then on to St Giles’s. I’ve got a sort of summer shack out on the Cape near Sam and Peter. One of the uncles owned it and left it to me. They say about him that he died of a heart attack. But privately we all know he took an overdose because he was in much the same situation as my father. When you’re older, it’s pretty tough to learn how to do without money, being blamed by other people because you’ve lost their money for them. The clubs in Boston weren’t very cheerful places in those days. The older ones took it hard when the bubble burst. I was lucky I had a profession, and somewhere else to go, something to build on. I suppose I have to say I thought I was lucky I didn’t have a wife and kids because I couldn’t have dragged them after me ‒ wouldn’t have dared to take the risk. But when I come down to Fenton Field and see what they make of their lives here … when I remember how Sam and Peter’s wives have actually seemed to give them strength to get through these last years, well … I wonder. I do wonder. To be free’s fine. It can be damn lonely, too.’
Nicole said slowly, laying down the toast because it had suddenly seemed too dry in her mouth, ‘You’ll build up again. All of you. Your kind does. You’ll all help each other because it’s always been that way. Families matter. Families …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Yes … families …’ he prompted.
‘Well, since I never had one, I don’t really know, do I? I wish …’
She never knew what she had been going to say to Lloyd Fenton. Perhaps she never could have found the words, or wanted to reveal herself by saying them. The barriers she built were of loneliness, a loneliness she would never confess to anyone. She probably would never have said it to him, but she never knew, then, what might have been said. She heard the sound of Richard’s stick tapping in the hall outside, and her thoughts as well as her tongue froze.
Richard stood in the doorway, skilfully balancing himself while he closed the door behind him. He had the grace that even made the plaster on his foot an ornament. As he appeared, Nicole thought she heard the merest whisper from Lloyd Fenton. ‘Damn …!’
Richard’s smile took them both in. ‘Good morning. Hope I’m not interrupting. Anything left to eat …?’
Nicole found herself helping him to bacon and eggs and toast from the sideboard, and pouring coffee for him. With a deliberate refusal to move, Lloyd Fenton lighted another cigarette.
3
It was, Nicole thought, the best week of her whole life. It was a magical piece of time, suspended between the end of one sort of life and the beginning of another. She was conscious of many things happening within herself, a receptiveness, a willingness to see and understand, to let herself be swayed and pulled by different influences. She let herself float, making no effort to struggle against a delicious, lulling tide of peace and the sense of serenity that pervaded Fenton Field. She felt herself open up to receive these influences. She found she smiled a lot, and there was much to laugh at, silly inconsequential things. And when she looked at her face in the mirror, some of the tight reserve had gone. She was no longer quite so guarded, so wary. To be able to trust was a wholly new experience.
Even the weather combined with the sense of ease. There was a whole week of perfect spring days, days with the breeze warm and scented, the sun already had the heat of summer. The sound of bees was constant, a sound of contentment and fullness. She learned the names of the dogs ‒ one of them, MacGinty, belonged to Lloyd Fenton. He had brought it, a stray he had found in London, down to Fenton Field two years ago. Margaret Fenton accepted it as she had accepted Lloyd himself, as part of the family. She had an enormous capacity to embrace whatever came her way, to make room for it. Without seeming to, she stretched out hands to Nicole, and had them grasped. From that first hour Nicole knew she could never be a stranger in this house or among these people.
She went riding a little with Judy and Lloyd. Sometimes Ross and Gavin McLeod were with them. They played tennis and Nicole found she didn’t mind at all that she was so bad at the game. There was time for croquet on the lawn, when Richard balanced skilfully on the heel of his plaster and managed to beat them all. No one minded. There was no room for competitiveness in the easeful days of that week. Nicole often played the piano in the evenings after dinner, but not once did she put in a rigorous hour of scales.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Judy said. ‘You ‒ slacking off …’
Slacking off. To Nicole it suddenly had a delicious meaning. She felt herself trying to slow up the days, the hours even. She wanted to hold this piece of time, welcoming the early dawn chorus of the birds, waking just to revel in hearing it, hating to see the pink colouring in the west come to herald the beginning of the long spring twilight. For the first time she felt that she was grasping at the sense of what was England itself, what the poets had written about, what the soldiers who built the Empire had longed for, dreamed of returning to. She knew there were dole queues on the streets but for this one week she shut them from her mind, determined that nothing ugly should touch this little oasis of enchanted beauty.
The very essence of it all, the scene she would hold most strongly in her heart in the years ahead, came on the last afternoon, when already an impinging threat of the end of this idyllic dream touched her like a light cloud across the sun. They sat in the orchard where the bees droned about them and the daffodils which came as a flood in April had been left to die down among the long grass. Lloyd lay on his back staring into the trees above him. Judy plucked a long blade of grass and let it fall across his eyes; he brushed it aside lazily. Gavin McLeod and Ross had just joined them, bringing the latest MCC cricket score from Lord’s. Richard sat with his back against a tree. He had selected it because it was the one Nicole was also leaning against and Richard had made no secret in the past week that he liked to be near Nicole. Soon they would be joined by Andrew and Allan, and Wilks would carry tea to the table under the great oak from which there was the best view of the house. They were just waiting, doing nothing, perfectly content.
Then Richard reached for the book Ross had brought with him. ‘They’re still reading old Rupert Brooke, are they?’ he said. He flipped the pages.
‘Read “The Soldier”, Rick,’ Judy said. ‘Read it for me.’
He turned the pages until he found it, and his low voice was accompanied by the sound of the bees and they melded together as if the poem might have been written in such a place.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be in
That rich earth a richer dust concealed …
The familiar w
ords went on, and a sudden, almost unbearable pain touched Nicole. She wanted him to stop because he was speaking of things that threatened vaguely, dredging memories of a time she was too young to remember, too painful for this bright day. But the voice went on, remorselessly, to the end:
… Dreams happy as her day,
And laughter, learnt of friends: and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
It was Judy who broke the following silence. ‘I shouldn’t have asked for that. It’s too sad for a day like this. I’m glad Mother didn’t hear. She lost two brothers in the war.’
‘And Nicole lost her father,’ Lloyd said quietly.
‘They lost almost a whole generation,’ Gavin McLeod said, ‘and if these fools don’t wake up, they may lose another.’
‘Stop it, Gavin!’ Judy said. ‘It can’t ever happen again. The last war was fought so it couldn’t happen again.’
‘The last war hasn’t finished yet, dear girl,’ he answered. ‘We’re still manoeuvring on the last battlefield.’
‘And I,’ Richard said, ‘am learning to fly. If there’s another war, I don’t intend to be stuck in the mud in some fox-hole.’
Judy turned a startled, stricken face on him. ‘Rick ‒ you’re learning to fly!’
‘Yes, why not? It’s fun! And it may come in useful some day, if Gavin’s war turns up.’
‘Oh, God ‒ I hope you haven’t told Mother. It would worry her.’
‘Of course I haven’t. And it isn’t nearly as dangerous as …’ He stopped, and then as if he forced himself not to look at Gavin, he continued, ‘It’s not as dangerous as driving a car.’
Judy gave a soft, little cry. ‘They couldn’t be so stupid as to begin another war ‒ they couldn’t!’
The Lynmara Legacy Page 14