And there had been no word from Anna Rainard in the years that followed. Charles, looking once again at Nicole’s happily serene face, almost hoped there would not be. She was doing so well, this beloved girl of his, that he didn’t want her life upset by the appearance from the past of a mother of whom she was half-afraid. He respected Lloyd’s continued efforts to find Anna Rainard, not to attempt to drop her behind the screen of anonymity which Iris’s father’s will had erected, but still he hoped the efforts wouldn’t be successful. Charles knew as much and as little about Russians as most Englishmen. He feared for the calm smile on Nicole’s face if this unknown woman, of fearsome discipline and will, should reappear.
In 1938 he had visited Boston once again, spent as before most of the summer at the Cape with Nicole. This time he had been prodded by Lloyd’s urging. ‘She talks to you best of all, Sir Charles,’ Lloyd had written. ‘It’s good for her to have a special friend. And the boys are growing up. They’re a bit of a handful. I think it would be good for them to have a bit of military discipline out on the Cape this summer …’ Kind of him, Charles thought, to find reasons for his presence … kind, and somehow typical, because there was an element of practicality in what he wrote. So Charles had gone, and the summer weeks had slipped into months, and the beginning of the New England autumn was on them before he took the steamer again from Boston. He felt vaguely ashamed of staying so long. But he couldn’t drag himself away. He realized that never in his life before had he lived in such close proximity to people who were completely happy with each other. What a rare thing this marriage was ‒ almost unique in his experience. He did not worry any more lest something should happen to cause it to flounder. By now he felt comfortably sure that nothing would ever drive a wedge between them. He had witnessed their small disagreements, and witnessed the way they resolved them. He thought that sometimes Nicole was too compliant, too ready to give in to Lloyd ‒ but then Lloyd had never, so far as he could see, guided her badly, or wilfully acted to hurt or wound her. Nicole, in her marriage, had blossomed to a new kind of beauty, and Lloyd, Charles saw, made it clear by look and touch and gesture, that he couldn’t have enough of her.
He returned to London and wished very much that he could have told Iris some of this. But he was not invited to talk, and he doubted, in any case, that she would have understood.
The only thing wrong with those visits was that he was lonelier than ever when he returned. But still, this must never be hinted at to Nicole. He looked again at the picture and went back to his letter ‘… and I send you my dearest love and every possible wish that there will be many, and even happier returns of this day …’ He paused again and thought of the Cambridge house, across the river from Boston. At this time of year the snow would be piled high on its old lawns, the walk and driveway would be shovelled clean. Perhaps guests were coming that evening for dinner ‒ or perhaps Nicole and Lloyd were going to one of his brothers’ houses for a celebration. The Fentons were a close lot, given to observing family occasions. The house that Sam lived in on Beacon Hill was still the gathering place for his brothers and his sister, regarded by them almost as belonging to them all because they had banded together to preserve it. It was part of Boston’s history, that house, and Charles had noticed that those who helped Sam with its upkeep seemed to feel no jealousy about him being the one actually to inhabit it. It just happened that he was the oldest, and it had become his task and his responsibility to keep it as it had been in his father’s time, and his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s. Charles had learned that Americans could be just as conscious of their family background as any Englishman of long lineage. England had little to teach the Bostonians in that respect.
There was one other gift that the Fentons had given to Charles. It was the gift of the friendship he had formed with the Fentons of Fenton Field. It had begun during those few days when Lloyd and Nicole had waited to be married. Their calmness, their lack of fuss in the face of the storm that had broken in the gossip columns of the newspapers, the reporters who had appeared at their door and had been politely, firmly turned away, had aroused Charles’s admiration and respect. Margaret Fenton’s instinct for the feel of a lonely man had caused her to invite him to visit later, and she had pressed the invitation so that he was convinced that it was genuine. Since then he had visited several times a year, sharing to a degree the events of their lives. He had attended Judy’s wedding to Gavin McLeod, he was godfather to one of Allan and Joan’s sons, and to Judy’s first child. Richard had finally married a totally unexpected girl, a shy, quiet girl, someone who had lived near by all her life, someone almost plain by comparison to the good looks of her husband. Charles guessed that Richard had once been in love with Nicole, and he had expected some girl quite as exotic in background to replace her. On the surface the marriage appeared to have worked. Richard had steadied as much as his temperament would ever allow him. He had been admitted to practise at the Bar and was making progress there, having that kind of presence which, allied to brains, makes an impact in the courtroom. During the week he lived in a flat in Middle Temple. On weekends he returned to his wife, Celia, at Potters, the place he had bought next to Fenton Field, and which his father and brother farmed for him. He continued to fly his own small aircraft. But for all the seeming placidity of his life, Charles sensed a certain restlessness which would never be assuaged, and he was not surprised one evening on entering a restaurant with a party of Iris’s guests to see Richard with an unknown young woman seated inconspicuously. Charles had been careful not to notice him.
Ross had followed Richard and Gavin McLeod to Cambridge, and was doing brilliantly in science. The English Fenton family seemed as close-knit as their American cousins, and instilled in Charles that same vague sense of longing. His life at Elgin Square as a puppet-host whose strings were pulled to Iris’s bidding seemed to grow more useless and empty. He thought of rebellion ‒ and knew he was too old for it. He had sold out, and with the millions of unemployed about him, he knew his rebellion would be futile. So he gave his services to a tiny centre in the East End that tried to care for homeless, jobless men, and he tried himself to be grateful for the warmth and comfort of Elgin Square. He found poverty sordid and demeaning, and he knew he would not have the strength to stand it long. It was difficult, with the medals he had won and which were worn each Armistice Day, to admit that he was a coward, but he did that. And more and more the young woman in the photograph became the core of his life. He looked at it now and smiled wistfully, and wondered how soon he could decently visit again.
And still, as he looked at the calendar, he wondered if he would ever again make that journey. He had heard Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ speech, and he did not believe it was possible. A man called Hitler had arisen, and the shadow grew sharper and shorter.
2
A light snow had fallen that day, and a hard freeze on top of it had turned it to a thin ice. Lloyd drove with the care and the swift skill that seemed inborn in every New Englander. They had lived with hard winters for a long time. On the way home he and Nicole had talked amiably about the dinner party given for Nicole on the eve of her birthday. Twenty-four of the family had been there. ‘I wonder did Sam and Ginny make up the number for my birthday, or was that just how many the table would seat?’ Nicole said idly. It didn’t really matter. It had been a fine evening, the talk argumentative, the wine mellow as these New England aristocrats liked it. Everyone had gone off with a sense of satisfaction, and a renewed belief in the family unity.
They slid once or twice on the ice, but Lloyd corrected mechanically and without fuss or hurry; he waited though until they had turned into their own short driveway before he began to focus his thoughts on what he wanted to say to Nicole. The headbeams of the car briefly swept the front of the house. At the sight of it Nicole touched his arm. ‘It really looks like home, doesn’t it? Look, there’s the light in Henson’s room. You could bet, couldn’t you, that she’d wait until she heard
us come in? She’s so terrified of wooden houses and what she calls “these monstrous furnaces, ma’am”. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to her to wonder how else we keep so warm all winter. That’s something that firmly belongs in Jenkins’s department. But if there wasn’t hot bath water for Baby, we’d know all about it. How English she still is, Lloyd. So firmly a nanny …’
He slipped the car into the garage with a niceness of judgement that allowed for the ice. Nicole went out on her side, and through a door into the kitchen, which gave off the warm subdued smell of cooking, and the comfort of reassurance that everything in the silent household was ticking over as it should. She knew that above, Henson would have heard their arrival and have settled down to sleep; that tomorrow morning, early, would bring the arrival of Jenkins, the gardener and handyman, to tend the furnace and take out the rubbish; that Nan, the cook, would serve an English breakfast for everyone; that Ellen, the daily cleaning woman, would put the house to rights. It had become such a smooth, well-ordered world. Nicole smiled softly as she went to poke up and add wood to the dying fire in the library. The old dog, MacGinty, lay there, and he indicated his pleasure at their return by briefly thumping his tail and falling back into a snoring sleep. And Lloyd was bringing two glasses of very old brandy, saved for special occasions. He put one into her hand as they stood before the fire.
‘Here’s to the return of all the good things, Nicky …’ They sipped, and then he bent and kissed her, not in a light salutation, but deeply, and she felt her lips open against his. There were many good things. Because she had never been absolutely sure that life was meant to be this way, a thought flickered at the back of her mind that perhaps it was all too good. Then she put the thought aside, or rather Lloyd did it for her. She didn’t think of it any more as he kissed her.
‘Would you like a summer in England, Nicky?’ he said casually after they had sipped the brandy again.
‘A summer in England? Could we manage it? Could we afford it? What about ‒’
He sank down into one of the long shabby chintz-covered chairs that made the place look so much like an English house. ‘A letter today. They’d like me to do a few lectures at Cambridge. I’ve … I’ve been in correspondence with Wygate ‒ you remember him, my senior consultant at St Giles’s? Well, we’ve been trying a new technique over here that he’d rather like demonstrated. I’m to do a couple of lectures with slides, and then, if the appropriate case turns up at St Giles’s, actually to operate. Naturally, I’d be there to learn what I could myself …’
‘You’re going to demonstrate to Wygate!’ Nicole turned her head sharply away from the fire to look at him. ‘You know, Lloyd, I’m so snug and complacent these days, I hardly ever bother to think about what you’re doing professionally. I have people tell me what a genius I’m married to, and I always smile and say I always knew it. But I just don’t realize … Could we really go? Could the practice afford it? What about the classes at Harvard …?’
‘Well, Nicky, with a surgeon, if you can’t get one man, you just take another. The practice could stand it as far as being away a few months. And they could reschedule the last lectures at Harvard so that I could make the last weeks of term at Cambridge … After all, they like their men to have overseas experience … overseas honours, I suppose you might call it.’
The brandy moved wildly in her glass as she waved it. ‘Let’s go …’ And then her face clouded. ‘But now? Where do we stay? I can hardly trail the kids up to Cambridge and keep them quiet in a hotel … and then back to London … They’re not old enough to do any sightseeing.’
‘Fenton Field,’ he said. ‘Aunt Margaret’s just waiting for us all. You can park the kids there with Henson, and come with me to Cambridge and London. A chance to see Judy … and Sir Charles … and … and everyone …’ he finished lamely.
She sighed. ‘No, I suppose Aunt Iris wouldn’t see me. But, if I were actually in London, who knows how she might change? She might want to see the boys …’
‘She might. Her grand-nephews …’ Lloyd himself didn’t believe Iris Gowing’s rigid attitude would change in the least, but he would never say so to Nicole. Leave the hope as long as Nicole wanted to keep it. She was leaning towards him.
‘Shall I write to Aunt Margaret, then, and ask if that would be all right? A whole summer … is it asking too much? But I’d love to go.’ He thought she looked like an Italian Renaissance painting in her gown of red velvet, the garnets he had given her for her birthday gleaming darkly in the firelight, her hair coiled about her head; she was beautiful now, he thought, and she would be beautiful when she was sixty. She now possessed a degree of confidence and charm that had been missing in the rather waif-like beauty of the young girl he had married. She was adding anxiously, ‘But it’ll cost an awful lot, won’t it, for us all to go …?’
‘Nicky … Nicky…’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘You know, things aren’t all that tough with me. I’m not doing too badly. And you … you’re rich by most people’s standards. Relax. You’re getting to be too much of a proper Bostonian, afraid even to spend the interest on the income.’
She laughed also. ‘I know … I know.’ Her eyes went lovingly over the big shabby room with its books and worn carpets. ‘But perhaps I’ve always been that way. I never did like show … Aunt Iris’s sort of show. I keep thinking about what the boys will need in the future ‒’
‘Stop thinking of them, Nicky. There’ll be plenty. They’re not going to be coddled. They’ll get an education. The best there is. And then they’ll be thrown out into the world to find their own way. The Fentons have always done that. And kids of yours are always going to be tough, even if they weren’t Fentons as well.’
She nodded. ‘I suppose I grew up frightened of money … frightened of spending it. It was Anna, of course. To her it made all the difference. It was so hard to come by, so when it was spent, you thought about how you spent it. There always had to be value for money. I tried very hard to give her value … give her a return.’ Her voice tightened. ‘Lloyd, do you suppose she knows? The way the watch came here … I’d like to show her this house. I’d love her to see her grandchildren. I’d like her to meet the Fentons. Yes … I think she’d consider all this value for money. If only I could be sure she knew …’
‘I have a feeling she does. Someone like your mother … so thorough … efficient. I’ll bet she knows more than you’d believe. I’ll bet she knows which charities you’ve begun to work for. I’ll bet she knows about the chamber music group. She’d like things like that. That was what she meant you to do. But, damn it, Nicky, it makes me mad as hell that I haven’t met her. A woman like that … she’d be more than a match for any of the grandes dames of Boston, and to do them justice, I’ll bet the old girls would recognize it too. You know something, Nicky? Sometimes when I pass a really striking-looking woman ‒ the way I imagine your mother looks ‒ I have the oddest sensation that maybe that’s Anna. I have the feeling that maybe she’s even been here and seen this house, seen you come and go, seen the kids. It’s a kind of creepy sensation. And yet I’d never dare go and take a strange woman by the arm and say “Are you Anna Rainard?” You know, Nicky, I’d be awfully satisfied if I could once meet your mother. She must be one hell of a woman.’
The smile that quietly touched Nicole’s lips was a gesture of gratitude. Only this man, this beloved man, could have so embraced her mother, made her a part of this family. Because he loved her, Nicole, he managed to reach out to Anna, that distant figure. He made her mother admirable as well as strong. For an instant she thought she saw Anna through Lloyd’s eyes, and dimly another personality emerged. She was not only the mother whom Nicole had respected and obeyed, but transformed almost into a person of heroic proportions. In those seconds Nicole’s half-fear of her mother began to alter; she perceived strength, but not dominance. She breathed deeply, and her sense of what she had inherited was right and good.
Slowly she got to her feet. ‘Perhaps one day
we will meet her, Lloyd. We’ll keep on trying … Well, now, since it’s my birthday, then I’m going to propose a toast. Just between us two. To Anna … to absent friends …’
He rose and came to stand beside her. ‘To Anna … to absent friends.’ He bent and kissed her. ‘And to present lovers …’
Afterwards, Henson, half-dozing, heard the laughter on the stairs, the stifled laughter, as if between children. And then quite distinctly she heard Dr Fenton’s voice. ‘You know … you’re getting far too big and heavy for me to carry you to bed any more …’
Henson knew she hadn’t been meant to hear, but she heard most things. She nodded a kind of agreement, stretched in the warmth of her bed, and turned over and went to sleep.
3
The West Coast of America is three hours in time behind the East Coast, so it was late afternoon in Los Angeles when Nicole and Lloyd were sitting down to dinner with the Fentons, and Anna was driving towards MIKE’S NEW AND USED CARS on Wilshire Boulevard. She was very conscious that it was the eve of Nicole’s birthday. Occasionally she had been tempted to lift the telephone and place a call to that house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But she never did. Sending the watch to her oldest grandchild had been her sole gesture. She had not been able to bear the thought that it might, if she died, pass into the hands of a stranger. There would be one man in Boston, her grandson, who would carry a watch inscribed in Russian characters. Anna found contentment in the thought.
The Lynmara Legacy Page 32