For Nicole there seemed no real break in those months, the months of spring that flowed into summer. When the telephone rang, her ears did not strain to hear who was calling. It would never be Lloyd. There was no leave to look forward to, no one to save up items of news for. She wrote her letters to the Fentons in Boston, determined to keep that link with America for her sons, but there was little to tell them. She wrote to acknowledge the many food parcels that arrived ‒ strange how guilty they felt about a tin of jam at Fenton Field because it might have taken the space of a belt of ammunition.
‘Eat it,’ Andrew said authoritatively. ‘You don’t think they’d let parcels be sent if they didn’t think civilian morale was important too? And England’s not paying for these bits of goodies. That counts, too. We’ll all of us owe a big debt after the war for what comes in food parcels.’ He put a little sugar sparingly in his tea. ‘Here’s to the Boston Fentons. Just thank God for them ‒ and don’t question the manna that falls from Heaven!’
During that spring Nicole travelled up to London to meet Charles, and together they went to Buckingham Palace, where Charles received Iris’s posthumous award of the George Cross, a recently instituted award for civilian gallantry. It seemed a whole age ago since she had made her only other visit to this Palace. They stood in the long line of those waiting to receive medals, mostly servicemen, a throng of ordinary people, from every place in Britain, from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, some of them terribly disabled. It wasn’t hard to see the future. She thought that never again would the lines of nervous, white-plumed débutantes form up. More than one sort of wall had crashed down when the bombers had crossed the English Channel.
After they had lunched on very slender rations at the Savoy, Nicole made her way to a firm of solicitors in the City. Just after Lloyd had been killed, she had received a letter from them, asking that she visit them at her convenience in connection with the estate of the late Sir Gerald Agar. She had supposed that it meant some small memento; Margaret had written for her that she was unwell, and unable to come at that time. During the winter months she had put it from her mind; there was enough sadness, enough pain. She still refused to believe what was said about Gerry’s supposed collaboration with the Nazis, but she didn’t want to face the cold reality of it again in the office of some unknown solicitor. In the spring they had written again, hoping that she could come to London, and failing that, asking if they could send a representative of their firm. Margaret had urged her to go up to London, both because Charles needed her, and the fact of Gerry Agar’s death and its circumstances must be faced, just as she had had to face the fact of Lloyd’s death. So she went, and a dry, papery little man, with the common look of weariness that Londoners wore, told her that although most of the estate of the late Sir Gerald had been entailed, and passed to his sister’s oldest son, certain pieces of his personal property had been his to will specifically as he chose. To Nicole Fenton, née Rainard, he had left his collection of twentieth-century pictures.
Nicole had gasped, and the dry little man had peered at her over his glasses.
‘You’re familiar with Sir Gerald’s collection?’
‘I saw only a few of the pictures. The ones he had in London. I believe there were others in the country house …’
‘Indeed, yes. Well, they were there. Before war broke out, Sir Gerald had them all crated and sent to a farmhouse he owned in Wales. Very remote country, it is, I understand. Unlikely to suffer from bombing.’ He went back to his papers. ‘The list includes some by Pablo Picasso …’ He droned on through the other names, as if they were of little interest to him, mispronouncing some. ‘Leger, Braque, Klee, Matisse, Soutine, Gris, Modigliani … Miro, Chagall.’ For the first time he ventured a personal comment. ‘Sir Gerald had a rather peculiar taste in paintings. Now myself …’ He decided to forgo stating his own preferences. ‘Sir Gerald’s nephew, who also inherited the farmhouse, is willing that the pictures should remain in storage there for the duration. These are difficult times ‒ difficult to arrange the movement of such things. There is an elderly caretaker in the place, and since it is very remote, three miles from the nearest road even, it is not being used for evacuees. They should be as safe there as anywhere in this kingdom, I should imagine. There are some fifty-seven paintings in all. I have had a list prepared for you. It was compiled from the list made by Sir Gerald who himself supervised the packing and removal of the paintings. He journeyed to Wales himself and saw them safely installed. I haven’t had the opportunity to go there to ascertain that they are all intact, but I am assured the caretaker is a very trustworthy person. Sir Gerald’s nephew is willing, as I said, for the paintings to remain in situ, but naturally he will require a small storage fee. It helps defray the expenses of the caretaker, you understand. Now, of course, if you want them taken somewhere else, you may make arrangements …’
‘I’ll leave them,’ Nicole said softly.
‘Rather a nuisance for you,’ the man commented. ‘Such things are surely faddish, and cannot have much value ‒ though I do think that Sir Gerald paid rather a considerable amount of money for some of his later acquisitions …’
‘I wouldn’t doubt it,’ Nicole answered.
She completed the formalities he required of her. ‘Some day, when you are able to travel to Wales, I should be grateful if you could go and verify what is there against this list.’
‘Some time … yes.’
During the long slow journey back to Fenton Field, she thought of the events of the day, the moving little ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and the tears that had momentarily shone in Charles’s eyes. And now this strange and beautiful gift from Gerry of his most loved possessions, this legacy which surely must have sprung from that chance meeting that afternoon in the Tate in the summer before the war. The words went on and on in her head: ‘the summer before the war …’ The time that would never return again. She hadn’t, now, the faintest idea of what she would do with this legacy, but whatever happened, she was determined the pictures would be kept together, and in defiance of what the world believed of the way Gerry had lived and died, they would not be slipped into the anonymity of an auction house and sold. Somehow, in some fashion, she would contrive to keep them together, and they should be known as the Gerald Agar Collection. She hadn’t the least doubt that Gerry’s taste had proved unerring. Some of the names were already great, though unknown to the dry little man who ran Gerry’s legal affairs. The others, in time, would become as well known as Picasso and Matisse. It only needed time. They would stay in the safety of their Welsh fastness until this was all over, and then she would consult with the experts on how this great work of Gerry’s would be preserved.
She wasn’t aware of it, but in those hours of planning on the journey back to Fenton Field, she had dared for the first time to look into the future, some purpose shaped in her mind. She had some task other than the tending of children and animals; this gift of awakening, Gerry had also given to her.
Margaret noted the change in her face when she got back to Fenton Field that evening. She herself felt a faint repugnance at the thought of a legacy of this magnitude from such a person as Gerald Agar had proved to be. After the war, when it was revealed, when Nicole had to make decisions as to its future, all the old scandal of Gerry Agar would be revived, and with that, Nicole’s name must inevitably be muddied by association. But listening to the note of excitement, the talk of the future, she was grateful for anything ‒ even such a thing as this ‒ which would make Nicole talk as if there was indeed a future beyond the next milking.
The other task which woke Nicole to life that year was the need to find some way to help Richard. He had been moved to the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, and two operations had been performed. The sight in one eye had gone completely; in the second his only vision was of faint images, blurred at the edges, against a generally grey background. It was not enough, in the beginning, to allow him to successfully negotiate his way across a room. The
y told him he would learn, by experience, and as his confidence grew, to find his way around and past objects which he only dimly perceived. He would never read again.
He was discharged from the RAF, and he came back to Fenton Field. Potters was still used as a convalescent home. Celia was still at her post at Stanmore. Richard had curtly refused to allow her to apply for leave when he returned to Fenton Field. ‘I’ll have enough damn women hanging over me, won’t I?’ Nicole heard him snap into the telephone on the day he left the hospital. They were providing an ambulance for his journey home. There would be help and instructions from a teacher for the blind whenever it was possible to arrange that. That, and a total disability pension, was his last contact with the service except for the summons to Buckingham Palace to receive his DFC.
He sent Celia and Margaret. ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide copy for the newspaper sob-sisters,’ he said. ‘Nice tear-jerking sight. Brave officer with his white cane being led forward and having to be told which way to face so the King can pin the medal on. No thanks! Let my sweet, trim, efficient little officer wife do the honours. The newspapers can really wallow in the story of the brave little WAAF officer still gallantly doing her duty while her sham hero husband sits in darkness. The fact that she’s an Air Vice-Marshal’s daughter will just heighten the pathos. A family devoted to the service, through and through.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut up!’ Nicole had shouted at him. She didn’t care that Wilks was in the kitchen at the time. They were used to saying exactly what they pleased before Wilks. The war had made him and Henson closer to them at Fenton Field than Ross or Gavin would ever be. ‘I’d like to know who’s wallowing in what! All this picture of the bitter, blighted cynic just doesn’t impress me, Richard. What’s wrong with what Celia’s doing? Someone has to do it, and from what I hear, she’s damn good at her job. Maybe it is in the blood, even if she doesn’t like to fly. Are you going to make life hell for her because you’ve had something terrible happen to you? Of course it’s terrible. You probably wish you were dead. But as long as you’re alive, you’d just better settle for living. You see, we don’t have much time here at Fenton Field. We work. It’s dull, boring, dirty. We all look a mess ‒ but you can’t see that any more. All of us ‒ all of us, will be helping you in one way and another, Richard. The rest, you’ll do yourself.’
‘Listen to who’s talking … Why you ‒’
‘Yes, I know. Me. I’m no example to hold up. I let go when Lloyd was killed. I let go and thrashed and kicked so much about what had happened to me that I lost Lloyd’s child. I’ll tell you something, Rick. I’d give anything I’ve ever had, except Lloyd himself, to have carried that child, and had it born. I lost two lives then, and I was a fool. What I’m saying … what I’m trying to say, is that I made a terrible mistake. Perhaps it was inevitable that I would make it. I was thinking too much of myself. Probably we all do that when the blow first hits. I’m telling you, Rick … dear Rick …’ She stretched her hands across the kitchen table towards his, realized that he didn’t see them, and so forced hers upon his. ‘I’m telling you … we’re all trying to help you, but in the end you fall back on yourself. Let it in, Rick, let it in! Weep if you have to. Curse! Shout! Do anything but deny that it’s happened. Because it has … Nothing can ever undo it.’
‘God damn you!’ He stood up abruptly, jarring the table, upsetting his mug of tea, which spilled on to the floor. With a wildly thrashing movement of his stick, he made his way towards the door of the kitchen. Wilks reached it before he did, and opened it, Richard passed through, almost striking the old man with his stick, unknowing. They heard him slashing his way along the corridor, hitting the walls to the left and right.
‘Shouldn’t I go with him, Mrs Fenton? If he’s trying to go upstairs ‒’
‘Leave him be, Wilks. He will learn the way very quickly. He’ll learn to count each step. He has to. He’ll fall a lot of times. We can’t always be with him, every moment. And he doesn’t want it. Just leave him be. He’ll have to rage and shout and weep. He won’t ever accept it. He’ll just learn that this has happened to him …!’
She looked around the kitchen. ‘Now, where are the beans? I was going to slice them … I wish Judy would come in. She was going to do something to that bit of stew we have. I’d like it to be a bit festive for Aunt Margaret when she gets back. And Richard … when he decides to come down. I suppose there isn’t a bottle of wine …? Oh, I’ll tell you! We’ll bring up a bottle of Gavin’s Glenlivet whisky. I’ll write him an IOU for after the war.’
In the weeks after that Nicole and Richard fought bitter battles over the piano. She tuned it for him, forced him into the seat, and dared him to play. ‘Well ‒ can’t you do it? You never looked at the keys before. Can’t you find your way? Can’t you hear anything in your head that you know you can play ‒ just the melody? Oh, come on! Damn it, you’re a musician. What you can’t hear in your head isn’t worth remembering. Come on! Come on, damn you. There’s middle C. You can feel that. After that, the whole keyboard is yours.’
‘And damn you!’ he shouted back. ‘I haven’t laid a hand on the piano for years. I can’t remember a bloody thing. So here’s a middle C. What the hell am I supposed to do with it?’
‘Do with it? If there’s nothing else to do, then play the C major scale. Both hands. That’s a beginning.’
‘Me? Back to scales?’
‘Listen, Buster, as we say in the States ‒ at times we all go back to the beginning. So, go back.’
She didn’t know how to teach him. She had no way of knowing how to teach anyone who cannot read music. Each day she watched his more confident progress around the house, she listened to the careful, measured tread on the curving wooden staircase. Each day he gained some measure of independence, and had help along the way, whether he chose to acknowledge it or not. He had a curious ability to withdraw himself from the helping hand, to act as if it were not there, even when he accepted it. Mostly he suffered his dependence in silence. Wilks added to his formidable range of tasks by coming to shave and help him bathe each morning. Then that was left off as Richard began to get the feel of the razor against his skin without being able to see his face. The little dried nicks were the only evidence of his struggle. Everything took an inordinate length of time ‒ to bathe, shave, dress, and finally appear in the kitchen for breakfast, unaware that it was already eleven o’clock.
‘On no account ever say anything about the time ‒ about his being late,’ Andrew told them. ‘After all, what else does he have to do all day? My God, what is he going to do? There’s all the rest of his life …’
Richard had started to venture beyond the relatively safe confines of the house. Often Nicole saw him tapping his way with his stick across the stable yard, holding his face upwards if there happened to be sun. Always now, the black labrador, Nell, was at his side. She was only two years old, one of the dogs that had been spared, at Judy’s pleading when the war brought serious food rationing. ‘We have to have some dogs. This is a farm. Between us we can surely find enough to feed her.’ Nell had never become a working dog. She clung to the house and the people in it. She was not timid, but she did not want the life of the dogs who had lived in the stables. And now it seemed that she had found her task, her object, in Richard. Soon after he had returned from the hospital, she had placed herself at his side; in the beginning he had tried to reject her, as if she were some other symbol, like his white cane, of his blindness. But she refused to allow herself to be rejected. She stuck to his side, and it was her need for exercise and fresh air which first drove him out of doors.
Nicole would call to him across the yard, telling him about the horses, their temper that day, about the state of the tack. ‘That’s something you could do for me ‒ clean a bit of tack.’
He tended to turn away when a task was offered, thinking that it was done as make-work for him, and would have to be done over. ‘What do you want me to do ‒ start weaving bas
kets and making brooms?’
‘It would be better than doing nothing, wouldn’t it?’ Nicole shouted at him. ‘If you think you’re going to be a grand gentleman sitting around while everyone else waits on you ‒’
Their quarrelling was usually broken by laughter. Nicole, being removed from the family, was the only one who could bully him into some sort of acceptance of his situation. When time permitted, she would take a walk with him and Nell. He even allowed himself to rest an arm on her shoulder for guidance. Nell was close by his leg on the other side, instinctively nudging him away from any obstacle. She would talk of the things she saw as they walked. ‘You smell the hawthorn, Rick? It’s so white, and yet when you stand back from it, it’s got that marvellous pink flush on it …’
‘What are you trying to do, Nicole ‒ see for me?’
‘Perhaps,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s possible I’m really seeing them for the first time fully for myself. You’re lucky in one thing, Rick. You have seen things once. How does one describe blue to someone who’s never seen blue? And what colour is a sunset?’
A harried, middle-aged woman came to begin to teach him Braille. Nicole found herself learning also, so as to be able to help him. He worked hard at it, and his naturally good brain responded to the challenge. The response was that of a muscle left long unused. ‘I think I might, I just might, be able to do something,’ he said. ‘I’d begun to think I’d spend the rest of my life listening to the radio, or waiting for someone to have time to read the newspaper for me.’
The Lynmara Legacy Page 43