The Hardie Inheritance

by Anne Melville

‘I’ll go and help Grace choose,’ decided Trish. There was nothing she liked better than changing rooms around, and for half an hour they discussed possibilities together. The morning room, which was the ground floor of the tower, would be ideal as a bedroom, but was too small to act as a sitting room as well.

  ‘No point in making up our minds yet awhile,’ said Grace at last. ‘It may turn out that a bedroom’s all she’ll need. Have you had tea yet?’

  ‘Not yet. Where’s Gordon?’

  ‘Finding out how to enlist. Don’t look so horrified! He doesn’t expect to be press-ganged straight away. He needs to know what the procedures are – and what choices he may have. I tried to suggest to him that the British Army might not suit him too well. I can’t quite see him saying “Yes sir, no sir” to someone he’ll regard as a stuffy Pom.’

  ‘That must have set him back a bit, when he’s come all this way specially.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I discovered that he can fly a plane – and make repairs to it, as well. He’s used to visiting his friends and neighbours by air where you might get on your bike. It’s not easy to get into the RAF, I don’t think, but he’d be better qualified than most volunteers and he might find it more congenial if they’d have him. He should be back soon.’

  Trish waited for him with a mixture of impatience and shyness while Grace and Jay made their second journey to the Infirmary. Would he want to kiss her again? Did she want him to? Yes, she did. It was odd, when she thought about it now, that neither Jean-Paul nor Terry had ever kissed her; although neither of them, as far as she knew, had any other special girl and each of them was in a way ‘interested’ in her. As for Rupert, he planted kisses on her forehead or cheek when they met and parted, but only in a cousinly way. Was Gordon treating her as an adult because he had not known her as a child? Or had she unconsciously given him some kind of signal that she was ready for a flirtation?

  No, not a flirtation. She was eager for something deeper than that, and Gordon had sensed her eagerness. She hoped he would not be too quick to disappear into the armed forces.

  He returned, by chance, only a few moments after his aunt and uncles came back from the Infirmary. David and Grace had gone straight into the house but Trish, watching out, was disappointed to see him introduce himself to Jay and accept the suggestion of a walk.

  Max had arrived as well, trailing behind the others. Trish saw his eyes brighten at the sight of the two long ropes which hung from a branch of the cedar tree. Originally fastened there for Dan and Boxer to climb, they were close enough together for a boy to grip one in each hand. Setting down his suitcase, Max gave a little jump on the spot and then ran with long, high strides before leaping into the air and grasping the ropes higher up than Trish would have believed possible. He swung his legs until they pointed straight up in the air above his head, and then pushed himself off the ropes in a somersault, taking pains to keep his balance steady after landing.

  She found his agility incredible. Even more extraordinary was the fact that he showed no interest in what he could achieve on the ropes or bars. Gymnastics was simply one kind of exercise to help him develop strength and balance. All he wanted to do was to dance. Though Trish did not go as far as David in disapproving of such an ambition, she did secretly consider it to be rather cissy. But remembering her manners as a hostess, she went outside to welcome him.

  ‘How did you get on with your exam?’ she asked. Grace had confided the situation to her.

  Max’s pointed face creased with mischief. He gave a little run and leapt into the air, his body turning while his toes crossed each other more quickly than Trish could count.

  ‘Jolly well,’ he said. ‘All my jumps went right. Where’s Boxer?’

  ‘Playing cricket. I’ll look after your case if you want to join in.’

  For the time being, she left it in the hall and took her sketch pad and pencil and a pair of scissors into the library. If Mrs Hardie were to need a ground floor room when she returned home, the library would be almost as suitable as the morning room, and far larger – large enough to be divided into two sections. True, it did not get the early morning sun; but there would be plenty of afternoon brightness. Since Philip’s death, nobody ever looked at the books which had once been Mr Hardie’s, for neither Trish nor Grace was a great reader. There could be no objection to moving some of them in order to make room for a bed.

  Indeed, perhaps two of the heavy bookcases could be turned at right angles to the wall to cut off a sleeping cubicle, with the wide space between them leading to a comfortable sitting room. The solid backs of the bookcases could be covered with some kind of fabric and used to hang a few of Mrs Hardie’s watercolours so that she could see them from her bed. After pacing out the size of the whole room, Trish sat down on the steps which were used to reach the highest shelves of books and began to sketch an outline of the room and cut out the shapes of furniture to arrange on it.

  So engrossed was she in the task that she was not immediately aware that Grace and David had come into the drawing room. There was a corridor running round the edge of the internal courtyard of Greystones to give access to each of the downstairs rooms, but every room was also connected with its neighbours directly by means of double doors. To reach the library, Trish had walked from the hall through the drawing room, and had left both sets of doors open behind her.

  There was a quarrel in progress. Even without hearing the words, the tone of the two raised voices told her that. Trish moved quietly towards the wide doors with the intention of closing them, but realized that the action would draw attention to her presence and perhaps make two angry people even angrier. The right solution was to make her way out into the corridor, but curiosity proved to be too strong. Standing still against the end wall of the library, she began to eavesdrop.

  ‘It only goes to prove what I’ve always said.’ David, in the middle of some argument whose subject she would have to work out gradually, was in a state of fury. ‘I can’t think what possessed anyone to give a house like this to a girl.’

  ‘I take it you don’t hold me responsible for that, since I was only one year old at the time.’ Grace’s voice was calmer, but icy.

  ‘But you have the responsibility now to take proper care of it. For goodness’ sake, Grace, don’t you know anything at all about death duties? Suppose you had died a month ago, and Mother today, do you realize what would have happened? The family would have had to find an enormous sum of money to pay the duty on the value of Greystones when you died, and then within a few weeks would have had to pay the same sum all over again. Since none of us has got that sort of money, or anything like it, the only way it could have been paid would be by selling the house. Is that really what you wanted to happen?’

  ‘It was never likely that I would die before Mother.’

  ‘That’s what wills are for, to deal with the consequences of the unlikely as well as the inevitable. Any lawyer would have told you what a mess you were getting yourself into.’

  ‘You were the one,’ said Grace – and she too was growing angry now – ‘who was concerned lest Philip and Mother should lose their home if anything happened to me. I promised that I’d guard against any danger of that, and I took the necessary steps.’

  ‘I assumed that at least you’d have the sense to take advice. You could have set up a family trust, for example. I don’t consider that you kept your promise in any proper sense of the phrase. I did you a big favour and I remind you that you’re still under an obligation to keep the spirit of your promise as well as the letter.’

  Grace sighed so heavily that Trish could hear it in the next room. When she spoke again the anger had gone out of her voice, which was low and unhappy.

  ‘This isn’t the right time for this kind of discussion. We ought not to be quarrelling now. I must go and find Trish and tell her.’

  Tell her what? Trish guessed what it must be, and could not understand why she had not realized at once.

  ‘Grace, Grace!’ she c
alled, hurtling into the drawing room at such speed that she might well be assumed to have only just run the length of the library. ‘How’s Grandmother?’

  Grace, who so rarely gave caresses, opened her arms in an embrace. No further words were needed to tell Trish that Mrs Hardie was dead.

  1945

  Chapter One

  ‘Is it all over now?’ asked Trish, coming late to breakfast. Germany had surrendered on the previous day and everyone at Greystones had listened to the radio all evening in the hope of hearing the official announcement of the end of hostilities. For some reason this had been continually postponed; but surely, with Hitler dead and Italy officially out of the war, there could not be any last-minute snags.

  ‘All over bar the shouting,’ Gordon, on leave after three months of training with Bomber Command, had also treated himself to a morning lie-in. ‘Churchill’s going to have lunch at Buckingham Palace. Due to make a broadcast at three o’clock. And then – when I say shouting, shouting is what I mean. What say you and I go up to London and join in?’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’ Often during the past few years Trish had wished, in a sort of way, that she lived in London. Obviously it would not have been nice to be bombed or to live in a house with all its windows blown out or to queue for rationed food and have nothing but that to eat at all. But for the past five and half years the capital had seemed to enjoy a very special atmosphere of romance and excitement. Compared with London, Oxford was dull.

  No one she knew had died in battle. Jean-Paul had been wounded and taken prisoner; but his injuries were not serious. Not a single bomb had fallen on Oxford and she had never gone hungry, although there were times when she sighed for the taste of an orange or banana or swore that she never wanted to eat rabbit again. In a sense she hardly deserved to celebrate a victory to which she had contributed so little – but to join the crowds might help her for the first time to feel part of the excitement she had missed. ‘I’ll go and tell Grace,’ she said.

  On the way across the hall she passed Dan and Boxer sitting on the bottom stair.

  ‘Is the war over?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Any minute now. You should be looking excited. Isn’t there going to be a party at school?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  Trish stopped, sensitive to their anxiety. ‘But what?’

  ‘What’s going to happen to us? All the other ‘vacuees have gone home already.’

  It was a question which deserved serious consideration. Trish knew that the boys’ only relatives, apart from Terry, were an uncle in Australia whose address no one could remember and an aunt who had lived next door and had lost both legs in the same raid which killed their mother.

  ‘I’ll ask Grace,’ she promised. She was sure she knew what the answer would be, but it was too important a matter to risk a guess.

  Grace, who took no notice of public holidays, was working in the studio, rolling pieces of clay between her hands in the abstracted manner which was always the prelude to a new piece of work.

  ‘Preparing a victory piece?’

  ‘No. Unless – I suppose you might say, this is what the victory is over; why it was worth while fighting.’ She pointed to a maquette on the work bench.

  Trish could see that the small clay figure had only just been completed, and knew better than to touch. She stared, startled, at the emaciated man, little more than a skeleton. He represented, almost certainly, one of the victims of the camp at Belsen, which had been discovered and liberated a few days earlier.

  ‘It won’t be a figure, of course, by the time I finish working on it,’ Grace explained. ‘I shall use just the rib structure, probably, as the basis of a shape. A symbol. I see it in metal. To give the impression of a cage. Do you think Gordon knows anything about metal-working? It’s not something I’ve tried before.’

  ‘I expect so. Gordon knows something about most things.’ But Trish’s voice was abstracted. The tiny figure horrified her, yet she was unable to take her eyes off it. ‘Grace, no one will buy it! How could anyone possibly live with something like that?’

  ‘It will be a piece for a museum.’

  Grace never discussed the commercial aspect of her work. Trish was aware that she was preparing for a large exhibition to be held as soon as the war was over; in addition, private buyers came to the house from time to time after seeing some earlier piece of work. And very often when Ellis came to Greystones he brought with him magazine articles which mentioned Grace Hardie in the same sentence as Barbara Hepworth.

  Trish found it difficult to believe that someone so unpretentiously hard-working could apparently be acquiring a public reputation. But as well as the indications that the work was admired, there were more material signs of success. Money, which had been a major anxiety when she first arrived at Greystones, seemed no longer to present any problem. Ellis’s contribution to the household and the Beverley money which had come to Mrs Hardie late in her life and passed to Grace after her death had each played a part, but could not by themselves explain Grace’s frequent references to her new affluence.

  The war made it difficult to find servants, either for the house or for the land; but when any became available, there was money to pay them. The still-modest nature of the household bills was caused by the shortage of anything to buy rather than lack of cash. Trish’s own college fees were paid by her father, but it was Grace who, without being asked, had discussed her need for a personal allowance and fixed it at a generous figure.

  So perhaps it was true that she was becoming important and producing the kind of sculpture which might be admired in museums. Trish studied the emaciated figure with a different eye – although it still made her uncomfortable to look at it.

  With an effort she remembered why she had come, and passed on Dan’s question.

  ‘What’s going to happen about the boys?’ she asked. ‘They’re worried about whether they’re going to be taken away.’

  ‘Of course they’re not.’ Grace slapped a new piece of clay on to the work bench and began to beat the air out of it. ‘They’ll stay with us until Terry is demobbed and can tell us what he plans to do.’

  ‘Will you invite him to live here as well?’

  ‘He won’t want that,’ said Grace confidently. ‘An ambitious young man, in my opinion. Doing odd jobs around the house here was a nice way of paying for hospitality, but he’ll want a place of his own, if I know anything about him. Anyway, as far as Boxer and Dan are concerned, this is their home until Terry tells them differently. Tell them that straightaway, will you, and I’ll say it again this evening.’ She laughed as though surprised at herself. ‘I never saw myself as a kind of foster-mother, but it’s nice that people want to stay on. I’ve already had Max here in tears.’

  ‘Crying? What about?’

  ‘Because he’ll have to go home soon. Mind you, it’s not me that he doesn’t want to leave; it’s his ballet class. He doesn’t believe that his father will let him keep on with it – and I should think he’s quite right about that.’

  ‘Couldn’t you invite him to stay on? I mean, since he and Uncle David get on so badly it might suit both of them, not just Max.’

  Grace shook her head. ‘I ought not to split up someone else’s family. And his mother will want him back, even if his father doesn’t. It sounds as though she’s living an invalid life these days, frightened of having another heart attack – and his brothers and sister have all left home by now. I shall suggest to David that it’s not a good idea to move him in the middle of term. That will give him until July, but after that … I feel sorry for him, but I can’t interfere unless David asks me himself, and he’s not likely to do that.’

  ‘I can see his point of view,’ said Trish. ‘It’s an awfully peculiar thing for a boy to want to do, isn’t it, dancing? And a very un-Hardie-ish thing.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s peculiar at all. As for whether it’s un-Hardie-ish –’ She laughed, turning her clay-smeared hands outwards for inspection. ‘Look at Jay
. And look at me. I wouldn’t say that my life has been exactly what’s expected of a young lady born into a good class of trade. You never knew my father, but he had the same kind of –’ She searched for the right word.

  ‘Enthusiasm? Obsession?’

  ‘Something more than either of those. He had to earn his living as a wine merchant, but what he really was, in his heart, was an explorer. A sense of vocation, I think that’s what it is. Something that I inherited, and so did Jay, and now Max. Each in a different field, but with the same kind of certainty and determination and dedication. So you might almost say that Max is more of a Hardie than his father, who merely earns a living.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about Jay. Yes, I suppose –’

  ‘I see great resemblances.’ Grace picked up another piece of clay and began to mould it between her fingers. ‘The same kind of self-absorption. I suppose it’s always rather selfish, this sense of vocation thing. You’re so sure of what is right for yourself that you don’t have much time for considering other people. It wasn’t so obvious in Jay as a boy, because his vocation was always to be somebody else, and that was amusing. All Max’s ambition is directed on himself. That’s probably why you don’t like him as much as Dan and Boxer, because they’re ordinary boys with time to be friendly.’

  ‘I never said I didn’t like him.’

  ‘I can tell. I expect he can as well, but it’s a part of that kind of selfishness not to care. I remember – She paused for a moment, perhaps to collect the memory accurately. ‘I remember very clearly something that Jay said when he first became aware of his own vocation. He’d have been a year or two older than Max is now. Happiness, he said, is when what you are is the same as what you do. He knew that he was an actor, but he didn’t know at that point whether he’d be able to spend his life acting. I thought it was quite a good definition for a thirteen-year-old to produce. I was in my twenties before I proved it for myself. Max has got there young. He knows what he needs for his own happiness, and he’s frightened that he may not be allowed to have it.’