Grace Hardie

by Anne Melville

  Kenneth looked at her across the cradle and the motionless baby. He was not interested in his new brother, any more than Grace was, as his anxious brown eyes appealed for understanding.

  ‘Pepper was an accident too,’ he said. ‘We’re all sorry.’

  Grace was unable to answer. She had begun to cough, trying to expel the heavy weight which was clogging up her lungs, and in between the paroxysms her chest heaved with the desperate need to snatch a breath. She had to hold on to the edge of the cradle if she were not to collapse on to the floor, and was hardly aware of Dr Sibley striding into the room, nor of Milly picking her up and carrying her to bed. Too much had happened which she did not want to remember. It was a relief when at last the day slipped away into darkness and sleep.

  Chapter Four

  For as long as Grace could remember, Sundays had been family days. As a family the Hardies walked down the hill to the church at Headington Quarry in the morning, and as a family they sat down to mid-day dinner when they returned. Even little Jay was allowed to leave the nursery for this one meal of the week. Grace had missed two Sundays while she was ill, and on this third one she was left at home whilst the others went to church. But she could get up for the meal, Nanny Crocker told her, and from then on could enjoy the holiday with her brothers as usual, as long as she was careful not to tire herself.

  It felt odd to be wearing shoes and stockings again, and to hear her starched petticoat rustling as she walked. Even odder was the sight of her brothers. She had not seen them for three weeks, and looked at them now as though they were strangers. The four elder boys had been made to wear their best knickerbocker suits, although the day was hot. Their hair was sleeked down with water, and they sat stiffly at the table as though afraid of spoiling their unnatural cleanliness. Jay alone was his usual excited self, bouncing dangerously up and down in his high chair as he waited to be served.

  The boys were not the only ones to appear restrained. Mrs Hardie looked pale and tired, whilst Mr Hardie silently concentrated on carving the meat instead of providing his usual lively comments on the morning’s sermon. Only when he had said grace and nodded permission for them all to start did the grave expression on his face relax into a smile.

  ‘We’re all glad to see you down again, Grace. Are you feeling better?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Papa.’ Grace looked down at her plate and discovered that she was not hungry. All morning, while the others were at church, she had wondered who would be the first person to mention the baby and to accuse her of hurting him. She ought to keep quiet, and wait to be told what had happened. But until she knew, she could not enjoy her meal or anything else. Fear made her sly: she approached the subject sideways. ‘Papa, what name did you give to the new baby?’

  Her parents looked at each other, and the pause before either of them spoke increased her anxiety.

  ‘He was christened Felix,’ said Mr Hardie. ‘But –’

  ‘I’m afraid he died, darling,’ said Mrs Hardie. ‘He arrived early, you see. He was very small. Too small to live.’ Upset, she looked down at her plate.

  So the nightmare had come true. Over and over again while she was ill, Grace had re-lived the moment in which she knocked the baby to the ground in a fit of temper, and those following moments when she had stared at him in the hope that some movement or cry would indicate that he was not too badly hurt. If he was dead, then it must mean that she had killed him. She could not pretend that it was someone else’s fault, because Kenneth had seen her.

  ‘I didn’t mean,’ she began slowly – but her father, speaking now with his usual briskness, interrupted her.

  ‘We’re not going to pull long faces about this, Grace. It was a sad moment when we had to say goodbye. But there are eight people left in this family to be happy together. Not to mention Pepper. Come to think, I haven’t seen Pepper around while you were ill. Has he been sleeping in your room?’

  Even until that moment, the big dining room had been much quieter than on an ordinary Sunday. But the silence which followed the simple question was of a quite different kind. It seemed that all the boys were holding their breath as they waited to learn what Grace was going to say.

  She looked round at each of her brothers in turn. All of them had been brought up to sit straight-backed and tall, but Frank held his head higher and more firmly than the rest, as though taking it for granted that he was about to be punished, and determined to accept it like a man. David’s chin was just as firm, and his black eyes just as steady, but there was a glint of defiance in them; he was not admitting to any shame. Philip’s expression held a glint of resignation. He had had nothing to do with the killing of Pepper but no doubt recognized that he was likely to be tarred with the same brush as the others. Even Jay was still, waiting anxiously to be told by his elder brothers what he should say. Only Kenneth’s eyes flickered uncertainly, and his mouth moved as though he were about to speak.

  There was a moment in which Grace felt anger rising within her as though she were about to be sick. The boys deserved a beating for what they had done. But no beating could bring Pepper back to her. Had she been able to see her mother immediately after the funeral in the wood she would certainly have poured out the whole story, but now there seemed no point in involving the grown-ups. She would punish David and Kenneth herself, by never loving them again and leaving them out of her bedtime prayers.

  ‘Nanny won’t let Pepper sleep in my room because he makes me sneeze,’ Grace said. ‘I haven’t seen him either. Perhaps he’s lost. Or perhaps he’s run away because he thought I’d forgotten about him.’

  How odd it was that she could tell such lies and at the same time feel smugly virtuous – and even odder that her parents did not seem to recognize the lies. Until today she had always been sure that they could tell when she was not speaking the truth. But now they were sympathetic, hoping that Pepper might return, offering to arrange a search of the grounds and of any outhouses in which he might be accidentally imprisoned.

  The boys, of course, knew that no search would be successful. They had all relaxed. Jay was busily chasing the food round his plate with a spoon and pusher. Philip was smiling in a friendly and relieved fashion whilst Frank gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval. David applied himself to his meal as though the disappearance of Pepper had nothing at all to do with him. Only Kenneth made her uneasy by catching her eye and winking. Did he think that she was trading with him, one silence for another? She had not meant it to be like that.

  The wink disturbed her. Instead of congratulating herself on behaving well, she was made to feel guilty again. Kenneth knew what had happened in their mother’s dressing room. What else did he know? Had her parents been telling lies in the same way as Grace herself? Had the baby really died just because he was too small?

  That afternoon Grace broke her best china doll, the one she was only allowed to play with on Sundays. She was not as a general rule interested in dolls, preferring to play with her brothers’ toys whenever they would let her. But since Pepper’s death she had taken her rag doll to bed with her; and on this Sunday afternoon, when she was told to rest for an hour, she climbed up on a chair to fetch Princess Anna down from her shelf and quite deliberately dropped her on to the floor.

  Nanny Crocker, unsuspecting, was sympathetic to Grace’s distress. She spread glue over the broken edges of the doll’s head and wound a bandage round and round to hold the pieces in place. ‘Leave her for a day or two and she’ll be as good as new.’

  ‘Really as good as new, Nanny?’

  ‘Well, very nearly. You’ll see a brown line if you look very hard. And if you were to drop her again, she’d crack more easily. There’ll always be a weakness. You’ll have to look after her. But tuck her up in bed now and kiss her better and you won’t need to worry any more.’

  Grace did as she was told, but the expression on her face reflected her troubled conscience. ‘Why did our new baby die, Nanny?’

  ‘Poor little scrap, he was
too small to live. No strength to take any food.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t exactly know. Two days he was here, getting weaker and weaker. Then Dr Sibley sent him off to the hospital, and that special nurse went with him. Your mother wasn’t strong enough to go too, but your father called in to take a look at him every evening on his way back from business. It must have been six or seven days later that we were told he’d slipped away in the middle of the night to be with Jesus.’

  Six or seven days! A cloud lifted from Grace’s head and heart. In her nightmares the baby had always been lying without sound or movement in his cradle after he had been picked up from the floor and tucked back in. She had been sure that he was dead already and that it was all her fault. But if Felix had still been alive when he was carried out of the house, and for a week after that, it meant that she had not killed him after all. Her father and Nanny Crocker must be telling the truth. The doctor had delivered a baby who was not as big or strong as he ought to be. It was Dr Sibley who was to blame. The relief was so great that Grace’s own strength rushed back, flushing her cheeks and filling her body with energy. Her breathing was no longer laboured, but smooth and easy. When Philip put his head round the door to ask if he could take her for a walk to show her something special, she bounced hopefully up and down to show that she was better and accepted without argument all the special instructions about not tiring herself.

  ‘What’s the special thing?’ she asked Philip, but he refused to tell her.

  ‘Wait and see,’ was all he would say.

  She skipped happily across the garden and through the rose garden and past the walled vegetable garden. They walked down the hill, through the long grass of the meadow, and skirted round the side of the glasshouse and their father’s plant room. Only when it became clear that they were making for the wood did Grace begin to falter and hang back. Philip took her hand. ‘It’s all right,’ he said.

  He was taking her to Pepper’s grave. Grace realized that even before they arrived. But there had been a change since she last saw it as a rough piece of earth, hastily dug and filled. Someone had tidied it up. A neat frame of grey pebbles outlined what had become a garden bright with pansies.

  ‘Andy got the flowers,’ said Philip; and when Grace looked up she saw the gardener’s son hovering amongst the trees, waiting to learn whether his contribution was approved. ‘And I did the name.’ He had used a hot poker to write PEPPER in uneven capitals on a piece of wood which had been placed at the foot of the grave. ‘But now we’ve found a proper headstone. It’s too hard for any of us to carve. But if you like it, we’ll all pay to have it done properly.’

  It was not really a headstone but a paving stone, which must have been left over from the time when the paths and terraces were laid near the house. It was too big – larger than the area of the grave. And too heavy: if it were to topple over it would crush Pepper beneath it. Except, of course, that Pepper was crushed already. Well, it would break the flowers which Andy had planted. Grace shook her head silently. ‘I don’t want that there,’ she said.

  With help from Andy, Philip dragged the big stone away. That left the grave looking somehow empty. The boys had been right to think that there ought to be a headstone of some kind – it was just that they had chosen the wrong size. It must be a shape which had some connection with Pepper as he had looked when he was alive. Pepper lying on his back with his four legs in the air, waiting to be tickled. Or stretched to an unnatural length as he stalked a bird and froze for a moment before pouncing. Or alert, with his ears pricked up as he waited to discover what kind of game Grace would play with him.

  That was it: the last one. The headstone ought to look like a pair of ears. Grace realized that her hands – as though they had a mind of their own – were tracing the shapes that would be right. Where could she find something like that? She frowned with concentration, and the answer presented itself like a picture in front of her mind. Leaning against the potting shed were some broken pieces of slate; just what she wanted.

  As she set off towards the gardener’s domain she met Frank running down. ‘D’you want to play with us?’ he asked. ‘We’re going to have a Zulu war. You can be the colonel of the regiment if you like. Or the Zulu chief.’

  Grace understood what he was saying. This was to be her reward for not sneaking on her brothers about Pepper’s death. She had observed the schoolboy’s code of honour. So not only could she play with them, but she could play as though she were a boy, no longer confined to the role of a nurse or a maiden needing rescue.

  For as long as she could remember – ever since she first became aware that she was a girl and somehow different from the others – she had listened to her parents using the phrase ‘Grace and the boys’ and had longed to be one of the boys. Now she was being offered the opportunity, but she no longer wished to take it.

  She didn’t want to be rough and cruel, always looking for someone to hit or something to kill. She didn’t want to be a boy and she didn’t want to play with boys. She was content to be herself, Grace Hardie: not one of a group, but someone on her own. Her only wish at this moment was to find two pieces of slate which were exactly the right shape to show that it was Pepper who was buried in the woodland grave. She shook her head, not even bothering to thank her eldest brother for the invitation, and plodded on up the hill.

  Andy, helping his father to pull carrots, heard the clinking of the slates as she sorted through them and came to see what was happening.

  ‘I want another one just like this.’ Grace showed him the broken piece she held in her hand. ‘With a point at the top. But sloping the other way.’ She wet her finger and drew the pointed cat’s ear shape on one of the other pieces of slate.

  ‘It’s broken already,’ said Andy. ‘Don’t suppose any-one’ll mind …’ He balanced the slate on the edge of a stone, put his foot on half of it and hit the protruding edge hard with a spade.

  ‘It’s nearly right,’ said Grace, inspecting the result. ‘A bit more round.’ Never in her life before had she been so sure what she wanted. Andy had to break two more slates and chip away the corner of one of them before she was satisfied. ‘Will you help me put them in?’ she asked.

  Half an hour later she stood back and looked at Pepper’s finished grave. The pebbles and the pansies and the two ear-shaped stones all added up to something that was complete. Nothing could cure her grief, but with one last sigh she cleared her mind of rage.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said to Andy. ‘It’s exactly right.’

  Part Three

  Aunt Midge 1908

  Chapter One

  Grace had always been sure that her aunt liked her best of all the family. In school time, no doubt, a headmistress had to be careful not to show any favouritism, but she relaxed this rule at Greystones.

  In the August of 1908, for example, two months after Grace’s eleventh birthday, Aunt Midge arrived – as she did in each school holiday – to spend a week with her brother’s family. For each of the children she brought with her a gift from Switzerland, where she had spent the previous month. All the boys received chocolate – thick rich bars for the elder ones and a hollow cow for Jay. Grace’s present was different.

  It was a clock to hang on the wall of the tower bedroom. A clock in the shape of a Swiss chalet, with an overhanging wooden roof and four painted windows surrounded by brightly coloured flowers. From it a thin golden chain hung down, and pulling the shorter end was all that was necessary to rewind it. Once every hour the double doors of the chalet opened and a wide-mouthed cuckoo sprang out to call the time.

  ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,’ it said as Grace was still staring in delight, for the unwrapping of the gift had been timed to take place just before three o’clock.

  ‘Thank you, thank you!’ Grace hugged her aunt in delight. ‘It’s the best present I’ve ever had.’ The best present since Pepper, she might have said; but she never nowadays allowed herself to think abo
ut Pepper.

  ‘We’ll put it up after tea,’ Aunt Midge suggested. ‘Are you going to take me for a walk now?’ It was part of the routine of every visit that after the greetings were over she should go outside to explore the grounds. ‘To blow London away,’ she would say, as though that mysterious city were swathed round her head like a scarf of smoke, to be dispersed by the first puff of wind.

  Grace nodded happily, and Jay announced his intention of accompanying them. He was almost eight now, and in a few weeks’ time would become a day boy at Lynam’s, just as his twin brothers moved on from there to boarding school. In his usual wholehearted manner he had thrown himself into the new role of schoolboy already. He insisted on wearing his uniform, with its dragon badge, even during the holiday, and pestered his brothers for hints on what he must remember to do or refrain from doing.

  Before joining his aunt and sister he hurried upstairs to change into sports kit, so that he could practise dribbling a football as he ran beside them. The jersey was a hand-me-down from his brothers, all of whom had started school at a slightly later age, so that the garment covered his hands and reached down to his knees. His thick fair hair had not yet been cut with the severity which the new regime would demand and he made a quaint, elf-like figure as he danced, rather than ran, through the meadow, chasing ahead to catch up with his football whenever it rolled too fast down the slope.

  ‘He’s very excited about school,’ Grace told her aunt.

  ‘I’m not surprised. In the houses around my school in London there are forty girls who must be feeling just the same excitement now. My next two classes of new girls.’

  ‘Don’t they ever feel frightened?’

  ‘I hope not. Not for more than a day, anyway. Wouldn’t you like to go to school, Grace? You’re going to be the only one left in the schoolroom.’

  ‘What would Miss Sefton do if I went to school?’