The Child's Child

by Barbara Vine

  26

  HOPE RETURNED home to The Larches that evening, though not intending to stay, and Guy and Elspeth came with her. Guy was prepared to tell Maud about Bertie and his dreadful end, but she interrupted him before he had finished the first sentence, said she knew what had happened and had no wish to talk about it. But to their surprise she produced a bottle of sherry. It was hard not to see this, poured into the best and seldom-used glasses, as a celebration.

  In their estimation, as it had been in George Goshawk’s, though he had said nothing, Maud had never looked so well or, in Guy’s rather old-fashioned word when used of a woman, so handsome. She was now a beautiful woman and must surely be aware of it, otherwise why dress with such care and paint her face so elaborately. It was a time—perhaps the first time in history—when ordinary women, not actresses or street women but working-class women and factory girls as well as those middle-class, wore makeup as a matter of course, powder and rouge and scarlet lipstick, coloured eye shadow and eyebrow pencil. Elspeth had never succumbed to the trend and Hope hadn’t begun, but Maud never set foot outside her front door without what Guy called her “war paint.” But whom was it for? Herself, it must be, Elspeth said, for Maud was now entirely without friends, unless Elspeth and Guy could be called friends, and this was their first encounter for a long while. Maud wanted no one. Jack Greystock had proposed twice more and been refused again, but he continued to bring gifts of food.

  Maud kissed her daughter when they parted and told her it was kind of Mr. and Mrs. Harding to have her and not to wear out her welcome. It was the last time Maud saw Hope for several weeks, which embarrassed Elspeth, who feared for the girl. She who had been adored by her mother when she was a baby and young child was now almost rejected, a burden and a nuisance when she was in the house. Elspeth tried to talk to Maud about it, the two of them on their own, but Maud only said, “If you don’t want her, why don’t you say straight out?”

  “Of course I want her, Maud. I love her. She has become part of our family, but I think she needs you.” Elspeth didn’t add that Hope was afraid that if she came back to The Larches more often than she did, Maud would tell her she wasn’t wanted. It was a real fear. Hope told Elspeth, in the frankest confidence she had ever made to her, that if her mother refused to let her in, it would break her heart. Without the Hardings and their children, Hope would have been a lonely adolescent, unable to understand what she had done to make her mother reject her.

  “I suppose she has come to blame her for existing.” Elspeth said that while once Maud had felt that Hope had transformed her life, bringing her her best happiness, Maud now saw her as ruining it. Without her, where might Maud have been now? A university graduate, a teacher perhaps, married to a wealthy man and with a family of children.

  “But does she really feel like that?” Guy asked.

  “Who knows?” Elspeth said. “She will never say. Would it have been different if John had lived?”

  “Only if she could have accepted him for what he was.”

  “She would never have done that.”

  THEY WERE quiet times in the countryside, those later years of the war. For Hope there was school and a few friends, including the Rosemary Maud had refused to have in the house but Elspeth welcomed. For Maud one thing only had changed, and this was enormous. Hope was nearly fifteen, the age at which her mother had conceived and given birth to her. Something Maud said to her around the time she turned fifteen frightened Hope more than anything Maud had ever said to her before.

  “You should cut off that hair of yours.” Not “your hair” but “that hair of yours.” “You should let it go back to its natural colour too. You’ve been bleaching it, I can tell.” A few hours later, she peered into Hope’s eyes, said, “You can’t see very well, can you? You get that from my mother, she was shortsighted. We shall have to see about glasses for you.”

  Hope told Elspeth, and Elspeth, who tried never to criticise Maud to her daughter, told Hope to take no notice but she could have an eye test if she liked. When they were alone, Elspeth said to Guy that she wondered if Maud had said that because she feared competition from Hope, who had quickly become so beautiful. “And I’ve wondered,” Guy said, “if Hope reminds her too much of her father. If, say, she sees the child’s father every time she looks at her. Of course we’ve no idea what he looks like.”

  Alicia Brown invited Hope to come to stay at Dartcombe Hall in the summer holidays and again the following spring. Christian, down from Oxford for the last time, had a first in modern history and was going into the navy. Hope was nearly as tall as he and undeniably beautiful, but to Alicia she was still a little girl, lucky enough to have been taken up—practically adopted—by those kind Hardings, and because of her nice manners and helpfulness, a welcome guest in her own house. Her son was a man now and would look on Hope as a child. Alicia was unaware of the kisses Christian gave Hope and she gave him in the twilight garden before he left for his ship at Portsmouth.

  The following summer Hope passed her School Certificate examination with two “distinctions,” four “credits,” and two passes. These successes meant she could proceed into the sixth form and prepare to take her Higher Certificate in two years’ time. If Maud noticed her child’s achievement, she made no comment on it to Hope herself. But she must have been aware that while her daughter had seemed to follow in her mother’s footsteps, she was now well past the age when Maud herself had come to the end of her childhood, her youth, and her education by becoming pregnant. Hope was set to go on to higher education and, while at Reading or Exeter, perhaps meet some suitable young man, very different from Ronnie Clifford.

  But if Maud thought in these terms, she talked about it to no one. It was now years since she had had any contact with her family in Bristol, if they were still in Bristol, if her mother was still alive. That Sybil was still in what Maud called “the land of the living” she knew, for a card came regularly at Christmas with her sister’s Christian name signed under a sentimental verse. Maud herself had sent Christmas cards while John was still with her, no more than half a dozen, but still they were sent and signed by both of them as if they had really been husband and wife.

  27

  AFTER A few months the anonymous letters ceased. Some neighbours and people in the village still turned away their heads when they passed Maud in the street, some women still turned their backs. But Elspeth Harding remained loyal to her, a good friend, and Jack Greystock the farmer was still her admirer.

  The events that happen in families happened, beginning with a death, Mary Goodwin’s. The news was brought to Maud in a cold letter from her sister Ethel, who told her when and where the funeral was to be. Maud’s usual reaction to news of someone she had heard nothing of for a long time was to remind herself of the injuries, real or imagined, that man or that woman had done her in the past. In the case of her mother, these were many. Resentment replaced indignation in her mind and sullenness resentment. They need not any of them think that she would turn up at that funeral. Her bad temper vented itself on Hope, now seventeen and with a place awaiting her at the University of Reading. Hope had also had a letter, but hers was from Christian Imber, now applying himself to the study of law in London. It was the most recent of many letters, all of which she kept from her mother, knowing that any mention of them would bring denunciations of the whole Imber-Brown family from Maud.

  But Maud had picked up this letter from the doormat before Hope could forestall her—shades of the days of John and Bertie—and recognised Christian’s hand. “I’m surprised he bothers with you considering all the beautiful girls he must meet in London.” Did Maud never see her lovely daughter? Or did she see too much? “Unless he’s unlike the rest of his family, he can’t be doing it out of kindness.”

  Hope made no comment on this. She was going to spend the coming weekend in London with Christian in a hotel in Kensington, her preparations including equipping herself with a wedding ring and telling Maud she would be staying
with Rosemary’s family in the Cornish village of Lostwithiel. Maud had romantic plans of her own or, rather, plans for the denial yet again of romance. Jack Greystock was coming for a glass of sherry at six o’clock, his excuse for the visit (and hers) to bring her half a dozen eggs, a capon, and two jars of his mother’s damson jam. He asked her to marry him about twice a year, and she calculated that the six months was up. They had become as near to being friends as Maud would allow with anyone apart from Elspeth, but once Jack had handed over what he called the “provisions” and she had thanked him, they had little to say to each other. They drank their sherry and each had a second glass. He said he was in love with her, but Maud doubted it. What was he in love with? Her looks, of course. She looked in the glass and saw that at thirty-three she was better looking than ever, her face and figure that sort of ideal that would be particularly attractive to a Devonshire yokel (the way she thought of him)—blond, blue-eyed, regular-featured, with an hourglass figure, high-instepped feet, and shapely legs.

  He had a lot of money. The farmhouse was commodious and well cared for. That would have amounted to nothing from her point of view if his mother had lived with him. But she lived in a big and pretty thatched cottage some hundred yards away, where she made her jams and scalded her clotted cream and pickled her eggs. Maud was comfortable, but she was well aware that she had a fixed income which might not look so flourishing in ten or twenty years’ time. She sat silent and patient, waiting for Jack to ask her to marry him, prefacing the proposal as he always did with “You know I’m crazy about you, don’t you?”—delivered in a stiff, steady voice as if he had had to learn the words by heart.

  But he didn’t ask. This time there was no proposal. He neither said he was crazy about her nor asked her to marry him. Maybe the six months wasn’t quite up. Maud tried to check it out after he had gone. Now it was September and last time he had proposed had been March. She knew it was March because Elspeth’s birthday was in March and it had been the day after her birthday. Perhaps he was never going to propose again. Maud led such a routine-driven, steady life that she disliked anything’s happening to disturb this regularity, though if he had proposed, she had intended to disturb it herself. She had been going to say that she didn’t know, but she would like to think about it.

  Denied this chance, she got out the file where she kept bank statements; studying them, she wondered with increasing fear why her financial situation had throughout those years since John’s death seemed so satisfactory. Now, though it was unchanged, she saw poverty returning and a destitute old age. Jack Greystock was her only hope.

  Did she want to marry him? She wanted more money and freedom from worry. Something had to occur in her life that would push her over the edge into accepting him. She knew that, she knew herself well enough for that. But nothing much was likely to happen to her, it was so long now since anything had.

  HOPE HAD behaved badly. She knew she was behaving badly and she did it on purpose, refusing to take the obvious step to prevent it. It was revenge on her mother for neglecting her. The odd part of it was, perhaps, that until she knew what had happened, she failed to realise the similarity it would have to Maud’s own experience. No one was told except Christian. Neither of them quite foresaw the extent of Maud’s rage when Hope told her. If he had had the slightest idea of how Maud could react—if he had been aware, for instance, of how she had leapt from her seat and screamed at her sister when a suggestion was made of the then favourite Hope’s exclusion from a family gathering—he would have taken care to be present at Hope’s disclosure, not a few miles away making his own confession at Alicia Brown’s house in Dartcombe.

  It would hardly have occurred to Hope to let her mother discover the fact for herself, walking into her bedroom while her daughter was dressing, as Mary Goodwin had done. For the first time in a fortnight she had slept the previous night in her bedroom at The Larches, and she came down next morning at a little after nine.

  “You’re very late,” said Maud. She was sitting at the table, observing her customary habit of eating quarter slices of toast with her left hand while using her right for the sipping of tea. “You’re here so seldom that I suppose you’d forgotten we’re early risers in this house.”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “I suppose I have to put up with it.”

  The tea was cold. Hope was used to drinking coffee at breakfast at River House, but she made a second pot of tea and brought her mother some in a fresh cup and one for herself. Maud thanked her in a preoccupied tone. She wasn’t looking at a newspaper—there wasn’t one—or reading a book, as her daughter had been told not to do at table, but thinking as she did a lot these days about Jack Greystock and what was to be done about him. He must long ago have heard the rumours about her past, the circulating tales of Bertie Webber, and the speculations as to what her true relation to John had been, not to mention her having given birth at only fifteen—or had they only reached him between his last proposal and the due date of the one that never came? She was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she was barely aware that Hope was speaking to her.

  “Yes, what did you say?”

  “I said I had something to tell you.”

  If it had occurred to Maud that her daughter hardly ever called her Mother these days, let alone Mummy, which had once been usual and sweet to her ears, or by any name, she never remarked on it. “Yes, all right, what is it?”

  “When someone’s going to give you a shock, have you noticed how they ask you if you’re sitting down? It’s as if they think maybe you’ll faint or collapse or something.”

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maud stood up as if she had known what Hope meant but was determined to defy it. “What is this something you’ve got to tell me.”

  “You’re not sitting down, but never mind. I want to tell you something that’s bound to give you a shock.” Hope took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”

  Maud sat down. She sat heavily like a woman twice her weight. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I really did say that. I’m pregnant, I’m going to have a baby.”

  Maud behaved exactly as she had when Sybil had told her that if she came to see her father, she should leave the child behind. She jumped up, let out a loud scream, and shouted, “I don’t believe it, it’s not true. You’re lying, you want to kill me.”

  Hope also had got to her feet, and Maud, who had never before done violence to anyone, threw herself on her. Slapping her face and seizing her by the shoulders, Maud began to shake her, shouting all the while that her daughter was lying, that she was making it up. But Hope was taller and much stronger than her mother. She grasped Maud’s hands and forced her arms down by her sides, turning her face away until she felt Maud grow limp and weak and collapse into her chair in gushes of tears.

  “Well, I’m going to have a baby,” said Hope, “just like you had me, only I’m two years older than you were. You see, I do know your real age. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I think I’ve got more sense than you.”

  The almost mechanical response to that was “How dare you speak to me like that.”

  “Well, as you see, I do dare. Christian Imber is the father, by the way.”

  “What do you mean ‘by the way’?”

  “I thought you might want to know that vital fact. Children are quite keen on knowing who their fathers are, in case that fact has escaped your notice.”

  This time Maud said nothing about Hope’s lack of respect, but Maud seemed to have forgotten the treatment she had received from her own parents in a like situation. “You can’t stay here,” she shouted. “I’ve had enough disgrace, none of it my own fault, and I’m not having you bring more on me. I knew those Imbers would ruin me, I knew it the first day I met that woman.”

  Hope had sat down. She had moved from her chair onto the sofa and put her feet up. She was waiting for her mother to tell her that although Maud hated Christian (as an Imber)
, he would have to marry Hope. If anyone had told her she would one day enjoy getting revenge on her mother, Hope would never have believed it. She wasn’t that sort of person, but perhaps she was. But Maud said nothing of that. She ran upstairs, encountered the openmouthed Enid Biddle plying the carpet sweeper on the landing, and stormed into her bedroom. When Maud came down again, she was wearing the last outfit she had bought before clothes rationing began and a hat Hope had never before seen. She didn’t ask her mother where she was going. Hope knew and knew too that it would be pointless to try to stop her.

  It was a warm day, but Maud arrived at the front door of River House in a pale blue tailored suit, a maroon felt hat, and maroon suede shoes with high heels. She was so dressed up that Elspeth, in answering the door, thought for a moment that one of them had mistaken the date and Maud had come to lunch or even a party. The illusion lasted only seconds, for Maud, marching in, began shouting that Elspeth and Guy—she addressed them as Mr. and Mrs. Harding—had led her daughter astray, corrupted her morals, and contrived that Hope and Christian share a bed in their house. Where else could “the deed” have been done? No doubt, Maud had forgotten the meadows behind the Bristol home of her parents. When Guy appeared and asked what was going on, she called him “a pimp,” a word the Hardings were amazed she even knew.

  Her rant continued for some time, growing more and more hysterical, until she had taken herself into the drawing-room and begun picking up small ornaments, books, and cushions and hurling them across the room. Fortunately, all but a rather nice little piece of Royal Copenhagen were unbreakable. When Elspeth made a mild effort to restrain Maud, she struck out, landing a glancing blow on Elspeth’s cheek. Guy stepped in and got Maud onto a sofa, forcing her to sit down. Rage broke into cries and sobs, which subsided when Guy held a small glass of brandy to her lips. It was rather late in the day, a good half hour after all this had begun, that Maud was in a fit state, though tearstained and hiccupping, to understand that neither of the Hardings had the least idea what she had been talking (or, rather, screaming) about.