The Children's Hour

by Marcia Willett

  The quick-tongued, clever Henrietta torments Josie with her conquest but Josie, experiencing the agony and the ecstasy of first love, for once refuses to be browbeaten into second place.

  A tennis party sets the scene for a full-scale battle: Henrietta has avoided telling Josie that she is invited until the very last moment, guessing that it will be too late for her to go.

  ‘It’s not fair, Mama,’ cries Josie, near to tears. ‘My tennis things need washing and I haven’t anything to wear. She’s done this on purpose because she wants to be with Lionel on her own.’

  ‘Oh, honestly!’ Henrietta looks at Mama, round-eyed with amazement at her sister’s apparent madness, inviting her mother’s approval. ‘How can I be alone with anyone at a tennis party? And, anyway, it’s embarrassing, Mama, to see her making sheep’s eyes at him all the time. She’s just a little girl, after all. He thinks it’s a terrific joke.’

  ‘He does not! He likes me. It’s you who plays up to him, draping yourself round him—’

  ‘That will do.’ Mama, for once, is cross and the girls fall silent, biting their lips, waiting for her decision. ‘It was very wrong of Henrietta not to tell the truth about the invitation and I am almost inclined to refuse to let either of you go . . .’ Josie puts out her tongue triumphantly and Henrietta turns white with fury . . . ‘except that Lionel will already be on his way to collect you. If this happens again, Henrietta, I shall forbid any more parties, and perhaps, Josie, it will teach you to keep your clothes in good order. This time, I’m afraid, you will have to stay at home.’

  Henrietta flounces away, secretly overjoyed with her success, whilst Josie, frustrated and bitterly disappointed, flings her sister’s newly whitened tennis shoes into the slimy depths of the water-butt. In the row that follows, even Timmie is frightened and Nest is in tears. Finally, Lydia threatens that if Henrietta and Josie do not behave she will tell Lionel the whole truth about their shocking behaviour so that the girls, flung together into an unwilling confederacy, stammer their way out of trouble as best they might. Lionel, puzzled by their confused explanations, insists that, of course, they must both go with him to the party. Shoes and a tennis-skirt, he tells them with youthful confidence, can be supplied by his sister. Besides, he adds as if this clinches it, his mother is expecting them. Neither Henrietta nor Josie wishes to lose face before this innocent boy, who is just as charming to Lydia and Nest as he is to the two quarrelsome contenders for his affection, and, after this, the battle in his presence is waged with silent jabs and pinches or with furious glares, which slide into the sweetest of smiles when he glances their way.

  The feud continues, gaining impetus, and the two Tinies stare aghast when, at the height of their passions, Henrietta empties a teapot half full of the dregs of cold tea over Josie’s freshly set hair and, in retaliation, Josie slashes the skirts of Henrietta’s best party frock. Tears and shrieks rend the peaceful cleave whilst Mama pleads and remonstrates in turn. Much though she misses Timmie, Nest is almost relieved when the summer term begins and she is alone again with Mama.

  ‘We miss Mina,’ says Mama. ‘There’s something steady about her.’

  Fifty-five years on, Nest smiled to herself as she wheeled over the lawn and onto the gravel. Yes, beneath Mina’s warmth and apparent agelessness there was a serenity that remained unchanged even when it was challenged by grief or despair. All the family, at one time or another, had leaned against it and drawn strength from it. As Nest had this thought, Mina appeared from the open doorway, Georgie behind her.

  ‘Lovely news!’ she cried, making a fearsome face for Nest’s benefit which denied the loveliness of the news and made Nest grin privately. ‘Helena and Rupert are coming to see us. Won’t that be fun?’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lyddie telephoned the local office of the courier service she used, asked for her parcel to be collected, and began to pack the completed typescript, along with her notes, style sheet and the letter to the editor, into the publisher’s Jiffy bag, before putting that inside the courier’s special plastic bag. She filled in the form on the top page of a book of blanks they’d given her and carried the parcel downstairs. Ever since a typescript had gone astray she hadn’t trusted the Post Office and now she was obliged to wait for the delivery van. As she put the kettle on for a cup of tea, the Bosun watched her hopefully but she shook her head at him.

  ‘You’ll have to wait until he’s collected this,’ she told him, showing him the package – and he heaved a sigh and settled down outside the door in the hall.

  Lyddie huddled a little in her long green knitted coat as she waited for the kettle to boil. As winter drew on, her small room was increasingly cold – especially on sunless days. Perhaps, after all, some kind of heating should be installed; the electric fire was out of the question, with the Bosun keeping her company, but a radiator of some kind might be the answer. In fact, the whole house could do with central heating. There was a very efficient woodburning stove in the long downstairs room, which was kept alight for most of the winter and helped to warm the small house, but their bedroom, next door to Lyddie’s study, was very chilly.

  As she made her tea, Lyddie had a new idea. Perhaps the money from the house in Iffley could be used to install central heating. It would add to the value of the house and make their lives more comfortable; surely Liam couldn’t object to that? The kitchen was in a small extension at the back of the house, making an L-shape at the end of the long room, and the back door led into a tiny yard, which Lyddie had filled with pots and tubs of flowers. Now, she carried her tea into the other room where she could sit at the table and look out into this little area. The back wall and the wood-shed were washed the same creamy-pink as the extension walls and, with the chrysanthemums and hebes making a late, colourful display, it was a delightful little scene. In the summer, roses and honeysuckle climbed the wall and the wood-shed roof, but now, with November approaching, there was little left of their earlier glory.

  Watching the robin pecking up toast crumbs, Lyddie wondered why she felt this very real need to contribute – apart from her own earnings. Why not just put the money somewhere safe, when it should come along, and save it for an emergency? Wrapping herself more closely in her long green coat, her hands clasped around the hot mug, Lyddie allowed herself to look at the situation dispassionately. The truth was that, even after two years in Truro, she had this odd sensation of unreality. Just occasionally she caught herself thinking: What am I doing here? or had an unsettling feeling that she was waiting for something. Most of the time she was too involved in her work to be thinking of anything but the current typescript. Even with the lists she made, a great deal had to be held in her head as she worked, each and every line of typescript to be thoroughly checked for punctuation and spelling, every fact noted, so there was little time to brood on the state of her marriage. In one year she might work on thirty-five typescripts – the turnaround was very quick – so she couldn’t accuse herself of having too many hours on her hands in which to magnify or distort her emotions. Yet there was this strange sense of expectancy; that this was temporary and something else was going to happen very soon.

  Lyddie set down her mug and, pulling the long, soft wool about her, went to kneel before the stove. She opened its glass doors and began to lay the fire with some kindling and one of the firelighters from the box beside the log-basket. Soon she had a little blaze going and closed the doors so that the flames would pull up into a blaze. Sitting back on her heels she watched golden tongues licking round the scraps of wood, mesmerized for a moment by the curling, greedy fire, before standing up so as to wash her hands at the kitchen sink. She dried them on the roller-towel behind the door and went back to the table, picking up her mug again, frowning as she tried to analyse these sensations of impermanence.

  Perhaps this feeling of unreality was because of the odd life she and Liam led. It was impossible, with The Place, to live as other young couples did: making supper together; going out for a meal o
r down to the pub; booking seats for the theatre or having an evening at the cinema. She was beginning to realize that the glorious day when Liam and Joe could afford a full-time bar manager, so as to relieve them from their heavy work-load, would be long in coming. It was being borne in upon her consciousness that Liam, at least, had no desire to be free of his work: he loved it; it was his life. Because of her early readiness to adapt, to be content with spending evenings in the snug, she had allowed the future pattern of their marriage to be set. Yet what else could he have done? There was no bar manager to give them evenings off and – after all – would nagging have had any effect except to cause unhappiness and discontent?

  Lyddie sighed. The point was that she’d enjoyed it. Going to The Place after a long day of isolated concentration, sitting joking with Joe in the snug, eating delicious food she hadn’t had to buy, prepare or cook, was a wonderful change from that unhappy year in London after James had left for New York. How well she could remember coming back to the small flat, after a long day and a gruesome journey home, only to find that she was out of food and much too weary to go out again to shop, so that she’d eat some toast and mindlessly watch some television before falling into bed. It was her work as an editor and the relationships she’d had with her friends at the publishing house that had made life worthwhile. Now, she still had her work but it was difficult to make new friends when one either had to entertain them alone or take them to The Place, where Liam might – or might not – be available to sit and chat with them.

  At this point, however, she shook her head. To be honest, it was not really a lack of friends that she was missing – she still kept closely in touch with those few special friends and occasionally went to London to see them – it was this inability to come close to Liam that was beginning to affect her. It was as if his inner self were kept inviolate, unknowable, and, even for her, he was not prepared to make exceptions. His delightful charm, his wicked tongue and knowing eye disguised a secret personality, a depth that even Lyddie could not penetrate.

  ‘Are you sure,’ her closest friend, Caroline, had asked, ‘that you really want to do this? Oh, I can see that he’s drop-dead sexy, and he’s terribly funny, and clearly an achiever . . . but he doesn’t let you get too close, does he?’ And Lyddie, foolishly flattered to think that only she had access to the private Liam, had assured her that she knew what she was doing.

  Now, trying to be scrupulously fair, she reminded herself that the row over the letter had unnerved her, that these feelings of unreality – as if I’m on some kind of holiday, she thought – might simply be a result of the fact that this was an entirely different way of life. Thousands of people – hoteliers, restaurateurs, and those involved with tourism – lived in this oddly fragmented way and managed perfectly happily; yet this truth brought no comfort. The fact remained that Liam was content to go on exactly as he was, with no intention of allowing her more closely into his life. Her need to contribute was simply a desire to be included, to be involved; to break through his protective shell and force him to acknowledge her as an equal in this whole partnership. The row had pointed up her anxieties and it was difficult to return to that previous innocence; that belief that, soon, things would change: that a bar manager would be employed, she would be involved financially, and they would become truly partners, talking openly and freely, sharing their emotions and fears.

  The affair of the letter was closed and Liam certainly bore no grudge, there was no lingering resentment or coolness – but no progress had been made either. They were back at square one. Yet things had subtly changed: the honeymoon period was over but there seemed no clear way forward; all paths at present were marked ‘No Thoroughfare’. The difficulty was that Lyddie was beginning to be less able – less willing – to remain passive. Her instinctive reaction to consider Liam’s point of view, to weigh up his reactions carefully, was beginning to crumble in the face of her own needs. This insecurity – a result of James’s defection – was not a genetic part of her character and, beneath the fear that she might lose Liam too, her sense of fair play and her determination were re-emerging. More, a longing for his child was beginning to possess her, distracting her from her work, and, after all, might this not be the natural answer to their impasse? Perhaps Liam’s indifference to children, his reluctance to discuss the possibility of a family, was simply due to his obsession with The Place? A new mind-set was needed but how to approach it . . .?

  A ringing at the doorbell startled her and woke the Bosun, who staggered up and barked confusedly at Lyddie’s long mackintosh, hanging from a peg in the hall, before realizing his mistake. After a moment he came in and stared at Lyddie reproachfully, unused to having his sleep so rudely disturbed, and she picked up the parcel and hurried out to open the door.

  ‘When is Helena coming?’ asked Georgie, for the fourth or fifth time since the telephone call, and Mina answered patiently, ‘At the weekend, not long now.’

  ‘And don’t forget Rupert,’ murmured Nest wickedly. ‘Dear Rupert’s coming too.’

  In a corner of the sofa Georgie had already relapsed, as she so often did, toes restlessly tapping, shoulders shrugging, even her face twitching – now frowning, now pouting – as if she could hear a tune in her head, or, rather, as if she were having a long conversation with an unseen adversary.

  ‘Why adversary?’ asked Mina when Nest had propounded this idea.

  ‘Because she seems so fractious,’ answered Nest, after a moment. ‘You don’t feel that she’s enjoying herself but that it’s some kind of contest.’

  Mina had considered this. ‘That sounds about right,’ she’d said at last.

  Meanwhile, Georgie sat wrapped in her private world whilst Nest knitted the toys and small garments that she sent to the local Women’s Institute for their charity stall, and Mina did the crossword. The logs had burned into silky, ashy embers and the wind, howling up in the cleave, rattled at the windows and echoed eerily in the chimney.

  ‘Yes, Rupert’s coming too,’ agreed Mina absently. ‘Who wrote Of Mice and Men? Nine letters with a B in it.’

  ‘Steinbeck,’ said Nest. ‘The thing is that it’s rather easy to forget dear old Rupert, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Terribly easy,’ said Mina, still absently, busy writing in the word – and then, realizing what she’d said, glancing up, first guiltily at Georgie and then reproachfully at Nest, who grinned back at her.

  ‘Just testing,’ said Nest. ‘Away with the fairies.’

  ‘But not always,’ warned Mina.

  ‘No, not always.’ Nest put her knitting aside and yawned. ‘Bedtime. Would you like a hot drink, Mina?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Mina took off her spectacles and folded up The Times. ‘Goodness, is that the time? I’ll let the dogs out.’ She raised her voice a little. ‘Hot chocolate for you, Georgie?’

  Recalled from her inner world, Georgie looked up at her intelligently enough but Nest could see that, even now, it was still second nature for her to frame her answer carefully. There was seldom, with Georgie, a warm, uncalculated response.

  ‘As long as it’s not as milky as last night,’ she said. Her face took on the slightly fretful, faintly frowning expression that indicated that one had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mina sounded cheerfully apologetic. ‘Wasn’t it quite right? Would you like to do it yourself?’

  This was something of a challenge for all three of them. The last time Georgie had made herself a hot drink, Nest had wheeled herself into the kitchen to find milk boiling over the Esse, no sign of Georgie, and Mina’s favourite milk pan ruined.

  ‘Well, if you can’t manage to make a cup of hot chocolate . . .’ Georgie was struggling to get out of her deep, comfortable corner, mumbling complainingly to herself, whilst Nest had already gone ahead to begin the night-time preparations. Mina put the guard across the fire, collected her spectacles and her book, checked that Georgie had taken her belongings with her and shut the door b
ehind them all. The dogs followed her across the hall, looking forward to their last potter in the garden, and, by the time she reached the kitchen, Nest was already managing the hot drinks, observed closely by Georgie.

  Mina went past them, out into the windy night, watching the dogs disappear into the wild garden. Between the flying wracks of cloud, torn apart by sharp gusts, she could see the bright stars, whilst the music of the tumbling waterfall, cascading into the stream, joined with the roaring of the gale in the trees up on the steep-sided cleave, and, beneath it all, the insistent, groaning groundswell of the sea.

  Invigorated, refreshed, she called to the dogs, who appeared one by one, and they went back into the sudden hush of the kitchen. Georgie had already gone, carrying her mug of chocolate, and Nest was putting the pan to soak, Mina’s mug waiting on the Esse to keep it warm.

  ‘That was naughty of you,’ she said, bending to kiss her goodnight. ‘Saying that about Rupert. Very risky.’

  ‘I know,’ said Nest unrepentantly, ‘but, you know, Mina, there are times when I want to do something outrageous. To break out of this damned prison; to dance and run . . .’

  She looked away, the passion dying from her flushed face, biting her lips, whilst Mina watched her helplessly, knowing from past experience that nothing she could say would ease the pain.