The Children's Hour

by Marcia Willett

  ‘Was the difference,’ suggested Jack, after a moment, ‘that most other hoteliers and restaurateurs are in it together? It’s a common interest. They start it together, have their own roles within it, and their whole lives are bound up in it and controlled by it. You told me that Liam never invited you to play any part in his work, that he actively discouraged it, in fact. You got on with the work you’d been trained for, alone at home, and then used The Place purely as a wine bar every evening. I often wondered how you would carry on like that, to be honest. Where did children fit into the scheme of things, for instance? You could have only become more and more isolated. The hours are so antisocial – or, at least, antifamily – that I wondered whether, at fifty, you’d still be working alone all day and then sitting in a wine bar every evening whilst Liam lived his own life on the side.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Did you suspect that Liam was cheating?’

  He frowned, formulating his thoughts. ‘I had this feeling that he was playing a part. You know, all that gliding around chatting to the punters and putting himself about in that particular way he has – a kind of cross between a high-class major-domo and Peter Stringfellow. Sorry.’ He glanced down at her, pressing her hand with his arm. ‘I’m not trying to be offensive, it’s just that he is a bit of a poseur and a very attractive one, by the way. I can imagine that women really fell for him.’

  ‘Well, I did.’ Lyddie sighed. ‘I think you’re absolutely right. There was no chance of real family life, no weekends, no holidays. Perhaps that’s why, in this very odd way, it’s almost a relief. Not that it hurts less.’

  ‘No, but it gives you something to work towards,’ said Jack. ‘That it was, really, a mistake, I mean. You can hang on to that. I have to say that I did wonder if it was a bit quick after James.’

  ‘I’m beginning to lose my confidence,’ said Lyddie. ‘ “To lose one man might be regarded as a mistake”, et cetera.’

  ‘Absolute rubbish,’ he said. ‘What about third time lucky? I shall insist on vetting the next candidate.’

  ‘So you don’t think it’s wrong of me to give up on marriage to Liam?’ She was surprised at how important his answer was.

  ‘It sounds as if you hadn’t much option,’ he replied. ‘You’ve offered him a way forward and he’s rejected it. I can’t think what else you could do.’

  ‘You don’t think I should just go along with it?’

  ‘No, I bloody don’t,’ he said forcibly. ‘Good God, Lyddie! Don’t be daft. However much you love him, nobody could expect you to passively accept such a role. He’s put his cards on the table and you have to take it or leave it. Well, you’re leaving it.’

  She smiled, hugging his arm. ‘Thanks, Jack.’

  ‘I’m not sure why I have your gratitude but you’re welcome. Will you be OK with the Aunts for a bit?’

  ‘I think so. At least I shall be able to work. I’m glad now that I didn’t make Roger sell the house all those years ago so that I could have my share. He couldn’t have afforded, back then, to buy me out. Now he can and it will be very useful. It’s been like a nest-egg, all this time.’

  ‘You could go back to London, to your old job, or one like it.’

  ‘I have thought about it.’ She hesitated. ‘I need time to think it through. I can do that at Ottercombe.’

  ‘Nowhere better to recuperate than with those two old darlings,’ he said affectionately. ‘Look, if you take the way through the shrubbery it’ll take you round the outbuildings, back onto the path home, and it’ll give the Bosun a good run. Will you be OK?’

  ‘Of course I will. Bless you, Jack, you’re such a comfort.’

  He smiled down at her. ‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he told her. ‘Hang on to that. See you later. We’ll have more speaks this evening.’

  She watched his tall figure walk with long strides towards the sprawling Georgian building, saw the small boys toiling in from the rugby pitch waving to him, calling to him, and felt a huge love for him.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to the Bosun. ‘You can’t go with him but he’ll be back later’ – and she turned away, her hands in her pockets, her heart eased from some of its pain.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Nest was sitting by the fire in the drawing-room. It was a bleak and dismal November afternoon, a raw wind blowing the drizzle against the windows, and it was good to turn one’s back on it and stare instead at the comforting flicker of the flames. The dogs and Mina had gone down to the beach, despite the weather, and Georgie, tired after a morning’s shopping in Barnstaple, had gone upstairs to rest. It was good to be alone in this peaceful room, freed finally from the weight of the secret that had lain on her heart for more than thirty years; alone to think about all the things Mina had told her. Was it simply Mina’s skill at story-spinning that had enabled her to listen so calmly and, if not immediately accept this new startling evidence, at least be able to begin to come to terms with it without anger or fear? Was this how Lyddie might feel? Had Mina woven her spell there too? Never had Nest been so grateful for Mina’s gift. She’d spun the events of the past into a rich tapestry, threading each strand carefully together so that the characters emerged, vivid and exciting against the bright, familiar background of the cleave and sea or moving within the old house as if it might be yesterday.

  Nest looked down at the things she held in her lap: some photographs; an Easter card; the rosary. These were the only objects left behind by her father, except, of course, for his letters, which had been returned with these other effects. There had not been many letters between the two of them, twenty perhaps in all. She’d read them chronologically, remembering as she did so Mama opening his letters at the breakfast table: the flimsy sheets rustling as she turned them, folding them away in the envelope, and the way her hand had strayed to touch it as if reassuring herself that it really existed. Given their circumstances, the letters were almost shockingly indiscreet:

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ she’d write. ‘How can I bear this endless separation . . .?’ and his replies, which always began ‘My dearest love,’ and covered sheet after sheet with the outpourings of his love.

  ‘I am expecting your child and I feel nothing but the deepest joy. Oh, why am I not afraid? I am so happy . . .’

  There had been no question that she should leave Ambrose who, as luck would have it, arrived at Ottercombe a few weeks after Timothy’s visit so that there was never any doubt in his mind but that this was his own child. It was clear that Lydia, even for Timothy, would never have contemplated leaving her children and equally clear that he had never demanded it of her:

  . . . for what kind of life could I offer you, my heart’s love, which could give you the stability and security required for you and your beloved children. How can we take our joy at their expense? They are very dear to me and, if we harmed them in any way, our love would be dust and ashes . . .

  She answered him.

  . . . to know that this is your child gives me the greatest happiness, and I have your namesake too, your godson. When I look at Timmie I remember how we first met and you stood in the hall saying, ‘I apologize for arriving unannounced,’ and I knew that I would fall in love with you . . .

  Nest had been shocked by the naïvety and the simplicity of these letters: they were like two children standing in awe before this amazing gift of their love. At first, Nest had read avidly, gulping the words down hungrily as she relearned her own history; later, though, she’d been ashamed.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve spied on them,’ she’d said to Mina. ‘It doesn’t seem fair, somehow. They were so . . . so innocent, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I know exactly what you mean,’ she’d agreed ruefully. ‘I felt it too, but when Mama died I didn’t know what should be done with them and by then, you see, I’d begun to guess the truth. Towards the end she began to talk about him, to believe that he was here with her, and it wasn’t difficult to work out certain things. It felt wrong to destroy the letters without
quite knowing if I had the right. In the end I read them and decided that I should keep them, just in case.’

  ‘I’m so glad you did,’ said Nest fervently. ‘The odd thing is that, although I feel this kind of disloyalty, I also feel strangely proud to have been the product of such love. Gosh! That sounds a bit naff, doesn’t it . . .?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Mina said quickly. ‘It doesn’t at all. There isn’t one of us who wouldn’t have been thrilled to have Timothy as our father. You should be proud.’

  ‘I wish,’ Nest had said, after a moment, ‘that Lyddie could feel the smallest bit of that in her position. And not for any reason except that it would help her, as it’s helping me, to come to terms with it, to accept it.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that those thirty-odd years of love and friendship which you have given Lyddie will earn much more than her acceptance. It makes it easier too that Henrietta has been dead for over ten years. Perhaps that sounds brutal but it will be less complicated to adjust with her memories of Henrietta at a distance and it’s the love which counts in the end. Lyddie hasn’t got to choose or worry about disloyalty; she simply has to continue to allow herself to receive your love.’

  Listening to the wind casting handfuls of cold rain against the window, Nest looked again at the treasures she held. First, a photograph of Lydia and Timothy with seven-year-old Nest standing between them: one sandalled foot resting upon the other, with a rag-doll clasped in her arms, she watched the person behind the camera, her face eagerly intent; Timothy’s hand was placed lightly about Lydia’s shoulder so that she leaned slightly towards him, her hand on Nest’s head. He was laughing, encouraging the photographer, whilst Lydia looked at Timothy, her face alight with love. On the back of the photograph in faded ink was scrawled, ‘1941. Lydia and Timothy with Nest at Ottercombe.’

  ‘I probably took it,’ Mina had said. ‘Timothy certainly had a camera and he liked to take photographs. It was clever of them to manage it, though, without any of the rest of us being in it. My guess is that the others had probably been sent on ahead to the beach so that he and Mama could snatch the opportunity. You’ve seen all the others we’ve got with variations of us all with them. This is the only one I’ve ever seen with just the three of you.’

  Nest stared down at it, willing herself to remember the occasion. Words from one of the letters slipped into her mind:

  She’s such a darling baby only, oh dear, Ambrose insists that she is to be called Ernestina!!! At one time he wanted Timmie to be named Ernest, after his father, and then, to my delight, decided that he should be named for you. But now he stands firm. Such a ponderous name for such a pretty, tiny scrap of humanity . . .

  Nest tried to bring her father to mind but it was very difficult; he’d been such a distant figure, rarely at Ottercombe even after the war, and his death had occurred before she was fifteen. Yet she could still recall the presence of Timothy; that aura of excitement that clung to him, the security he represented.

  ‘But I can’t have been more than seven or eight when he died,’ she’d said to Mina. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can remember the atmosphere, I expect.’ Mina had smiled reminiscently. ‘When Timothy was here it was like Christmas, Easter and birthdays rolled into one. He was special.’

  ‘Like Timmie. Or Jack?’ suggested Nest.

  ‘I’ve often wondered how much Mama’s meeting Timothy, her thinking about him through that pregnancy when she was here alone with us, might have affected the child she was carrying. I know it sounds peculiar but I suppose it’s possible that Timmie was shaped by their love in some way, which in turn passed on to Jack. To be fair, it would have been easy to believe that Timmie was their child but you only have to read the letters to see that they weren’t lovers until the following year.’

  Now, alone in the quiet drawing-room, Nest passed her fingers gently over the battered photograph and looked at the second one: a portrait of Lydia, taken by the same camera and clearly by Timothy himself. Her tender look of adoration could only have been called up by him: beautiful, wistful, her lips curving into a smile. On the back was written: ‘Lydia – 1934.’ She would have been thirty-five years old. The last photograph was one with which Nest was familiar: Lydia sitting on a chair just outside the french window, her children gathered about her. She held the baby Nest on her lap, whilst Henrietta and Josie sat cross-legged on the ground at her feet. Timmie stood by her knee, Mina just behind him with her hands on his shoulders, and Georgie stood at Lydia’s right, rather as if she presided over the little group. Nest stared intently at each face. Lydia smiled out peacefully, one hand gently cradling the baby’s head, shielding it a little from the sun. Endearingly gap-toothed, startlingly alike, Henrietta and Josie grinned cheerfully, the small event engendering an unusual camaraderie. Timmie’s look was slightly anxious, a knitted soldier held up – rather tentatively – as though he hoped that it too would be recorded for posterity. Mina’s smile was warm, happy, clearly at ease; a contrast to Georgie’s almost censorious expression. On the back was written, ‘Ottercombe, 1936.’

  Strangely moved, sighing a little, Nest placed the photographs together and looked at the Easter card. Beneath a simple colourwash of the empty Cross, bathed in sunshine, were the words: ‘He is risen.’ Inside Lydia had written: ‘With love from us all at Ottercombe’, and each of them had signed it. Georgie’s writing was clear and careful, Mina’s looping and generous, whilst the two younger girls’ names were written in best school copperplate. Timmie had printed his name in shaky capital letters, twice as large as any of the others, and it was clear that Lydia had held Nest’s fist on the pencil to so as to make her distinctive contribution. Opposite the names and the greeting was a printed verse:

  The tumult and the shouting dies;

  The Captains and the Kings depart:

  Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

  An humble and a contrite heart.

  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

  Lest we forget – lest we forget!

  She wondered what significance these words from Kipling’s ‘Recessional’ had had for her father, and why he’d carried them, or was it simply that the card carried the love of all of his ‘family’ within it? As she pondered this, a voice spoke in her ear.

  ‘What have you got?’

  It was several seconds before Nest could control the violent shock and the crashing of her heart, so as to look up calmly at Georgie, trying to shield her treasures from that interested stare as she slipped them into the tapestry bag that held her spectacles and book.

  ‘Nothing much.’ She tried to keep her voice neutral. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  Georgie edged past Nest’s chair and sat down at the end of the sofa.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. Her gaze slid away from Nest towards the fire. ‘The wind is getting up.’

  ‘Mina should be home soon.’ Nest took some deep, calming breaths and then, quite suddenly, she relaxed. She’d forgotten that Georgie had no power to harm her now.

  ‘I think you can be quite certain,’ Mina had said, when she’d given Nest the letters, ‘that Georgie knows nothing about you and Connor and so has no idea about Lyddie. This is the secret Georgie knows. She’s read them too.’ She’d given a great gasp of relief. ‘Po-po-po. How wonderful to have everything in the open at last.’

  ‘Not quite everything. You’re not suggesting that I should tell Lyddie,’ Nest had looked anxiously at her sister, ‘not on top of everything else . . .?’

  ‘No, no.’ Mina had shaken her head. ‘At least, not yet. Maybe the day will come for that, you must wait and see, but at least we can both relax a little now. It’s you that Georgie associates with her secret, not Lyddie.’

  Now, Nest looked at Georgie with compassion; her teeth were drawn, her reign of power was over.

  ‘Do you remember Timothy?’ she asked quite naturally.

  Georgie looked at her slyly and started to perform that strange
bridling, shrugging movement, a little smile on her lips, her eyes sharp.

  Nest thought: She’s like a child who knows she has done something wrong, yet justifies it with this kind of ‘see if I care’ defiance.

  ‘I know a secret,’ Georgie said – and, from nowhere, Nest was caught up in a memory of a hot summer’s afternoon: she and Timmie conducting a toys’ tea-party under the trees on the lawn. Georgie was towering over the table and Timmie was frightened: she could feel his fear, running out through his hot hand into her own. Even when Mina appeared she could not restore the harmony; the happy atmosphere and sunny afternoon were scarred with the ugly stains of anger and cross voices and she, Nest, wept frightened tears wrung out of impotent helplessness and a sense of destruction: the foreshadowing of the transience of childhood and the loss of innocence.

  Now, more than sixty years later, she leaned forward and touched Georgie’s arm gently.

  ‘So do I,’ she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Walking back from the sea, Mina was experiencing an unusual blend of light-headedness and light-heartedness. The last few weeks, ever since Georgie’s arrival, had taken their toll – dizzy spells and a terrible exhaustion – in a way that nursing Lydia and caring for Nest had never done. It was odd that such mental stress should be so much more deeply wearing than sustained physical effort. Towards the end, Lydia had become very demanding in terms of sheet washing and running up and down the stairs dozens of times a day; she’d required carefully planned meals and a great deal of company yet she’d rarely been fretful, never critical. She’d loved to have Mina with her – ‘Oh good, you’ve brought your coffee up too, we can have it together’ – and she’d always loved Mina to read aloud to her. ‘Now, what is it this evening? Oh, yes, of course, Twilight on the Floods. Now, where had we got to?’ The television had tended to make her anxious, finding it difficult sometimes to follow accents, or any fast-moving action, although she’d adored any kind of costume drama and refused to miss a second of Wimbledon.