One of the Family

by Monica Dickens

  Since the ceremony of throwing the wreath on the river, Leonard, who was drawn to symbolic expression, had thought a lot about some more permanent token of remembrance. When the acute pain of grief began to recede, he was frightened of losing the memory of his young son.

  Photographs, which were all over the house, were necessary, but they had been taken when Dicky was alive, at various ages. The same urge to do something for him now that had sent Leonard out in a boat to the water-meadows last November sent him to talk to a stonemason who worked for Whiteley’s funeral department.

  The mason had carved a beautifully simple memorial plaque, a wreath of laurel surrounding the relief of a young boy’s head above Dicky’s name and dates. Leonard had hung the plaque on the brown brick wall that was the back of the mews houses at the end of the yard.

  Gwen came back from the Portobello Road market one Saturday with one of Dicky’s ruffianly friends, the hedgehog-haired urchin called Noah, who had accosted her perkily when she was buying bananas. She gave him one, and took him home to see his friend’s memorial.

  Noah stood in front of it, frowning and biting his thumb. He looked at Gwen’s corner flower beds and asked Leonard hoarsely, ‘Is ‘e buried ‘ere, then?’

  At one of the season’s last cricket games, young Mr Frank Whiteley, who was in the habit of walking up from Porchester Terrace on Sunday mornings, swung his bat and hit the tennis ball against the plaque. He was horrified. He apologized embarrassedly, but Austin said, ‘No, it’s all right, sir. It’s quite difficult to hit, so my father and I decided that it scores a six.’

  The symbol of loss had been suitably incorporated into the mythology of No. 72 Chepstow Villas.

  In the afternoon, Madge and Guy made the long train journey from Putney Bridge and turned up unexpectedly. Leonard and Gwen and Austin and Elizabeth and the children were finishing a late lunch. Flora brought up extra cheese and fruit plates, and Madge and Guy sat down, looking a little tense. They had obviously come to say something serious.

  When Flora went out with her loaded tray, Madge said rather nervously to her father, ‘I’ve got to tell you something.’

  ‘What? What?’ Laura clamoured, sensing drama.

  ‘Come along.’ Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at Madge, who nodded, so she lifted John from the high chair that had been every child’s from Leonard on down, and took the children up to the nursery. Laura could be heard protesting and kicking the stair rods. Austin shut the dining-room door.

  Madge was silent for a moment, her gaze resting on the faces of her mother and father.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Guy said in his abrupt voice, which he did not realize still bore traces of his enemy, the military. ‘Say what you’ve come to say.’

  ‘I have had a letter from Bella.’

  ‘Oh – where is she?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘She seems to be somewhere in Hertfordshire, where Owles is working on extensions to the Garden City. No, wait, Mother.’ She saw that Gwen was full of questions. ‘Let me tell you this. I’m afraid it may be’ – she looked at Guy – ‘rather difficult for you.’

  Her father reached across the corner of the table and took Gwen’s hand.

  ‘She sent me some papers,’ Madge went on, ‘about the baby. His baptismal certificate, some notes from a doctor and the matron of the home, that sort of thing.’

  ‘But why?’ Gwen frowned. ‘You mean, she’s not coming back?’

  ‘I don’t know. She said I was to give the papers to you, not to her parents.’

  ‘Hugo would burn ’em,’ Leonard said.

  ‘There is a birth certificate, which will be a shock.’ Madge watched their faces. ‘I did know, about the father. Bella had told me before he was born; but I wasn’t going to tell you.’

  Gwen put her hand to her mouth. Leonard said, ‘Oh my God.’

  Madge nodded, and Guy cut in, ‘She registered the baby as Hugo Tobias Taylor.’

  Later, Austin sent his wife and children home in a cab, but stayed to talk with the family at No. 72.

  ‘And suppose Bella never does come back,’ he asked his mother, ‘would you still want to keep the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know. Would we, Leo?’ Gwen turned to him, as she still did, from the habit of making him feel he had all the answers. ‘Today, after Madge had told us, I tried to see if I could recognize the devil in him. He looked the same. Placid. Adorable. But suppose he grew up to look like . . . ? I would never be able to forget. And I try so hard to remember not to let myself remember that moment in the study. Mr Brett, the surgeon, was halfway out of the door. I don’t want to have to go back and back and always hear him saying, ‘I think he may have killed your son.’

  Flora had not taken her afternoon off, because she knew that something was up. When she brought the tray with the hot-water kettle for Madam to make tea in the drawing room, her heart ached for the sadness there. She could have cut it like butter.

  Surprisingly, it was Guy who dared to say, when he and Madge got up to leave, ‘Last year, you could have killed that Taylor fellow yourselves, if poor Jack Haynes hadn’t done it for you. Am I right?’ When he threw out those brusque challenges, it was a statement, not a question. ‘None of my business, I know, but Madge has told me how much you all did love him.’

  ‘That makes it worse,’ Leonard said, ‘doesn’t it, Gwen? We feel guilty that we did. But I still can’t hate him.’

  ‘Good,’ Guy said cheerfully, resting on his cane, leaning a hip against the sofa back, ‘because that wouldn’t do you any good.’

  ‘The man was an impostor and a quack,’ Austin said bitterly.

  ‘But he did help quite a lot of people, didn’t he? What is a quack, after all? A dedicated amateur? A faith healer?’

  The family watched him cautiously. Was it perhaps all right, then, to let themselves remember that Toby had, after all, believed in what he did?

  ‘I hate the domineering medical profession – with good reason.’ Guy gave his sardonic smile. ‘I don’t like quacks much either, but they do at least recognize the right of an Englishman to go to hell in his own way.’ With Guy, you did not always know if he was making a joke, and if he was, you could not always see it. ‘Come on, Madge, it’s getting dark.’

  ‘No.’ Gwen reached out a hand. ‘What else?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I’ve said too much.’ Guy left the room, abruptly, as he often did, without saying goodbye.

  After the immemorial Sunday supper of sardines, cold meat and beetroot salad, Austin stayed late talking to his father.

  ‘That cranky fellow is right, damn him,’ Leonard said. ‘I did love Toby. He was one of us. I –’ His face crumpled. ‘I miss him. Oh, Austin, son, forgive me. Oh, God, I wish he hadn’t died! So horrible ... so horrible...’

  Because his father wept, and groaned as if he were in pain, Austin could not go home. He stayed in Dicky’s little front bedroom that had once been his own. Unable to sleep, he lay awake, disturbed by the old unchanged experiences of the boy he had been. Creaks from the landing, as it relaxed its sinews, his parents’ low voices in the next room. Running water and the clank and rumble from the cistern overhead. His father throwing open the bathroom window to let the steam out and the cold air in for the next comer. The gas lamp outside the window, hatched by plane-tree branches. The public houses were closed on Sundays, but after St Peter’s clock struck midnight, a few desultory drunks from somewhere came bawling down the Portobello Road.

  In the morning, his father was dressed and brisk, impeccable for Whiteley’s, no emotion, no trace of the agonizing tears. Austin still felt heavy-hearted from the night before. He could actually feel the weight of his heart in his chest.

  Outside the front door, he and his father shook hands politely.

  ‘Dad.’ Austin wanted to reach again the vulnerable man within the ‘Our Mr Morley’ exterior, already prepared for the street and the Monday morning store. ‘What will –’ He fumbled for the right words, and came out with a childish, ‘Wh
at will ever make it all right?’

  ‘This family,’ his father said. ‘This house.’

  Then he settled his top hat and went down the hearth-stoned steps, clanged the front gate and turned briskly left down Chepstow Villas.

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © the Estate of Monica Dickens, 1993

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  ISBN: 9781448206698

  eISBN: 9781448206339

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