‘Well, then,’ said Sophie, with a glance at Belle. ‘I’ll leave you two alone for a while.’
Belle sat beside her mother in the corridor, feeling exhausted, and strangely nervous. She’d slept badly, waking often to the sound of the tree-ferns tapping on the louvres, and the north wind whistling through the house. When at last she’d fallen into a fitful sleep, she’d had the old nightmare. She was back in Papa’s study, and he didn’t know who she was.
‘Belle?’
She gave a start.
Mamma had risen to her feet, and was looking down at her curiously. ‘Dr Walpole says we may go in.’
Her father lay in a bed by the window. Through the louvres, slatted light gilded his fair head. He was only a little greyer at the temples than Belle remembered, and he didn’t look ill at all. Just a narrow strip of bandage across the forehead, and the strapping across the ribs showing at the neck of his nightshirt. The hand that lay on the coverlet looked as tanned and strong as ever.
Mamma went to the side of the bed by the window and pulled up a stool, leaving Belle the chair on the other side. Belle’s nervousness increased as she went forward and sat down, and took his hand.
Seven years, and now here she was, holding his hand. It felt warm and strong. When she touched the thick, raised vein on the back, she felt the blood pulsing beneath the skin.
Sadness welled up in her throat. This hand had picked her up when she’d fallen off her swing; it had dried her tears when Pilate the horse had trodden on her foot. This hand had helped her buckle the collar on her mastiff puppy, and held her upright when she sat her pony, Muffin, for the very first time.
As the tears rolled down her cheeks, she felt at last that she was home. How could she have stayed away so long?
After a while he turned his head, and his eyebrows drew together in a frown. Then he opened his eyes and gazed up at her.
Belle saw with a surge of joy that the light grey eyes were as bright and clear as ever. She pressed his hand. ‘Papa,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me. Belle.’
‘Belle?’
Through her tears she tried to smile. ‘Yes, Papa. Belle. Your daughter.’
The frown deepened. ‘But – you’re not my daughter,’ he said. ‘Who are you? You’re not my little girl.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘Just give him time,’ Ben told her as they walked on the lawns at Fever Hill. ‘The man’s recovering from a head wound. That does things to you. God knows, when I first came round, I didn’t even know who I was.’
Belle did not reply. After several days of drifting in and out of consciousness, Papa had finally rallied, and been pronounced out of danger. But she hadn’t been back to see him. She couldn’t bear it if he still didn’t know who she was.
‘Besides,’ said Ben, ‘in a way he was right, wasn’t he? You’re not his little girl any more.’
She threw him a startled glance.
‘You’re grown up, love. Funny thing is, it’s only happened over the past few months.’
‘What do you mean?’
He studied her, his eyepatch making him look more like a pirate than ever. ‘Something about you. A new assurance? Being out in France did you good. It’s as if at last you seem to know who you are.’
‘And I didn‘t before?’
‘What, all those years in London?’ He barked a laugh. ‘Not a chance! You were like a frightened little girl trying on disguises.’
His shrewdness took her aback. But even if he was right . . . ‘I just wish,’ she said, ‘that Papa had known who I was.’
‘He will. Just give him time.’
Two days later, she let Ben persuade her to try again.
‘In fact,’ he said as he handed her out of the motor, ‘you’re doing me a favour. Sophie’s been on at me to visit him, and I’ve been putting it off. Never liked hospitals at the best of times.’
She knew he was only saying that to make her feel better. And she wished that she wasn’t shaking so hard.
Ben pretended not to notice, and almost before she realized it they were at the bedside.
Papa was asleep. He looked the same as he had when she’d last seen him: not ill at all.
Her stomach tightened.
He opened his eyes and studied her for a moment. ‘My God, but you’ve changed.’
Belle swallowed.
Papa’s mouth curled in the almost-smile that was habitual with him. ‘I was always glad that you were so dark. Like your mother.’
Belle’s eyes began to sting. Behind her, she heard Ben get to his feet and leave the room.
She took her father’s hand. ‘How do you feel, Papa?’
He frowned slightly. ‘Oh, no tears, Belle. Please. Never could bear to see a woman cry.’
She nodded, and fumbled for her handkerchief.
‘I’m told,’ he began, ‘that on your first visit, I didn’t know who you were.’
‘Doesn’t matter now,’ she sniffed.
‘Of course it does. It’s just – you look so different. So grown-up and sophisticated.’
Belle tried to smile. Since she’d arrived in Jamaica, she’d made a conscious effort to tone down her make-up and her London grooming, so as to avoid disconcerting her mother. The fact that her father still found her ‘sophisticated’ was touching. But it also emphasized the gulf between them.
She thought about her life in London. About Osbourne and the influenza, and Cairngowrie and Adam. There was so much that Papa didn’t know.
With a pang she realized that even though he recognized her now, he still didn’t really know who she was. She had stayed away too long.
The following month, Papa came home. Dr Walpole allowed it on the strict understanding that he was to get out of bed for no more than two hours every afternoon, and then only to sit on the verandah for a change of scene.
‘Change of scene?’ growled Papa when Dr Walpole was barely out of earshot. ‘What the devil does he mean? Our bedroom looks out onto the verandah, the view’s exactly the same. If he wants me to have a change of scene, he should let me go and visit the works.’
He would have done so, too, if Mamma hadn’t put her foot down.
Once he was back, Eden became a hub of activity, with Ben and Sophie visiting daily, as well as friends and well-wishers from all over the Northside calling to pay their respects. Belle felt like an onlooker caught up in someone else’s family gathering on false pretences.
Eventually she couldn’t take it any longer, and moved out to stay with Ben and Sophie at Fever Hill, citing its proximity to Burntwood Sanatorium as an excuse.
The weeks passed.
She got on famously with Ben and Sophie, and visited Eden punctiliously twice a week.
She volunteered for work at Burntwood from Mondays to Thursdays, and was accepted with alacrity.
She befriended Dodo’s little sister Margaret, a boisterous, russet-haired fourteen-year-old with the gawky charm of a red setter puppy, who took to following her about and pestering her with questions about photography.
Finally, she mustered the courage to write to Maud. After a long delay, she received a terse note informing her that Adam was ‘on the mend’ but still couldn’t speak, and was now in the convalescent hospital at Farnborough.
March gave way to April, and April to May. Belle tried to put Adam out of her mind, and went on working at Burntwood, and visiting Eden.
She and her father were always polite and even affectionate to one another. He would ask her about Flanders and photography, while she would ask him about the estate, taking care to show that she’d paid attention to his letters over the years, and had kept up with developments. But when all that was dealt with, the silences would grow, and they’d both be relieved when she stood up to leave.
With Mamma, things were worse. In a strange way, it had been easier when Papa was in danger, because at least that had brought them together. Now that he was getting better, the old constraint had re-emerged.
‘Sh
e’s probably just a little confused,’ said Sophie as they drove towards Burntwood one morning.
Belle stared at her. ‘She hardly gives that impression. It’s almost as if she resents my being here. Or else she’s still angry with me for not getting in touch during the ’flu. Whatever it is, whenever I see her, neither of us knows what to say.’
The driver swerved to avoid a goat, and Sophie glanced back to make sure that it had survived. ‘But, Belle,’ she said, ‘that’s just an impression that she gives. You’re not the only one in the family who can act.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, think about it. She hasn’t seen you for seven years, and in all that time it was poor Sib who was more of a mother to you than she. And then when you do come home, it’s because of your father, not her; and then you end up staying not at Eden, but with us at Fever Hill. Of course she doesn’t understand it. Frankly, neither do I.’
‘Fever Hill is closer to Burntwood,’ Belle said quickly.
‘Only by a couple of miles,’ Sophie pointed out.
‘Mamma was the one who suggested that I find something to do. She was the one who suggested I help out at Burntwood.’
‘Mm,’ said Sophie.
Belle said, ‘You think I’m avoiding her.’
‘I think you’re avoiding everyone,’ said Sophie. ‘Ever since you got here you’ve cut yourself off. I can’t help wondering why.’
Belle began to feel hot. It was a relief when the great iron gates of Burntwood swept into sight. ‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly there.’
Sophie threw her a look.
As they turned into the carriageway, Belle stared stubbornly out of the window. She’d never felt so relieved to reach the sanatorium.
It was an enormous old great house which had originally belonged to Papa’s family. In those days it had been called Seven Hills: a monument to the power and prestige of the Lawes in the Golden Age of sugar. But old Duncan Lawe had been savage to his slaves, and in the Christmas Rebellion of 1832 they’d burnt it to the ground. Stubbornly, he’d raised an even larger great house on the original site – bigger than Fever Hill, more magnificent even than Parnassus – and in his bitterness he’d named it Burntwood. He’d died the following year without sleeping a night in his new house, and as the rebuilding had crippled the estate, his heir had been forced to sell soon afterwards.
Since then, it had passed through several hands, and acquired a reputation among the local people for being ‘bad luckid’. It was said that when disaster was imminent, a spectral stench of ashes permeated the outer gallery – although this was only discernible to the prescient, or ‘four-eyed’, as they were called on the Northside.
Belle was not four-eyed, and she’d never smelt ashes in the gallery. But sometimes on overcast days, she thought she sensed an air of misfortune about the place. Margaret Cornwallis, too, seemed to notice it, for recently she’d become subdued, and now spent most of her time winding bandages on her own. Belle was relieved. The pestering had been getting wearisome.
The driver drew up at the foot of the steps, and the old house reared above them like a witch’s castle from a fairy tale. It had high, pointed gables, and as the verandahs were enclosed by louvres to make an old-fashioned gallery, a curiously blind façade. But what made it extraordinary was the massive, windowless, wedge-shaped structure of cut-stone and cement which had been built onto the west wing. It was fully two storeys high, and its knife-sharp edge jutted fiercely north, like the prow of an enormous ship.
When Belle had first seen it as a child, she’d been terrified. She’d refused to get out of the carriage until Papa had explained that it was a Hurrycane Cellar, or cutwind: a place of safety in which people used to take shelter from hurricanes.
‘There’s room for at least ten people inside,’ he’d told her. But that had merely set the seven-year-old Belle to wondering how they’d decided which ten people had been allowed to survive inside, and which had been left to face the onslaught of the hurricane.
‘I think,’ said Sophie, gazing up at the windowless stone, ‘I finally understand why you like this dreadful place.’
‘I don’t exactly like it,’ said Belle. ‘I simply work here.’
‘Mm,’ said Sophie doubtfully. ‘You give the odd photography class, and read newspapers to convalescents. I suppose one might call that work.’
Belle’s cheeks grew hot. ‘Mamma suggested I come here,’ she said defensively.
Sophie brushed that aside. ‘The truth is, you’ve got a lot in common with this place, haven’t you?’ She craned her neck at the cutwind’s blank, forbidding walls. ‘Closed to outsiders. Repel all comers. It’s no way to live, Belle darling.’
Belle got out of the motor car and closed the door. ‘I’ll see you this evening,’ she s
aid.
Damn Sophie for being so shrewd.
Of course Burntwood was a bolt-hole. That was why she liked it. She liked its ugliness and its blind façade; she liked the steady monotony of the work, and the fact that it left her too tired to think at the end of the day.
With an effort, Belle put Sophie from her mind, and spent the morning reading articles from the Gleaner to a ward full of blind veterans, and the afternoon teaching the importance of focal length to a trio of mildly flirtatious officers in Bath chairs. By the time she got back to the cubbyhole where she stowed her camera, and which Matron grandly called ‘Miss Lawe’s office’, it was teatime, and there was a letter waiting for her on her desk. She recognized the engraved coat of arms of the Duke of Kyme.
I thought I’d send this to you at the san, wrote Dodo, as you don’t seem to be staying with your mamma (hope nothing’s wrong!!). This way it’ll be sure to reach you.
Belle sighed. Not another one who thought she ought to be staying at Eden.
I’m writing with a request for help, Dodo went on with her usual bluntness, though not for me, for Mags.
Mags? wondered Belle. Oh, of course. Margaret.
It’s just that she’s changed so awfully over the past few weeks. I can tell from her letters. She used to draw the most screamingly funny cartoons in the margins, and scribble all sorts of appalling jokes, but suddenly it’s just dutiful little notes. I can’t think what’s got into her, and I wondered, could you bear to have a bash at finding out? She was always the chatterbox of the family, absolutely fearless, ready for anything . . .
Belle felt a stab of guilt. She too had noticed the change in the girl, but she’d been too preoccupied with her own concerns to do anything about it.
. . . and now she’s – well, so different. Esmond says it’s just that she’s not used to the tropics, but privately I don’t think it can be that, as she’s visited lots of times and always adored it. Of course, if I say anything, Esmond counters it by saying that she’s simply growing up. Obviously I tell him that he’s right, because there’s no point in telling him anything else . . .
Oh, Dodo, thought Belle sadly. Is that the way it’s going to be with you from now on? Kowtowing to Esmond for the rest of your life?
. . . but strictly entre nous, I can’t help feeling that there must be something else. Sorry to burden you with this when I know your pater still isn’t quite well, but I’m really beginning to get a little worried – which with Dodo probably meant that she’d been having sleepless nights for weeks – although of course I’m not asking you to bear the brunt completely. Of all people, old Cornelius Traherne has been absolutely marvellous, and quite taken her in hand; lovely long drives, showing her over his estate, that sort of thing . . .
The world tilted sickeningly.
Someone knocked at the door.
Belle jumped.
One of the maids put in her head. ‘Missy Belle? Miss Evie come by on her way to Fever Hill to visit wid Missy Sophie, an ax to say do you want a ride?’
Belle swallowed. ‘Um. Thank you. Yes. Tell her – I’ll be down soon.’
The maid glanced at the letter in Belle’s fis
t, and softly withdrew.
Cornelius Traherne has been absolutely marvellous, and quite taken her in hand . . .
The words swam before her eyes. Until now, it had never occurred to her that there might be others.
It can’t be true, she told herself. It can’t be happening again.
And yet – Margaret Cornwallis was only fourteen . . .
Quickly she skimmed the rest of the letter, but there was nothing more about Margaret; just news of Kyme – to which Dodo seemed to be resigning herself. Sorry to be such a bore, she finished, but anything you can do for Mags would be so very kind . . .
Anything I can do? thought Belle.
And what could she do? He wouldn’t stop if I told him to; he’d just pretend that he didn’t know what she was talking about. And if I told anyone else, they’d never believe her. And even if they did, it would mean that she’d be found out, too.
Found out, found out. The mere thought made her feel physically sick.
Somehow, she got to her feet and got her things together. Stuffed the crumpled letter into her bag. Found her way out into the corridor.
He’s doing it again, she thought. The knowledge pounded through her to the rhythm of her blood. He’s doing it to someone else . . .
Teatime was well under way and the corridors were busy with nurses and trolleys as Belle left the sanatorium and went out through the gallery and onto the front steps. Two motor cars were waiting in the carriageway. As there were only eight motors in the whole of Trelawny, the sight had attracted a little cluster of admiring garden boys and porters.
One of the motors was the grey Mercedes-Benz owned by Isaac Walker of the neighbouring estate, Arethusa. In the back, smiling up at Belle, sat his wife, Evie, elegant as ever in a mint-green afternoon gown which perfectly set off her smooth, coffee-coloured complexion.
The other was the mustard-coloured Daimler which belonged to the Parnassus estate. Cornelius Traherne stood beside it, immaculate in a white linen suit and a Panama hat, chatting amicably with the matron, who’d come down herself to greet so important a visitor. He was making no move to go inside. Clearly he was waiting for someone to come out to him.
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 112