That They Might Lovely Be

by David Matthews

  ‘What is?’

  ‘She’ll have had to dispense with Kingsnorth and Kingsnorth. They are family and about to be disinherited it would appear. A bit of professional rivalry has no doubt contributed to a very clear document. The Trust states quite categorically that everything has been settled on Bertie without qualification.’

  Delia did not respond. Was this the crisis? Was this the pivot on which their futures were balanced?

  ‘It is,’ her father continued, ‘an admirable conclusion. We should thank Lady Margery.’

  ‘And Anstace,’ said Delia, sourly. ‘There is always Anstace.’

  ‘Indeed. But I doubt she had anything to do with drawing up this Trust.’

  ‘The whole thing rests with her. Had it not been for her … she must take him away.’

  ‘That is probably for the best.’

  Simmonds turned and looked out of the kitchen window, across the schoolyard to the well-head.

  ‘So we are decided. He will become Geoffrey Cordingley’s bastard.’ And then, after a long pause, he added—so quietly she could barely hear him—’And you, Muriel, will be rid of him forever.’

  Delia followed her father’s gaze and imagined again her mother’s last sick moments, peering into the well, trying to see a watery glimmer, reflecting the thin moonlight, to assure her that there had indeed been enough rain. She would have pulled herself up onto the parapet and leaned over, feeling the smooth courses of stone encircling the dark drop, before propelling herself headfirst into the blackness. Delia held all this in her head but, scrawled over these images, cut deep into her mind with heavy black lines, was another picture: she saw herself, staring down from a third-floor landing, gripping a rickety balustrade, eviscerated by an agonising pain and the stairs spiralling away, away into darkness.

  Delia did not know how long they stood there, she and her father, held by their own spectres.

  ‘Anstace must take him immediately,’ she said eventually.

  Later that same evening, Delia found Bertie and told him to follow her to the South Lodge. As the door opened to her vigorous knocking, Delia kicked a suitcase over the threshold and thrust the boy at Anstace. Nothing of his own volition was evident. He moved in accordance with the force Delia exerted; neither propulsion nor resistance came from him. Anstace placed her hand on his shoulder but it felt to her as if she were touching a statue, as if all animation had withdrawn from the boy.

  ‘What is happening, Delia?’ she asked.

  The explanation, which Delia had been rehearsing since she left the schoolhouse, deserted her. She was barely coherent now, spitting out disjointed phrases from which Anstace was free to make whatever sense she chose. The dominant issue was a physical one, it did not need words: Bertie was now Anstace’s.

  ‘We know about this Trust. The solicitor told us. It’s madness but so is everything. If everything comes to Bertie, that’s someone else’s concern now: the trustees, those people in loco parentis. You! You’re a Trustee so we entrust him to you. We’re glad to … delighted to. Bertie too no doubt. All shall be surrendered to her every whim. A Trust has been imposed with neither consultation nor consideration. So be it. We trust this is the end. But not for you. You and Bertie can settle down to whatever arrangement suits. My father relinquishes any residual responsibility. Why should he not? Lady Margery has set up a Trust! He is yours.’

  Anstace waited until she was sure Delia was done. She wanted to leave a definite moment of silence between this tirade and what she would say. She would not be antagonized.

  ‘Thank you. I’d be happy to look after Bertie. I hope, Bertie, you’re happy to stay with me. You’ll need to go to school but we can talk about that. Yes, Delia. Yes, of course. I shall see that he is looked after and taught well. I might ask my cousin…’

  ‘Oh, Anstace! A cousin! How many are you: this tribe of Quakers pulling the strings, invisibly, behind the scenes? What’ll you do? Hand him over to Dorothy Lean so he can attend the Quaker school at Saffron Walden?’

  ‘There are other schools. There’s one in Somerset. My cousin Kenneth Southall teaches there. A change might be the best thing but I’ll discuss it all with Bertie.’

  ‘Of course. Somerset. Of course. Close to Weston-super-Mare. How could I have forgotten?’ If Delia had forgotten it was because there were other associations with that northern corner of Somerset far more weighty, far more memorable than the fact that Anstace had been staying with a relation when they had met that fateful summer out on the headland, south of the town.

  How was it that the events of her life seemed to be folding back on themselves, finding the same creases?

  ‘It sickens me. All of this sickens me. Sickens me.’

  Delia shook her head, glaring at Anstace. Delia wanted— more than anything—for Anstace to react, to register something of the loathing which she was trying to project onto her. It was only a fundamental taboo, a deep-rooted social decorum that prevented her from hitting the other woman. Did Anstace realise that? Delia doubted it. Anstace could be extraordinarily insensitive. All she was projecting now was a mute sympathy. Delia was riled to her core.

  ‘You sicken me, Anstace. Understand that. You really do.’

  ‘Do I? Then I am sorry, if that helps … Are these Bertie’s things?’

  ‘Yes. Take it all. Take it all. Take him away.’

  Delia turned away. She did not know if they watched her walking back to the schoolhouse or whether they simply stepped back into the South Lodge and shut the door.

  She wanted to lose herself, to fade or evaporate. She wished that she could be transported to another clime washed of identity, history and future. She understood completely the yearning that had compelled her mother to suicide: it was the sweet, sweet call of oblivion, the seductive tug of deep, black peace.

  She did not return directly to the schoolhouse. She wandered into the woods, pushing herself through the waves of bracken, heedless of the scratches to her legs, the damage to her stockings or the assault on her forearms. Gradually, an awareness of her physical self returned. She stopped. She smelled the warm vegetation that engulfed her. Pollen from the trees drifted on the air like dust. A cloud of gnats, active in the last of the evening light, began to circle her head attracted to the sweat springing up on her brow, her upper lip, beneath her arms. Her nose itched. There was something in her shoe.

  Life was combat. If any generation should be aware of that, it was hers. Surrender was never possible because it would break faith with those men she had known, and others she had never known who had all fallen before her in their struggle.

  ‘I shall not be brought down,’ she said aloud.

  As she made her way home, the simple rhythm of walking helped calm her mind. She was able to tell herself that she and her father had acted well. They had acquiesced with Lady Margery. Her father had acknowledged the solicitor’s letter graciously; he had accepted everything it implied without committing himself absolutely to an untruth. The Trust enabled them to dispense with the boy.

  For her own reasons (Delia did not care what they were), Lady Margery had thought to enmesh Anstace in her plans by naming her as a Trustee. Therefore, passing Bertie to Anstace, this final act, had been the most natural thing to do. It could all be explained as benefiting Bertie. Bertie was to disappear at last from their lives. All was legally sanctioned. She and her father were free.

  No doubt there would be some gossip to weather. Delia knew she would be perfectly capable of withstanding that. Lady Margery’s motives for creating the Trust were unlikely to be publicly known but, if they were, it was to Delia’s advantage that the Rector, the Chairman of the School Managers, had told her father that he was convinced Lady Margery had no grounds to claim Bertie as her heir. Delia’s position at the school would not be in jeopardy. Her reputation would not be shredded. When her father retired, she might step down at the same time but it would be on her own terms, holding on to her own standing in the community.

  It w
as heavy dusk when Delia reached the schoolhouse. Perched on the gatepost was the owl. It swiveled its head around, searching, aware that the boy had missed its feeding time. Delia went into the kitchen and returned with a scrap of chicken skin, retrieved from the pigs’ bucket. She held it out to the bird. After a moment’s pause, it spread its wings and fluttered silently onto her hand to pull at the food she held. She winced as it landed; she should have covered her hand with a cloth or worn a glove. Quickly, Delia brought her other hand up and closed her fingers around the owl. She could feel its bones beneath the silken feathers. It emitted one lone eerie shriek and dug its talons into her flesh but she did not release it. She plunged both her hands into the water butt and held them there until she felt the bird’s struggles cease. The sodden corpse floated free while her blood spread a film across the water.

  Saturday, 7 September 1930

  Kenneth Southall had borrowed the school’s pony and trap to drive to Yatton to meet the boy’s train. He was arriving two days before the new term began, the better to find his bearings — and for the Southall family to gauge the nature of the task they had taken on—before the hordes of boarders arrived at the school.

  When he had read Anstace’s letter to Peggy, his wife, she had recognized the surname Simmonds. It was the same name as that of the young soldier Anstace had talked about when she had come to stay for a few days during their first summer at Winscot.

  ‘Days that turned into weeks,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘It was before she married Geoffrey, but she had been quite clearly in love with the dead soldier. She was still grieving for him.’

  ‘We were still lodging in the three rooms above the boys’ dormitories. We’d only been married a couple of months ourselves.’

  ‘I liked having her to stay,’ said Peggy.

  ‘I know you did. But I wanted you to myself.’

  ‘Any chance of conjugal privacy was already compromised with matron in the room next door. Having Anstace on a camp bed in the sitting room did not make so much of a difference. It was nice going for walks with her during the day whilst you were up at the school and her conversation was definitely a welcome change from mundane exchanges with the laundry maid.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

  ‘Without Anstace, it would have been worse.’

  He smiled across the breakfast table at his wife, stretching out his hand to cover hers.

  ‘So we are to have another boy,’ said Peggy, dipping a “soldier” into their two-year-old’s breakfast egg.

  ‘Yes. A special case. Anstace has pulled some strings with the Headmaster to get him here but, fundamentally, Lady Margery Cordingley appears to have been very generous to this young fellow.’

  ‘Lady Margery? Anstace’s irascible mother-in-law? It does not sound quite in character.’

  ‘Agreed. All a bit mysterious. Anstace says the details are immaterial but the fact is the boy has been set up wonderfully.’

  ‘How terribly patriarchal.’

  ‘Anstace clearly thinks it’ll be to his advantage coming here, to Winscot.’

  ‘Does she say why? Let me read what she says for myself.’

  Kenneth took over egg-duty while his wife scanned the letter.

  ‘Goodness, Kenneth, she’s not asking much is she?’

  ‘Don’t you think we could take him on?’

  ‘It’s impossible to tell. It’s a touch presumptuous, don’t you think? She certainly knows how to butter you up! All this “complete confidence” in your abilities. Do you find it rather flattering?’

  ‘Humbling, rather.’

  ‘But listen to this! She says, “He needs so much to be freed from everyone who knows him. His only chance to speak is to live somewhere where talk is not painful.” She has no idea what bedlam it is when there are thirty boys clomping up and down the stairs!’

  ‘Boys’ jabbering is not bedlam. And it’s certainly not painful.’

  ‘Speak for yourself! But I suppose one more won’t make any difference.’

  ‘Do I take that grudging acknowledgement to be assent?’

  ‘I suppose we shall have to do it. Let’s hope he’s a nice child.’

  Kenneth rose and kissed the top of his wife’s head. He loved her refusal to be sensible.

  ‘With a bit of luck,’ she chuckled, ‘he could teach Patricia to be an elective mute.’

  ‘And Philip.’

  ‘Think how it would improve the quality of Sunday Meetings!’

  Their laughter increased when they discovered Kenneth had dribbled his son’s egg yolk down his tie.

  ‘We’re mad!’ spluttered Peggy.

  However, as he sat in the trap at Yatton station, Kenneth Southall wondered again if they had been too precipitate in agreeing to take on this boy of Anstace’s. It really was an enormous responsibility and he and Peggy had given it no serious consideration. But then, when did they ever once their instincts had been engaged? The success of Anstace’s scheme would probably hinge on whether, as Peggy had said, he was a nice child but they ought to have thought about how they would manage if he weren’t. Kenneth Southall was resolved that he would be with them for better or for worse. No child ought ever to experience rejection. Whatever they had let themselves in for was about to begin for here was the Bristol train steaming into the station.

  He had expected a shy, shadowy child, muted as well as mute. That was not at all the impression the boy first gave. Although he held Anstace’s hand, it was to lead her forward with an air of excited curiosity rather than to seek reassurance. He was a tall boy, appearing taller beside the diminutive Anstace, already shedding the vestiges of childhood. He would be handsome, fair and loose-limbed.

  Kenneth Southall loved his children but he knew that he and Peggy had not produced beauties. He was, for a moment, sharply envious on their behalf of this boy’s physical attraction. How fair was it to them to take this alien into their home?

  ‘Anstace Cordingley.’

  ‘Kenneth Southall.’

  The two cousins greeted each other and shook hands solemnly in light mockery of the Quakers’ customs. Kenneth turned to shake the boy’s hand. He proferred his right but the boy gave him his left, leaving it for this stranger to hold. At the same time, the boy dropped Anstace’s hand and moved to the older man’s side quite clearly expecting her to leave him, now he had been delivered.

  Kenneth Southall’s doubts disappeared. This trust in Anstace, and in him because of Anstace, overawed him. He did not know what to say besides, ‘Welcome, welcome, Bertie. You’re most welcome.’

  Anstace laughed.

  ‘You’ll not leave me here, will you Bertie? I’m going to make sure you’re settled at Winscot before I travel back to Dunchurch. Come on, look, we’re to ride behind a pony.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit up at the front with me, Bertie? We can leave Anstace in the back with your trunk.’

  The porter had wheeled the boy’s box out of the station and helped stow it in the trap. Kenneth Southall giddied the pony and they were on their way.

  Kenneth Southall was aware that, during the journey, Bertie was stealing furtive glances at him but he made no attempt to catch the boy’s eye. He was happy for him to absorb the novelty in his own time. He hoped Bertie would look about him too and take in the beauty of the lush Mendip valleys in late summer. He never ceased to bless his fortune in having this rural loveliness surround him.

  Dry-stone walls of grey limestone, mossed and lichened, lined the roads and divided the fields. Here, as he paused at a crossroads, late marguerites and rose-bay-willow-herb decorated the grass verge at the base of the road sign. Beyond, the hills swelled to draw an undulating horizon.

  Off to the west, in the distance, was Bleadon Hill capped by a dense ridge of trees.

  ‘Those trees on the top of that hill are nicknamed “The Caterpillar”,’ he said. ‘One day, we’ll walk up there. You can walk all around this circle of hills.’

  Now, as they neared the end of th
eir journey, as they turned the bend in the road, the spire of Winscot church rose above the domes of elms and horse chestnuts. Kenneth Southall relished the detail of ordinary daily living. His eye was drawn, through the trees fringing their gardens, to the substantial houses built at the end of the last century, on the lower slopes of Wavering Down. There was a maid shaking a bedspread from an upper window. Here, as they drove through the hamlet of Wainborough, a collier’s cart was drawn up outside the public house. Two coal-begrimed men were humping sacks into the yard. At the sound of their pony’s hooves on the cobbles, the dray-horse threw its head back and whinnied, a rope of viscous saliva hanging from the flubbering lips.

  The school’s playing fields swept away to the right as the pony slowed to take the final climb. An avenue of horse chestnuts held the road in deep shadow. Already there were hands of autumn yellow patching the green of the summer’s leaves, and the prickly clusters of conkers hung clearly in the lower branches. The pony took the rest of the journey, through the lanes between the school buildings, at a walk. High, dry-stone walls, mottled with sage-green lichens, were draped in ivy-leaved toadflax, fumitory and the last vestiges of valerian stretching out its season. A little yellow brimstone butterfly batted its wings slowly in the sun.

  ‘You are in the Mendip Hills here, Bertie. In a moment, when we turn the corner, you will see Combe House, your new home. “Combe” is the word they have in the west country for a valley, so you are to live in a house in a valley with these lovely hills to wrap around you. You will enjoy living here.’

  Kenneth Southall looked over this shoulder and smiled at Anstace and she reached forward to squeeze Bertie’s shoulders. Her bright eyes were full.

  Thursday, 12 September 1930

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Childs. Nurse Hillier, thank you. That will be all. Lady Margery and I are grateful to you.’