A Dark-Adapted Eye

by Barbara Vine

I did not lock Jamie in his bedroom (Chad continued). I simply put him in there on his bed with his toys and hoped he would fall asleep for a while. Eden arrived at about three. You want the facts, you want everything I can remember, so I may as well tell you that though she wasn't drunk, she had been drinking a lot. She smelt of wine. Mme de Pompadour said that the only wine a woman can drink and still look beautiful afterwards is champagne, so I suppose it was champagne, among other things, Eden had been drinking. She shouldn't really have been driving a car. She went straight to Jamie's room and packed a suitcase for him and then she went in to see Vera.

  I heard nothing of what they said to each other. Eden's going into his room had awakened Jamie and he was whimpering. I gave him some orange squash and a biscuit. By that time I was desperate to get away. I heard Eden calling my name and I went upstairs and found Vera lying on the landing where she had collapsed and fallen over. She wasn't unconscious, only too weak to get up. I thought she had been trying to reach the bathroom, that was what I thought at the time, but later on I came to a different conclusion. Eden was also out on the landing, her gloves on, her handbag under her arm. I think Eden had said goodbye to Vera and come out of the bedroom, and Vera had got up and followed her, tried to run after her perhaps, and there in her weakness, fallen over. I picked her up in my arms and carried her back to bed. She lay back against the pillows with her eyes closed. Downstairs Jamie had begun to cry.

  Vera murmured, ‘Jamie – please, Chad…’ Tears began to fall down her cheeks. I thought they were the tears of weakness, of fever.

  ‘It's best to leave her and let her get some sleep,’ Eden said. Her speech was the slightest bit slurred. You wouldn't have noticed if you didn't know what her normal voice was like.

  We went down to Jamie. He was crying because he had spilt his drink over himself. I cleaned him up and gave him some more. Nothing was said by Eden about taking both Vera and Jamie away with her. Nor did I remind her of what she had said earlier. Vera wasn't fit to be moved. The doctor himself had said she should stay in her room in bed. We had seen what happened when she tried to walk. I was wondering whether I dared leave her when Josie Cambus came in, carrying her knitting and a library book, all prepared to stay for the rest of the day and all night if necessary.

  And that was it. Eden put Jamie on the back seat of her car and the suitcase in the boot and drove off. I told Josie I would give Vera a ring on Monday to find out how she was and then I, too, left. By Monday, however, I had flu. I was off work ill for the whole of that week and part of the next and when I finally phoned Vera, Josie answered to say she was much better but asleep just now. I did not speak to Vera again for a long time and when I did things were very much changed. Eden Pearmain I never saw again. My last sight of her was as she got into the driving seat of her car, the last words I ever heard her speak, those in which she told Jamie to mind his fingers in the door.

  Vera was ill for a long time. Her appearance shocked me when I saw her that February and I thought Helen was right when she said Vera wasn't yet fit to have Jamie back.

  I was staying at Walbrooks for the weekend, having come down with Andrew on the Friday night. If my father had heard from either Vera or Eden during the past weeks no news had been passed on to me beyond the information that Vera's convalescence was a long one. I arrived at Stoke-by-Nayland, concerning myself about Vera only in so far as my conscience was mildly troubling me. For reasons that must have been obvious to everyone, including herself and Eden, I now stayed with Helen instead of her when I was in this part of the country. No doubt Vera understood but I had deserted her all the same.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Helen said, ‘she wouldn't have wanted you. I don't mean it like that, of course, but she's not at all well. She's never got over that flu. But we'll go over tomorrow and you shall see for yourself. She wants Jamie back, she wants us all to go to Eden's and fetch him back but I don't know. You'll see.’

  She was so thin I had to stop myself staring at her, and she had that faded worn-out look some fair women get as they age, the look of a dead leaf. Her skin had crumpled and there was a lot of grey in her hair, the bones in her wrists and knees were knobs, and when she smiled her face became a skull. In spite of all this, in spite of her evident weakness, she had spent the past week painting Jamie's bedroom. We all had to go up and admire her work, Helen and the General and Andrew and I. This was the room where I had slept, where I had watched Eden cream her face and put her hair in curlers and had myself experimented with her make-up. It was transformed. Vera had painted the walls white and the woodwork pale blue, made Jamie a rag rug out of blue and white material scraps, cut illustrations out of Beatrix Potter books and framed them in passe-partout.

  ‘It looks heavenly,’ said Helen. ‘Isn't he going to adore it? But, darling, are you sure you're fit enough to cope?’

  Vera gave her skull smile. ‘Of course I am. Could I have done all this if I wasn't? Anyway, I don't suppose Eden would keep Jamie any longer. It would be a bit much to ask. She leads a very busy social life, you know. I expect she's fed up with having him, she'll be only too glad to see the back of him.’

  It was said so brightly, so confidently, so – desperately?

  ‘I could have him for a while.’ Helen sounded anything but enthusiastic. Yet I am sure none of us doubted that she meant it. She would have Jamie if Vera wanted her to. ‘I happily will, darling, if you don't feel up to it and Eden wants a rest.’

  Vera didn't say anything. It struck me then that she was frightened. Or does hindsight make me say that? Did I notice anything at the time except her thinness, her tiredness, the way she shook her head, at the same time giving Helen a grateful yet dismissive smile? We all got into the car and drove to Goodney Hall. The house was approached by a long avenue of lime trees and around their roots and in patches on the parkland lay drifts of snow. The sky looked full of snow. It was deep, bleak midwinter, the worst time of the year, much worse than December, and although the evenings were lengthening, it was dark soon after five.

  Steuart's beautiful house rested aloof on its raft of terraces and balustrades and steps. There wasn't even a coniferous tree or an evergreen up near it to break the monochrome, the greys of that house and the sky behind. It was three o'clock and not a light on yet. A curious thing happened as we approached the gravel sweep in front of the terrace. Eden came round the side of the house alone, walking slowly, pausing at the corner where a stone urn stood on the angle of the balustrade, and placing her hands on its pedestal stared first across the park, then in our direction. She was wrapped in a fur coat with a thick, upturned fur collar that framed her face. I am sure she didn't expect to see us, didn't know we were coming and was unpleasantly surprised by the sight of us.

  Nor could she quite disguise this. She had not been born to this style of life or nurtured in a tradition of social grace, the concealment of feeling, the putting on of an artificially welcoming face. She came down the steps looking cross, then resigned. Her hair was entirely covered by a turban of some sort of dark jersey material and this and the red fox collar discouraged kissing. No one kissed. Eden said:

  ‘Well, my goodness, how nice to see you all. What a surprise!’

  ‘I told you we'd come on Saturday,’ said Vera.

  ‘Two weeks ago you said something about probably coming this weekend.’

  They were both giving the impression that if Vera had tried to make a firm date, Eden would have turned her down. We went into the house. Although there was a fuel shortage just as there were shortages of almost everything, I had expected Goodney Hall to be warm inside. Eden and Tony would have found ways, I thought. It was cold, colder than college or Walbrooks or my parents' house. A small electric fire was switched on in the drawing-room. We all kept our coats on and perhaps because of this didn't attempt to sit down. Eden said it was Mrs King's day off but it was a bit early for tea anyway, wasn't it? Tony, too, was out somewhere.

  Vera's voice had become strangely timid. ‘Is Jamie st
ill having his sleep?’

  ‘Jamie?’ Eden spoke as if he were someone whose name she had once heard and now vaguely remembered from the distant past. ‘Jamie? Yes, I suppose he is. I really don't know.’

  No one said anything. Andrew said to me afterwards that for a moment he had the curious feeling that Eden hadn't been looking after Jamie, that he wasn't in the house, that it was all some sort of delusion on Vera's part. She only thought Eden had been looking after him while all the time he had really been with Josie or Mrs Morrell. But this, of course, was Andrew's misapprehension, for Eden, taking off the red fox coat and dropping it over an armchair, now said, with equally devastating effect:

  ‘Shall I ask Nanny to bring him down or shall we go up?’

  A little colour came into Vera's face. She looked as if she had two insect bites on her wasted face, one on each cheekbone.

  ‘Nanny?’

  ‘Yes, that's what I said.’ Eden spoke in a pleasant tone.

  ‘You had a nanny to look after Jamie?’

  ‘We thought the most sensible thing would be to engage a professional who would know what she was doing, yes.’

  As if Jamie were autistic or retarded or delinquent, Andrew later said to me.

  ‘Is he up in that beautiful nursery we saw, Eden?’ said Helen, very sweet, very cheerful. ‘I'd truly love to see it in use.’

  Eden shrugged. ‘Come along, then.’

  The General declined. He belonged in that generation of men, perhaps the last, for whom men's and women's roles were utterly differentiated. Men did not set foot in nurseries, converse with nannies. Men, like sultans, had nothing to do with children, even boy children, until they attained the age of reason. He picked up the Daily Telegraph – in which, I noted, Eden had half done the crossword – and sat on the sofa with it. A man's role was to drive the car and when the car was ready to be driven, he would do it. Andrew came with us, though, and as we went up the staircase, I took his hand.

  Eden, when the fox was off, was dressed for the part of lady of the manor. She wore a tweed skirt with box pleats, a pale blue twinset, several strings of pearls and the eternity ring. Her brilliant gold hair was cut short and permed in symmetrical sausage curls. She led us down the long corridor to the corner of the house where the nursery was. It was so cold in that passage that my teeth started to chatter. But inside the nursery it wasn't cold. I hadn't noticed the fireplace on my previous visit. I noticed it now. A fire burned in it, a fire generously fed with good Welsh nuts, not logs, and it sent out a fierce red heat, more than competing with the two-bar electric fire that stood between the windows. These were misted with condensation, the air outside being icy. Last time I had seen this room, the sun was shining and making patterns all over the pink carpet which had a border of ivy and convolvulus. This carpet had gone and been replaced by a fitted one of light beige and there were new curtains of beige rep, but the table and chairs were still there and the rocking horse. A girl a bit older than I, perhaps Eden's age, was laying this table with a teacup and saucer, plates, a rabbit mug. She wore a grey dress, not exactly a uniform yet drab enough to be one. Jamie was on the rocking horse and seemed to have been jerking it vigorously back and forth. When we came in, the jerking stopped though the horse naturally went on swinging. He looked in our direction, then turned his face sharply away.

  Eden went up to the nanny and muttered something inaudible to her. The girl immediately, as if in response to a button pressed or a lever thrown, said:

  ‘Say hello to Mother, Jamie.’

  She had a thick Suffolk accent so that this command (which was disobeyed) came out something like: ‘Sah-allo ter Mawther, Jarmie.’

  Vera was sensible enough not to show her bitter disappointment. I hadn't realized until that moment that she and Jamie hadn't seen each other since January the first, now six weeks past, and six weeks is a long time in the life of a four-year-old. Jamie got down off the horse, went over to his nanny and stood close by her.

  ‘Come on now, don't be a baby,’ she said.

  Jamie's face crumpled and he began to cry. The girl picked him up and held him. Rather awkwardly, I thought. Eden had detached herself from the little drama that was developing, gone to the fireplace and, slipping her carefully manicured and be-ringed right hand into a coal glove, started prodding at the fire with a small brass poker.

  Unable to contain herself any longer, Vera ran to Jamie and put out her arms. As anyone but she could have foretold, this had the effect of making Jamie cling all the tighter to the brawny, grey-cotton-clad shoulders. He buried his face. Vera gave a piteous cry and the nanny responded by shoving Jamie at her. The ensuing scene was painful to see. Such scenes – and they usually happen when a mother and her child have been separated over a long period – always are painful. Jamie screamed and fought, struggled out of Vera's arms, threw himself at his nanny's lap, bellowed, embraced his nanny's knees. All the while Eden poked and prodded at the fire. Outside it had begun to snow. Fat, fluffy flakes of snow were drifting thickly past those dewed windows. The nanny sat down, cuddling Jamie, and Vera stood trembling with clenched fists. Helen said:

  ‘He's bound to be a bit unsettled at first, darling. Don't be upset. Shouldn't we just wrap him up warm and collect his things and go? Wouldn't that be best?’

  Eden came over. ‘You weren't intending to take him with you?’

  ‘Yes, of course, darling, I thought you knew that.’

  ‘I certainly did not. Anyway, it's out of the question. Look at the snow. He's had a bad cold and it would be very unwise indeed to take him out in this weather, wouldn't it, nanny?’

  I think we were all struck by the unsuitability of this girl as an oracle, and it so happened that she made no answer to Eden's appeal. She merely looked bovine, humping Jamie on to her hip and jigging about with him from one foot to the other. We probably all felt, too, that if anyone were consulted on the question of Jamie's health it should be Vera. Jamie struggled down, sat on the hearthrug and began sucking his thumb. Vera said:

  ‘You never mentioned a cold.’

  ‘No, well, I haven't spoken to you for about ten days, have I? He's had it since then.’

  ‘I rang and rang. You were never in. That woman, your housekeeper, always answered.’

  ‘Vera,’ said Eden patiently, ‘I can't stop in all day on the chance you might ring.’

  ‘When can I have Jamie, then?’ said Vera like a little girl who, having been denied a treat, tries to extract a fresh promise from a parent. ‘When can I have him?’

  Andrew was starting to get angry and the effect of Vera's humble pleading tone was to make him angrier still. He might be an undergraduate like me but he was much older, older than Eden, nearly thirty, had been in the Battle of Britain, had been a prisoner of war and was long past the category of ‘children’ of the family, in which I still belonged.

  ‘You can have him when you like, Vera. He's your child. We'll wrap him up and he'll be perfectly all right. We came over here to fetch him and that's what we'll do.’ He addressed the nanny in a tone worthy of a descendant of the Richardsons, wealthy gentlefolk that they were. ‘Get his things ready, will you?’

  I admired his manner. Emancipated as I was, sticking up even then for women's rights, I still expected a man to be able to ‘take charge’. Helen too looked pleased. I had watched dismay come into her face at Eden's high-handedness. Astonishingly it was Vera who demurred. She seemed determined to placate Eden, though Eden was firm rather than angry.

  ‘If you really think it would be bad for him, Eden…’

  ‘I do. I've already said so.’ Eden went to one of the windows and lifted the curtain away from it, though it was perfectly easy to see the blizzard without that. Andrew said what we were surely all thinking:

  ‘If the car is brought up to the front door he'll only be outside for about ten seconds,’ and added scathingly, ‘it isn't as if he's got to walk two miles to the station.’

  ‘Why don't we say next weekend and ma
ke a firm date?’ said Vera. It seemed, even then, a very curious way of putting it. ‘Suppose I said next Saturday, Eden?’

  ‘You'd better make sure my father's free next Saturday,’ Andrew said, not very warmly.

  ‘Josie's got a car. She'll drive me. Shall we say next Saturday, Eden?’

  Eden took her time about answering. The fire in front of which Jamie was sitting, still sucking his thumb (the bitter-aloes aversion therapy all forgotten now), had been unguarded. Eden slipped her hand into the coal glove, put a couple of pieces of coal on the fire and placed a wire mesh guard in front of it. When she had finished doing this she took the glove off and in an absent-minded sort of way put her hand out and lightly ruffled Jamie's hair. He reacted not at all.

  ‘You can come next Saturday if you like,’ she said.

  ‘I'll come in the morning and fetch him then, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, come in the morning.’

  The nanny came back with tea for all of us on a tray. Eden looked annoyed. She shook her head when the nanny started pouring tea into her cup. Vera sat down in one of the wooden nursery chairs. She looked as if she might have fainted if she hadn't done that. Silence prevailed until Helen began talking about the snow, relating snow anecdotes of her childhood at Walbrooks. During this, something odd, and in the light of what was to come, dreadfully painful, happened. Jamie got up off the hearthrug and made his way over to Vera's side. He stood by her chair. Again Vera behaved quite sensibly, not showing the emotion I believe she was feeling. She put out her arms to him, or her hands rather, in that tendering gesture that offers a casual cuddle if the child wants it. Jamie evidently did want it. He climbed on to her lap. For the first time since our arrival, he spoke.

  ‘Eden is going to buy me a dog,’ he said to Vera.

  ‘Is she, darling? That's kind.’

  ‘A big dog. But it will be little first.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Vera said. ‘I hadn't really anticipated having a dog, but if you've promised, Eden.’

  Jamie nodded. ‘She's promised.’ He put his arms round Vera's neck and hugged her.