The car made such a difference to my life. I didn’t use it to go to the gallery because I went in Bernard’s and I wasn’t up to driving in the centre of London yet; but it was so useful for shopping, visiting my few friends and taking Marline to school in term time. Best of all, it gave me a new confidence. I suppose I felt rather as my mother did in her red Rover.
I didn’t see much of my mother at this time because Mr Crimony was ill, really ill, poor man, and waiting to go into hospital for an operation; but she had come to our simple registry office wedding – nothing would have kept her away from that – and I heard her say to Mr Crimony in her usual abrupt way: ‘You silly old man, you would choose a time like this to be ill.’ All dressed in black, he sat outside in the car and neither of them came to the wedding lunch, which we had in a local French restaurant. So beside ourselves, there were just the two witnesses, business friends of Bernard’s, Mary and Peter. Peter was particularly quiet that day. Mary was very gay at first, but by the end of the meal tears were pouring down her small pointed face. She said champagne always made her weep, and when we left for our plane, she was laughing again.
Poor Mr Crimony. Mother did bring him to see the house once before he returned to the hospital for his second operation. Marline was delighted to see her Mr Chimney again and showed him round the garden and allowed him to watch her feeding the magpies, which she had been taming all the summer. When the cock bird settled on her shoulder and took food from between her lips, the old man thought it dangerous, and I must admit, I did at first. But the birds appeared to be absolutely trustworthy except that they were thieves. When the last young magpie left the nest – there had only been two – I intended to have a good search for Bernard’s golden cuff-link. I was sure it was somewhere in that domed nest.
My mother showed Mr Crimony all over the house and, although it took some time and he appeared to be very tired, I think he enjoyed it and liked to think of such a fine place ‘being in the family’, as he called it. He saw little Johnny in his nursery and thought him a nice little chap ‘but not a patch on our Tommy’.
When we were sitting at the dining-room table, mother picked up a heavy silver tablespoon and weighed it in her hand as if to tell its worth and said, ‘I must say, you’ve done very well for yourself, Bella. I never would have thought it possible.’
But Mr Crimony said: ‘It’s no surprise to me. Bella always knew what she wanted. If she’d stayed in my coal office, where would she be now?’
I laughed and said, ‘In the coal office, I should imagine.’
Just a week later Mr Crimony died during his second operation.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
On the first day of the new term I took Marline to school. Then I returned to do something I could only do when she was not at home – search for Bernard’s cuff-link in the magpies’ nest. I carried a small ladder and a child’s spade down to the juniper tree clearing. I was relieved to see there wasn’t a single magpie in sight, and I put the ladder against the cherry tree and climbed up. I found the spade, small as it was, useless; something flexible was needed, a hand for instance, so I dropped the spade and put my hand in through the opening of the dome-shaped nest and scooped up all kinds of filth – bird mess, dirty feathers and a few small bones, a child’s bead necklace, sweet papers, but then the golden cuff-link. I had not damaged the nest at all, just given it a good clean, but suddenly an angry bird appeared and began to attack me, making frightful noises at the same time. I managed to beat it off my face but got my hand scratched by its strong dark beak and by the time I’d reached the bottom of the ladder there were two of them attacking me. I could still hear their harsh, aggressive cries as I ran towards the house.
Later in the day, when I went to retrieve the ladder, the cock bird appeared threateningly and from that time Gertrude’s elsters never trustedv me again. Bernard was pleased to have his cuff-link back, though.
Johnny was nearly three and rather spoilt by Bernard and Marline; I suppose we all spoilt him in a way because Bernard insisted that he must always have his own way. If he wanted to eat from the back of his plate he must be allowed to do so. When he cried at bedtime, he could stay up as long as he wanted, often falling asleep on the carpet. It could have been much worse except that by nature he was an obedient boy, particularly when his father was not around. I suggested to Bernard that he went to playschool in the mornings, as there was one for under fives quite near. Reluctantly he agreed and for the first few days Johnny enjoyed himself. He was very affectionate towards the other children and not at all shy as I feared he would be. Then one morning he was tired from staying up too late the previous evening and, when he saw Bernard, he broke into tears and said he didn’t want to go to school. Bernard held him in his arms and said, ‘Poor little fellow, of course you needn’t go to school if you don’t like it. We’ll try again when you are older.’ And that was the end of school for the time being.
We had done nothing about the replacement of Greta, who was due to leave in late October. I offered her a rise in salary if she would stay a little longer, until Christmas, perhaps, but she was determined to go home. It was Miss May I wanted to get rid of, not Greta, who had become quite a friend. We hardly needed her as well as old Mrs Hicks. She was over-inquisitive and too interested in our sleeping arrangements and because of this I used to change the sheets so that it appeared that Bernard slept in the bed beside me and not in the dressing-room. I only did this on Mondays, when she put clean linen on the beds after I left the house. One Monday, just as I was leaving and Bernard was sitting in the car waiting for me, Miss May caught my arm familiarly and said, ‘I hope you haven’t been juggling about with the sheets, Mrs Forbes. It’s quite unnecessary. I know your husband sleeps in his dressing-room.’
I jerked my arm free but didn’t say a thing, just walked away with what must have been a stricken face. I could hear Bernard saying, ‘Hurry, dear, we’re late,’ then seeing my face as he opened the car door for me, he asked, ‘What’s happened? You are upset about something,’ and he put his arm round me in the kindest way.
I told him what Miss May had said and asked if he’d mind if I got rid of her, she was so very unpleasant at times. He agreed that it was time she went and offered to dismiss her that evening, but I said I’d prefer to do it myself. I did it so well that she left the following morning and nothing was said about a month’s notice on either side.
It was the dismissal of Miss May that caused me to give up my career in the gallery. It was intended as a temporary break until we got someone suitable to help at home; but it gradually became permanent. I did go to some of the private views and helped out occasionally when Miss Rose was short-handed, but that was all.
At the end of October, just before Greta returned to Holland, we picked apples in the spinney. There was a small tree of indeterminate cookers and a large one of Blenheim orange, apples as beautiful as their name in appearance and taste. To my surprise Peter left his magnifying glass and paints and joined us. He climbed the trees with a basket on his arm, but Greta and I used a ladder. Marline had been given a holiday that day and was climbing about like a monkey. Johnny, who was only just three, had to be carefully carried up and down every now and then to pick a few apples, but otherwise he sat on the grass or collected windfalls from the ground. It was a perfect autumn day and we made an occasion of the apple gathering or rather picking, by having a picnic under the tree.
In all the time I’d been connected with the Forbeses and since becoming a Forbes myself, I’d seldom seen Peter outside the rooms where he worked, a largish studio upstairs where he did his painting and restoring and a room in the basement he used for picture framing and other things. He often worked with a small magnifying-glass fixed in one eye like a monocle and I almost thought of it as part of his pale calm face. When the apple picking was over he helped me store the apples in the room where my things were kept. I took off the shroud-like sheets and showed him my treasures and from that moment we were
close friends.
He cared for antiques almost as much as I did. In his spare time he decorated the room for me, all white except for a sea-green ceiling, which rather gave the feeling of being in an aquarium. We covered the rough wood floor with a light terracotta fitted carpet, my only extravagance at that time. Then Peter discovered a beautiful fireplace that had been boarded in and the room completely lost its basement look. When the furniture was arranged it was transformed into a magical place. Bernard knew nothing about it and he sometimes wondered why Johnny, who liked to play there and called it ‘Bella’s house’ tried to lead him down the basement steps. If he had looked through the basement windows, he would have seen Bella’s house in all its glory and his special chair waiting for him; but Bernard wasn’t the kind of man who looked down into basements and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to or not. I’d have loved to have seen him in his chair and to be sitting at his feet as I used to, perhaps with him stroking my hair; but we never sat like that now. Would it be different in Bella’s house? I felt I’d rather not know.
Soon after Greta left I engaged a daily nurse, a policeman’s wife who had been a nanny before she married, Jenny she was called. Her hours were flexible and she was willing to stay late when we went out in the evening, which was once a week at the most. On other evenings we sometimes had people to dinner, otherwise we listened to music, read or looked at television. We didn’t talk as much as we used to, and I think it was about this time that Bernard lost interest in educating me. All the same, he was a kind and generous husband and he did want me to be happy. It put him out if I wasn’t, so quite often I appeared to be happier than I was. Sometimes I had hopes that Gertrude was fading from the house because he had ceased to talk about her as if she were still alive.
One autumn morning I drove to the Green and the leaves were falling from the chestnut trees and I remembered how I watched them from the shop window and used to think of them as golden gloves falling down. Now I was the other side of the window looking in and instead of antiques there were tubes of paint and drawing blocks and stark white canvases, brushes too and art books. Mary had told me that it was now an art shop, but I hadn’t really taken it in and now, seeing the changes, I felt slightly shocked and resentful. I could see the owner of the shop, a man with a pink drooping face and pig-like nose, wrapping up a neat square parcel, then putting money in the till. I’d never had a till, only a black tin cashbox. Suddenly my resentment faded and I hoped little Droopy-cheeks would make a great success of his shop, far better to sell art materials. The shop was now completely impersonal and nothing to do with me. That part of my life was finished. But I still had my collection in Bella’s house and was adding to it from time to time.
After Christmas Marline went to a new school, rather an expensive one where the children wore a very pretty casual uniform. She stayed there all day and seemed to like it, making friends and bringing them home to tea. There were birthday parties and I always seemed to be buying birthday presents for children I’d never even seen; but I had my small income from the building society and there was nothing much to spend it on except Marline and my collection downstairs. Mr Crimony had left Marline and me a thousand pounds each, which I immediately put in our accounts. The rest of his money went to my mother, so she was quite a well off woman now and gave up her travel agency work. This was a mistake because she found life without Mr Crimony to boss around very lonely and I think she bossed people in the agency and must have missed that too. She took to visiting me at least once a week, usually for tea, when Marline was home from school. She got on extraordinarily well with Marline, and now she had overcome her original shock at her colour, I don’t think she would have changed her for a white grand-daughter. She was fond of Johnny too and used to tell people that she was his grandmother if she got the chance.
Seeing her pleasure in her grand-children, I asked her why she had so disliked me as a child. She said quite truthfully that it was because I reminded her of my father and that I’d brought her shame. ‘You see,’ she said sadly, ‘it was what they call a shotgun wedding. The whole thing was so humiliating. Producing a baby six months after marriage was a terrible thing in those days, so of course I resented you and I resented your father also because he didn’t love me, but was fond of you. I knew he’d go off with someone in the end and that’s what he did. I felt so bitter towards you both. I suppose in my way I loved the wretched man and that made it worse. You are very lucky, Bella, to have such a devoted husband, very lucky indeed.’ Mother was someone else I had to wear a happy face for.
I was fairly busy at this time. Now Miss May had gone away I did all the cooking and some of the housework. Mrs Hicks did all the heavy work – and there was a lot in that large house – and she also insisted on preparing the vegetables because she had always done so when Gertrude was alive. Jenny fitted in extremely well, arriving soon after eight in the morning to help the children dress and to supervise their breakfast which they ate in the kitchen. Bernard and I ate a stately breakfast in the dining-room, discussing our correspondence of which I had very little, and the gallery which he liked to talk about with me. Then he made a few suggestions on how I was to spend the day, gave me a peck on the cheek and would go off in search of Peter to discuss his work. Peter always worked in the house, never in the gallery.
On weekdays there wasn’t much cooking until the evening so I often had a morning more or less free to visit art exhibitions suggested by Bernard and then go off to the sale rooms. I became quite bold at the sales and sometimes bid for things that ran into hundreds of pounds, at least a few hundred pounds. I bought a French escritoire made of beautifully inlaid woods for £230 and sold my early Victorian one for £65 in the following week’s sale to pay for some of it. A pair of elegant Queen Anne pier glasses took the place of the Trafalgar mirror, one on either side of the console table; then the console table was changed for an earlier, more elaborately carved one, and so it went on and the contents of my secret room became more and more valuable. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Peter’s help and the use of his van, and it was he who found some of my best bargains. We’d sit down there drinking coffee and planning what to do next and sometimes Mary joined us. She called the room ‘Paradise Lost’, but I thought it was more ‘Paradise Found’.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Johnny started having nightmares, so Bernard had his small bed moved to the dressing-room and he slept beside his father and the nightmares ceased. I was glad for the child’s sake, and yet I could not help feeling a certain resentment. Now, when the children played together and Johnny cried because he couldn’t have his own way, Bernard would appear from nowhere and accuse Marline of being rough with him. If they were telling him something both at once, as they so often did, he’d say, ‘Marline, be quiet for a moment and let Johnny speak.’ Sometimes she seemed a little hurt, but on the whole she took it very well. When I looked at my daughter I loved her so much, and when I looked at my stepson, with his fairy-story red and white cheeks, it cut me to the heart and I’d think: ‘He’ll always come first with his father. Marline and I are nothing.’ I became almost jealous of the child, and I’m sorry to say I sometimes gave him a slap when he was particularly difficult. He wasn’t naturally a difficult child; Bernard had made him so.
We picked the apples again a few days before Johnny’s fourth birthday. It wasn’t the happy day it had been the previous year, perhaps because I tried too hard. We had our picnic under the tree and Mary was there as well as Peter, so it should have been a jolly occasion, and it was for the children. Johnny was far more nimble this year and climbed about the lower branches of the tree although we were terrified he’d fall. Bernard would never forgive us if a big black bruise appeared on his snow-white skin. He didn’t fall, but anything made me nervous that afternoon. One minute I’d be laughing, then I’d find I was crying instead and Peter and Mary would exchange glances. I knew they were worried about me and indeed I was worried about myself. As my desolat
e marriage deteriorated, so did my health. I had headaches and found it difficult to eat, the food seemed to stick in my throat; but the worst thing was the depression, sometimes really black and terrible, and at other times just under the surface waiting to pounce. I’d sit in my secret room and tears would run down my cheeks; then, when I touched the beautiful things – the carving on the console table, the smooth inlaid woods of the escritoire and the Spanish virgin with her delicately carved hands and gold-embroidered robes – I’d feel comforted and I’d return to the household upstairs. There was only Mrs Hicks working for us now both children went to school, Johnny just in the morning. The policeman’s wife still came to babysit, but it wouldn’t be for long because she was expecting a baby of her own. We went out so seldom now, Bernard and I, that that wouldn’t cause much inconvenience.
Meanwhile a girl called Alison had come into our lives, a wistful girl with small breasts and large eyes that appeared to be appealing for help. She worked in Bernard’s bank and had cashed cheques for him for over a year without him noticing her. Then she turned up at the gallery one lunchtime and he recognized her immediately, quite startled to see her against a different background. He told me about her when we were having dinner one evening. ‘There was this timid girl gazing at the paintings with her big eyes and trying to understand them. She said she often spent her lunch hour in the National Gallery but now she was becoming interested in modern paintings after a visit to the Tate. The poor girl – she’s called Alison, by the way – admitted she knew nothing about art, but she so wanted to learn. Anyway, I promised to lend her some books and she’ll be calling for them on Saturday afternoon. You won’t mind giving her tea, will you?’
The Juniper Tree Page 16