The Glass Castle

by Violet Winspear

  ‘Ben is extremely nice, if a little flirtatious,’ said Heron. ‘You should think yourself lucky that you attract the honey-bees and not the wasps. It’s much nicer to be sweet-talked than stung, I can tell you.’

  ‘Did the dark hawk dare to sting you?’ Sybil grinned. ‘Darling cousin, you do take life a little too seriously, and I suppose it’s mixing with all those barristers and silks that does it. They must be a very earnest bunch of people and naturally suspicious of everyone. If you had to go and work in London why didn’t you take a modelling job, or become secretary to some dashing tycoon?’

  ‘In the first place I don’t fancy being a clothes peg for a lot of idle women and their cohorts to gape at, and in the second place, dear romantic Sybil, most tycoons are fat and sixty and pay other people to do their dashing.’ Heron tilted her chin. ‘I happen to like my job. I earn a decent wage and I don’t have to sponge on Uncle Saul any more. He had to pay for my schooling and I’m only too glad that I can repay him by being self-sufficient and independent now I’m grown up.’

  ‘Dear Heron!’ Suddenly Sybil became serious and bending forward she planted a kiss against her cousin’s smooth, cool cheek. ‘I only tease you because I’m so fond of you. Shall we go in now and join the others for a bite of supper? I’m ravenous, and Lilian is cooking us some sausages and bacon.’

  Lilian was Sybil’s rather young stepmother, and unlike the stepmother of tradition she was, in the words of her stepdaughter, a pet of a person.

  The remainder of the party was more relaxing for Heron, but she was glad to get to her bed in the room she had slept in when this gracious old house, rather Tudor in design, had been the property of her parents and had not yet passed into the hands of Saul Kendall, who had made his fortune in the foundries of the North and whose first wife had been the sister of Heron’s mother, as lissom and delicate, and with the rose-red hair which Heron had inherited.

  Sybil took after her father, for she was fair in colouring and inclined to plumpness.

  Heron smiled to herself as she brushed her red hair and saw the gleaming reflection of it in the mirror of the vanity-table. She was very fond of Sybil and didn’t envy her because she was fortunate enough to reside at Memory; the daughter of the house as Heron had been, with a wealthy and indulgent father who didn’t mind how many friends his girl invited here.

  Less frequently did the old memories clutch at Heron, but again the feeling swept over her that tonight at Memory a ghost had walked and touched her for a brief moment there beside the lake. A shiver ran through her and her fingers were not quite steady as she loosely braided her hair before getting into bed. She sat a moment, slim and straight against the pillows, and allowed her eyes to travel around the bedroom to which she now came as a guest. Still the colour motif was silvery stripes against blue wallpaper, and patterned net at the windows blew softly in the night breeze. The white rug on the floor beside the single bed still bore the faint pink mark of the medicine spilled there when Heron had whooping-cough as a child. On the shelf above the small writing-bureau there were the books she had read over and over. Still within those worn covers were the fictional characters she had loved, and the poetry she had murmured to herself. Nobbin and Dobbin, the china horses, held between their rumps a set of Dickens. Great Expectations had always been her favourite book, for each character had seemed to be so vividly alive, and Pip had been so human for a hero.

  She pulled the cord of the overhead light and settled down against her pillows as darkness blotted out the books and the rug and the gently swaying curtains. The moon had shifted and was on the other side of the house, no longer shining on the lake where she had had that rather disturbing conversation with Edwin Trequair.

  Why had he kissed her hand? Did he really mean to see her again?

  She drifted off to sleep with his lean, dark face imposed upon her mind, but when the morning came, bringing sunshine, she had forgotten her rather disturbing thoughts about him.

  It was after Sunday lunch that Heron slipped away from the house and made her way to the churchyard where her parents were at rest. The early morning sunshine had given way to blustery clouds and the promise of rain, so Heron was clad in a hooded jacket of red worn over slim-fitting pants of dark green. She carried a large bunch of daffodils and tulips cut from the garden of Memory by the old gardener who had been there in her mother’s time. Her mother had loved the April flowers, and the gold and grey of the April weather, and whenever Heron came to Memory she never failed to take to her mother the kind of flowers she had loved, for she had been rather like a spring flower herself, lovely and glowing for too short a time.

  As Heron walked through the open gates of the churchyard a few spots of rain fell on to the flowers she was carrying and she sent up a little prayer that it wouldn’t rain hard and spoil the flowers. She made her way along the path that was so quiet but for the twittering of birds in the yews and the dark towering cypress trees. Here and there she caught the murmur of voices as other people tended the stone resting places of those they had loved. It was very peaceful, she thought. A secluded place cut off from the troubles and tribulations of life. Some of the stones were lichened and worn, and their epitaphs could hardly be read; but others were white and new, and upon one was a little stone bird with outstretched wings indicating that a very young life had recently flown away.

  Then Heron caught sight of the mass of mauve aubretia that marked the double stone bed of her parents, a thick cloak of the small lovely flowers to warm the stone with their brightness. And there she paused, the daffodils and tulips still in her arms, and read yet again the words which were engraved on the open stone book above the aubretia ... the words her father had chosen when he had lost his wife ... the words which never failed to revive for Heron the feeling of hopeless loneliness which he had felt.

  My wine hath run

  Indeed out of my cup, and there is none

  To gather up the bread of my repast.

  They expressed all that he had felt, and they were also words by Elizabeth Barrett Browning who had been the favourite poetess of Heron’s mother.

  Heron often wondered what it felt like to be loved so much, unto death and beyond it, and with a tiny sigh she knelt on the grass verge and arranged the gold and scarlet flowers in the stone vase beside the stone book. Their loveliness blended with the aubretia and the rain in the air brought out the scent of the flowers. Heron pushed back her hood and bowed her head in a small prayer. Then she rose to her feet and with her hair still uncovered she walked back along the path to the gates of the churchyard, leaving her parents together in their love, and felt stricken for a while by a sense of being alone in the world.

  Sybil’s parents were kind to her, but they were not deeply concerned for her future as they were naturally concerned for their daughter’s. They made her welcome at Memory, but when she left tonight for London they would drive her to the station and wave goodbye to her without realizing that she dreaded the return to her small silent flat in Bloomsbury.

  The feeling would slowly wear off, but it was always a wrench to leave the grace and warmth of Memory, where dogs barked and friends called, and the piano or radiogram were always in use, for both Sybil and Lilian were lively people.

  The flat was compact and painted in gay pastels. It was conveniently situated for Temple Court and the theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue, but she was not allowed a pet, nor a piano, and only a sea of traffic flowed beyond her windows.

  Heron loved the sea, and upon leaving the quiet churchyard she ran to catch a green, low-decker bus and paid the fare to Jocelyn’s Beach. She just had to have a breath of sea air before she left for London, and she caught a grin from the bus driver as she settled back in her seat. ‘Not much of a day for the beach,’ he said over his shoulder, as he started the almost empty bus.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I like the beach to myself.’

  She alighted from the bus where a cobbled hill meandered its way to the seashore. Cloud
s rolled in from the Channel and shadows dappled the white cobbled wall that rambled downhill. She passed a dell filled with white bells giving out a honey smell that mingled with the tang of the sea and the stony sands that swept along beside it. An old shop filled with Victoriana stood at the foot of the hill and there she paused for a few moments to gaze in at the waxen dolls, the birds under glass, the big pottery jugs, and the items of furniture marked by time and the hands through which they had passed. Chains of big glass beads hung round the neck of a stuffed owl, whose beady eyes seemed to look into hers with a sly sort of mockery. A huge elephant’s foot stood on a bamboo table, and a brass gong seemed to quiver in the shadows, as if it still held the echoes of a tiffin summons, or a call to dinner in a white-panelled room where ceiling fans whirled angry wings at the big persistent moths.

  As this thought drifted through Heron’s mind she frowned and turned away from the dusty shop. She stood at the kerb and waited for a car to roar past before she crossed the narrow road. She recognized the two-seater as belonging to a boy-friend of Sybil’s, and she turned her head aside and hoped she had not been seen. The car flashed by and she was glad, and at the same time a little saddened that she should be left alone on the kerb, unrecognized in her red jacket and green pants, the hood of the jacket still thrown back from her red hair.

  She crossed the road and made her way along the path where trees rustled and leaves caught the rain. She walked along beside the endless line of small yachts and the wind as it sang in their moorings made a strange sort of sea music. She passed the Lady Audacity, an old sailor of a ship now used as a club by the yachters and forever chained to the beach. The old girl had a gipsy air, a romantically battered look ... almost a stranded look, for the tide was out and her chains were deep in the mud.

  Far out the sea sparkled in a truant ray of sunshine through the clouds, and Heron breathed the tang of sea mud and curling weeds and creatures in washed-up shells. She stood at the rail of some steps leading down to the sands and watched as small birds hopped among the rocks and searched for crumbs left by the morning sun-seekers. Heron stood alone and let her mind, her body, all her senses, respond to the loneliness of the sea and the beach. Her eyes were a silvery grey like the sea, and her hair tossed in the breeze like a bright banner.

  Once upon a time she had been part of Jocelyn’s Beach; part of this town on the edge of the estuary, attuned to its every church chime and greedy call of the seagulls. Now she was a town-dweller who came as a visitor, hungering for the sights and sounds and smells of the place she had always loved. Nothing made up for this, not even success at her job and the satisfaction of being independent. Nothing really compensated in the city, and suddenly she ran down the steps to the beach and bent like a child to pick up a tawny shell striped like a tiger. She polished off the grains of sand and stood there admiring it as the wind blew her hair about her brow. The years seemed to slip away and she was lost in her memories, a carefree child again chasing along the beach with Lonny her dog, running into the surf and feeling it cool and caressing about her ankles. Her tumble into the lake at Memory had not made her frightened of the water; she seemed to have a nature that responded to a challenge, and her eyes were unclouded and unafraid as she gazed at the sea and saw a solitary sail moving against the silvery-grey water. A hardy soul was out there, braving the wind and the fine sting of the rain as he drifted along the estuary and waited for the turn of the tide to bring him in.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Brooks.’

  The deep voice cut into her thoughts so suddenly that she almost jumped out of her sneakers. She whirled to face the owner of the voice; a tall man wearing a field coat with a storm collar, his long legs in narrow brown trousers. A man with black and silver hair ruffled by the wind, the skin of his face and hands saddle-brown. A man whose eyes caught the sea-light and glittered like dark sapphires in his lean, distinctive face ... made sinister by that long scar.

  Heron had no difficulty in recognizing him, and now she masked her nervous tension with an appearance of composure. ‘Why, fancy seeing you, Mr. Trequair. You must have the tread of an Indian, for I didn’t hear you crossing the sands.’

  ‘I think you were miles away in your thoughts.’ His eyes were world-wise, adept at reading the faces and minds of other people. ‘Let me guess that this strip of beach, rambling all the way to Geesewell, is a favourite place of yours. Here you have left your footprints in the sand. Am I correct?’

  ‘Are you ever incorrect?’ Her fingers tightened on the tiger shell and she was acutely aware of how alone she was on this strip of beach with the East Indies man. The rumours about him rushed through her mind, and her impression of him last night was intensified now she saw his face by daylight, and noticed how searching were his eyes. He wasn’t a modern man and carelessly unconventional ... he looked beneath the surface of a woman’s skin and he probed her secrets and made use of them.

  He was a disturbing invader of her privacy, and his warning that they would meet again was now a fact which she couldn’t help but acknowledge, and resent.

  ‘You mustn’t let it disturb you, Miss Brookes, that there are people you will see and never see again, and others you will meet whom you would rather not run into. Life is often disagreeable in that respect.’ He smiled sardonically and his teeth were white against his brown skin. ‘We seem, you and I, to have in common a fondness for solitary walks and the feel of the wind. But it’s rather unusual in a woman to like her own company, and to be careless of what the wind does to her hair.’

  At once he made her conscious of herself as a woman who for a while had felt like the young Heron again, who used to come racing here to Jocelyn’s Beach when school was out, tossing off her pudding school hat so her red hair could romp free of its braid.

  The look she gave Edwin Trequair was not designed to hide her resentment that he should appear and scatter the old happy memories he could never share. She saw his left eyebrow twist, giving him an air of quizzical irony.

  ‘You don’t like me very much, do you, Miss Brooks?’ He said it quite without rancour, as if it didn’t really matter ... as if in fact it rather amused him that she should react so fiercely against him.

  ‘If you already know,’ she said, ‘then I needn’t confess my feelings. I’m sure it doesn’t bother you, for I’m sure you must know that you have half the townswomen curious about you, and I’m no longer a member of the community. I live in London.’

  ‘But I think your heart still lives here,’ he said, and his gaze was intent upon her face as he slid his hands into the pockets of his field coat. ‘You know, it’s rather dangerous to dislike someone at first glance ... as dangerous as loving someone at first sight.’

  Love ... the word ran through Heron like an electric probe. It seemed the very last emotion to associate with Edwin Trequair, who had such an air of sardonic knowledge of the world. The sentiments of love seemed as alien in this man as a flirtatious gaiety would have been alien in Heron. This lean, dark, hardened man would possess a woman, but there would surely be none of the divine companionship Heron thought of as love.

  ‘I—I wouldn’t know,’ she said, in her coolest tone of voice. ‘I’ve never yet fallen in love, at first sight or second. I should think it would be rather a foolish thing to do, to imagine yourself in love with a stranger.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘Foolish, dangerous, and yet curiously exciting. Don’t tell me that a girl with red hair has not imagined a love affair like a bolt out of heaven? Ah, you look shaken, Miss Brooks. Have I touched a nerve?’

  ‘No,’ she denied, for what business was it of his that only last night, as she played a Liszt prelude, she had visualized love as a pleasure close to pain ... a passion near to tears ... a joy with its heels in hell and its hopes in heaven. Such imaginings were not for sharing with Edwin Trequair. He was a stranger to her ... yet, looking at him as they stood beside the incoming sea, tossing its spray and washing the rocks, she again had the curious feeling that h
e knew something intimate about her. The knowledge seemed to lie deep in his strange, dark-blue eyes, smouldering there almost like a threat.

  She shivered as the voice of the sea made itself heard, and the rain began to fall with more insistence. She drew the red hood over her hair, and she cast a glance at the incoming tide. ‘I must be getting home—I mean, I leave soon for London and I have to catch a bus to Memory.’

  ‘I have my car parked on the road,’ he said. ‘The buses are slow on a Sunday and you’ll get soaked in the rain. Let me drive you home.’

  She hesitated, but when she saw a derisive little smile edge his mouth she agreed to his suggestion. To refuse his offer of a lift would only convince him that she was rather afraid of him. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t much fancy a long wait in the rain.’

  They trod through the sand to the steps that led up to the path that led further along to the cliff gardens. The scent of the flowers was intensified by the rain as side by side they mounted the wide stone garden steps to the street. The rain darkened the empty timber seats that overlooked a fine view of the sea, and Heron turned for a final look at the running tide, for a final breath of the tangy air, before following Edwin Trequair to the sleek, grey, black-topped car that stood in the kerb.

  He went round to the driver’s door and unlocked it, leaned in and opened the passenger door for Heron. She slipped inside and settled herself in the comfortable leather seat, and it was a relief that he joined her in silence and didn’t speak until they had left Jocelyn’s Beach behind them and were coasting smoothly uphill. ‘I shall be in London next week on business,’ he said. ‘Will you snap off my head if I ask you to dine with me next Thursday evening?’