The Glass Castle

by Violet Winspear

  It was altogether a disastrous day as far as Heron was concerned, though when Miss Carnaby appeared at her chambers in the afternoon she was looking pleased and said that her three cases for that day had gone well.

  ‘The Judge congratulated me on that defamation case this afternoon,’ she beamed. ‘Heron, you added an “argument” which I used and it came in very handy. Why don’t you take my advice and start studying for a law scholarship? We need all the women barristers we can get, and you seem very career-conscious. It’s essential, of course, to be dedicated to the practice of law. Marriage, a husband and a home, can be an interference, but you strike me—oh, I don’t know, as a rather self-contained sort of girl. Rather like I was at your age. Why don’t you think about it, Heron? Pass the scholarship and I’ll take you on as my pupil.’

  Training to be a barrister had often crossed Heron’s mind, but if she started to study for such a career she would need the money to carry her through the years of study as opposed to actual work. On the money she earned as a clerk she kept herself, and she didn’t like the idea of asking Uncle Saul for any more money. He had put her through college as it was, and there was a firm streak of independence running through Heron. And also, if she worked hard enough, she might become a head clerk in due course, an important and well-paid position.

  ‘Think about it, seriously,’ Miss Carnaby said, and then sat back with a pleased sigh of relaxation to enjoy her cup of coffee. ‘It’s a hectic life but a very satisfying one, when all’s said and done.’

  Heron returned to the office she shared with another clerk and she silently prayed that her employer wouldn’t suddenly drop some homework on her desk. All week she had been in doubt about her date with Edwin Trequair, but all at once the thought of seeing a really good play, and of eating a well-chosen meal after the performance, sent a thrill of expectation running through Heron. It would, after all, be pleasant to place herself in his assured hands and let the turmoil of the day be soothed away.

  At twenty minutes to five Miss Carnaby swept off to her weekend at her country cottage, and Heron breathed a sigh of relief. She and the other girl quickly cleared their desks, covered their typewriters, and were allowed to leave the office before the stroke of five. The great catkin-laden willow-tree in the courtyard seemed to shine golden as the two girls hurried from the precincts of those panelled, book-lined, ever busy offices where they spent so many hours of their youthful lives.

  ‘Doing anything interesting this weekend?’ asked the other girl as they stood waiting for their buses.

  ‘I’m going to see a play tonight.’ Again Heron felt that quickening of her pulses, half pleased by the idea, and half alarmed. It was silly to feel this way, but she just couldn’t help it.

  ‘Going with someone nice?’ The other girl had been going steady for quite a while, so there wasn’t the slightest note of envy in her voice, only a slight hint of surprise. She was aware that Heron held rather aloof from men, and being female herself she knew from Heron’s impatient glance at her watch (the plain, leather-strapped one she wore for work) that she was in a hurry to get home and get dressed up; the usual sign that a man was involved.

  ‘Well, nice isn’t exactly the right word for him.’ Heron broke into a silent grin. ‘My escort is the tall, dark and dangerous man of the gipsy predictions. He takes charge, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘I rather like that myself—ah, here comes my bus, so I’ll bid you farewell and hope you have a good time with your dark and dangerous man. ’Bye, Heron!’

  ‘ ’Bye! Have a nice weekend yourself!’

  Directly Heron arrived at her flat she ran herself a hot, scented bath in which to soak away the flurries of the day; she rolled her hair into big fat rollers for a soft hairstyle, and laid out the dress which she had decided to wear for the evening. It was a gracefully draped dress in georgette, a violet-grey colour, dramatized by a georgette jacket in sheer stunning violet. She had bought it for a fairly reasonable price at a local boutique, for it seemed just the right kind of dress to wear to a play entitled The Constant Nymph. It was so young and light and gay, and it would dispel that feeling she had had all the week, that by going out again with Edwin Trequair she was, perhaps, allowing him to think that she liked him a little better. And if he thought that, then he might attempt to kiss her, and Heron didn’t dare to think of how she would react if he suddenly swept her into his arms and made love to her.

  That he was experienced in the ways of women she didn’t doubt, but because she was so inexperienced in the ways of men of his age and sophistication, the thought of having to submit to his kisses was enough to make her go cold all over. She quickly stepped into the steaming bath and sank down into the scented warmth of it. She leaned her head against the rubber cushion and made herself relax for ten luxurious minutes. Then she lathered herself, used the hand shower to rinse off, and stepped out to begin the ritual of making herself glamorous.

  It was rather a nice ritual, especially at the end of a busy week, and she had to admit to herself that she was looking forward to seeing a play with such a romantic reputation. It was good that theatre managements were reviving the old classics and giving modern-day audiences a chance to see romance. Everyday living was so devoid of it, and permissive attitudes of mind, and body, were sweeping away the old respect and desire for love. The kind of love people died for.

  Heron had dressed and made up her face, and was putting the final touches to her hair when the door chimes rang their sonorous warning through the flat. She stared a moment at her reflection in the mirror, saw there a cool and outwardly composed figure, and tried to ignore the slight tremor in her knees as she made her way to the front door. As the time before Edwin looked the personification of masculine style and self-assurance.

  He carried a small white box which he handed to Heron as he silently took in her appearance. ‘You look very charming,’ he said to her. ‘Like a breath of springtime.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and concentrated on opening the box, which contained a big white flower resting on a velvety, heart-shaped leaf.

  ‘It’s a water-lotus,’ he told her. ‘I’m growing them in my hothouse for transference to the garden pool. They’re more hardy than they look, but don’t pin it to the delicate fabric of your dress, for the pearls have a certain waxy heaviness.’

  ‘It’s gorgeous.’ She cupped the lotus in her hands, and she knew why he gave it to her. It resembled the big water-lily which had nearly caused her to drown when she was an infant, and he remembered, and he wished to compare the grown-up Heron with that drenched, bawling young brat who had given her mother such a fright. She glanced up at him, and there was a quizzical smile arching the edges of his mouth. ‘It has a devilish beauty, and you have a satanic sense of humour.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Where are you going to wear it?’

  ‘In my hair, I think. Will you help yourself to a drink while I fix the flower? I shan’t be more than a minute or two.’ Heron disappeared into her bedroom, where she rearranged her hair into a glossy coil at the nape of her neck, into which she fixed the white lotus, using a couple of bobby-pins to make it settle firmly in place. She then took stock of it in the triple mirrors of her vanity table; it looked very exotic against her red hair, and it made her wonder if Edwin Trequair would think she was trying to imitate the girls of the Indies, who liked to dress up their hair with a flower.

  She picked up her silver cloak and enveloped herself in the silky folds, which blended with the filmy violet-grey of her dress. She picked up her purse, braced her shoulders and rejoined her escort. He was standing at the window with his drink, gazing down at the traffic that wended its way past the building in which she lived.

  ‘You must miss Jocelyn’s Beach like the devil,’ he said, turning to face her. He came over and studied the effect of the lotus in her hair. ‘The petals match your skin,’ he murmured, and as his dark blue eyes swept over her face and her slender neck, rising from the folds of her c
loak, there shot through her an electric awareness of his worldliness and his control of the situation between them.

  ‘We’d better go,’ she said, retreating from him to the door. ‘We don’t want to miss the curtain up—’

  ‘I was unable to get tickets,’ he broke in smoothly. ‘I thought we’d take a drive into the country and have dinner there.’

  ‘Oh—’ She looked at him in a disappointed silence. ‘I was so looking forward to the play—’

  ‘There’s always another time, and I know a place in the country where the food is very enjoyable.’ He came and held open the door of the lounge. ‘What’s the matter, Heron? Don’t you trust me? Do you think I have dark designs on your virtue?’

  ‘I think you’re unpredictable,’ she said. ‘You enjoy springing surprises—’

  ‘Is it really such an unpleasant one, the prospect of a drive with me into the peace of the country after your busy week in noisy London?’

  She thought about that and had to admit to herself that it would be nice to get away from the sound of traffic and the smell of petrol fumes. ‘Where exactly are we going?’ she asked, as she preceded him from the flat and he firmly closed the door behind them.

  ‘Let it be a surprise, eh?’ They went down the stairs to the street, and there in the kerb stood his grey Rapier, sleek and gleaming in the evening sunlight. ‘To the coach, Cinderella, and I promise to have you home by midnight.’

  ‘I shall make sure of that, prince charmant.’ She held out her wrist, on which gleamed the watch he had given her. ‘This keeps very good time and isn’t just a pretty face.’

  She saw a smile glint in her eyes as he unlocked the car and held open the door for her. She brushed past him and was very aware of his height, which always caught her attention because he held himself so upright, with none of that casual ease of posture of other men. It was as if he had a backbone of unbending iron, an outward indication of the touch of iron in his character. As she sat back in the wine-leather seat, a mental picture of David Wildwine flashed across her mind and she realized that had she been with David she wouldn’t have felt half so nervous about a drive into the country, and this was strange because the dark, bold art dealer had the reputation of a rake.

  ‘Comfortable?’ During the course of her rather uncomfortable thoughts Edwin had slid into the driving seat and shut them together in his car.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, and watched his lean and assured hands as he started the car; his skin was still deeply bronzed from the hot sun of the Indies and his long fingers were ringless. It was always with a sort of reluctance that Heron admitted to herself that she admired certain things about this man, but he did have good hands and the bone formation of his face was almost foreign in its distinction. She could almost see the shape of the bones under his tanned skin; the scar caused by a knife almost seemed to add to his look of a—a satyr prince.

  ‘I’d give a pound or two to know what you’re thinking,’ he drawled, as they sped along Holborn, almost quiet and deserted at this end of the day.

  ‘I thought you read my thoughts without having to pay for them,’ she rejoined. ‘In any case money wouldn’t buy them. They are very, very personal—after all, would you tell me your private thoughts?’

  ‘Not right now,’ he drawled, winding the car along Threadneedle Street. ‘I don’t want to break up a beautiful friendship, do I?’

  ‘Are your thoughts that terrible?’ She glanced at him and saw the sardonic smile clefting his cheek.

  ‘Someone with your virginal eyes might think so. After all, what is there for a man of my age to discover about any woman, and this is a factor which either intrigues a girl of your age, or inspires her with a certain fear. I know what I inspire you with, Heron. All the time you are expecting me to pounce, but it’s young men who do this. My methods are far more subtle.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘You’re with me right now, are you not?’ They paused at the traffic signals near Liverpool Street Station, and he looked at her as she glanced at the door handle beside her. One downward thrust and the door would be open and she would be free ... his fingers tapped the smooth, notched wheel of the car and he made no attempt to reach out and restrain the movement of her hand.

  ‘Go ahead, Heron,’ he said. ‘You’ll be just in time to go under the wheels of the lorry directly behind us.’ Her hand moved back into her lap as if stung, and the go-ahead light glowed in her eyes as the car moved forward. For a minute or two she felt as if she hated him for being so attuned to her distrust of him.

  ‘Aren’t you clever?’ she said cuttingly. ‘Clever as the devil!’

  ‘I am merely less lethal than a two-ton lorry, and I am instinctively aware that there must be a dash of folly in a girl with flaming hair. I am also a man who sat one night on a verandah far away, under a moon as big as a breadfruit, who suddenly said to himself, “Happiness, where art thou?” It hits us all at some time or other, and so I came home.’

  ‘Was Jocelyn’s Beach your home before you went abroad?’ she asked; her flare of anger seemed as if it had left its smoke in her eyes, and she blinked and was amazed to feel the sting of tears.

  ‘No. I had no home. I chose to make the Glass Castle my home.’

  ‘But you must have been born somewhere,’ she protested. ‘You must have a birthplace.’

  ‘It would shock you to know, child. You had a pink nursery and a rosy-cheeked nursemaid.’

  ‘I—I like to think those things didn’t spoil me.’

  ‘I was born in a shack on a beach—not Jocelyn’s Beach. My mother was unmarried, and she left me there in that dirty, cold shack and she was never seen or heard of again. A fisherman found me and took me to the Carmelite nuns who cared for abandoned infants. I was with them until I was five, when I was sent to a State home for foundlings, as it was called. I ran away when I was fourteen. Hopped a train and let it take me where it would; a thin, hungry little blighter, as distrustful of people as a kicked mongrel. It wasn’t that they’d been actively unkind to me, but of kisses, of love, of being wanted I knew nothing. I’d like to think that these things haven’t scarred my soul, but I know they have. Scars aren’t pretty objects, so I make no apology for requiring the company of a pretty girl ... a girl unflawed.’

  He drove smoothly, swiftly, taking a route which Heron knew but which she didn’t comment on. She wasn’t shocked by what he had revealed, but she felt as if it were all curiously unreal when related to his look of distinction; the nose thin, proud and dominant, the deep-set glinting eyes, showing startling blue lights when he raised the heavy eyelids. His looks, his fine quality suiting; the leather, walnut, and air-conditioning of his car, all added up to good living and excellent taste.

  Heron found it hard to associate him, ever, with a dirty shack on a lonely beach, where his uncaring girl of a mother had given birth to him, leaving him to the care of strangers. Leaving him to grow up unloved ... and the unloved never found it easy to love anything or anyone.

  ‘Have I taken your breath away?’ he murmured. ‘By plunging you in at the deep end of my history?’

  ‘No one would guess ...’ She sought for the right words to express her thought. ‘When I saw you at Memory the night of Sybil’s birthday I thought you must know everything in the world except toiling for a living. You looked as if you had spent your life in art galleries, and in salons being witty and cruel. I—I detested you—’

  ‘And what now?’ He spoke as casually as if they were discussing the next turning they should take.

  ‘I suddenly feel that you’re a lot more human—’

  ‘But am I likeable?’

  ‘I’m not going to commit myself to answering that question. You’re too unpredictable ... a tiger, not a tabby cat with a friendly purr.’

  ‘Well, I certainly won’t be annoyed by that thumbnail sketch of myself.’ He spoke in a dry tone of voice, as if he were amused. ‘What makes you imagine a tiger as opposed to a bear or a mule? Because I liv
ed in the Indies?’

  ‘Yes, partly that, and because you have a sort of well-controlled menace and grace about you. You just don’t strike me as a bear, though I think you might have a few characteristics of the mule.’

  ‘Which is an obstinate animal, eh? True, I can be stubborn and I’m well aware that you didn’t want me to persist in breaking down your resistance to me. Are you afraid that with my tigerish instincts aroused I shall make a meal of you?’

  ‘Is it so ridiculous of me?’ She flushed slightly, for why else did he persist in wanting her company if he didn’t wish to make love to her? Had he not said only minutes ago that he made no apology for needing the company of a girl like herself; one who had not yet succumbed to the wiles of a man!

  ‘It isn’t so ridiculous,’ he said, ‘but on the other hand it’s rather insulting. So you believe that I’ve planned your seduction, eh? That in a while I shall stop the car, drag you behind a bush and enjoy all that pale and pure innocence of yours. What a vivid, and very unworldly imagination you have, Heron! I’d hardly crease a Savile Row suit and a Sulka shirt in a rough-and-tumble behind a bush with a most unwilling victim. As I told you earlier on, my methods are much more subtle than that. You know this route we’re taking. You know we’re heading for the little coastal town where you were born, and where I came to live in a house you called fantastic ... a sort of ogre’s castle on a hill.’