Charity

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Years ago this was as smooth as a pavement,’ Jackson said. ‘But things have slid a bit since then, half the house is shut up now. It takes me all me time just to keep the grass cut.’

  All at once they were out of the trees, and there, beyond a circular lawn, was the house.

  The view from back up the road had given her the scale of the place. Now as she saw it close up, bathed in sunlight, an unexpected lump came to her throat.

  She had sometimes seen pictures in glossy magazines at the dentist’s, of houses as big and as old, but a black and white photograph couldn’t show the serenity, the softness of the colours or the sheer beauty of such a place, with its warm grey stone walls, dozens of twinkling mullioned windows, tall chimneypots and a terracotta coloured roof. The turret-like porch with an arched front door and a coat of arms evoked castles in history books; the small belltower on the north wing and the stained glass in a bay window an image of a church. With the clear blue sky above, the lawn in front and the ancient cypresses grouped protectively round it, no one, least of all a girl from the back streets of Greenwich, could fail to be moved by its magnificence.

  Jackson stopped the car and got out to open her door. Charity stepped out hesitantly, looking up at the inscription above the front door.

  FEARE HIS GLORIOUS AND FEAREFUL NAME. THE LORD THY GOD. HONOUR THE KING.

  It brought back an image of her father and made her shiver.

  ‘Remember what I said.’ Jackson took her case from the boot and, holding her elbow, led her towards the door. ‘They’re only people, just like you and me!’

  Charity’s first impression of the interior of the house was of walking into an old church. The hall was stone, the floor made uneven by feet over the centuries and chillingly gloomy with a strong smell of mildew. But before she had a chance to catch her breath, an old lady came out of a door to her left.

  ‘Charity,’ she said. ‘How good to see you at last.’

  Her voice rang out like a melodious bell, echoing round the hall. Although she was small and slender and her hair a fluffy white cloud round a lined face, there was no sign of infirmity. Her back was straight, the hands that reached out to clutch Charity’s arms in greeting, unwavering.

  ‘Hallo.’ Charity wasn’t sure whether she should kiss her grandmother or not. Although her words were welcoming enough, she gave only a tight, cool smile and there was no inclination of her cheek towards Charity. ‘It’s kind of you to invite me.’

  She’d pictured her grandmother as an older version of her mother, but in fact there was no similarity. Grandmother’s face might be heavily lined, but it had a healthy glow and a sweetness that Gwen’s had lacked. Her eyes were faded blue, her mouth slack and puckered with tiny lines, but she was still undeniably pretty.

  ‘Take Charity’s case up, Jackson,’ her grandmother said, and caught Charity’s elbow in exactly the same way that Jackson had done, waving her hand dismissively towards the man hovering in the background.

  As Jackson disappeared, Grandmother opened the door she’d come through earlier, nudging Charity before her.

  ‘Stephen!’ she said. ‘Charity.’

  Charity stopped short as she saw her uncle. She was aware of the vast room which seemed to dwarf her, but the man in the wheelchair moving himself towards her intimidated her still more.

  Despite his sitting position, he was huge. He had a bloated, purple-tinged face and a shock of white hair that hung over the neck of a navy blue sweater. His trouser legs were pinned up, just two short flaps where his knees should have been.

  ‘Hallo, Uncle Stephen.’ Charity took a deep breath and stepped forward to shake his hand, trying to remember the polite greetings Uncle Geoff had suggested. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’

  He shook her hand with surprising strength. ‘You’re even smaller and thinner than the picture,’ he said, his voice hoarse, as if he’d spent a lifetime shouting.

  She knew instantly she would never like this man. He was fat, so very fat it made her stomach churn. He didn’t have one chin, but four or five, almost like a pelican, and his blue eyes were small and bright as a bird’s. Even his mouth was nasty, with loose, shiny lips that suggested he would dribble, and the hand that held hers was covered in engorged veins.

  ‘I’ll go and see how dinner’s progressing,’ Grandmother said, ‘and leave you to get acquainted.’

  To be left alone with this monster of a man brought Charity out in a cold sweat. Her heart thumped alarmingly and the last of her courage left her.

  ‘Don’t stand there gawping like an idiot.’ Stephen wheeled his chair round and pointed to an armchair. ‘Sit down and tell me all about yourself. You look very like your mother.’

  Charity had assumed when Jackson had said the same thing that it was out of politeness; she’d never seen any similarity between them. But then she couldn’t imagine this man being her mother’s brother either, he was far too big.

  ‘Well speak up, girl!’ he bellowed. ‘Gwen didn’t inform me she’d four children. If she had we might not be strangers now.’

  His ferocity and insensitivity reminded her of her father, and all the confidence Geoff and Lou had built up in her vanished. What did he expect her to tell him? About the fire? About her father’s preaching? Or about her brothers and sisters?

  ‘Mother never told me she had a brother,’ she ventured in a shaky voice. Her eyes were straying from his face to her surroundings and that was enough to rob her of speech entirely.

  ‘Why should she mention me? I wasn’t much use to her, too far apart in age,’ he barked. ‘I was off at Sandhurst when she was a baby. You’ve left school, I hear? Why’s that?’

  ‘It was arranged before Mother and Father died.’ Charity wished he wouldn’t bellow; it made her shake. ‘Uncle Geoff is coaching me and I’ve learned such a lot since I went to live with them.’

  She wanted to phone home now and beg to go back. Her uncle was staring at her so intently she wanted to hide behind a chair. Was he already disappointed by her appearance?

  ‘Are your foster parents vegetarians?’

  Charity was startled by this odd question.

  ‘Do they eat meat, girl?’

  ‘Well yes,’ she replied, wondering if that was a crime.

  He snorted.

  ‘Huh. Thought they were plant eaters, browsers, they sound like it. Full of all that weak claptrap.’

  Charity didn’t understand the remark.

  ‘Uncle Geoff’s a writer,’ she said in his defence. ‘He’s very clever and kind.’

  ‘What service was he in during the war?’

  ‘The air force.’ Uncle Geoff had told her he hated service life more than anything, but he’d advised her not to mention that.

  ‘Damn Brylcreem boy.’ He snorted again. ‘Still, I half expected him to be a conchie. Do you know what that is?’

  Charity shook her head.

  ‘Conscientious objector, the yellow-bellied cowards who refused to fight. If I’d had my way I would have lined them all up and shot ’em.’

  This seemed a very odd thing to spurt out and it crossed Charity’s mind that her uncle might be mad.

  ‘Uncle Geoff went back to Germany to help the refugees,’ she said stoutly. ‘And Auntie Lou. They weren’t cowards.’

  ‘Does your brother Tobias want to join the army?’ He shot the question at her and took her by surprise. ‘Every man in our family for eight generations has been in the Rifle Brigade. If we get his name down now he could go to Sandhurst.’

  Uncle Geoff was a pacifist, but even he had agreed that Toby would be an ideal candidate for the army, with his fascination with guns, tanks and just about everything overtly masculine. But she wasn’t going to say anything that might make Toby attractive to this bully of a man.

  ‘He likes sport,’ she said, playing it safe.

  ‘Plenty of chance for sport in the army,’ he said. ‘A real man’s life. Boys should be made into men at the earliest opportunit
y with plenty of discipline.’

  Panic rose up within her, robbing her of speech. Toby resented discipline more than any of them and suppose her uncle was also including little James in this toughening-up process?

  ‘Prudence is clever,’ she volunteered. ‘She should pass her eleven-plus.’

  ‘Girls don’t need education,’ he said airily. ‘It’s wasted on them. Boys are different.’

  Charity could imagine Lou’s hair standing on end at that remark. She had got a first-class degree at university and even now she taught classes in history at evening schools.

  ‘Times are changing though, Uncle Stephen.’ Charity would have loved to come out with one of Lou’s fiery speeches but she wasn’t that articulate or brave. ‘Girls have a right to a career too.’

  ‘Secretaries, nurses maybe.’ He snorted again. ‘They have their place in society of course. But higher education is a waste and they take places which should go to men.’

  Fortunately Grandmother came in at that point with a cup of tea for Charity. She must have heard her son’s last remark, and half smiled at Charity.

  ‘Don’t take too much notice of him,’ she said. ‘If a woman doctor could give him back his legs he’d be straight off to see her. Now Stephen! Would you like a whisky? And will you need the fire?’

  ‘Just the one in my room,’ he said. ‘Doubtless the girl is tired after her journey and it’s warm enough for the time being.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’ Charity asked. She couldn’t imagine why they would even be discussing fires in June; the room was hot from the sun.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Grandmother said, and went over to one of the big cabinets. It looked Chinese: shiny black with glistening patterns of mother of pearl set in it. She opened a door to reveal dozens of bottles with glasses on a lower shelf, and poured her son a large tumbler full of whisky. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough. Dinner’s at six, I hope you like fish?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ In fact Charity wasn’t keen, not unless it was the kind from the fish and chip shop, but it had been drilled into her at an early age to eat whatever was put in front of her.

  ‘Shall I show Charity her room now?’ Grandmother gave the drink to Stephen.

  ‘You might as well.’ He gave Charity a withering look which seemed to imply he had nothing further to say to her. ‘And bring me the paper.’

  ‘Don’t mind Stephen too much,’ her grandmother said once they’d left the room. ‘He’s always been a grumpy devil, but he gets more amenable once he’s had a drink or two.’

  Charity had no idea how to respond to this so she smiled weakly.

  ‘Who looks after all this?’ she asked instead as they turned a corner past a grandfather clock and walked towards a big wide oak staircase. There were doors everywhere and she couldn’t get a fix on exactly where she was in relation to the the drawing room. Even a glance out the window on the staircase didn’t help. A large tree blocked any view.

  ‘We have help,’ her grandmother said vaguely. ‘But it’s much too large now there’s just Stephen and myself.’

  Grandmother drew Charity along a narrow, dark passage, in which there were many more closed heavy oak doors.

  ‘I’ve given you this one because it’s well aired,’ she said as she opened a door right at the end. ‘It’s above the kitchen, you see. An old house like this gets very damp.’

  There were high, twin single beds with carved headboards, a matching dressing-table with dozens of tiny drawers and a wardrobe big enough for ten people. Beneath a window stood an old-fashioned tiled washstand equipped with china basin and jug.

  ‘This is nice,’ Charity lied, hoping her grandmother might unbend with flattery. The room had the same kind of austerity as her parents’ bedroom back in Greenwich and although the view was of garden and rolling fields beyond, the decoration was dingy as if it hadn’t been touched since Victorian times.

  ‘It needs decorating,’ her grandmother said tartly, but she sat down on the edge of the closest bed as if suddenly realising Charity expected more of her. ‘I’m sorry my dear, you must be feeling very strange to be suddenly landed here without knowing anything about us. The house has become a terrible burden since my husband died. We find it hard to get reliable staff and there’s so much that needs attention. If you could only have seen it as it used to be when Gwen was a girl!’

  Charity had an inkling. Everything she’d seen so far created an image of decaying grandeur. In its heyday Studley Priory must have housed droves of servants to keep it all in order; now it was silent and empty, her grandmother and crippled uncle rattling around in it like two peas in a dusty shoebox.

  ‘Maybe I can help?’ Charity wanted the old lady to like her. ‘I can cook and clean. I used to do nearly everything at home when Mother was ill.’

  ‘Gwen was ill?’ Consternation flitted across Grandmother’s lined face.

  ‘It was her nerves.’ Charity fell back on the excuse everyone had used for Gwen Stratton. ‘She got much worse after baby Jacob died and I did everything for James when he was born.’

  If she expected this to bring forth an explanation of why Gwen never contacted her family or even spoke of her, Charity was disappointed. Grandmother stood up, smoothed down her dress and made for the door.

  ‘I’ll leave you to unpack,’ she said, and once more her face registered nothing other than polite deference to a passing stranger. ‘The bathroom’s the last door on the left by the stairs. Come down again when you’re ready. Put something tidier on for dinner, please.’

  It took only a couple of minutes for Charity to unpack her few belongings. She hung up her best blue dress in the wardrobe, put her underwear, shorts, jumper and skirt in the chest of drawers and shook the creases out of a pink dress with a white Peter Pan collar to change into.

  She was close to tears. The house was so big and silent and she hadn’t the least idea what was expected of her.

  In her pink dress, with clean white ankle socks to replace her laddered nylons, and with her hair brushed, she looked closer to twelve than fifteen. She paused outside her room, looking along the narrow winding corridor with its many heavy doors, tempted to open some of them and peep inside.

  The silence made her skin prickle and the gloom conjured up pictures of ghosts, even though it was still hot and sunny outside. But as she placed her hand on the latch of the first door, a loud booming sound made her jump back in fright.

  For a second or two she thought it was some device to warn her uncle she was intending to snoop. But as the sound reverberated around the house, it dawned on Charity that it was nothing more than a gong, to call her for dinner.

  It was quite an ordeal. Charity had never seen a formally laid dining room, much less eaten in one. Aside from the formidable sight of all the heavy silver plate and a long table big enough to seat at least sixteen, the atmosphere in the room made her jumpy.

  She was put opposite her grandmother, with Uncle Stephen in his wheelchair at the head of the table and a big, sour-faced woman, to whom she was offered no introduction, dished out the meal in sullen silence.

  First came soup and her uncle glared at her as she picked up the dessert spoon. But although the soup was red, it wasn’t tomato as she expected, but something fiery which almost blew her head off.

  The fish was flat. Grandmother said it was plaice and tutted when Charity couldn’t get the bones out. With it came a strange green vegetable called kale, and new potatoes.

  ‘No wonder you’re so thin,’ Uncle Stephen said, looking disapprovingly at her plate. She had eaten all the potatoes and some of the fish, but no more than a mouthful of the kale.

  Charity privately thought he was incredibly greedy. He gobbled vast quantities of everything, covering it in a nasty-looking sauce that had green things in it. Aside from pouring his mother one small glass of wine, he drank the rest of the bottle himself and each time he downed another glass he belched loudly without even excusing himself.

  Grandmother, in c
ontrast, ate hardly anything, but she listened intently as her son fired questions at Charity. There was nothing subtle or gentle in the way he phrased them, and if his mother was appalled at his lack of tact as he broached the subjects of the fire and the funeral, she showed no sign of it.

  ‘I’ll leave you two now.’ Stephen wiped his lips on his napkin and wheeled himself away from the table once the baked apples and custard had been eaten. ‘Tell Jackson to come in about ten to help me into bed.’

  As the door slammed behind him, Charity looked to her grandmother hopefully.

  ‘I’m sorry, Charity,’ Grandmother said softly. She got up from the table and stacked the dirty dishes on to a trolley. ‘My son isn’t the easiest man to live with at any time, but I hadn’t expected him to be quite so terse with you.’

  ‘He doesn’t like me, does he?’ Charity’s lips trembled, wishing she dared ask if she could phone Aunt Lou.

  The old lady pushed the trolley towards the door that led to the kitchen, rolled it through, then closed the door firmly behind her. She came back and put her hand on Charity’s shoulder.

  ‘It isn’t a question of likes or dislikes,’ she said in a low tone.

  Charity heard the trolley being wheeled away and it crossed her mind that it was no wonder the big woman who prepared the meal looked so sullen if no one ever thanked her or even spoke to her.

  ‘Quite honestly, Charity, it might’ve been better if he’d remained in ignorance of you all. It’s upset him a great deal.’

  ‘We don’t have to be a burden to him,’ Charity said timidly. ‘Uncle Geoff is happy to have us.’

  Grandmother sat down next to Charity and looked right into her eyes.

  ‘That isn’t this family’s way.’ She sighed, her faded blue eyes tinged with sympathy. ‘We are strong on duty. To my son that means he must see you all get a good education and start in life. Unfortunately Stephen has decided that Mr Charles is what he calls a “lefty”. He feels you will all be indoctrinated by his ideals.’

  Charity didn’t understand what ‘lefty’ meant. She assumed it meant Uncle Geoff’s gentleness, his aversion to corporal punishment, to public schools and indeed the armed forces.