The Diamond Waterfall

by Pamela Haines

  Why, how, can a gift of God be an instrument of wickedness? I wonder, did God allow the Devil to tempt me through Teddy? No. There the circle begins again—because she is good, but is tied to me —I am a monster of wickedness. Wicked beyond forgiveness.

  November 20th. Nine days now since the Armistice. I thought this morning, does it matter if or when I go home? The best that could happen would be for me to die first, and be punished. For God will surely punish me—but those I love, and loved, will be free of me.

  December 10th. I shall not speak very much in the future. Dead men have little to say. I dreamed last night that I was already dead and knew this morning that that is how it is to be. They will know I am dead. I shall say, “Look, Teddy Bear, look.” The doctors, what can they do? They may insist that time will cure everything. How little they know.

  Some words from Revelations came to me this evening: “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them …”

  How long, oh Lord, how long?

  There seemed so many of them. American cousins. It was overwhelming at first. That, and the New World.

  They all spoke at once:

  “My name’s Jay. You’re Cousin Teddy Bear.”

  “Cousin Teddy, can you see whose sister I am?”

  “Can you tell us, Teddy, why you’ve been so long coming to see us. David said—”

  “Teddy, I sort of like promised Jay you’d sit with him.”

  Even those who lived out of New York had come to be there for her arrival. It was all part of that great lift of her heart she’d had as the liner came through the Narrows. Standing at the rail, seeing the Statue of Liberty. The New World (Oh, how she needed a new world).

  Aunt Daisy, her mother’s sister—she hadn’t expected her to be so like Lily. Photographs of the two as young girls—even later pictures—had not shown it. It was Mother’s turn of the head, laugh, voice. Most of all—voice.

  Nearly forty years now since she escaped to marry her Joszef. Teddy liked him at once. White-haired and frail, old for his age. Gentle. She wondered how, as her mother had said, two such gentle people had managed. Except Daisy had been strong with it, must have been strong.

  Daisy talked freely to Teddy of the bad times. “Some of it your mother never knew. We wouldn’t have wanted her to. And then in the end, she was so good to us. The money—I think it must have been the whole proceeds of her stage success.”

  Teddy had wanted then, suddenly, to tell her about Romania. This was, unlike her own mother, someone in whom she would find it easy to confide. Yet (and I am able to tell casual acquaintances, shipboard friends like Daphne) she didn’t feel it was her own secret to pass on, it was her mother’s.

  There had been money, but not so much of it until their eldest son, Joe, joined his father in 1905 at the age of eighteen. Within five years the business had taken off. Joszef’s partner, approaching seventy, sold out. Joe, it seemed, had moneymaking talents inherited from who knows how many forebears. The Greenwood touch—he had that certainly.

  He was thirty-six now, married, with three sons. The whole family came over for lunch the first weekend of Teddy’s visit. Anna, the first daughter, came too, with her four children. David, the only member of the family Teddy had already met, had survived the war, but now lived in the West.

  Ruth was the youngest. Her husband, Lew, had been killed in France in 1918. She and her four children lived now with Daisy and Joszef. Daisy said, “We offered them a home at once—for selfish reasons. It’s so lovely to have small children around all the time.”

  For Teddy, passing several weeks with these grandchildren, her cousins, was a happiness she tried not to grasp at too frantically. She thought sometimes they must sense her longing when she picked them up and hugged them, took them on excursions, sang to them at bedtime. It was worse even than the longing with the orphans in Paris.

  Ruth’s children, Jay and Harry, were eight and five. The little girls, Esther and Lily, ten and seven, were dark-haired like their mother. Both were rivals over their dolls:

  Esther: “Cousin Teddy, my Gloria’s cuter than her Laura, isn’t Gloria cute, Cousin Teddy?” Lily: “Estie’s too old for dolls, Cousin Teddy.”

  They liked stories from her at bedtime, especially stories of how it had been when she was a little girl. The boys liked songs:

  “I was born in Michigan and I wish and wish again,” she sang:

  “Picking fruit seems silly, after Piccadilly … Oh how I wish again, I was in Michigan—down on the farm …”

  Jay was the most talkative. He was learning the cornet and was very confident: “Listen to me. I play a real mean cornet.” She had to sit while he tried, over and over, “Black Sheep Blues.”

  There were snowy days, when two red-cheeked little girls went to school by motor car. Jay had a croup and had to stay home. He couldn’t play cornet either. She sat with him and with Harry, who was recovering from a fever.

  “Say, can you play piano? When I’m not sick anymore we could maybe play alongside each other.”

  “I have to sing to Harry now,” she said. “I promised.”

  Harry climbed out of bed and sat on her knee.

  “I’m just wild about Harry,” she sang, “and he’s just wild about, he’s just wild about, he’s just wild about me!”

  Jay asked, “Cousin Teddy Bear, did you never have any children?”

  “No.”

  Puzzled, he said, “Did you never want some?”

  “Yes, Jay,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

  5

  Sylvia’s despair was terrible. The first week after Geoffrey’s going, she wanted only to die. And, she thought afterward, if she had known the best way, had had the courage, had not been given that puppy—what might not have happened?

  Certainly the puppy needed her. The first night he cried piteously, so that she put the small basket up on the bed beside her, wrapping it around with an old blanket. When he cried, she cried. Outside the cold was intense and for a few days she had to stay in bed, still with the kidney complaint. She was treated by the new doctor with some nauseous alkaline mixture. She was told that she could expect to feel some sickness, and this she admitted to. Her real fears, she did not mention.

  “What do you call him?” he asked of the puppy, which she had in the room with her now all the time, running to and fro, squeaking, falling over his paws.

  “Ludwig.”

  “As in Ludwig van B, eh? Never thought to hear Jerry names chosen again. But time passes. Things not too good in Germany either.”

  But it had been silly, absurd. She had named him after Beethoven only because of that first evening, the evening of the storm. How, why should she remind herself continually? And yet I do. Now she said only:

  “He looks like a Ludwig, don’t you agree?”

  She tried never to think at all of how far Geoffrey would be on his journey, of when he would arrive—of his new life, his family’s new life. She tried but did not always succeed. On her second day up again, she went into Richmond and had her hair bobbed. When it was done, she would have liked not to have to look. But, “Yes,” she said politely to the hairdresser, “yes, that’s very nice.” She looked quite different: her face seemed surprised, fragile —her cheekbones accentuated. At home, her mother liked it. She herself knew the act to have been a punishment.

  She had now passed the time for her second period. Panic seized her where before she’d been numb with despair. I must do something tell someone. But who? Her mother—impossible. Teddy? I might. If she were here.

  Three days later she received a Valentine from Reggie. She had no doubt it was from him. The handwriting, clumsily disguised, could have been no one else’s. Postmarked in Argyll, it was a luridly colored heart with attached arrow. Alongside he had written in capitals:

  Maid of Flaxthorpe, ere we part,

  Give, oh give me back my heart!

  Or, since that has left my breas
t,

  Keep it now, and take the rest!

  Below he had added, “How about marrying me?”

  She smiled affectionately, for a second almost forgetting her despair. Then it swept over her again. I will wait one week, she thought, and then speak to someone.

  Afterward she was to reflect with surprise that it should have been Reggie to whom she spoke. It came about because he called at The Towers, driving a smart pony and trap, announcing that he was back in Flaxthorpe, and could he take her out?

  She didn’t suppose Mother would really approve, but she wasn’t at home. She was probably with Erik.

  “To bob or not to bob?” Reggie said. “Pity you couldn’t have kept that hair.”

  They took Ludwig with them, on Sylvia’s knee, wrapped in a rug. It was a mild sunny day, unbelievable for February.

  “He’s a wriggly little blighter. Terrier, good for rabbiting though. Shouldn’t be surprised if he yaps.”

  A little way out of Flaxthorpe on the Settstone road, he said, “I didn’t write that verse stuff—the Valentine, you know. Words by that bounder Byron. Maid of somewhere or other he said—so I put Flaxthorpe.” He paused a moment. “How about it then? Any good a chap asking again, eh? Got quite a few prospects.”

  “All right,” she said. “Yes, I will, Reggie.”

  He jerked suddenly on the reins, startling the pony. Brought the trap to a smart halt. “Phew! By George—that’s the most extraordinary … Do you mean that?”

  She was trembling, and put her gloved hands inside the rug where Ludwig lay sleeping, warm.

  “It’s not—I’m not—” she began, looking down all the time at the puppy. “There’s something dreadful I have to tell you.” And she burst into tears.

  “Hold on, old thing. I mean to say …” Hooking up the reins, he turned so that he could put his arm about her. “It can’t be that bad—can it?”

  But it was, even in the version she gave him. The New Year party which she should never have attended, the man, visiting Yorkshire only, who’d paid her so much attention. The drink she wasn’t accustomed to. Her shame when she realized … “I’m not even sure of his name—only that he was married. I never thought … what happened to me, that it could …” She finished, “So you see I have to be honest. I couldn’t not be. But I can hardly expect—”

  Soon it would be over—she would be despised, and the mistake she had just made wiped out. The terror would begin again.

  “By Jove, that’s a facer. Bloody good thing you haven’t his name, his life wouldn’t be worth much.” He pulled her closer, his mouth on her shoulder. “You didn’t think I’d take back my offer, did you, eh? That I’d be such a cad. I’m still there, if you want me.”

  Ludwig had woken and was whimpering. “Another kind of girl might have tried it on—deceit and all that. Getting me to, you know—well, perform.” He added, “Wouldn’t have minded a bit of that—except you’re not the sort. … That’s why I do want you. If you’ll have me.”

  Yes, she would have him. There was no turning back now. For Geoffrey’s child, a father. For her, Reggie. God’s in his heaven, she thought suddenly, bitterly.

  She picked up Ludwig and held him close, but he wanted only to jump down and explore. He waddled and stumbled on the floor of the trap.

  “Luck,” Reggie was saying, “don’t usually get luck. Unless you count losing only one arm when it might have been both my—I’m sorry. Something I shouldn’t say in front of a lady.”

  She had to kiss him. It was not unpleasant, although he tasted bitter (or was it her?). She felt a little faint as his empty sleeve pressed against her. He told her that he wanted a son, very badly. “Quite a thing with me, that is. … Right through this last show I was thinking, if I come out—what I want is a son. A lovely little wife and a son. We’ll sort out this little fellow first,” he told her. “Then you’ll have one for me, eh?”

  Later, as they were driving back, he said, “Look, old thing, if you’re in this jam—the wedding, it’ll have to be pretty soon, don’t you think? Dashed soon by my reckoning.”

  She did not have to decide not to think, she found quite simply that she could not. It was as if from the moment she had said “Yes,” and made her (false) confession, her mind had ceased to work. Practical matters such as telling her mother, those she could not escape. But real thoughts, she was spared. For the moment—she did not imagine it would last—she could not feel anything at all.

  Her first concern now must be for the child. She would take care of herself, try to eat well, sleep more, walk in the fresh air. In the meantime she must tell her mother about the marriage. That, she dreaded. She would have to he again.

  She and Reggie had agreed that it would be better if she spoke, even though it was his place to do so. She told her mother in the evening of the next day, after dinner.

  “Reggie Gilmartin—we want—what would you say—we thought, you see—of getting married.”

  “Darling …” Her mother’s face, voice, shocked. Displeased? Then, laughing almost: “You’re not serious?”

  Oh, but she was. (There must be no going back.) She said over and over that really she meant it—that she and everyone else had misunderstood Reggie, that truly he was a much better person than he seemed. (And might not that indeed be true?)

  “He’s a fortune hunter, tout court.”

  But money had never been mentioned. He had not spoken of it, except to tell his ideas for making it.

  “Daddy said something like that once, but not about Reggie. About men generally. Honestly, I don’t think—”

  “Darling, why not—wait a little? Postpone the whole notion and then see how you feel—say, after the Season? If it’s real love—”

  “But, Mummy—” (She could not bear, would not hear, that word “love.” What had this to do with love—except that it was his child?)

  “Oh, do be civilized. I just make the suggestion—”

  “But it has to be soon. The wedding, I mean. You see …”

  Perhaps she had become better at telling lies, for this time it came out pat. “I’m going to have a baby.” She phrased it so that she did not have to lie, did not actually say that it was Reggie’s. Such foolish scruples amid such great deceit.

  She was believed, of course. And her confession, as she had known it must, changed everything, although Lily was at first inclined to blame Reggie:

  “So much older. To have seduced you—it doesn’t bear thinking.”

  “But it was my fault, Mummy. And what a lovely old-fashioned expression, ‘seduced.’ It was—we were just anticipating, you see, then there was Daddy’s illness and—and …”

  A lot of talking to be done. She did it all in the same airy, falsely happy tone. A dangerous excitement gripped her as if she played with death—or for very high stakes.

  Her mother’s voice broke.

  “I can’t think—all my children … Teddy’s marriage—such a rush, so little thought. But that had the excuse of wartime. I encouraged that marriage, which seemed so right. Just seventeen, younger even than you. Yet I who waited till twenty-seven—” She broke off. “My plans, all my hopes for you, darling …”

  She put her arms tight about Sylvia. She was weeping now. “Forgive me. It’s the shock. Perhaps we ought to … Please, please darling, think dreadfully carefully about this. That you are absolutely certain …”

  But there was a baby, and that altered everything. Her mother admitted that. And as for thinking … God, that I may never have to think again, or feel again. May I be a good wife to Reggie. Above all, may I be a good mother to his child.

  The rush to make arrangements started almost at once. Except for Angie and Mrs. Fraser, his aunt, she knew nothing of Reggie’s family. Both his parents were dead, but there was another sister, Bar, married to a doctor and living in Canada. Reggie spoke grandly of going out to visit her. There were some cousins in Argyll with whom he’d just been staying, others in Harrogate.

  She wond
ered a little how Angie would react. She was staying with friends in Switzerland, but wrote immediately to Sylvia. It was a letter full of enthusiasm. “All I could have wanted for the blighter—too marvelous for words—long to hear all details … perfectly sickening to see him so absolutely pining …”

  The wedding date was fixed for April 6, just after Easter, which that year fell on April Fools’ Day, a coincidence she found sourly appropriate. The haste of course needed explaining, as would later the child’s birth: even seven months could not be managed. But she had ceased to care about any of this and wanted only the ceremony and all the fuss that went with it over as quickly as possible. She knew there was some talk—gossip rather, not about the haste but because Reggie was (terrible phrase) “not quite out of the top drawer.” Even her mother had said as much, although she’d added, “Since you love him, what’s it matter? It’s only if perhaps, later …” She left the rest unsaid. To Sylvia it all seemed much the same, since ne was not Geoffrey.

  Money too entered the picture. The family solicitor was sent for, and there was talk of settlements, a dowry, inheritance, jewelry, and, of course, the Diamond Waterfall. Most of it was over her head, just as it had been when after her father’s funeral they had read the will. She knew only that at twenty-five she would be very rich, and that Reggie would not ever have to worry. Although he assured her, protested, that he could never live off her wealth. “I’ve a sound business head, old thing, oodles of acumen—just need to find the best enterprise, get it off the ground. Bring Angie into it, perhaps.”

  The arrangement was that as soon as she inherited The Towers, they would live there. Until then Reggie could find work if he liked. They would have her ample allowance meanwhile.

  It was thought better if the birth did not take place in or near Flaxthorpe. In that way it would pass with less remark. The story was given out that Reggie had a post in the South of France, in Mentone, deliberately vague but with diplomatic undertones. Because it must be taken up immediately, they would marry very quietly before he left.