It was the last evening but one of their stay in London, and the sitting room of his suite was full of flowers. She’d arranged that. They were to eat upstairs before going out much later to dance. She was on the sofa, smoking and reading Vogue. She remembered afterward that she wore a new dinner dress. Blackberry silk, with a high neck. Both the color and cut flattered her.
Ferdy had just gone into the bath. Beforehand he had rung room service for champagne.
When there was a knock at the door, she thought, How speedy their service is!
But it was a bellboy, with a telegram. She called through to Ferdy:
“A wire for you. Shall I bring it in?”
“God, no. Business. It can wait.”
He emerged a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel. “Let’s see,” he said. As he opened it, she saw him frown. Then, for a moment, his face looked pinched, colorless.
“Everything all right?”
“It’s rubbish,” he said, shaking his head, “the office really does pester me.” Crumpling it up, he threw it into the basket. “Why are they taking so long with the champagne?” he said irritably. “Ring again, darling. If it’s not there by the time I’m dressed …”
She was ashamed, while he went through to dress, by her curiosity, and in the end she gave way to temptation. She who was so scrupulous of another’s privacy, so jealous of her own, picked it out of the basket, and she read it hurriedly. It was in French, oddly botched along the wires (scrambled deliberately?) but its meaning was clear. An angry Solange told him she knew he was with another woman and that he was a charogne and a crapule and … ten indecipherable words … ending “va te faire foutre.”
She had already put it back in the basket as he came through. She said to him:
“I know I did wrong, but I read your wire.”
“Oh yes?” He looked uneasy.
“Someone feels strongly. By the sound of it she may even turn up here.” “I don’t think so,” he said. “It wouldn’t be her style.”
She said angrily, “Why didn’t you say? Some other woman—that you were in the middle of another affair?”
“It’s not an—affair,” he said. “She’s my wife.”
She could think of nothing to say. Then: “Oh Ferdy. You could at least have told me.”
“Why?” He looked puzzled. “We’re not planning to marry. We haven’t that intention. So what’s it matter?”
“It’s the deceit. I can’t trust you. Why hide it all?”
“Why not? Who would it help if I told? To be honest, I didn’t remember if I had or hadn’t.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “If I’m to take someone’s husband, I want to know that’s what I’m doing. I’ve the right to know the wrong I’m doing—”
“I never heard such nonsense. Casuiste. I didn’t tell you, and that’s all. Anyway, she’s been angry before. She’s often angry—”
“Not without cause—”
“You didn’t think, my darling, that you were the first?” “No. Nor the last.”
“Curiosity,” he said, “it’s the undoing of people, isn’t it?” He added, “What a charming way to begin our evening.”
At that moment the champagne arrived. The waiter offered to open it. Ferdy shooed him out.
“You’re in a bad mood,” she said. “I don’t know how you dare. If anyone’s entitled to be furious, it’s me.”
They kept the argument up for another ten, fifteen minutes, then ended it abruptly, by common consent. Ferdy said, “Whatever are we doing? Nothing but talking, talking, talking.” His hand beneath her arm, other hand holding out a glass of champagne for her, he murmured in her ear:
“… Just making conversation, when we ought to be making love …”
9
“Cuckoo,” Reggie said in a loud voice. Then again: “Cuckoo, cuckoo.”
“Please,” Sylvia said, “please. Your voice. The little ones, their door’s open—”
“Means nothing to them, Sylvie. Cuckoo, cuckoo in the nest—”
“Willow—”
“If Madam Titwillow hears something to her disadvantage, none too soon, is it, eh?”
“You promised. My God, you promised.”
“Can’t learn too early what her bestest Mummy’s like. Might have a bit more respect when she finds out what I’ve put up with, eh?”
“She might have more respect if you weren’t drunk five nights of the week—”
“Bloody rich, that—coming from you. … Mote in my eye, beam in yours. Can’t see it, can you, old thing? Whoring—that’s what I have to put up with. Mess you’ve made of your hair, too, permanent wave, when we’re on our uppers. It’s to get men, isn’t it? Cave, cave—mind we don’t get another cuckoo’s egg. Always room in the nest, eh? Titwillow. Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.”
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want … I shall not want … I must believe this, Sylvia told herself, walking heavily around the small kitchen, flies buzzing in the summer heat, afternoon traffic rattling outside. I do believe this.
Homesickness made her long for the Norman church in Flaxthorpe. Sleepless at night, she would imagine herself going through the doorway, walking up to the family pew. Smell of beeswax, of roses, cool stone. She would people the church—old Mrs. Matthews (was she still alive?), Mrs. Fisher, Mother standing always so straight-backed, wearing the very latest in hats. Erik in his place on the left, four rows back. Let us sing. Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven …
The linoleum on the top landing. She saw, as she came up the stairs, a big cut, the frayed edge showing. She hadn’t noticed it before—yet it couldn’t be new (Oh God help us if we have to replace even the cheapest of floor coverings) since it was surely one of the younger children’s work, and they’d been gone four days now, were Mother’s worry for the next three weeks. An August holiday in a seaside hotel (and I hope, I hope, that Beth doesn’t strip off the wallpaper beside her bed as she did last year at the Grand, Scarborough).
Willow would look after them of course—far better than the nanny engaged for the holiday. With her they were as naughty and difficult as a real mother. She did not seem to mind.
“Mummy, you look worried—don’t worry. It’s much better without a nanny, we see lots more of you. And the other girls at school, they don’t have nannies.”
She leaned too much on Willow these days. She should not, really should not. Nor should one child be more precious than another—that had been the first wrong. So much love for Lucy and Jessica and Margaret and Beth—but for Willow just a little more, because she is Geoffrey’s.
Cuckoo, cuckoo in the nest. It was that taunt that drove her to burden Willow with the truth. (But I would have told her one day, surely?) The risk that she would learn from Reggie, drunk so often now, was too great.
It was difficult to find the right words, to tell neither too much nor too little. “He was a truly good person, we loved each other so much but he wasn’t free to marry. We would have had to hurt others—but I could not have borne you to be adopted so I married Reggie and …” Words dried up.
Willow stared at her, white-faced, then burst into tears. Flinging herself into Sylvia’s arms, she cried:
“I’m so glad, glad. I can’t bear he should be my father—when he’s so rude to you and doesn’t care and—”
“But of course he cares, darling. It’s because of the Great War—he got that habit of drinking too much. Lots of them did. And then he’s had terrible business worries …”
“It’s you I’m worried about, always so tired. Oh Mummy, honestly, I am glad. I’m sure I knew somehow, even when he used to be nice, that he wasn’t —that I’m not his.”
It was only afterward she realized Willow had not asked for a name—or indeed for any detail at all. Instead she’d changed the subject, saying only:
“You looked so upset telling me that, Mummy. I want you to sit on the sofa, with your feet up, and I’ll put the rug over and make you some tea and then you’ve
got to let me give Margaret and Beth their baths. Promise, darling Mummy?”
Perhaps she had wanted to ask, but could not? Sylvia did not feel she could open the subject again. And later that same day they were to become fully occupied with a dying Ludwig. He was ill for two days only, losing the use of his back legs, then running a high fever. The third evening he died, Willow sitting on one side of his basket, Sylvia the other. They both wept. Willow said she couldn’t remember when there hadn’t been a Ludwig. “We’re the same age, nearly, except he’s had his thirteenth birthday.” Naughty Wig, who’d once stolen a whole leg of lamb, but who never snapped and was always always obedient. Sylvia wept because she remembered Geoffrey coming through the doorway, the puppy in his arms.
“One less mouth to feed, old thing,” Reggie said, arriving home later. “Don’t go replacing him, will you?”
The younger children’s grief didn’t last long because of the excitement of going to the seaside with Lily. Up to the last moment Willow had tried to persuade Sylvia to come. Lily too. But she didn’t want to. She was afraid to leave Reggie. What terrible thing might not he do, left on his own?
She wasn’t sure which worried her the most: the heavy drinking—drink they could ill afford—or the suicidal rages and despairs it led to. When she’d spoken to the doctor, visiting the two youngest with measles, she’d either explained badly or been misunderstood.
“Is he ill with it? Hung over? How’s his digestion?” But Reggie was able to tolerate vast quantities. That was not the problem. “Of course I can’t make him come and see me. So, better wait a little—shall we? And what about yourself? You don’t look too good. Pop into the office sometime.”
She did not, could not, say that Reggie had struck her. Once on the breast, another time about the head. The first time, but not the second, he had remembered and been repentant. Too repentant. Abject: “Got carried away, old thing. Went a bit too far. Was thinking, when we get our son, must never … Won’t do to let a son see …”
“What about daughters?” she had asked. But he had not been listening. Of course they could not afford a son now, nor could she be forever childbearing. It was that, and a painful miscarriage six months after they were ruined, that caused her to sell a few shares at a loss and go to Wimpole Street to have a Grafenberg ring inserted. She did not tell him. What could he not do with the knowledge?
They had been hard days since the Crash. So much had had to be concealed from her family. She had forbidden the family lawyer to speak with her mother at all. She wondered sometimes how much they knew.
The small Victorian house in North London, its main advantage that it had no space for Angie, the school where Willow was happy, the minor clerical job Reggie had found, and which she continually feared he would lose. The penny-pinching. Her own fierce pride. “We’re all right”
Downstairs, she began supper. The enervating August heat made food unattractive. She wasn’t often hungry these days, yet hadn’t lost weight. Was puffy if anything.
In fact, she seldom felt well now. A dragging sensation, dizziness, sometimes blinding headaches. One was creeping up on her now. She tried to ignore it. She should have been at the seaside resting, but had fobbed Mother off with a story of going away later with Reggie, when he gets his holiday. Someone in to look after the children.
A salad: she carefully washed lettuce, peeled tomatoes, cut cucumbers into patterns, the better to tempt Reggie. She had chopped up the last of Sunday’s lamb and set it in aspic. Fetching it now from the larder, she heard the frantic buzzing of flies. She’d left the back door open to air the small kitchen. She saw outside the old wire-mesh safe where Ludwig’s meat was kept. The sound came from there, and when she opened the safe, the smell too. Flies clustered thickly on his forgotten lumps of scrap meat. Even when she had dealt with it, throwing it away in several thicknesses of newspaper, the smell lingered. How could I have left it so long?
She found herself crying—for Ludwig again. He was only a dog, she told herself. Only a dog.
She went upstairs to have a cool bath, change her dress. The glass in the bathroom was clouded. Then as she stood there, it cleared, and her face stared back at her. Heavy black circles under dull eyes, her skin rough, drawn. Stringy hair made worse by the perm which she had thought would simplify her life but which had succeeded only in enraging Reggie. Her hair was breaking—the perm had been perhaps too strong for it.
Even when some time ago her looks had begun to go, she’d thought, There is always my hair. Easy, gives no trouble. Hair that others had envied and she had scarcely appreciated. I was not vain, she thought. What I had was only wonderful, beautiful, because Geoffrey loved me.
Fourteen years now since … Shutting her eyes, she opened them again quickly, head turned away from the glass. Thirty-two and she could have been fifty. He would not know me now.
She began to dress hurriedly, haunted by what she had seen. Where did my beauty go? It is not lying in wait for his return. It is gone. Destroyed. She felt a fierce anger at the waste of years. Why not have trampled on everyone, fled after happiness? For we would have been happy. (If he had not felt guilt, if I had not felt guilt.) We could have been happy.
Now, I try not to remember much. To resist the recurrent temptation to trace him. Those letters (only a few over the years and always destroyed as soon as written):
You have a beautiful daughter, with fair hair and brown eyes. Willow, after the willow wood that is your name.
But, of course, she thought now, that’s where my beauty has gone. It lives safely in Willow. Together with his, because for me, he was beautiful too. The front door slammed as she reached the top of the stairs. Reggie, in the hall, called up to her:
“Sorry, late, old thing—sorry, Sylvie.”
She said, “It’s only cold supper. It doesn’t matter.” She saw him sway a little.
“No hurry then, eh? Little drink. Some time together? Quiet without kiddies. Meant to give them something to spend—donkey rides, ice creams, that sort of thing. Always short these days, though. But your Mama—plenty. She’ll give them a good time.”
He went into the sitting room, which looked out onto the small garden— the fence at the end backing onto another house. The french windows were shut. A bluebottle buzzed angrily.
“No hurry to eat, eh?” He opened the radiogram, picked up a stack of records, and turned on the switch for the drop head. A Billy Cotton novelty number started up. He turned the sound louder. “Let’s have a little drink—”
“I don’t feel like one really. I’d thought if we—”
“Always spoilsport, Sylvie. Not your fault. We need old Angie here to shake things up, cheer you. Life always better when Angie’s around.”
He toyed with the food, breaking up the aspic jelly, grumbling about the lettuce. “Lucy and Jessica’s prize bunnies—give it them.” There was a boiled dressing. He poured it on lavishly, then pushed the plate aside. “Get a drink …”
She had stewed some greengages. She said, “What about pudding?” “Drink—don’t want any more till I’ve had a drink. You have one. Sylvie have a drink too.”
“Honestly, Reggie, no. Look, the meal—”
But he had gone through to the sitting room. After a moment she followed him. The last of the records dropped down. Reggie, a full glass in his hand, drained it in two gulps.
“There you are. Now Sylvia have a drink too.”
“I said, no.”
“I’m feeling beastly. Reggie’s down, pretty dumpy. Got dumps. Don’t want to go on.” He turned. “Come here and sit on a chap’s knee.” Reaching out suddenly, he pulled her to him, so that she stumbled onto his lap. Then, running his hand through her hair: “Hate those waves, curly stuff.” Hand over her breast, and on to her thigh. “Wait a mo. A chap needs a drink. Got to drink if he’s to make a son. Best thing we can do. What I need is son—”
Not now. Not that. She was safe. … but Reggie maudlin was perhaps worse than Reggie rough, angry.
And how quickly he could change from one to the other.
“Well, old thing, Sylvie—we’ve been long time now—no babe, eh? I don’t pay attention I ought, have to try harder, make a son.” His voice changed. Suspicious. “Not doing anything funny, are you?” He squeezed her breast, kneading it. “Fellow I know, his wife had tubes tied, didn’t tell him— poor chap found out too late. Haven’t had them tied, eh, Sylvie?”
She shook her head.
“You wouldn’t, old thing? Not the way to make a son, that. And those cap things, sponges, all those … Nothing like that, haven’t been putting anything up, eh?” He pulled her dress up roughly, his hand parted her french panties. Whiskey-laden breath.
“Reggie—enough!”
He said angrily, “Caught you out, eh? Haven’t put it in. One of those dutch cap things—Marie Stopes nonsense. If I find one in, know what? I’ll tear it out of you—yes, that’s it, tear it out. Can’t make our son that way.” He paused. “You’ve been putting one in, eh?”
She said tiredly, “No. No, I haven’t. I’m going to make us some tea, Reggie—”
“Don’t want tea,” he said sulkily. “Don’t want anything. Don’t want to live. That’s it—don’t want to live.” He gave her a small push. “Get me a drink.”
“Get yourself one.”
“I bloody well will. You have one. Come on”—his voice wheedling—“Sylvie have a drink.”
“I don’t want one. I said—a cup of tea. And you, certainly you’ve had enough.”
“Telling me what I must and mustn’t. So bloody good. No bloody good, that’s what’s wrong with you.” He reached for the whiskey, drank some straight from the bottle, then pushed the rim against her mouth. “Go on—I said, have a drink—have a drink.” He pushed her against the wall. She struggled—he forced a stream of whiskey down her gullet. Rushing, burning, choking her. Her mouth open to cough, she felt more poured down. She gagged. As she tried to shut her mouth, the bottle rattled against her teeth. He tilted it and the whiskey ran down her chin, through the top of her linen dress, trickling down her body.
The Diamond Waterfall Page 47