He had half forgotten, though, with how absorbing a passion she had loved Melanie, had half forgotten that the tentacles of her devotion had been strangling in their jealous possessiveness until through marriage Melanie had escaped, though not without a tussle between that same possessiveness of Lucia’s and his own determination ... He had forgotten all that until now he was reminded of it by the look on Lucia’s face, brooding and dark and tense, as she watched John struggling to force down his cold and claggy pudding.
Well, he would have to look about at once for some nice country lass, honest and clean and free from complexes regarding diet and what not, put her in charge of John, set Mrs. MacNeish, homely and full of kindly wisdom, to watch over the pair of them unobtrusively. That done, he would thank Lucia for her help and send her back by car to Earl’s Court, where she had a tiny flat. He had a shrewd suspicion that she hoped to take root permanently in his household, but it would never do to let her have the chance of winding those taut, clinging tentacles of her devotion stiflingly about John’s budding personality. He’d let her down as gently as he could by telling her they counted on a visit from her next summer. He wasn’t going to sacrifice John for all the emotionally unsatisfied women in the world.
“Eat up, now, darling!” Lucia said again. This time John pushed his plate away. “I aren’t going to eat up. There isn’t any room for more.”
“Well, just this once, perhaps!” Over the small fair head Lucia looked at Hugh and made a series of meaning grimaces. “To-day is rather different, I think, don’t you, Daddy?”
Hugh winced. He couldn’t bear the way she had of addressing him as “Daddy” when John was there. “Leave it, John, if you can’t get down any more of it.”
“There! Daddy’s let you off! And now we’ll go and have a nice rest in our new beddy-ba, and when it’s time to get up we’ll go for a nice walk with Auntie Lucia and explore this lovely place we’ve come to live in. And if we’re very good I shouldn’t wonder if there might be a surprise for tea! I smelt a smell of baking in the kitchen before lunch!”
John’s small face expressed no pleasure at the delights in store for him. “Bill Chauncey didn’t have to rest,” he said.
“Bill was a little boy we met at Southwold,” Lucia told Hugh, “staying with his parents at the Swan. Nice people, very friendly but not quite, you know.”
“Not quite what?” John asked.
“Not quite sensible about bringing up Bill. It’s good for little boys to rest. You will excuse us, won’t you, Daddy? Someone I know is half asleep already, tired out with all the excitement of coming here.”
“Of course. I’ve finished, in any case.” Left alone, Hugh lit a cigarette, then strolled to the french window and stood looking out into the garden. He was above the average height, broad shouldered, of athletic build. He had dark hair, peppered with silver at the temples; it grew back with a slight ripple from a square forehead. His features were clear-cut, his mouth was strong and sensitive; his deep-set hazel eyes, betraying nothing of himself, were penetrating in their scrutiny of others. His deep, deliberate voice, that could be harsh and brusque when he was dealing with some silly woman’s fancied ailment, could also be both gentle and reassuring when real suffering was involved.
Hearing Lucia warning John: “Careful, darling! Mustn’t fall and bump your knees!” as they went upstairs, Hugh frowned impatiently. Wrapping a child, even a delicate child, in cotton wool could do more harm than good. In a day or two, perhaps to-morrow, he must have a word with Lucia. John must have the chance of playing by himself, too. In London that had been impossible. You couldn’t turn out a child of five to play alone in the park, and naturally Miss Heald had been with him when he was playing in the nursery. That was one of the chief reasons why Hugh had come here. It would do John good to potter about in the garden on his own, free from the cramping consciousness of watching eyes, learning, as London children never could, the pleasures of clean country dirt, of climbing trees, dabbling in water, lurking in the bushes stalking lions and Red Indians in the unconscious persons of the gardener and the tradesmen’s boys. Yes, he would speak to Lucia this evening. Might get John a sand-pit...
He heard the front door open and close and footsteps in the hall. Miss Liskard, his secretary, had returned from lunch. He had arranged for her to live out, in rooms the Sinclairs recommended, though there was room enough in Swan House for her. Better for her to be away from work out of working hours, as she had been in London. He had taken her over with the house in Harley Street, eight years ago, capable, middle-aged, and pleasant. No sense in altering a satisfactory relationship by altering its basis without need. Familiarity need not necessarily breed contempt, according to the old adage, but in his experience it could and often did breed irritation.
He ground his cigarette out in an ashtray. Some men would have tossed it in the garden, but Hugh hated mess. He’d have a word first with Miss Liskard, then set out on the afternoon round. His calls this morning had included two at farms; one on a gamekeeper with a nasty septic foot; one at a country vicarage to see a child with measles; one on a charming elderly lady living alone in a corner of a great house, full of courage and humour; one on a retired general with a passion for heraldry; one on a young mother and her first baby, an eight-pound son. All of them kindly, friendly, pleasant people, genuine and simple hearted. All of them free from the poses, complexes, and inhibitions such as he came across too often among the wealthy women patients who consulted him in London. His round had taken him through a village where old cottages of rosy brick with curved Dutch gables clustered about a green where fat white geese were grazing; by farms where redpoll cows stood in the shade of ancient oaks, knee-deep in buttercups, and women in print frocks of blue or pink fed calves and chickens in the apple orchards; by quiet streams where willows leaned to look at their reflections. He had left London taut and strained. Already life had taken on a simpler, saner aspect. He had begun to feel smoothed out and relaxed. He had begun to think that there were more advantages in coming here than the benefits to John...
To-day was Wednesday, and on Wednesday afternoons it had been Dr. Sinclair’s habit to visit only a few urgent cases, keeping as much time as was possible as leisure for himself. Hugh had decided to continue with the custom. On Wednesdays after tea, patients permitting, he would take John on the river or to the sea, or on some other ploy a small boy might enjoy.
Returning home towards five o’clock he found John and his aunt finishing tea. He asked how they had spent the afternoon. “We went out to investigate the shopping possibilities when John had had his rest,” said Lucia, and went off into a long account of how the butcher had been none too civil when she asked for kidneys or sweetbreads to be delivered every Tuesday. “He actually asked me if I didn’t know there was a peace on!”
Not a very entertaining afternoon for John, thought Hugh, glancing at his small son’s drooping shoulders. “Like to come out with me, John, when I’ve swallowed down this hot tea?” he suggested. “I’ll take you to the river if you like.”
John nodded, his face radiant. “There might be tadpoles!”
“Not at this time of year, dear. Tadpoles come in spring,” said Lucia repressively. She was annoyed that Hugh evidently intended to go out alone with John.
“There won’t be tadpoles, but there may be minnows. We’ll have a look, and if there are, we’ll go to-morrow with a jam-jar and a net and see if we can catch some,” Hugh said.
“You won’t forget we go to beddy-ba at six?” Lucia reminded him. “It’s so important that we stick to our routine, isn’t it?”
“Routine times have to change, though, as a child grows older. And these long light evenings are the best part of the summer. It’ll do John no harm to stay up till half-past six or even seven. He only lies awake threshing around,” said Hugh.
“Threshing around,” John echoed him, “an’ playing. Mary at the Swan gave me a little tin. I filled it up with spit, but it had all run out by mo
rning.”
“And there’s my bath,” said Lucia. “I have it before dinner, after I’ve put John to bed.”
“I’ll put him to bed if we come in later than six.” Hugh wasn’t going to have Lucia dictating to him, least of all where John was concerned. She had done harm enough to Melanie.
“Oh, very well!” Lucia’s voice was huffy. Then, remembering that she would be well advised to tread warily with her brother-in-law until she had established herself here on a permanent basis, she changed her tune.
“Daddy knows best what’s good for little boys, doesn’t he, John? Hugh, while you’re out, how would it be for me to have a little talk with Mrs. MacNeish, to see if I can help her with the housekeeping in any way? I’d be so glad to take the little household bothers off your shoulders!”
Hugh thanked her, but said firmly that there was no need for her to trouble. Mrs. MacNeish was thoroughly capable, and if she did have any household bothers she had sense enough to deal with them herself. “Ready, John?” The tall man and the small boy went out together through the long french windows.
Hugh thought of Melanie as they crossed the lawn towards a door in the wall that opened on the river bank. She would have been a link between himself and John: a link they needed now that they were going to see more of one another. In London John’s nursery meals, his own return home too late to do more than say good night to a small figure in a dressing-gown already on his way to bed, had kept them from being much together. And now this feeling of his, that all the best of life was left behind, that he was old and tired at forty-three, was not going to be a helpful factor in the relations that he hoped to bring about with John. Useless to tell himself it was absurd to feel so at his age. He knew too well that age was not a matter of the years, but of the spirit. He had known men and women who at seventy were full of zest for living and others who in their twenties had already lost it.
“Whom the Gods love die young ... The Gods, then, had loved Melanie surpassing well. When she had died five years ago she had been thirty, yet had seemed no more than a child in her teens, with all a child’s carefree inconsequence. Always she had relied on him to make decisions, had been reluctant to assume the least responsibility, had shrunk from planning for the future, turned her face from difficulties. This was due to all the years when Lucia had possessed her, shielded her from trouble, guarded her from worry, blocked every path that might have led to her development along lines not planned for her by her managing elder sister.
His love for her had been the love one gives a charming, trustful child, cherishing and protective, and in return Melanie had given him her adoring hero-worship. He had never allowed himself the disloyalty of wondering whether that adoration would grow into the companionship and understanding of maturer womanhood, nor had he known their friends had likened them to David Copperfield and his Dora.
John had been following a swallow’s flight. He said, “I wonder how far it would be to heaven?”
Hugh came back to the present. “I don’t think anybody knows that.”
“If someone was to die it would be a good idea to tie an inch tape to his foot, so then we’d know.”
Hugh was spared having to answer this by Lucia calling after them. “Hugh! Telephone! A call from Norwich!”
“Wait for me; old boy. I’ll be as quick as I can,” he said, and went with long strides back to the house.
John looked about consideringly. At the far end of the garden was a screen of bushes beyond a fence. He wondered what they hid. Maybe he could look through that little gate.
Alison was feeding the hens when they flew up about her in a squawking cloud. She looked about to see what had startled them, and saw a rather alarmed-looking little boy who had clambered on the gate and now was hanging over it. “I didn’t mean to frighten them!” he said.
“Of course you didn’t. Look, they’ve all begun to eat again. Silly things, hens!”
“I’ve never known a hen, exactly.”
“Would you like to help to feed them?”
He nodded vehemently, slipped down off the gate, struggled with the latch, then, solemn and radiant, tiptoed to her side, anxious to cause no more commotion. “What do I have to do?” he whispered.
Alison held her bowl of com for him. “Just throw a handful down for them.”
The scattered hens came clustering round again as he threw down the com with the action of an underarm bowler, frowning anxiously. He beamed as they began to eat. “I did it all right, didn’t I?”
“Splendidly.” Alison was filled with tenderness for his small pale face, the endearing way his hair grew in a drake’s tail in the nape of his neck. “Would you like to see our kittens?” she suggested, to be answered again by his silent, vehement nod. The kittens were by now able to scamper unsteadily about the stable. They sat staring with surprised blue eyes in one of the hen’s nesting-boxes at the first small boy they had seen. One was black, the other striped grey and silver. John said nothing. He squatted by them, staring in silent ecstasy, oblivious to the voice that called him in the garden. “John! Hi! John! Where have you disappeared to?”
Alison left the small rapt figure and went out, and through the little gate to meet a tall man who must be Dr. Brandon. Her first impressions were of distinction, strength, intelligence; her next, of loneliness, a withdrawn austerity of the spirit that was to her a trifle daunting.
Hugh saw a girl rather below normal height, with round face, friendly brown eyes, smooth brown hair, and a diffident manner. She said, “If you’re looking for a small boy in a blue shirt, he’s brooding over two kittens in our stable, in such a state of bliss I hadn’t the heart to tear him away when you called.” He liked her voice, low-pitched and gentle and unhurried. His brow, that had been puckered, cleared.
“Oh, good! I was beginning to wonder if he’d found some way through to the river on his own. My name is Brandon, as you’ve probably suspected.”
“I had indeed. In Market Blyburgh we know all about a newcomer long before we set eyes on him. More about him than he knows himself, I sometimes think! I’m Alison Hamilton. I live up there”—she gestured to the windows over the coach-house—“with my young cousins.”
“The Sinclairs told me a great deal about you all. I was sorry not to meet you that evening you came to Swan House for coffee, but as you probably know, Tom and I had to dash off in a hurry to an accident. John and I are on our way to inspect the river.”
“I advise you to collect him, then! Otherwise he’ll spend the night in the stable. He can see and hear and think of nothing at the moment but kittens.” Laughing, they turned together towards the yard.
John was still crouched where Alison had left him. He scrambled up and clutched his father’s hand. “The black one pats your finger if you wiggle it! His nails go in an’ out of his feet! The other one’s more shyer, but he tries to catch his tail!”
Hugh stayed for a few minutes admiring the kittens, then suggested that they should go on to the river. John rose reluctantly, torn between two delights. “Do you know if there’s any little fishes in the river? Fishes we could catch and have in a jam-jar?” he asked Alison.
“Lots of them. There’s a shallow pool where catching them is easy. Have you got a net?”
“No ...” John looked up uncertainly at Hugh.
“We thought we’d find the fish first, then see about a net to-morrow,” Hugh told Alison.
“To-morrow’s such a long way off. We have one somewhere, and plenty of jars. If you’ll wait half a minute I’ll get them.”
Three minutes later she rejoined them, flushed and breathless, bringing a couple of glass jars and a muslin net on a long stick. “Shall I come with you to show you where the best pool is?” she suggested, not wanting to intrude, but thinking that Hugh, in his dark suit, looked as though he might have lost his boyhood’s skill at catching minnows.
“Oooo—yes!” John cried.
Hugh laughed. “No doubt about that answer! It’s most awfu
lly good of you. But can you spare the time?”
They could have boiled eggs for supper instead of the vegetable curry she had planned ... Alison answered that she had plenty of time. “At five years old it can be a major tragedy to go out fishing and catch nothing,” she said, as John went scampering ahead of them across the lawn. “Childhood isn’t invariably the blissful state that it’s supposed to be by sentimentalists!”
“No. Fortunately we’re more apt to remember the pantomimes and picnics than the time we hatched out measles the day before our birthday party.”
“Or the times it rained just as we were starting for the picnic.”
“Or the pangs of calf-love,” Hugh capped her. Alison stole a sidelong glance at him, thinking that it was difficult to associate anyone so aloof and poised with knowledge of calf-love and its pangs.
She led them up the river to a small shallow backwater, shaded by willows. At their approach a shoal of tiny fish darted for cover to the weeds that grew, a miniature submerged forest, on one side of the pool. Alison told John, “We’ll have to wait till they come out again, and then I’ll show you the best way of catching them.” Then she exclaimed apologetically to Hugh: “I’m sorry—how interfering of me! I’ll go back now and leave you to it.”
But he protested that she must stay. “You can’t desert us at the crucial moment. I’ve forgotten all the technique I used to have.” So she stayed on with them until a half dozen minnows were swimming in each jam-jar. Then while John, having seen a baby water-rat, wandered off along the bank in search of more, she sat with Hugh under the willows, unaware of how much she was revealing of herself as she answered his casual questions about the neighbourhood, and her young cousins, and told of local birds, legends, and folk-lore.
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