Crooked Wreath

by Christianna Brand

  “Just because I have fugues,” protested Edward mildly, “it doesn’t mean that I’m batty.”

  Sir Richard marched out of the dining room, leaving his stewed plums untouched in a sea of Bird’s custard, on his plate. “Come out on the terrace, Stephen, I shall want to discuss this with you.”

  “Fish out the old wills, Stephen, and pick a nice one for Grandfather to sign all over again!”

  “Oh, Peta!” begged Stephen. “Don’t be so–so unkind and silly!” He followed Sir Richard to the little iron garden table on the terrace. “Don’t take any notice of them, sir. They’re only trying to be funny.”

  “I don’t find it very amusing,” said Sir Richard, curtly.

  “Well, neither do I, actually; but they’ve had a rotten time, up in London for the past few weeks, with the flying bombs and all that. I mean, it’s enough to make them all a bit edgy. You have to make allowances,” said Stephen, as steady as a rock after the “rough time” in Normandy.

  “We have flying bombs, too,” said Sir Richard, jealously. He glanced up at the fat silver fish floating lazily against the summer sky. “The place is a positive nightmare with this balloon barrage they’ve moved out here, and I believe that the other day they actually brought one down, less than three miles away, the other side of Heronsford. But you don’t see me getting tetchy and difficult and losing my nerve! The truth is, my boy, that these young people have things too much their own way: they don’t know any self-control; and I have only one hold over them, and I must exercise it; I must frighten them.”

  “But they never are frightened, sir, are they? I mean, you have tried it before. And after all, though I couldn’t agree more that they’ve been abominably rude and–and irreverent today,” said poor Stephen, feeling a prig, but heartily agreeing with himself all the same. “I do think it’s been only that; they haven’t done anything dreadful, unless you count this business of Claire and Philip, and that’ll soon blow over. Claire takes things a bit desperately, always; she’s a bit sort of dramatic.”

  Sir Richard, however, was a bit sort of dramatic himself, and he had no intention of being done out of all the excitement of altering his will. “I must have it today, Stephen, definitely; get it done this afternoon.”

  Stephen was a little shattered. “I’m not really your lawyer, actually now, sir, am I? I’m only a little tin soldier, while the war goes on; and actually I’ve quite lost touch with the office work.”

  “Pooh, nonsense,” said Sir Richard, firmly. “You can instruct old Briggs to get it done; he knows all about it, he did it the–the last time. Anyway, you have the draft of the one we made out over that business of Claire and the newspaper office, when they were all so obstinate and silly; use that–the whole lot to Belle and after her, the boy. And I want it by this evening; definitely this evening, mind!”

  The sun blazed down, and on the front terrace the disinherited family skipped gaily about in brief bathing-dresses, all ready for a plunge into the swimming pool. It was a little hard to be sent off to spend one of his seven precious afternoons, digging about in his office among dusty files. However, somebody must keep in with Sir Richard and be in a position to offer him guidance and advice; and for forty years Stephen, and his father before him, had been guiding and advising Sir Richard about his wills. “All right, sir. I’ll see to it.” He trudged off obediently down the gravelled drive. “If Peta really does lose her inheritance … If Sir Richard should snuff out before he changes this will …” But it behooved him the more to guard against Peta losing her inheritance, because he so desperately wanted her to. Down by the lodge the Ophelias filled the air with their heavy scent; he passed through the gates, and went off alone, along the road.

  4

  THE BABY was exceedingly busy that afternoon, helping Brough to mow the lawn. Clad in a pair of bright blue dungarees, with a string of large coloured beads about her neck, she staggered importantly to and fro, putting out a starfish hand to save herself from tipping forward and now and again sitting down abruptly among the daisies. Brough’s grandchild, a tiresome little girl of eight, known as Rosy-Posy, followed her about with an air of patronage and every time she fell down, hauled her bossily to her feet again. The family watched them, idling in deck chairs on the front terrace, sniffing luxuriously at the scent of the new-cut grass, or bobbed in and out of the swimming pool, lying flat on the sun-baked front terrace to dry. Sir Richard remained sitting at the little iron table, ostentatiously working out the terms of his new will and at intervals sending one or other of his grandchildren to the telephone in the hall, with messages to Stephen Garde. “I must say, Grandfather, I think it’s in the worst of taste,” protested Peta, “keeping us running about so busily, disinheriting ourselves.”

  Peta, his pet, his favourite, with her pretty face and her pretty hair and her pretty, engaging little ways, who could behave so very unprettily when she chose! His eyes filled with tears of stubborn self-pity. “I looked to you, Peta, to keep up Swanswater when I was dead and gone …”

  “Well, anyway, I think, darling, that Bella ought to have it, I always have. I mean, it’s all wrong to turn her out just because you’re dead. If you see what I mean,” added Peta, apologetically.

  “Swanswater is a memorial to your Grandmama Serafita,” said Sir Richard, firmly. “It is not suitable that my second wife should be the one to keep it up.” Serafita would not have cared two straws; she had laughed at his infidelities and would have laughed at his present nostalgic sentimentalities, and he knew it; but he had built up this fable of his devotion to her, and in his old age it was very dear to him. “It’s all your fault, Peta, you’re not worthy, not worthy to have this place. Edward, go and tell Stephen that I shall be at the lodge tonight, tell him to bring the draft will there when he’s got it done.”

  “Oh, Lord!” grumbled Edward, rising for the third time and shambling off crossly to the telephone.

  Bella came up the broad steps to the terrace, with Antonia in her arms. She was very pretty still, for all her sixty years, but the rosy glow of the baby robbed her skin of its bloom and took the light from her hair. “Oh, Richard–you’re not going to sign that nasty thing tonight!”

  “Go away, Bella,” said Sir Richard. He sent Peta after Edward. “Tell him I shall be at the lodge from now onwards; I’m fed up with the lot of you. I shall have my supper down there.”

  “Oh, Richard, you’re not going to sleep down there tonight!”

  “Leave me alone, Bella,” said Sir Richard irritably. “Don’t go on and on saying, ‘Oh, Richard, you’re not …’”

  “Well, but, Richard, your heart, dear! You really ought not to be alone.”

  “Get away, get away,” said Sir Richard flapping the air as though she were a fly.

  “But, Richard–well, if you’re determined, dear, let one of us stay there with you. Suppose, my dear, now seriously, that you had an attack!”

  “I’ll tell you what, Bella, if you want me to have a heart attack, you’re doing the very best way about bringing it on! I’ll hear no more about it. Leave me alone!”

  Bella appealed to Philip. “Do, as a doctor, use your influence with your grandfather! Do tell him he shouldn’t spend the night at the lodge.”

  Philip, lying on the terrace, opened a cross and sleepy eye. “He knows that perfectly well; if I say it, it’ll only make him more obstinate. I think you’re very foolish to do it, Grandfather, but having placed my protest on record, I wash my hands of the whole caboosh.” He closed his eyes and apparently went fast asleep at once.

  Bella gave it up in despair but could not refrain, as she went on into the house, from a reiteration of her hopes that Richard at least wouldn’t bother with that horrid will tonight. “I don’t know why you should worry, Bella,” said Ellen, following her in. “If Sir Richard does alter his will, you’ll be the one to benefit; you’ll be sole owner of Swanswater and you can turn us all out bag and baggage just like that!”

  “Yes, and I know which b
aggage I’ll begin with,” thought Bella angrily, for if Ellen hadn’t gone and told the family all about Philip on their way down in the car (as she had by now learned from Edward), this trouble need not have happened. She could never remain ill-tempered for long, however, and when Peta and Edward came out from the hall telephone, her attention was immediately distracted. “Good gracious, child–what on earth have you done to your nails?”

  Peta flapped pale finger-tips. “Taken off all the ox’s blood; don’t they look sort of feeble and peculiar?” She stood in her tight green bathing-dress, her wild rose skin touched to pink by her sunbathing. “Stephen said I was–was rude and silly to Grandfather, so I thought perhaps this would make up to him–Grandfather, I mean, of course.” She added, laughing, that perhaps if she sucked up to him enough he would reverse his decision after all and she would be an heiress again. “A fine thing if I’m left a pauper and Stephen’s still cross, and nobody’ll marry me.”

  “You should be a bit balmy like me, darling, and then you would be indifferent to wills and things and could paint your nails all colours of the rainbow. Grandfather has to provide for me, whatever happens, and anyway, whatever I do, people just say I can’t help it. Come on,” said Edward, urging her forward with a flip on her tight green behind, “let’s go back to the sunshine while it lasts. Your bathing dress is still quite damp; ugh!”

  Philip and Claire were lying flat on their backs on the terrace, also in bathing-dresses, their hands behind their heads. Peta laid out an elaborate arrangement of manicure accessories, and put a coat of colourless varnish over her pallid nails. “I feel as if I were back on the wards; Matron has fits if your nails aren’t absolutely stark white! There, Grandpapa, aren’t I a polite and unsilly granddaughter? Now you can cancel the stupid old new will and I can be an heiress again.”

  A reconciliation with Peta was as exciting and dramatic as a new will any day. Sir Richard said, almost eagerly: “Peta, if you will apologize for your disgraceful behaviour …”

  Claire raised her head, poking it forward to watch them; if only, at this eleventh hour, Peta would say the right thing, would exercise one of those easy little charms of hers that went so deeply to the old man’s heart; if only this hateful, unkind, silly row might end! But Peta would not appear to curry favour over the heads of her cousins, and all for the sake of wealth. She stretched herself out on the terrace, closing her eyes against the glare of the sun. “Well, I am sorry I was rude and silly, because I’m slightly ashamed of it myself, actually; and please witness to Stephen, everybody, that I’ve made a speech to Grandfather; but I don’t want to be un-disinherited in the last. Bella can have Swanswater,” said Peta airily, wriggling her toes against the comfortable heat of the stone, “and we’ll all come and cadge on her when Grandfather’s dead and gone and sleeps in dull, cold marble, or whatever that quotation is.”

  “I have put a clause in my new will preventing Bella from giving substantial financial assistance to any of you,” said Sir Richard, gloomily triumphant.

  “Oh, darling, how unco-operative of you! Shan’t we even be able to invite ourselves to Swanswater and outstay our welcomes, choking ourselves on the bitter bread of Bella’s charity?”

  “You will if she’ll have you,” said Sir Richard, grimly.

  “She’ll have me! Edward, you’ll be the little prince then, you’ll see that Bella has me to stay and chokes me with the bitter bread of her charity, won’t you, darling?”

  “She won’t have Ellen,” said Edward, stretching his neck up from his shoulders to look round at Philip. “Philip, she won’t have you and Ellen; she thinks this is all your fault, and Claire’s, of course; whereas it’s really my fault, isn’t it, for telling what Ellen said in the car?” He gave a fearful heave to get himself into a sitting position. “I say, Grandfather, if I apologized, would it do any good?” But this sounded a bit intense so he felt compelled to add: “Or shall I throw a fugue or something?”

  Sir Richard got to his feet and, sweeping together his papers, marched angrily to the front steps. Nobody appearing to notice, he announced loudly that he was now going down to the lodge and would not come up to dinner at the house. Peta opened one blue eye. “Won’t you, darling? You’ll starve.”

  “One of the servants can bring me something down on a tray.”

  “The seventh footman shall see to it,” said Peta. When Bella appeared from the house half an hour later she passed on the message. “I’ve told the Turtle to prepare something,” said Bella. “I’ll take it myself and try and persuade him to give up this fantastic idea of sleeping down there alone. I shall say to him, ‘Now, Richard,’ I shall say to him …”

  “Yes, all right, angel, don’t rehearse the whole thing to us; we know all about it, and anyway, you’ll never get him to budge.”

  “He’s as obstinate as a hog on ice,” said Philip. “It’s the silliest damn thing I ever heard of, but there’s no use my saying anything. Peta, you go down with Bella and try and persuade him; he listens to you–you nearly had him eating out of your hand just now, if you hadn’t been silly and insisted on remaining a pauper, and us with you.”

  The Turtle appeared carrying a large tray laden with the massive silver dishes which had appeared to a little ballet dancer the hallmark of respectability. “Here you are, Mum; though I’m shore if I’d known it was going to be seprit meals I’d never’ve done it not even to oblige!”

  Peta took the tray from Bella. “I’ll carry it, duck. Come on!” Tall and slender, she walked with her willowy grace in the brief green bathing-costume across the lawn at Bella’s side. A few minutes later the telephone rang from the lodge. Peta’s voice said: “Claire? I say, Grandfather’s left his fountain pen on the table and he wants it.”

  “His fountain pen? Which table?” said Claire.

  “Well, the little tin table on the terrace, darling; don’t be silly …”

  Ellen appeared from the terrace with a fat green Parker Duofold in her hand. “Is this it?”

  “Is it a green pen, Peta?”

  Claire could hear Peta’s voice speaking on the other end of the line. “Yes, Claire, he says it’s his green one. What, darling? Well, don’t tell me while I’m trying to tell her! Claire, he says he wants it to disinherit us with this evening!”

  “Tell them I’ll bring it down to him,” said Ellen, unexpectedly. Her quick maternal ear caught the sound of her baby’s weeping, and she ran upstairs, the pen still in her hand. Half an hour later, Bella and Peta, returning from the lodge, met her sauntering across the lawn towards it, the pen a vivid note against her brief red bathing-dress. “If she thinks she’s going to talk Grandfather round,” said Peta a little bitterly, having just failed to do so herself, “she won’t manage it in that! There’s too much of Ellen to get away with too little of a bathing-dress; it looks as if it had been varnished on, and some of the varnish had chipped.” The futile sacrifice of the ox’s blood was still a sore point.

  Edward was on the terrace in untidy flannels and a white shirt. “Will this do for dinner, Bella? Philip’s gone in to do likewise. I say, what’s Ellen up to? She’s gone off to the lodge with a look of grim determination on her face; target for tonight isn’t in it!”

  “We think she’s going to have a Straight Talk with Grandfather; but she’s an idiot to go in a tummyless bathing-dress.”

  “Let’s go and make faces outside the window and put her off,” suggested Edward, promptly.

  Peta thought this a delightful suggestion and would have turned back immediately, but was hustled into the house by Bella with instructions to put on something for dinner because her bathing-dress was worse than Ellen’s, only Peta was thin. “Heaven knows what stories the Turtle tells about you all down in the village!” Edward went off down to the lodge by himself. Ellen, however, was already leaving, walking along, a little bouncing in the tummyless bathing costume, down the sanded path. She said, taking his arm: “Where are you dashing off to?”

  “I was dashing of
f to this very spot, actually, to jump up and down outside the window and make you giggle in the middle of your Straight Talk with Grandfather.”

  Ellen laughed. “I never felt less like giggling in my life! It’s as gloomy as a morgue in there!–he says the sun on the window makes it like an oven, and he’s drawn the curtains across and shut out all the light; and he’s in a filthy temper, I can tell you! I tried to point out to him that it was all too silly and I didn’t mind in the least if Philip left me for Claire, but what I really couldn’t stick was this sort of half-and-half business, but, of course, he wouldn’t listen. He says it’s our attitude to the whole affair that he minds, and that we have no sense of decency.”

  “He meant your bathing-dress, I expect.”

  Ellen glanced down nonchalantly at her well-rounded diaphragm. “Can I help it if my figure won’t stay utility to fit the rubbish the government sells us now?”

  Brough appeared from the sanded path which led to the front door, dragging a little garden roller behind him; he touched his cap to them and moved round to the back. Edward moved forward to pass her and go up to the French window, with its drawn curtain. “As I’m fully clothed, and practically sub-utility as far as fat’s concerned, perhaps I could make more impression!” But she caught again at his arm. “I wouldn’t go, Teddy, honestly I wouldn’t. He won’t pay the slightest attention to you and you’ll only go into an automatic trance or something and make things worse. Come back to the house with me; it must be nearly dinner time anyway.” As he hesitated, she changed the subject and uttered the magic words: “How do you feel today, after your faint this morning?” He turned back immediately and went with her.