A legacy; a novel

by Bedford, Sybille

  Everything. The garden, the stables, the house, the servants, the animals I knew, my parents, the other house, my games, the pony; Fanny. When nanny was very cross she said, // I could talk, but more often she said that I was a fortunate little girl; and from the books she read me I knew that this was so. My possessions and surroundings were what they ought to be; my routine conformed recognizably with that of my coevals in literature; my family was requisitely complete. Yet there were deviations. . . . There was the fact that we were living in Germany, as nanny was never tired of rubbing in. My mother, I sensed, did not make quite the right kind of mummy in fiction (young and beautiful of course was standard), and she was so much away. Papa did not fit at all. The tall, sad, glossy gentleman who was never either stern or jolly but addressed one in phrases of grave politeness and sometimes offered one a sweet upon his stretched-out palm; I thought of him as belonging to another kind of story. He was the Unlucky Prince who had been changed by the sorcerer into a hare or stork, only the spell was such that nobody could see he was a stork and so he could not be found by the person who was to set out to change him back. Parents, perhaps, were not a serious matter. Henrietta was. She was too old. It was bad enough to have no brother at school, but to have a sister, one's only sister, who was practically a grownup, worse than a grownup. She played with me as if I were a doll, and she tried to dress me up. Mademoiselle, regardez comme le bleu va bien a ses yeux. Je voudrais tant la coiffer; avec des boucles elle sera ravissante. Tiens, je vais te faire un collier. And when I snarled, she said, "Tu ne devrais pas faire des grimaces, cela abime les traits." It was a lapse. But the worst, the most inadmissible, was Fanny. Surely no child one read of had ever been inflicted with a fiend like her? The whole business of my mount did not bear going into. The pony was an angel; but he was big and strong and, like our saddle horses, was not allowed these days outside our gates. It was one of the things one did not ask about. There was a paddock, and one could ride in the park though it was frightfully overgrown, or one could trot round the lawn, but the horses were stuffed with oats and clever—my mother herself had been thrown—and the pony, without any malice of his own, generally tried to bolt. This seemed a great worry to Papa, and it was not often that I was allowed to ride. To console me, he bought Fanny. Fanny was looked upon as safe, sweet and small. Papa loved and trusted Fanny, and Fanny venerated him. She ate from his pocket, and would take a lighted cigar from his hand and blow a few puffs of smoke. She liked him best in formal clothes, and he always tipped his hat to her; but above all she loved a tophat, and he sometimes wore one to give her pleasure. She was also fond of music full of brass, and it was for her benefit that the gramophone was set a-trigger at tea-time under the lime tree. Fanny had not come that day; she did not care for my mother, though she knew better than to show her open enmity; there was merely a mutual coolness between them, two charmers who had no use for each other. I had been prepared to love Fanny full tilt; but, above all people, Fanny detested me.

  She was exquisite to look at. She was a small, grey, high-bred Egyptian donkey—no longer young—with delicately shaped limbs and the finest markings. Papa had bought her from a passing circus, and he liked to tell of the scene of ceremonial leave-taking when the staff from clowns to ringmaster and director had lined up to kiss her. Now she belonged to me. Every day she and I were made to spend long hours in the park together by ourselves. Nobody but I knew that Fanny could not be ridden. It was her secret. (It was found out later on that it had been her life's career. Her turn had been to throw people from the audience, led on by a wager to try her round the ring, and she had thrown them—men whose feet almost touched the ground, jockeys, Sunday riders, cavalry officers and all.) We would leave the yard, Fanny with a trim little saddle, I on her back, and jog off. When we were out of sight she shed me. She simply toppled over on her side and I was in the grass. When I tried again, she rolled me. She rolled very hard. First I would not give up—I really longed to ride. It tired her. One day she did not topple, she bolted —with surprising speed—into the orchard where the new apple trees were low, and there we cantered to and fro, I face downward flattened against her mane under the grazing branches. I never bothered her again. Hereafter I dismounted at her sign, loosened her girth and bit, and was left to my own devices until it was time for our joint return. The arrangement seemed to suit Fanny, but I knew that she despised me. Sometimes, to put me in my place, she would chase me down a lane, catch the slack of my dress and shake me savagely. As she liked to find Papa whenever she felt like it, she often came to seek him in the house. The floors were too slippery for her to manage, so a set of felt over-hooves were made and kept outside the front door. Fanny, who knew how to make her wishes felt, would stop an outdoor servant to strap them on for her; I never got used to the sudden sight of Fanny turning a passage on a bedroom floor.

  I had another function in Fanny's life; both my mother and papa thought it proper that I should groom her entirely myself. Fanny submitted to the necessary ministrations with the alert impatience of Madame du Deffand having her hair brushed by a dull niece. Only one thing I did could please her—our house was in a still dry valley without natural waters, nanny often talked to me of the seaside and my mother of the sea, and I felt delicious only in the cool water of my tub. I was sure that poor Fanny must feel the same, so I sponged her, squeezing the good fresh water over her nostrils and behind. The first time there was a furious tightening, hoof twitching for the ready kick, then a surprised and pleased relenting; and from then on she always lifted tail and muzzle with gratifying confidence to my sponge.

  Perhaps I might not have fallen so much under Fanny's domination had I had other company. We had no visitors, we do not entertain, the servants said; I had met no living children. Everyone I knew was as adult as my poor donkey. There was the grandmother I had felt comfortable with—I remembered cosy drowsy days sitting together in a warm room sharing good things to eat—though that was far away now and I was outgrowing her, besides nanny told me she was not really my grandmama. The maids I held in affection, and sometimes they would play. But their moods changed often. They all came from the village —a place of great allure—they were with us to get trained, and they were least unwilling to let me have their time when they were new. I longed to hear about their home life—how many in that litter? had dad made up his mind to plant rye for fodder? were the turnips lovely again this year?—they usually told me they had sweethearts. They also took it upon themselves to enlighten me as to my religion (I had not known I had one). And here too, I found out, there were some grave shortcomings. I did know the Lord's Prayer, but I knew it with an ending so wrong and wicked that it made them flinch to hear it and use a word like mummy's words, heresy. I had no rosary, I had never

  heard of the Magnificat. The family ate meat on Fridays. (One didn't have to look for whom to blame for that.) All my people, I was forced to conclude, and especially my mother were on some grounds or other in a state of mortal sin. No doubt was left on where this must ultimately lead them. It was debated whether it was permissible for me to eat the Friday meat. Abstinence, they said, was only a Commandment of the Church, and Obedience came before those. Yet was I not bound to own up and ask them to dispense me from the latter? It might go to their very hearts, it might. Since when, said someone else, was Con-fessorship obligatory when it was known it was a Grace? The highest below Martyrs. Martyrs and Confessors— It was agreed that the course would be an advantageous one for me. The Remissions! A thousand years at least off Purgatory. The final consensus seemed to be that I would be perfectly en regie if I ate what was given to me but did not ask for a second helping. My own solution was to secrete my Friday bacon and give it to the dogs. The aspiration I myself most cherished was to be an acolyte. Practice for this function filled some of the time supposed to be spent with Fanny. I was told such future was not possible because of my being a girl; yet virgins had served mass in the Catacombs, all one needed nowadays was a Dispensation from a Cardi
nal. It was suggested that I should ask my father to write to one, or better still, ask my godmother to see the Archbishop.

  "He wouldn't say no to her."

  "Wouldn't he though now — ?"

  A light had sprung to their eyes, and it was at such a moment that our butler, a kind Frenchman, would disperse us by being of a sudden present. I regretted this, but knew that he was right. In return he'd ask me into the pantry and teach me a game called Pigeon vole. He told me many friendly and delightful stories, and I never minded his keeping an eye on me. It is to this gracious

  man that I owe the intimations of that sense of lighter heart, of deep-grooved pleasures, daylight and proportion, that sense of inalienable benefits received, the lines of that sustaining love I was to feel thereafter for his country.

  One did not ask anything of my godmother, who was also my Aunt Clara, one submitted to being asked by her. What she did not ask one—I knew the answers that would satisfy her, but they were things impossible to say. She always believed one. She did not come to see us very often, but when she did she was everywhere. Before, Henrietta and Mademoiselle went about the house putting away things like Fanny's gramophone; Papa often stayed upstairs, and during these visits my mother was nice to him. I did not find Aunt Clara frightening, she only embarrassed one; and though she took no general notice of me, she always insisted on a private talk. I knew that my mother tried to stop her.

  "My godchild—?"

  The only one of us who came out on these occasions as herself was nanny. When she thought it was enough, she appeared and marched me off. The admiration of the house was with her.

  "I should be sorry at my time of life if I didn't know how to deal with dowagers. Papist or C. of E., if you ask me, their bark's worse than their bite."

  This I felt did not at all describe Aunt Clara nor her powers; the results however were on nanny's side. The pragmatic method, as my mother would have said.

  The presence that I welcomed was the other tall lady's, my mother's friend in the wonderful clothes, such as she sometimes but by no means always wore (I could admire clothes ideally, contemplatively—feathers, jewels, silks, unconnected with coverings for such as myself); when she was here my mother was different and the afternoons were not so slow. I loved to watch them as they sat together under the trees, or upstairs in my mother's drawing room,

  the one that had the French windows and the picture that was like another garden, look at them, sometimes hear their talk—

  "I could take up Greek again— I'm reading Faust. Of course you haven't. I've never met a German yet who has. Perhaps my circle is not entirely representative."

  "I must have a generous nature after all. The way I'm not holding it against you to have been so unpardonably right— "

  "The ball, as my poor mother would have said—she really did say those things, you know; I was just beginning to mind, when she died—well, the ball was at one's feet. . . . Poor woman, she was right too. I would have held it against her. Yes, of course, my sweet, you may have cream."

  The splendid lady looked impatient.

  "Sarah—this is your one great fault," my mother said. She hugged the King-Charles. "Oh, you meant the child? Is she here too? All the time? Do go away, duck; go and learn something."

  I could learn but little. Various people had tried to teach me to read, and the various phonetics had left me confused. For I had no language. Or I had too many; acquiring and forgetting them with great rapidity. My mother talked to me in English, and so of course did nanny, who spoke it even to the servants who seemed to get her wishes the way I got those of Fanny. To papa my mother mostly talked in French, or in what I knew was Spanish; he addressed me in French at the times I knew it, and otherwise in Southern German which, as he talked it, was not like the German spoken sometimes by my sister and always in the other house, and which resembled, but was not really like, the patois of the maids which was a language of its own. Mademoiselle, who came from Neu-chatel, was supposed to keep me up in French and the

  village priest had started me on Latin; yet without the steadying recourse to books the ebb and flow of my attainments was erratic. And to add to the confusion I had an Italian name. I was called Francesca.

  "Mummy—I've got it."

  "What?"

  "The question."

  "Let's hear it."

  "Mummy," I said, "why are you here?"

  Jules had proposed to Caroline Trafford on the morning after meeting her. He was turned down, stayed another half hour when he had heard his fate and came away in high good spirits.

  This mood held through all that winter and the spring; enough of it was left to trundle him, not unpleasantly, through August and July when Miss Trafford was in Ireland and he in attendance at a German spa. In Paris in the autumn it flowered forth again. There seems to be a tide in men's existences when they are contented and at peace with their condition against all reason and certainly their own, almost against their wills. Jules believed he loved Miss Trafford, had tried to tell Sarah that life without her was impossible; he had been refused, and refused in a way that left no doubt that she could not as much as think of him. Yet there he was, not only comfortable, merry as a grig, going about evening and day running errands, sighing, enjoying himself, complaining, he also felt carefree; for the first time in his adult life he did not probe his fates, he forgot them.

  To Sarah, borne more consciously on the same wave, Caroline said, "The French National Archives were no idle lie—I have a great deal of time. An elderly man replete with knowledge — But Sarah, so alive! much more alive than I. Always fresh, always round. . . . There isn't a dry corner anywhere. And so just. The miracle of holding so much and holding it so lightly. Nothing's too complex or too small. He turns to it, no he doesn't do that— he's there—he is attention, with his tolerance, his good humour, the fantastic learning he sports like a nosegay he's just plucked from the hedges, his impeccable human values, and, of course, his powers of feeling. Whatever he touches becomes more. Whole. And every time, you know, it's done as if it were the first. A man who's spent his life trying to understand men, action, the world, and who's still moved! He makes other historians look not just cast-iron, but breezy.

  "And he works, you know. We have no idea, you and I—He thinks one has to, one must pay out what one takes in. So there he goes, day after day. To add six lines to a page. And I wait. No, it's not waiting; I like the time. I like the space. To turn round the moment ... In the street—standing still, sleep-walking in the Tuileries—"

  "Caroline," said Sarah, "you should not cut yourself off so entirely. You are seeing nobody but him and me. And Jules."

  "Ah yes, and Jules." Their eyes met over this. "He protects my sleep-walking. I'm very grateful to Jules. Do you know people are beginning to talk about him and me? Can it be the reward of innocence?"

  "You should sometimes see your own people," said Sarah.

  "Francis is that. In the only permissible sense."

  "You should see those who are in a narrower one; and you should see them publicly."

  "And it was you who told me to be careful. They might not be talking about Jules. In London, this time, I thought I caught some rather queer looks; you know, the face that dares not speak its question. Oh intangible. Straws in the wind— What surprises me, is my paying notice. People have always talked about me; I can't say—can I?—that I haven't given them cause. Oh don't let's think about it."

  "Caroline," Sarah said, "I wish you'd reconsider about staying with me when you're here. Please don't say no again at once."

  "Darling, I am grateful. But no . . . It's better as we are. I'm not cut out to be a guest, no more than you are, so we don't have to make bones about that. We don't like other people's roofs; even our best friends'. As for the rest, you must know that half the women in my family have died alone in undusted villas in the Brenta."

  "You have not reached that stage."

  "Oh no," said Caroline.

  "Meanwhile—"


  "The Hotel du Rhin is a fortress. You've only got to look at the American visitors—such youth, such ostentatious nonprotectedness, such open virtue. The least one can do is believe in it. No, Sarah, don't make your point. Remember my trump, remember that I have Brown. I may be alone in the world, I may have no hearth nor home, I'm still chained to that sacred presence, an unsackable family servant. Brown does as well as the American women's faces."

  "I've been thinking of taking a house," Sarah said. "I'm tired of this ghastly flat. I should like to feel settled where you are."

  "Oh no, don't do that!"

  She had said it quickly in a direct young voice. Sarah, used to the deliberate, the teasing manner of her friend's speech, was startled.

  "Let's all stay as we are. No plans."

  "But my dear, why?"

  "Because—well, because—" she was herself again— "it seems to be something I have in common with Jules. I am superstitious."

  Sarah, restless, unused to not carrying out her projects, bought a motor.

  "But you had one?" said Caroline. "This one's faster."

  "I see. It must be so worrying for the horses."

  "What horses?"

  "On the road."

  Sarah shrugged this aside. There was a silence filled by Caroline's looking at some aspects of her friend's existence. A little later she said, "I ought to mention, my dear, that we have coal mines. One coal mine."

  This was clearly an amende honorable, but for once Sarah had not followed.

  "To tell you that we also—we—my family—I—at a cost, well, let us say to more than horses, are drawing profits from what we might call progress."