by Sara Seale
“It can be quite important when we all have to live together,” Lucy said mildly.
“Not in this case,” he said. “To Smithers and Gaston, you must remember, you are possibly an unwelcome innovation. Don’t interfere and things will continue smoothly, as before.”
His words had a chilling sound, as if he was reminding her that she, no less than the two menservants, was merely an employee at Polvane. He did not understand, perhaps, that she had no wish to interfere, only to make friends.
Her pleasure in exploring the house was diminished after that. There seemed many doors which were thrown open on empty bedrooms and one which Bart passed without a glance.
“That is a room that’s never used,” he said as he saw her pause.
“Bluebeard’s chamber?” Lucy asked, trying to make light of a situation that was becoming something of an ordeal, but Bart only replied discouragingly: “Perhaps,” and passed on to the next room.
It was a relief when they reached Pierre’s quarters and Bart announced that he would leave them. He would expect her, he said, in an hour’s time for a glass of sherry before luncheon.
“Now!” said Pierre, firmly shutting the door, “now you shall see all my things, Baba.”
He began digging out toys and picture-books for her inspection, and she sat on a worn tuffet by the fire and forgot that she was a stranger to Polvane. It was a pliant room, more nursery than schoolroom, for a faded paper of nursery rhymes covered the walls, and there was a rocking-horse and animals on wheels and a little scarlet sports car in miniature propelled by pedals. A diminutive desk stood at one end of the room, flanked by a larger one, and a bookshelf against one wall contained primary editions of works considered necessary to the rudiments of education. “Do you do lessons already, Pierre?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. Since I am five. I’m seven now,” he replied with pride.
“But who teaches you?”
“Paul.” He had mentioned a Mr. Bond, she remembered, while talking to Gaston. “He is my tutor.”
“Your tutor! But you aren’t old enough, Pierre!”
He shrugged with the same Gallic eloquence that Gaston showed.
“Papa thinks so. But he does not come today because you are here and I have the holiday, but tomorrow—Baba, now that you have come, it is not necessary that Paul should continue, is it?”
“Don’t you like him?”
“Oh, yes, but now I have you there’s no need for another, is there?”
“I don’t know, Pierre,” Lucy replied a little helplessly. “Your father has never spoken of Mr. Bond to me.” When she went down to the library for her sherry she asked Bart at once about the tutor.
“Didn’t I mention Paul Bond?” he said carelessly. “He comes here daily. Today Pierre has a holiday in your honor, but Paul will be up tomorrow.”
“But, Bart, he’s such a baby! Little boys of seven surely don’t need tutors.”
He looked at her reflectively.
“Pierre’s old enough to have some sort of education,” he replied. “The lessons are fairly rudimentary, I fancy.”
“But now I’m here, it surely won’t be necessary—I mean, didn’t you marry me to take charge of Pierre?”
“Not entirely.” He sipped his sherry with deliberation. “You were something, a someone the boy appeared to need in his life, but that doesn’t automatically turn you into a nursery governess.”
She could not altogether follow his line of thought. “Even so,” she said, “I can surely fill Mr. Bond’s place in the matter of elementary teaching. It seems wasteful to have two of us.”
His eyes were suddenly cold.
“I think you’ll have to let me be the best judge of that, my dear,” he replied. “And since I evidently have to explain my actions, I’ll tell you that Paul is a distant connection of mine, not very strong or at all well off. At the moment he depends on me for a living, added to which, Pierre likes him.”
“I see,” she said, feeling snubbed, and fell silent, thinking what a strange mixture he was. It seemed clear that this unknown young man was dependent on Bart, who had probably created the rather ridiculous job of tutor to so young a child as an excuse for helping him.
“You must try to get on with all of us, Lucy,” Bart said dispassionately. “There will most likely be plenty of things at Polvane that seem strange to you. I haven’t, I suppose, led a very normal life for some years.”
Lucy looked out of the rain-spattered windows and shivered, listening to the breakers. No, she thought, it was not normal, this masculine household, isolation on a lonely headland, bringing up a small child to such a warped way of life.
“Have some more sherry,” Bart said, observing the shiver, and when she had taken the glass she did not really want from him, he leaned over her for a moment “Are you a little dismayed by your hasty action, Lucy Lamb?” he asked with wry humor.
“I’m Lucy Travers now,” she reminded him sharply, because she found his sudden change of mood disturbing.
“I hadn’t forgotten,” he said with amusement. “But I think you’ll always be Lucy Lamb to me—lamb with a small ‘l,’ you know. Ah, here’s Pierre. I hope you’re going to behave nicely in the dining-room, young man. You must make a good impression on Lucy if you want her to stay.”
The boy’s eyes grew enormous. He lifted a face to his father that was both beautiful and utterly unchildlike in that moment.
“But you p-promised,” he stammered. “You said it was for always. Baba, you have come for always, haven’t you—haven’t you?”
“Of course, darling,” Lucy said as he flung himself upon her, spilling the remains of her sherry. “Don’t be so silly, Pierre, your father was only joking, weren’t you, Bart?” Just for a moment she caught the look of unutterable weariness in his dark face, then he stopped to mop at her skirt with his handkerchief.
“Of course. Don’t make a scene, Pierre. You’re getting too big to cry.”
The boy bit his lip, fighting back the tears, and Lucy, giving him a comforting hug, would have liked to do the same for Bart. They neither of them, she thought with compassion, understood the other, and both of them needed that affection which neither knew how to give, Smithers sounded the gong for luncheon and she jumped to her feet with relief. It had been a strange, rather disconcerting few hours, that first morning at Polvane.
III
The rain did not stop all day. Whether Bart had cancelled all his calls or whether it was chance that he was free, Lucy never knew, but he remained in the house, lying back in a chair with his pipe while he listened to the endless chatter between his son and his new young wife, and watched their constantly changing expressions. Lucy’s face, no less than Pierre’s, lit up with pleasure and affection, lending her moments of elusive beauty, and he remembered her standing last night before the wall mirror in the drawing-room complaining that she found her face discouraging and negative.
The boy was merciless in his demands, like most children, and when tea was finished, Bart ordered him to bed. Immediately the child’s lips began to tremble and he looked at his father with open dislike.
“No,” he said, and Lucy saw Bart’s mouth tighten.
“We are not going to have any scenes, Pierre,” he said quietly. “You should know by now that when I give you an order I expect to be obeyed—instantly. Go along, now.”
Pierre edged slowly towards the door.
“Will Baba help me undress?” he asked.
“No. Smithers will see to you as usual. If you won’t make any fuss, Baba will come up later and tuck you in.”
The boy went immediately. He did not bid his father goodnight, but perhaps, thought Lucy a shade unhappily, it was his own practice to go upstairs and tuck his son in for the night.
“You look tired, Lucy,” Bart said when they were alone. “You mustn’t let the boy wear you out with his demands. That’s another very excellent reason for keeping Paul on. He manages Pierre very well.”
“A
nd you think I wouldn’t?”
“I think you’d be inclined to be too soft with him.”
“I don’t think,” she said gently, “that a little occasional spoiling does harm. Children respond to indulgence as well as to discipline.”
“Possibly, but they must also be taught not to impose.” Firelight flickered warmly over the room but the lamps had not yet been lighted. She could hardly see Bart’s face in the shadows, so that she found it easy to say:
But Pierre’s had so little spoiling. I — I think you make him afraid of you.”
“Am I so harsh with him, then?” His voice sounded suddenly weary and she said quickly:
“No, of course not, but you treat him like an adolescent. He doesn’t understand that you need him too.”
He moved impatiently and his hands were revealed in the firelight, his strong surgeon’s hands, tightly clasped so that the knuckles showed.
“Perhaps you don’t believe that I’ve tried very hard to win my son’s affection,” he said with sudden harshness.
Lucy shrank into the depths of her chair, grateful for the shadow. Her opinion in anything that mattered had never been invited by her past employers and she was afraid of seeming impertinent.
“I do believe it,” she said at last, “but perhaps — perhaps you’ve gone the wrong way about it.”
“Perhaps. Will you act as intermediary for me, Lucy?”
“I?” she sounded startled. “But that’s something between the two of you.”
“It’s also something that I seem unable to manage for myself. I’ve been wrong, I think, in allowing no woman’s influence in the house. When the boy has needed me I’ve been tied up with work and often away from home. You’ve won his love in some strange fashion. Will you try to persuade him to spare a little of it for me?”
It must have been, she knew, a difficult speech for him to make. He was a proud and often intolerant man and she a comparative stranger.
“Is that why you married me?” she asked. “To—to intercede for you?”
“Yes, perhaps it was.”
“How strange,” she said with wonder. “How strange—and rather pitiful.”
He was on his feet at once and standing over her.
“Not that,” he said harshly. “Blind, pig-headed if you like, but not pitiful. Make no mistake about me, my dear—I have no self-pity on account of the kicks life deals, only a resolve not to lay myself open to fresh kicks. Do you understand?”
She did not altogether understand. She vaguely supposed that part of his savage outburst must refer to his dead wife and the fact that he could never forget her, and it was this very bitterness, she thought, which had stood between him and his son.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I’ll do all I can, of course, to win Pierre over for you.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning away to light the lamps. “I must apologize for barking at you.”
With the gradually spreading light as he turned up the wicks, the brief intimacy vanished. Bart went to his desk, and reaching for his glasses settled down to work.
“You’d better go up and say goodnight to Pierre or he’ll be asleep,” he observed casually.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“He doesn’t expect it. I made a rule against the practice long ago. I’m here so little at his bed-time that it would only make for disappointment if I didn’t go.”
It was quite a shock to find Smithers sitting by the child’s bed, deep in a long and involved story. Lucy stood in the doorway watching the man’s gesticulations and grimaces. The hair that so carefully concealed his bald patch stood on end like a question mark and the collar of his black coat was turned up to his ears which were large and red and stuck out each side of his head.
“And then this here ogre said to the ‘aughty princess: “I’ll larn you, me girl, just you wait,’ ” he was saying, his Adam’s apple working overtime, and Lucy realized with surprise that this was probably Smithers’ natural mode of speech when off duty, ungrammatical and faintly cockney.
“Baba!” screamed Pierre from the bed, flinging wide both arms, and adding impatiently, “You can go now, Smithy.”
“I hope you’ll say thank you to Smithers for the story,” Lucy said, coming into the room. The man had got to his feet and Lucy wanted to laugh as he stood there, smoothing his hair and adjusting his collar, trying to slip back into his more familiar role of manservant. He really was a most extraordinary person, she thought.
“Thank you, Smithy,” Pierre said indifferently. “Baba, come here. Sit close to me and sing me to sleep. No one has ever sung me to sleep.”
“Had your dear mother not been taken, she would have done so, Master Pierre. She had a beautiful voice, fit for opera, so they say,” Smithers pronounced piously, and sending Lucy a look of acute dislike, left the room.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid he doesn’t like me at all,” said Lucy, trying to laugh.
“It doesn’t matter, he likes only me,” Pierre said with kindly complaisance. “Sing to me, Baba.”
“I can’t sing—not properly,” she protested.
‘Try.”
She searched her memory for half-forgotten songs of childhood, but could remember only the folk gongs of her adult years, so she sang him The Turtle Dove, that plaintive air from Dorset which always seemed to spring the most readily to her tongue.
“Oh! don’t you see the turtle dove
Sitting under yonder tree,
Lamenting for her own true love?
And I will mourn for thee, my dear,
And I will mourn for thee.”
“The tune is triste,” Pierre murmured sleepily. “The words are a little triste, too ... you have a pretty voice, Baba—like a small clear bell ... sing me more.”
She sang the second verse, then as his heavy eyelids closed, she kissed him gently, turned down the lamp and tip-toed from the room. Smithers was standing just outside the door, cracking his finger-joints one after the other.
“What was that piece, madam?” he asked.
Lucy had a moment’s discomfort thinking of him standing outside, listening.
“An old Dorset air called The Turtle Dove,” she answered a little shortly.
“Really? Very quaint, very pretty. You have a voice like a little girl, madam, if I may make so bold.”
Lucy looked at him sharply. She was not going to stand for patronage from Bart’s servants.
“Very likely. I, unlike the first Mrs. Travers, have no aspiration to opera,” she retorted, and was sorry she had spoken sharply when he saw his hurt look of surprise. He had possibly meant his remark as a compliment.
He tossed his head and went away, offended, and Lucy found her way to her own room to change her dress for dinner.
She turned the lamp up gingerly, not yet being used to this manner of lighting, which, unless respected, could produce a shower of smuts and a horrible smell. It would not do to give Smithers extra work again tomorrow morning. The bed had already been turned down for the night and her things laid out meticulously, the cheap nightdress, the well-worn dressing-gown, the slippers with the scuffed toes. She would never get used, she thought, to a man’s handling her intimate possessions and making her bed.
Her eyes went to the door which separated her room from Bart’s, and with sudden curiosity she sprang across the room, opened the door and looked inside.
It was a smaller room than hers, with the same heavy furniture and old-fashioned paper on the walls, but the bed was narrow and severe, and the room bare of all personal reminder of its occupant. Pyjamas and dressing-gown were laid out on the bed, and brushes were on the dressing-table, but it might have been a hotel bedroom prepared for a visitor for one night only.
Lucy shivered and closed the door. What manner of man had she married, she wondered? What manner of man had he been when he had shared his first wife’s bedroom and mingled his intimate possessions with hers? She viewed, with relief, the comparative comfort of her own room,
the welcoming fire, the scattered belongings that were familiar and homely, already softening the impersonality of a strange room.
Bart had told her that she was to buy what she needed. Well, she thought, she would do so. Smithers should no longer sniff at the meagreness of her wardrobe, and she, perhaps, with possessions she had never been able to afford, would blossom in stature and confidence.
She dressed carefully, choosing judiciously from her few outmoded frocks, and spent a long time brushing her soft fine hair until it shone and seemed to take kindly to the shape of her head, curving over her ears into delicate fronds. I’m not bad, she thought, gazing at her reflection which, in the lamplight, was one she was not accustomed to, and she began to wonder, a little nervously, how the evening would unravel. She would dine with Bart by candlelight, as, last night, she had dined alone, and tonight the formality of damask and old silver and fine glass would be warmed by a certain intimacy. She would sit at his table and be proud, however empty the sensation might be, that she was his wife.
She must have sat dreaming longer than she had thought, for the distant sound of the gong brought her hastily to her feet. She blew out the lamp and ran quickly down the graceful, curving staircase, thinking, as she ran, how often the lovely, and loved Marcelle must have done the same, only she would have made an entrance, trailing down those gracious stairs, aware that, however late, everyone would wait for her.
Smithers still stood by the gong.
“The master regrets that he has been called out, madam,” he said with lugubrious pleasure. “Would you care for a glass of sherry before dinner?”
She was brought to an instant standstill in her hurried flight across the hall and felt the blood ebbing from her face. Not again, she thought helplessly, and knew her disappointment to be disproportionate. Smithers watched her with interest, his human curiosity only just hidden by his professional impassiveness.
“No, thank you,” she replied, raising her chin. “I will go straight in to dinner.”
So for the second time Lucy dined alone at the foot of that long mahogany table which seemed to stretch into the shadows, and went, alone, to bed to lie listening to the breakers and the ceaseless rain on the windows. But this time she did not hear Bart return. Sleep, took her, and the sound of the rain and the distant sea mingled with her dreams and she slept with the tears still wet on her cheeks.