by Sara Seale
Immediately they began pouring out their grievances, Smithers relapsing into his natural cockney, Gaston in a mixture of French and English which she had difficulty in understanding at all. Had she not been so angry she would have wanted to laugh, for they looked and behaved like a knock-about music-hall turn.
“Stop it, both of you!” she cried, stamping her foot at them. “As if it wasn’t enough to have all this noise outside? I don’t care which of you ruined the bouillon— you’re the chef, Gaston, so it was probably you.”
“Mais, non, non, non, non! It is this imbecile, asked to watch my bouillon for one little minute, and lets it burn!” Gaston screamed.
“I assure you, madam—” began Smithers, reverting suddenly to his role of dignified butler, but Lucy stamped her foot again.
“Enough” she snapped. “And for goodness’ sake one of you go and stop that shutter banging.”
Gaston magically became wreathed in smiles.
“A-ha ... madame has temperament,” he said approvingly, and brandished a soup ladle under Smithers’ nose. “Alors, Smeety, Allez-vous en! See to the shutter and I will make more bouillon...”
He drove Smithers before him back to the kitchen quarters and almost before the door closed, Lucy heard him say:
“Tiens! Not so bad, la petite, hein?”
“Blimey!” said Smithers, cracking his finger-joints. “‘Oo does she think she is?”
Who, indeed, thought Lucy forlornly, her little spurt of temper, or perhaps it was only bravado, deserting her suddenly; Lucy Lamb, neither flesh; fowl, nor good red herring. She went slowly upstairs and tiptoed into Pierre’s room, but the boy was asleep, and she softly closed the door, thankful that a possible scene had been averted.
She stood in the corridor wondering what to do with her afternoon, and the sound of the swinging shutter was louder up here. It must belong to one of the upstairs rooms and she had better find out which for herself, for Smithers, unless reminded again, would be sure to forget. She began a systematic inspection of the rooms, remembering how Bart had flung open doors that first day at Polvane and how many of them there were, empty, untenanted rooms, all with their shutters firmly closed. She located the noise at once when she came to the other wing of the house. It came from behind the door which Bart had passed without comment and never opened. She had supposed the room to be some kind of store-room and had never had the curiosity to explore on her own. The handle did not yield to her touch like the other doors, but there was a key in the lock and she turned It. The recalcitrant shutter was here, certainly; she could see it swinging against one of the windows, but she did not immediately go to fasten it, but stood on the threshold looking about her in amazement.
This was no store-room. Even in the dim light occasioned by the shuttered windows, Lucy could see that it was a bedroom, lavishly appointed and with every mark of ownership. Toilet accessories stood on the dressing-table, cut glass jars and bottles, delicately fashioned brushes; the bed was turned down and a little pair of feathered mules stood in readiness beside it.
Her discovery was so strange, so unexpected, that for a moment Lucy thought she must have walked into one of Pierre’s fairy tales. She opened all the shutters to bring the room to life in daylight and stood wide-eyed at what she saw. Pale carpet and satin drapes and a vast Empire bed with scrolls and elaborate adornments of gilt, and on the pillow a richly embroidered night-dress case with the initials of M.T. Marcelle’s ... this must have been the room she had shared with Bart, the room he had omitted to show her, and just for a moment Lucy felt sickened. It was morbid, out of character to keep it like this after seven years, with the bed even turned down for the night, and Marcelle’s little mules waiting to be stepped into.
Lucy’s own reflection stared back at her from the many mirrored cupboards, curious and a little shocked. All around her was the mute evidence of Bart’s love for his dead wife, the extravagant lavishness which had gratified every whim, the bridal chamber which had been kept ever since as a shrine. She opened the cupboards one by one and stood fingering the clothes that hung there, outmoded now, perhaps, but fashioned of exquisite materials. She thought of her own new, but far more humble wardrobe and the lack of interest he had displayed in it, and wondered if he came up here to touch those other garments and smell the sweet stale perfume they still gave out.
“What are you doing in here?” His voice suddenly rapped out the question behind her, and she wheeled round, her heart in her mouth. She had not heard his step in the corridor, so absorbed had she been, and so loud the noise of the wind, and now she could think of no answer. He stood in the doorway, his eyes blazing with anger, and she knew, as she had always done, that he was a man of whom she could be afraid.
“Did you never read the story of Bluebeard when you were a child?” he said when she did not speak. “I purposely didn’t show you this room, Lucy, because you have no concern with it. It’s not very pleasant to come home unexpectedly and find you prying and spying.”
She felt frightened, but she said with a valiant effort to steady her voice:
“I was doing neither. A shutter was banging somewhere and I came to find out where. You should have told me that there was, as in Bluebeard’s house, one room I must not enter.”
“It hardly seemed necessary,” he replied with icy coolness. “The room is never used.”
“Someone dusts it,” she said with a stubbornness born of fright. “It—it’s morbid, Bart—like Queen Victoria and Albert.”
“Very likely,” he retorted sarcastically, and shut the cupboard doors with a series of bangs. “It might interest you to know that whoever’s handiwork this is, it’s none of mine. Do you take me for a psycho?”
Now that he was close to her she could see the angry whiteness about his mouth and she realized that the room’s appearance was as much of a shock to him as it had been to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, because she thought apology for something was needed, but he paid no attention but went from window to window, fastening the shutters, and she watched the outlines of the furniture become slowly shrouded again in the gloom.
“Now that you’ve discovered the secrets of Bluebeard’s chamber, perhaps you’ll oblige me by forgetting it and not referring to it again,” he said, closing the door behind them both, locking it and pocketing the key. He took no further notice of her and walked quickly into the main corridor. She could hear his steps descending the stairs, hurried, purposeful and somehow angry.
Considerably shaken by the encounter, Lucy went Into Pierre’s room to get him ready for tea. The boy was awake and held out his arms to her. Flushed from sleep, he was pliant and responsive to her quick embrace. The fractiousness of the morning had vanished.
“Dear Baba,” he said, nuzzling his head into her shoulder. “I have missed you.”
“While you were asleep?” she asked, smiling in gratitude for his need of her.
“Because I was asleep. I could not dream of you,” he insisted, and she laughed.
“Let me make you tidy. Your father is home,” she said, and instantly he frowned.
“I do not want him. I want only you.”
“You must behave nicely, my poppet. He will expect to take tea with us.”
“I do not want him,” the boy repeated stubbornly, and Lucy knelt beside the bed, holding his small hands in hers in an unconscious gesture of pleading.
“Oh, Pierre, don’t be difficult today—not today,” she begged. “Your father is upset. He needs gentleness—understanding.”
“Papa is not well?” he asked with a certain interest.
“He’s well but—a little unhappy, I think,” Lucy replied, seeking for a way to enlist the boy’s sympathy, but Pierre only smiled with supreme indifference.
“Papa is never unhappy,” he declared firmly. “Grownup people aren’t.”
“Indeed they are,” she said indignantly, impatient of a child’s inevitable lack of understanding, then added with guile: “You wil
l make me very unhappy if you are not nice to your father today.”
“You?” His great black eyes examined her curiously, then he smiled with obliging charm.
“Then I will be nice, to please you, Baba,” he said, adding firmly, “But only if you will sing to me.”
“Very well,” said Lucy, “only you shouldn’t bargain. You should sometimes give without expecting a reward. What shall I sing?”
“Not The Turtle Dove—it is too triste. Sing the one about the lily.”
She sang as she brushed his hair:
“Have you seen but a whyte lillie grow before rude hands had touch’d it;
Have you mark’t but the fall of the snow before the earth hath smutch’t it;
Have you felt the wool of beaver or swan’s down ever,
Or smelt of the bud of the bryer, or the nard in the fire:
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
Oso whyte ... O so soft ... O so sweet, so sweet is shee....
The words of the song rather than the air had appealed to him; he himself already knew them by heart.
“Again,” he commanded.
“Oh, Pierre!”
“Please,” he said, his head on one side.
He was ready for, tea now, so she sat in a low rocking-chair beside him, and sang the song again; Neither of them heard the door open, but as Lucy reached the last lines, Pierre looked over her shoulder and put his finger to his lips, and she turned to see Bart standing in the doorway.
“What was that?” he asked, and his eyes lingered with a strange expression on his son and his young wife.
She glanced at him under her lashes. Such a short while ago he had looked at her in anger and spoken with icy displeasure. A small part of her fear of him still remained, but she answered calmly enough.
“The words are by Ben Jonson, the music anonymous,” she said. “Pierre has a fondness for it.”
“It’s like Baba,” the boy said, and his father looked at him with attention.
“So it is,” he said softly. “You must sing it for me again sometime, Lucy. You have a charming little voice.”
“I don’t lay claim to a voice at all. I’ve never been trained,” Lucy answered, remembering that Marcelle had been considered good enough for opera and must often have sat at the painted piano in the drawing-room and sung for him.
“Perhaps that has its advantage,” he said obliquely. “I came to tell you tea is ready. Shall we go down?”
Pierre ran on ahead, and Bart, as Lucy passed him, put a hand on her shoulder.
“Am I invited to tea?” he asked.
“In your own house!” she exclaimed.
“Perhaps I thought today I should be in disgrace,” he said, and she knew that this was his way of apologizing for his earlier anger.
“It will be nice, just the three of us,” she said. “Paul went home after lunch.”
“That’s unusual, or has he taken my advice and found himself a part-time job?”
“I don’t think so. We quarrelled and he went off in a huff.”
He still had his hand on her shoulder, and he stood looking down at her with a rueful expression.
“How young you sound!” he said. “Only children quarrel. What was it about?”
“I don’t remember,” she replied, and added with the grave simplicity that was beginning to charm him, “One can quarrel with anyone, Bart, only some quarrels matter and others don’t.”
“Very true, of course,” he returned with a smile, and they heard Pierre’s voice shouting impatiently from the foot of the stairs that the crumpets were getting cold.
III
Afterwards, Lucy wondered if that strange day marked a change in the relationship between the boy and his father. She did not think, as tea progressed, that Pierre was making a conscious effort to behave in deference to her wishes, or that Bart had more ease of manner with his son. It was, curiously enough, as if, in the young tutor’s absence, the three of them could settle to a congenial hour without making Bart seem a stranger in his own home. Encouraged by Lucy, Pierre chattered naturally to his father, and Bart made a visible effort to respond to the boy’s unusual communicativeness. Only once did he become impatient when Pierre lapsed into French and was ordered sharply to speak English.
“Why do you discourage him?” asked Lucy, who had often wondered.
“Because I don’t want him to grow up speaking the language with Gaston’s provincial accent,” he replied. It was, she supposed, a reasonable enough explanation, but, with her intuitions newly quickened by the discovery of Marcelle’s room and personal possessions, Lucy suspected that hearing the boy give expression to his mother’s native tongue was too sharp a reminder.
“Pierre, you must remember,” she said, hoping that Bart’s rebuke would not upset the new found felicity of the evening.
For a moment Pierre looked mutinous, then he smiled happily.
“I will try to remember—for you, Baba,” he said.
“Not for me—for your father,” Lucy said, and with a quick flutter of his long lashes, the boy amended:
“For Papa, too.”
“Thank you, Pierre,” said Bart gravely, and Pierre looked pleased, as though he had conferred a favor.
As the boy’s bed-time approached, Bart glanced at the clock and, observing that Smithers was late, rang the bell, which was answered by Gaston.
“Smeety is indisposed,” he pronounced with a look of reproach at Lucy which she did not understand. “You speak severely and hurt his feelings, m’sieur. He has a migraine and moi, I prepare the dinner. Madame will, perhaps, give the little one his bath?”
Pierre gave a shriek of delight. He, no less than Lucy, enjoyed the ritual of bath nights on the rare occasions when Smithers would relinquish his rights. Gaston’s offended exit was lost in the general uproar.
“Come and help,” said Lucy impulsively, turning to Bart. It seemed to her a golden opportunity for fostering this budding intimacy between father and son.
“Oh, I hardly think—” Bart began awkwardly, but Pierre danced up and down, enchanted by the novelty. He dearly loved an audience.
“Yes, Papa, come!” he cried. “You do not know the games that Baba invents with the boats and the little ducks.”
“Very well,” said Bart, looking rather surprised at his own capitulation. “You two make a start and I’ll be up in ten minutes.”
When, later, he joined them in the bathroom he was sharply reminded of his own childhood. In the same huge bath with its old-fashioned mahogany surround he had been washed by his nurse and played the same games with boats and celluloid ducks, splashing as Pierre now splashed, shouting as Pierre shouted, blissfully unaware of the cares and problems of his elders. How strange, he thought, that after thirty or more years he should be so swiftly transported back to childhood.
“Don’t sit on the edge of the bath, Bart, you’ll get wet,” Lucy warned him. She was swathed in a large apron, her sleeves rolled up, soap-suds clinging to the hair which fell over, her forehead in charming disorder.
He sat on one of the old cork-bottomed chairs and watched her curiously. Not much more than a month ago he had married her and she had seemed an inexperienced rather timid young girl, ill-equipped for the role into which he had thrust her, but had a personality of her own, a gift of adaptability that made her unconscious mistress of certain situations.
“What have I married?” he enquired softly under cover of Pierre’s noisy splashing.
For a moment she looked startled, then she leaned over the side of the bath to give one of the floating toys a push and hide her flushed face from him.
“A nursemaid for your son,” she answered gaily. “That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Put like that it sounds a little crude, and I don’t think it’s quite what I’ve got, either,” he replied. “Look at me, Lucy.”
She raised her face and looked at him wordlessly. His moods were too extreme for her comprehension. Only a few hou
rs ago he had made her afraid with his icily controlled anger, now he was, regarding her with a strange uncertain tenderness, as if she both warmed and puzzled him. He even looked a little embarrassed.
“I used to be bathed in this tub when I was Pierre’s age, with just the same toys and games,” he said quickly to hide his awkwardness. “It sends me back years. We don’t know then how secure and loved we are, do we?”
“I suppose not,” she said. “I never had a nurse, though, and I don’t remember toy ducks and things. I think my aunt wasn’t a very imaginative woman where children were concerned.”
“No toys at all—not even a woolly lamb?” There was an unexpected twinkle in his eye.
“Toys, of course, but no lamb. That wouldn’t have occurred to Aunt Maud.”
“Where then do you get your understanding of children, or is it, perhaps, a natural antidote to your own upbringing?”
“Perhaps,” she said, lifting Pierre out of the bath to dry him. “I’ve always loved children, having had no brothers and sisters myself. I’ve always wanted them.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I should have thought of that.”
She paused in her towelling, aghast at the careless implication of her words, to meet his grave eyes, but Pierre, aware that he had ceased to be the centre of attention for too long, let out a shout and made a sudden lunge at his father with his wet fists. It was a spontaneous mark of approval and appropriation as though he had accepted Bart along with Lucy as his especial slave.
Lucy silently blessed him for his oblivious naturalness and concentrated her entire attention on the remaining preparations for bed.
“And you will both tuck me up, yes?” Pierre cried excitedly, as Lucy tied his dressing-gown over his blue pyjamas, but either Bart had lost interest, or had enough of unfamiliar domesticity. He was, he said, going down to the library for a quiet pipe before dinner. Lucy could see to the tucking up. Just for a moment the boy looked disappointed, then he turned to Lucy with the disconcerting complacency of all children.