If he was thinking of knocking, she told him, she could save him the trouble. Mrs. Baird and her daughter had gone that afternoon to Switzerland. For how long? She was unable to say.
They drove away in silence. Mrs. Laird was not a woman who could utter the words “I told you so”—but they hung in the air and buzzed in Rodney’s ears. They reached the hotel, and for the rest of that day, and part of the next, there remained nothing but the instructions to be given to the lawyers, and the closing of the house. As soon as they had had lunch, they left Brighton.
As he had anticipated, his mother refused to stay in London; she wanted to meet Angela somewhere for dinner, after which she would take the night train down to Cornwall.
Angela joined them in a Soho restaurant, and listened to an account of all that had taken place.
“What about the Religions of the World?” she asked. Those great heavy books Nicola talked about. What did you to with them?”
“Donated them to the local library,” Rodney told her. “Did Nicola say anything about going to Switzerland?”
“Switzerland? No, not a word. But she took all her things out of the house.”
Rodney put down his knife and fork.
“She what?”
“Took away all her things. She said she wanted to leave her room free, in case Mother decided to stay in London. And I suppose she thought that if Oliver was always going to be round, she’d rather be out of the way.”
“Rodney told me that Oliver was down at Oxford,” Mrs. Baird said.
“That’s right; he was. He isn’t any more. He wanted me to go down, but I wouldn’t, so he came back, but he couldn’t get into his own house because Henrietta still had a key and didn’t seem to want to give it back, but he sent his secretary around, and got it, and then he went home.”
“Did Nicola leave any message for me?”
“No. She only said she’d ring you one day to find out how the memoirs were getting on.”
It was not, he thought, much of a dinner; the food seemed to him tasteless, and he was surprised to see his mother and sister enjoying it.
After putting his mother on the train, he drove back with Angela to River Street. He stopped the car at the door of the house, and she spoke in surprise.
“Aren’t you going round to the garage?”
“No.” He was out of the car and going into the house. She called to him.
“Rodney, you’ve left your suitcase.”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
She followed him upstairs, to find him searching the drawers of his desk.
“Where the hell... Oh, got it.”
“Passport?” Angela exclaimed in astonishment. “Passport what for?”
“For crossing frontiers. What else?”
“You’re going to—”
“—Switzerland. Right.”
“Then let me see: It’s too late to ski and it’s too early to pick edelweiss. That only leaves yodelling. Whose window—”
He was at the door.
“Tell Oliver to tell Claudius I’ll be back as soon as I can. ’Bye.”
He went downstairs at a pace so swift that he was unable to stop when Mrs. Major came out into the hall to speak to him. Her words floated out to him as he drove away.
“. .. an’ no trouble at all, an’ a loverley boy!”
He looked down from the plane at the sea of winking lights that was London. He was asleep and had to be awakened by the steward when the order came to fasten seat-belts for the landing in Geneva. The formalities for hiring a car concluded, he studied the paper on which he had written the address. He had been in a phone booth and the woman answering from the patisserie obviously had her mouth full of her own wares, so his writing looked like the temperature chart of a fever patient. Chanvier might or might not turn out to be his final destination. His previous experience of looking for her told him that he would probably have to make a tour of Chanvier le Bas or le Haut or le Petit or le Grand.
But there was only one Chanvier. There was very little of it, and most of what there was hung over an abyss—but here he was, in a strange car in a strange street, if you could call it a street, outside a chalet that looked as if it would play a tune when you lifted the lid. And it was dark, and the inhabitants, if there were inhabitants, were put away for the night behind shutters. It would be awkward if he threw stones at the wrong window. The one with the balcony, or the one above with the window boxes? He could, of course, lean on the horn and see what happened; with the echo, it would sound like the voice doom.
He hit the window boxes twice before scoring a hit on the shutters. It seemed a long time before one opened. It seemed even longer before she came out, stepping through the snow in fur-lined boots and anorak and scarlet woollen cap. He put her into the car and took his place beside her.
“Where?” he asked.
“Straight ahead.”
“There’s no straight ahead. There’s only straight up or straight down. Which?”
“Up, and then round and round, and then we get to a wonderful place where you can watch the dawn.”
They reached a high shoulder of the mountain, and he drew into the deserted view-point and switched off the engine, then he turned to face her.
‘Why run out without a word?” he asked.
“Did I have to give notice before leaving? How did you discover Chanvier?”
“I phoned the patisserie. You said that a man had to wait and wonder and worry and finish up by taking a fatal step over a mountain like this one—but you also said that if a man wants a girl, he goes after her and tells her so. I’m telling you I couldn’t tell you so before, because my prospects were too poor, but they’ve improved. My uncle left me everything he possessed.”
“Religions of the World!”
“More. Far more. The entire rolling stock. More still: the house, only as I told you, it had been bought up long ago by the lawyers, one of whom looked down his nose and hinted that I mightn’t possess the forty thousand pounds needed to buy it. To confound him, I said, ‘Guido, you will arrange this’, and Guido did. Are you with me?”
“No.”
“I’ll backtrack. In olden days, there was a Maharajah who ruled over a State named Hardanipur. If you remember, he—”
“I remember. Your Uncle Julian was Resident of Hardanipur.”
“What you don’t know is that the year he spent there nearly dished his career. Nobody’ll ever know exactly what he and the Maharajah got up to, but one of their more innocent amusements was building miniature railways. When the Maharajah saw Uncle Julian’s tracks, he bought the lot, and bought the house too. He didn’t even have to stop and count, because although when he shook off the Hardanipur dust, he left behind his palaces and women and elephants and tigers and limousines, he thoughtfully shipped out many millions, added to which was his collection of diamonds. The price of the railway is yet to be fixed. The price of the house went to the lawyers. If you’ll marry me, we could use part of the railway money for our honeymoon. After that, we’d have the rooms I rent from Mrs. Major, my job at D. S. Claud, which might fold up when Claudius and Phoebe fold up, and—”
“—and your telescope.”
“No. No sign of my telescope. He probably sold it to buy more engines. Half the proceeds of the railway will go to Angela until she marries Oliver, when we’ll ask for it back again, because our need will be greater than hers. Life with Mrs. Major will be duller in future, because the War of the New Neighbours is over. She delivered Priss Grelby’s baby.”
“But it wasn’t due.”
“It didn’t stop to study a calendar. The latest bulletin from Mrs. Major stated that there was no trouble at all, and it was a boy. That means she’s crossed the bridge. From running the street as it used to be, she’ll run the street as it is now. She’ll hire herself out as a charlady, get to know the life history of everyone up and down the street, and live happily ever after. Now will you stop talking and look at the dawn?”
I
t came slowly, and they agreed that poets seemed to have a good sense of colour; first a faint misty grey, and the mountain peaks showing crimson; then a mixture of pale pinks fading to mother-of-pearl, and lastly the world white with snow.
“Morning glory,” he said quietly. “Happy?”
“Yes.”
“Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Will you come back to England with me after breakfast?”
“Naturally. If I don’t, who’s going to make certain that Oliver doesn’t get away?”
He started the car.
“Home to mother and hot coffee?”
“No. To the house of Hans, who used to be my father. His sister makes English breakfasts—eggs, bacon, sausages and tomatoes, and toast and butter and marmalade, and honey and coffee.”
He switched off the engine.
“Forgotten something?” she asked.
“Yes.” He took her in his arms. “I love you. I should have told you so before. I love you very—” He broke off and released her. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said slowly. “I bet that’s where it went! ”
“That’s where what went?”
“Don’t you see? The sea scouts.”
“Sea scouts? Why bring up sea scouts now?”
“I didn’t. You did. You mentioned the telescope, and that’s what he did with it.”
“Sold it to them?”
“No. If he’d sold it to them, they wouldn’t have turned up at the funeral. Going to his funeral was a tribute, which means that he gave it to them. Good for him.” He took her once more into his arms. “What was I saying before the sea scouts broke in?” he asked.
THE END
The Lark Shall Sing
There was no money, the family was scattered, and Lucille, who had mothered them all since she was sixteen, was going to be married. So the house must be sold; Lucille knew that was the only sensible things to do, but the family had other ideas.
Home they came by whatever way they could, penniless and bedraggled but with certain new-found friends who were to help them to upset Lucille’s plans—all her plans for a calm, settled and sensible life.
Behind him, Julia came on. She was riding, by now, in a dream—but not of the delightful kind that whiled away the minutes and the miles for Pietro. She had fallen off twice, and her clothes were torn and dishevelled. Her hat was gone, her elbows were showing through her sleeves, her face was tear-stained and mud-streaked and there was a buzzing in her ears. She had very little idea where she was—but this was the road and she had to keep on it. Somewhere along it was home. She would come to it in time...perhaps.
She saw a figure ahead, and then it became two figures, both dim, both hazy. She tightened her grip on the handlebars, but she was on a bicycle that had proved, more than once, to have ideas of its own. She steered for a point midway between the two figures, and plunged on.
The next moment, something hit Pietro straight between the shoulders and sent him flying. His suitcase went one way, his hat another; Pietro himself went straight into the ditch, and on top of him came a large bicycle.
“Mother of God,” he said in his own language. “Am I a cow that I should be—”
He stopped. Wet, filthy, dripping clods of mud, he stared over the side of the ditch into a pair of frightened, streaming eyes.
“Oh!” cried Julia, “Oh, are you...are you hurt?”
Pietro said nothing, for suddenly his heart was too full for speech. He could only gaze at her, this thin little girl with the red stringy hair and the dirty face and the torn clothes—-this little girl on this huge bicycle which had plunged him into the ditch—this exhausted-looking, this dreary little miss, who—herself scratched, bleeding—could yet look at him and, forgetting herself and her troubles, cry out in concern for him, Pietro Faccini—could ask if he was hurt.
He scrambled out and held out a muddy hand to help her up.
“Me? Hurt? How can a toss into a ditch hurt me, a so-big fellow?” he asked in magnificent astonishment. “All that is for me is a little mud, yes? And I say to myself, how lucky for me that I had my bad clothes—that will not be spoilt. A hot sun to dry them, and then a brush—see, I have a whole box full of brushes.”
There was not quite a boxful; the suitcase had burst open, and a good proportion of Pietro’s stock-in-trade lay in the ditch.
“Oh,” said Julia, “you were selling brushes and they’re...I’ve spoiled them!”
“You? No, no, no!” protested Pietro. “And nothing is spoiled—nothing. Now let me look and see if you have hurt your arm.”
“It’s nothing,” said Julia, surveying a number of scratches and bruises. “That was the last time I fell off.”
“You fell off before?”
“Yes, twice. The bike’s too big, and I shouldn’t have ridden it when the tyres were flat, and the road was bad and they came off in the end and after that it...it wasn’t very easy to...
Pietro, watching her throughout this speech, was appalled by what he saw. Questions rushed to his lips and he choked them back. Later; for the moment, it was enough to recognise that she—like himself—was being driven by necessity. She would not ride on a machine of that kind, so many miles, unless something compelled her. She was, perhaps, running away...but it was plain to see that she was almost at the end of her resources.
“See—” Pietro went round recovering their fallen property. He dragged the bicycle out of the ditch, handed it to Julia to steady and then stuffed brushes—clean, dusty, muddy or bent brushes into his suitcase. He looked for his hat, saw its crown appearing out of the mud in the ditch, and decided to treat it as abandoned. He opened the suitcase again, selected a clothes brush and, kneeling before Julia, dusted the worst of the dirt from her skirt. He borrowed her handkerchief and cleaned her cuts as best he could and then, ignoring his own lamentable state, flashed his beautiful white teeth at her in his enchanting smile.
“Now, my idea!” he said. “I am sick of carrying this box; if you will take him and sit on the bicycle, I will push you—and him.”
“Oh—no! I’ll walk,” protested Julia. “You can’t possibly—”
“Oh, no, no, no, no! That will not do,” said Pietro. “We have to push the bicycle and carry the box—yes? So we shall have two birds with one stick—one stone. Why shall we push this bicycle with no one upon it? I am too big, so you cannot push me; so you will sit up on it and I will push you. Now see how well we shall go.”
Too tired to argue, grateful beyond words for the thought of progressing, even for a short distance, without having to use any effort, Julia, assisted by her new friend, sat perched side-saddle, the suitcase balanced on the handlebars, while Pietro walked firmly beside her, pushing, guiding the bicycle. It was slow, but it was progress. It would take time, but they would get there.
She let a feeling of relief and repose flow over her. She had knocked a man into a ditch, but instead of the abuse, and worse, which she dreaded, he had proved a forgiving, an understanding man—a benefactor.
A foreigner, she thought, as the rest steadied her nerves and allowed a tiny spark of curiosity to kindle.
“Are you going to Greenhurst?” she asked.
“Yes. Greenhurst. My what you call Headquarters is there—my office. I go there to tell them the names of the ladies who wish to have brushes.”
“Will you be able to get other ones for the ones that are spoiled?” she asked, anxiously.
“Of course, of course, of course! If I ask, they will give me more,” said Pietro, with a confidence he was far from feeling. But the future was the future; it had never worried him before and it would not worry him now. This little girl—this little miss—still she thought only of him and not of herself. It was extraordinary. She was well brought up, so much was plain; a scarecrow she may look now, but it was clear to see that she was of good family; he knew good family when he saw it—who should not, who had waited all his life on good families?
Questions welled up i
n him, and went unvoiced. She was alone with him on this lonely road; she was too tired to care, but presently she would remember; if he asked questions about her—her name, her business—she would become alarmed. He must keep between them a distance —not physical, for that was impossible, with his shoulder against hers—but he would speak only of general matters. He would discourse.
Pietro discoursed—of Italy, of his native village, of his impending voyage to join his brother in New York.
But discoursing, under the circumstances, was killing work. As Pietro flagged, Julia revived, and so it came about that, bit by bit, mile by mile, he learned more and more of the reason for her being here on a too-large bicycle upon a too-long road. Listening, his heart rose within him, and he forgot his fatigue, forgot his ruined clothes and his ruined prospects, forgot the dusty road and the miles still before them. His body marched, but his spirit knelt—for this, he told himself, this was heroism. This thin child with the freckled face and the unkempt red hair— she was of the stuff that made heroes. Alone, she had set out to save her home. Alone, she was on her way to oppose fate; alone, she meant to battle, to stand up to this sister who so coldly, so heartlessly would throw away that most precious of all gifts—a home. This little creature...a one-woman crusade...Ah! it was magnificent! He, Pietro Faccini, would enrol himself on her side. He would say something to this sister. Only wait; her ears would burn. Before he went out of their lives, he would use his gift of discourse—he would place himself behind this brave, this incomparably courageous little miss, this Julia, this gallant little signorina.
The thought banished fatigue; Pietro’s speed increased to four miles an hour. On! On! Courage, Miss Julia; here are reinforcements, here an ally, here a humble follower. On...!
To read more, please look for “The Lark Shall Sing” by Elizabeth Cadell on kindle, kobo, paperback, and audio on amazon. You can also purchase this book on audio by going to audible.com
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