Ben had cried signing the letter – but Ben was utterly wet, so useless. Cord told herself she’d be strong and tough about it. She wouldn’t miss Mumma, not even Daddy . . . She gritted her teeth.
‘Cord! Ben!’ Their mother’s voice outside the door. ‘Darlings, breakfast’s ready. Get up, I’ve a surprise for you.’
Cord stiffened, and looked over at the slumbering Ben in alarm. She didn’t like surprises and she knew from Althea’s voice it wouldn’t be a puppy-and-ice-cream surprise, more of a someone-awful-coming-for-tea surprise. Uncle Bertie was already here – who else? They’d had friends to lunch yesterday, Kenneth the actor and his girlfriend Lavinia who was a model. Kenneth had a beard and Lavinia drank too much fruit punch and flirted with Daddy till Mumma suddenly went inside for a nap. Their friends were always coming to stay at the Bosky, or motoring down for the day, bringing gin and gramophone records and keeping Mumma and Daddy up late with too much noise and stupid raucous laughter.
‘Darlings! Wake up!’ her mother called, still nearby. ‘The surprise is in the beach hut.’
‘Ben,’ Cord hissed, urgently shaking her brother awake. ‘Wake up. The beach hut. She’s found us out.’
But upstairs in the kitchen, everything was normal, and Cord relaxed, wondering if their mother had just made a mistake. Althea had fixed them their special treat breakfast – Weetabix with golden syrup and a slight moistening of milk. Their father sat studying a script and drinking coffee. The day was fine, but blustery.
Outside on the porch, Uncle Bertie was smoking and reading The Times. He had been with them for a week and he got on Daddy’s nerves and so was often to be found on the porch. Bertie always had something new on the go to fascinate the children. This time it was his new shoes with antique gold compasses sunk into the back of each heel which swivelled as he changed direction. He’d got them from a fellow in World’s End, he’d told them, and this had impressed them mightily, though they weren’t entirely sure whether World’s End was real or a magical place, like Narnia.
Althea was humming to herself, tapping the children’s spoons together. Her hair was twisted up on her head and she was wearing a smart green dress. Cord said suspiciously, ‘Why have we got a special breakfast?’
‘Do I need an excuse to be nice to you?’ said her mother, laughing. ‘Well, that’s a damning indictment, isn’t it, darling?’ She looked over at her husband. ‘Tony? I’m off now, and I’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Ben’s lip trembled slightly. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To London, for an audition, and Uncle Bertle’s driving me, so I’ll be safe, Ben.’ Ben had taken to laboriously reading the newspaper when the adults had finished with it, and was convinced that anyone parted from him would be blown up by the IRA or die in a train, car or plane crash, depending on what was in the news that day, and despite the efforts of his parents to explain the likelihood of accidents to him.
‘An audition? Why?’
‘For a part in a TV series,’ said Althea. ‘If I get it, it’ll be very exciting.’
‘But you don’t really act any more,’ said Ben, sounding cross. ‘Daddy’s the famous actor.’
‘Oh!’ Althea looked at Tony, who shrugged his shoulders, grinning, and took a sip of coffee. ‘Well, I do, darling, I just haven’t done much for a while, because I’ve been waiting for the right part.’
‘And looking after us.’
‘Oh – that too, of course. But this is the right part. Bertle’s convinced it’s mine.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘A drama series. And – gosh, it’d be . . . Never mind,’ she trailed off, staring into space.
Ben furrowed his brow. ‘Uncle Bertle drives like a maniac, Daddy said so.’
Daddy stroked Ben’s soft, pink-and-cream cheek. ‘Bertie’s a fine driver, and your mother’s going to have a wonderful night in London and make them fall in love with her at the audition so they give her the role and take her out for champagne afterwards. Don’t you think they will?’ Daddy was standing up now, and had wrapped his arms around Mumma, who was flushing pink.
Cord, scandalised, nudged her father. ‘Daddy. You shouldn’t be wanting men to take her out for champagne.’
‘Oh, I should,’ said Daddy, gaily. ‘Everyone falls in love with your mother because she’s very, very lovable.’
‘That’s enough, what nonsense,’ Mumma said, suddenly sounding Scottish. ‘I’ll – Tony, you’ll be all right, won’t you?’
‘My love, of course,’ he said, and he kissed her hand, almost formally, and they stared at each other for a split second until Mumma turned aside.
‘Althea,’ called Bertie, appearing in the French windows, waving his cigarette behind him. He ran a speculative tongue in between his lower lip and teeth. ‘I say, darling, we’ll be cutting it fine if we don’t leave soon.’
‘I’m ready this moment.’ Mumma had picked up her silk jacket and was giving forlorn-looking Ben another kiss. ‘I love you, sweet boy. Cord darling, look after Ben. Yes, there’s a lovely treat in the beach hut, and I want you both to be very, very good for Daddy. Are you listening to me?’
‘What’s the treat?’ said Ben, stabbing furiously at his Weetabix, syrup clotting on his spoon.
‘Well . . . Oh, there she is!’ Mumma’s voice rose a notch. ‘She said she was too shy to come up here. I thought she wanted to wait for you both in the beach hut. Come in, darling! Tony, she’s here.’
Through the door came Madeleine. She stood on the threshold, not moving, and gazed around at them all, with a strange look on her face: Cord didn’t know if it was fear or excitement. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was in uneven bunches, ribbed and bumpy where it hadn’t been brushed beforehand. She was a sort of grey-sand colour, because, as Cord was to discover, in summer no one ever told her to have a bath. She wore some tiny apple-green linen shorts, made for a child half her size. The flies were strained open in an O to reveal blue knickers. She had on a large woman’s denim shirt and sandals with strange mustard-coloured socks. Her grey eyes were large and round, her small oval face pale.
Again, Cord would always remember the first proper sight of her, not obscured by doors or window frames or running away, and the feeling of falling, of struggling to remember her.
She hung off the side of her chair. ‘That’s not a surprise. That’s Madeleine,’ she said, rudely.
‘Oh,’ breathed Ben. ‘Her.’
Their mother’s tone was firm. ‘Cord. That’s enough. Now you two, listen.’ She glanced at their father and he nodded. ‘Daddy met Madeleine at the beach shop yesterday. Her daddy is . . . ah . . . away, so she’s been alone.’
‘All on your own! You lucky thing,’ said Ben. Madeleine looked at him blankly.
Althea put her arm around her thin shoulders. ‘I’ve asked Maddy to play with you, because she’d like some friends.’
‘We don’t want friends,’ Cord said, folding her arms.
‘No, we don’t,’ added Ben, emboldened.
Their mother sighed in harried frustration. ‘Tony. Tony,’ she hissed into her husband’s ear. ‘You deal with this. She needs a bath, and some food – she was practically feral by the time I found her, just out on the lane, and she hadn’t been in all night because she says she’s too scared . . . I have to go, I really do . . . You talk to that man, Tony. Bloody talk to him.’
‘Sweetheart,’ said Daddy, smoothly to Madeleine. ‘Come in and sit down, we’ll give you some breakfast.’ He held out his hand to Madeleine and she smiled shyly back. He clutched her fingers. ‘It’s all right. We don’t bite, I promise. I’m your friend, aren’t I?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Even if you did try to run me over.’ Tony put his hands over his mouth and laughed, his eyes half-moons of mirth.
‘What?’ said Cord, but Madeleine folded her arms again and wouldn’t speak.
‘Gary, if you could keep an eye on her—’ Mumma was saying to Mrs Gage, using the pet name Mrs G
age hated. ‘Look out some of Cord’s old clothes, poor lamb—’
‘Oh, of course,’ Mrs Gage answered, heavy sarcasm in her tone. ‘Because two of them’s not enough is it, and . . .’
Althea ignored her. ‘Ben! Don’t kneel on your chair. And button up your shirt.’
‘I wasn’t kneeling, I was doing something Cord showed me. The Bay City Rollers had no shirts on, just jackets on Top of the Pops last week, sequinned jackets, and—’
‘Don’t blame me for it,’ Cord bellowed, angrily. ‘Don’t make it sound like I’m making you behave badly at the dinner table, Flash—’
‘I’m starting the car, Althea darling.’ Uncle Bertie reappeared in the doorway.
‘Uncle Bertie, can you do that thing when you pop your eyeball out?’ Ben knelt up on the chair again.
‘Ben—’
Suddenly, a clear voice cut through the babble.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me!’ They all stopped, and stared over at the small figure. She was pointing at Ben and Cord. ‘I don’t want to play with either of you. I’m used to playing by myself. It’s much better, in fact, playing by myself. I wouldn’t have come at all only your mum and dad were nice to me and there’s only dried rice in our kitchen and I get scared there. I think you two are simply awful. So spoiled and you’re so pleased with yourselves.’
Cord stared at her, eyes narrowing. ‘Well,’ she said, trying to think of a good answer. ‘We – are pleased with ourselves, so there,’ she said eventually, and then she screwed her face up in annoyance as Madeleine gave a superior smirk.
‘Cord!’ her mother said, sharply, and a car horn sounded at the front of the house. ‘Oh, Maddy darling, I’m sorry to have to leave you. Cord and Ben are so excited to have you with them, poppet . . . I do hope you all become friends and – goodbye!’
She dashed down the stairs, slamming the front door, and was gone.
‘I say, you three,’ said Daddy, heartily, into the silence. ‘Isn’t this lovely. Now, shall I take you down to the beach? Or shall we all play Happy Families?’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Or any old game.’
‘You don’t have to look after me, Mr Wilde,’ Madeleine said. ‘I’m going now too. Oh, you left the beach-hut door open,’ she added in a clear little voice. ‘All those tins and piles of food and everything that you’re keeping in there, shouldn’t go to waste, Mr Wilde, could I possibly take something for my lunch?’
‘The food?’ said Daddy, bewildered. ‘My sweet, there isn’t any food in there.’
‘But there is. And a pile of theatre programmes and a letter that Cord and Ben have signed about running away – is it part of a game?’ She was smiling thinly at Cord now, two spots of pink burning on her grubby cheeks. She hitched the voluminous shirt up over her shoulders. ‘I wasn’t sure but perhaps I don’t really understand about games because I prefer playing on my own.’
Daddy stood up, and without a word strode out down the porch steps and as they saw him weave between the grasses and down towards the beach huts Cord snarled at her brother, ‘You said you’d locked the door, Ben. I’m never trusting you again. You stupid baby.’ She shoved him, harder than she meant to, and he fell against the sideboard and banged his head and cried, and got up and tried to push Cord but missed and cut himself again, and Mrs Gage pulled them apart and called them ungrateful little horrors and actually held Cord by the ear, which hurt a lot.
All the time Madeleine Fletcher stood there watching them, arms wrapped round her tiny frame, uneven bunches and that stupid O in her too-tight shorts showing her blue pants and her seemingly not even caring. When Daddy returned, grim-faced, holding the bag of food and the note in Cord’s handwriting and the spare teddy that Ben had left there, and when he saw the cut on Ben’s head, he sent Cord to her room for the rest of the day.
He came down later on, before lunch, and sat on the edge of the bed, those long sensitive hands that were exactly like hers fiddling with the blancmange-pink fringed bedspread. She pretended to still be crying and he said to her, ‘You must be kind, Cord. It breaks my heart when you behave like this.’
‘Ben doesn’t want to go to school, Daddy.’
Daddy’s hair was thinning on top. His face was sad. ‘I keep telling you both, it’s not till next year. He’s got lots of time to get used to it. Oh, Cord. It’s not the lying, or the making plans behind our backs. Sweetheart, have you any idea how upset Mumma and I would have been if you’d run away?’
Cord said in a tight voice, ‘Mumma wouldn’t care. She told you she never wanted children and you’d taken her whole young life away from her. I heard you both.’
Daddy looked aghast. ‘When?’
‘Easter. When Mumma wanted you both to go to Venice with Guy and Olivia and Simon and you said no.’
‘She – er, well, she didn’t mean it. It was the heat of the moment.’
‘What’s that?’
Daddy suddenly sounded impatient. ‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t change the subject, monkey. I want you to be kind, Cordy. It makes me sad when you’re cruel.’
Cord’s throat hurt. ‘I’m not cruel. But we want you to ourselves. Don’t make me be nice to Madeleine what’s-her-name, that’s all.’
‘Her father has been very unkind to her,’ he said, picking at the bedspread, and his jaw was tight, so that the words hardly came out at all. ‘He left her alone in the house, no food, she can’t even reach the taps without standing on a chair.’
‘Why?’ asked Cord, too young and too securely happy to understand how badly a child can be mistreated.
‘He’s a sad man. Like his father was. His mummy died.’ Daddy gave a big sigh. ‘And the war changed a lot of people.’
‘Your mummy died and it didn’t change you.’
He stroked her hair. ‘It did, darling, I’m afraid. Maddy’s father is a damaged man. We should be kind to her, till she goes back to Bristol, then her – her aunt looks after her and she’s a very nice woman.’
‘Did you know her too in the war?’
‘Yes.’ Daddy paused. ‘I loved her very much.’
‘More than Mummy?’
‘Not more than Mummy. No one more than Mummy.’ He slapped his legs. ‘Now. That’s enough histories. You’ll hurt yourself if you’re not nice to her, Cordy.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘Now, you’ll stay down here while we have lunch, then come up and help tidy the beach hut. Then we’ll all play Flowers and Stones – and that’s an end to the matter. For now. But I’m going to go over and talk to her father. I want you to like Madeleine. I owe her aunt something, and the least we can do is make sure her niece is safe with us. You’re too young for this. I’m telling you because you’re the same as me. And maybe one day you’ll understand.’
‘OK.’ She nodded even though he was right and she didn’t understand. ‘I’ll do my best, Daddy.’
He shut the door behind her and quietly, so she could hear the boards creaking gently, ascended the stairs.
Chapter Six
When Mumma returned from London the following day, without Uncle Bertie in tow, she was glowing. Normally Mumma was slightly chaotic, either dozing or smoking or in a panic, losing things, yelling, making mess wherever she went and, strange to say it, Cord never minded, so this Mary Poppins-like Mumma – joining in when Cord sang, unexpectedly blowing kisses at Mrs Gage, laughing in a trilling birdy way (‘like a stupid woman in a stupid film about love,’ as Ben put it, disgustedly) – was disconcerting. Cord didn’t realise, until Althea jumped violently in the air and dropped a glass when the telephone rang, that her mother was nervous.
She took the phone call in the bedroom and was in there for ages. When she came out on to the porch, her cheeks were pink. She had got the part, she’d told them.
Daddy leaped up, flinging his arms wide, mouth open in a rictus of joy.
‘Darling, this is marvellous!’
The children were allowed to stay up and eat nuts and have their own tonic water while their parents drank champagne. ‘To Mumma,’ D
addy said as they clinked glasses. ‘Every actress in town went up for Isabella and she beat them all to it. She’s going to be wonderful.’ His eyes shone; he pointed at Mumma, who shook her head. ‘Darling. You deserve this. It’s your time, truly it is.’ He leaned against the railings, spreading his arms wide and looking out to sea he roared, ‘“OTHER WOMEN CLOY THE APPETITES THEY FEED UPON, BUT SHE MAKES HUNGRY WHERE MOST SHE SATISFIES!”’
‘How charming, and how flattering to all women,’ said Althea, taking a hefty sip from her glass as the children clapped, rolling around with mirth.
It turned out Althea’s new role was rather a big deal. It was the lead in an adaptation of Hartman Hall, the eponymous bestseller of the previous summer about an aristocratic Cornish family at the turn of the century. Mumma was Lady Isabella, the tempestuous heiress who wanted Hartman to pass to her, and the Australian actor Ray Harrington was the distant cousin who’d come back to claim his inheritance.
‘It’s very Women’s Lib, really, the whole thing about her inheriting. But I still have to toss my hair a lot and weep on a strong manly shoulder,’ Mumma was explaining to Daddy. ‘And wear corsets, darling, that’s the awful bit. I’m so fat.’
Daddy laughed. ‘You! Darling, you’re as thin as you were at nineteen.’
‘Urgh,’ Ben said. He of all of them had greeted the news of Althea’s success with the least enthusiasm. ‘How old were you when you met Mumma?’
‘I was much older. Ten years older. A coup de foudre.’
Ben was silent, then he said, ‘What’s a coo de fooderer? Someone who loves young people?’
Mumma clicked her tongue. ‘Honestly, Ben. What do they teach you all day? No, he was twenty-nine. And a coup de foudre is . . . Oh, when your heart is captured. That’s what Daddy did to me.’
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