The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  ‘On the contrary. By all accounts, you’re quite gone on her. Have you done anything foolish?’

  Angry, and not wanting to associate what Dad spoke of with Gwen, he pretended to be puzzled.

  ‘I mean,’ Dad said impatiently, ‘have you promised her you’ll wed her? That sort of thing –’

  ‘I’ve asked her if we could be wed. I’ve asked, but she won’t have me.’

  ‘She will, she will. Hard to get, an old ploy. You should be man enough to recognize that one.’

  ‘She’s not that sort of girl, Dad. If you’d met her –’

  ‘The fact is I haven’t. But I’m older than you and I hope wiser. I’m just giving you advice … A bit long in the tooth, isn’t she? Thirty if she’s a day.’

  ‘Thirty-four.’ Anger, warm, powerless, grew in him. ‘She’s thirty-four. We can’t choose when we’re born –’

  ‘No, but we can choose who we marry. When you’re in your prime, she’ll be in her late fifties – an old woman. You’re prepared for that sort of thing?’

  ‘Her age doesn’t matter to me. I’ve thought about it. And it doesn’t.’

  ‘Difficult this next one, but let’s not mince words. Social class … I’ve done well for myself, very well, and expect my children to do better. Not to go backwards, in other words.’

  ‘Her husband was an officer,’ Dick said, defensively. ‘Cyril Latimer, he was a Captain –’

  ‘Temporary gentleman. Yes? Let’s be frank. She runs a café, doesn’t she, does the waitressing herself? Come, Dick – I’d worry less if she were a little bit of fluff. I can’t make head nor tail what the attraction is unless … I asked if you’d compromised her – but since you’ve not cheated the starter, there’s time to get out.’

  ‘I love her,’ Dick said.

  ‘You don’t want to be too fussed about love. What guarantee have you it’ll stay? Does she love you?’

  Dick was caught unawares. He felt the question like a bellyblow.

  ‘Ever had a woman? Well then, you’ll know how it can all be separated. Sex. Love.’

  ‘It’s my business, all that. If you’ve nothing better to say –’

  ‘I have. Had you thought of looking nearer home? Two years at least the little Carstairs girl’s been sweet on you. Old Carstairs even joked with me about it at the Rotary Dinner last month. She’d make a good catch, would Nancy. Think on it.’ Lifting the decanter, he filled Dick’s glass. ‘Of course, we’d Peter to get out of a fix two years ago –’

  Dick said sarcastically, ‘An unsuitable match?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me. Maria, I thought of as my daughter – I’d have had nothing against … It was age, Dick. They were two children only. Always quarrelling. What sort of a future there?’

  ‘What sort of a future now?’ Dick muttered, under his breath.

  Perhaps because they had finished their talk with Maria, it was of her he thought now as he made his way, leg tired and dragging, up the stairs. Think, think dearly, of Maria. Maria, seldom spoken of now except in hushed tones. It had taken him some time to discover (he’d wanted to visit her) that she wasn’t in an ordinary hospital, that it wasn’t an ordinary illness.

  When he had first been told of the child, and the plan and the elaborate arrangements, something in him had cried out – Don’t … Yet when Dad had asked, ‘What’s your solution, then?’ he’d faltered and stayed silent. There weren’t better ideas – just different ones. They came to the same thing: that Maria would suffer and Peter be allowed to forget. He didn’t believe it had been anything but Peter forcing himself on her. He would like to have called it rape. He hated this suggestion which Dad obviously believed, that they were two impulsive fools, that Maria had seduced, Peter had been weak. He would have liked to talk to her about it. But that had been forbidden.

  And now this. A breakdown. A nervous breakdown. She had been already several months now in a Home in Kent. He had written to her half a dozen times. But no letter ever came from her, for him or for anyone. After a while he had given up.

  When he had told Gwen in great confidence the story, she had been at once distressed for Maria. She said over and over, ‘Poor lass, poor lass.’ Then: ‘I’ve never had a bairn but – mother love, after all it’s deep inside, isn’t it?’ All he could think of then, and he had to bite his lips not to say it, was: ‘You never had a child, but I could give you one. Let me make you mother of my children.’

  ‘Marry me,’ he said again that evening.

  He had begun to have migraines. He supposed that was what they were. Flashing before the eyes and then the terrible waves of pain, a giant vice squeezing his head. Forced to stay away from work, vomiting in a darkened room, he felt certain they were something to do with the ‘plane crash. He began to fear, the walls closing in on him, that his leg had not been the end of it. Perhaps his brain had been after all damaged? He would grow worse, lose his mind. Deranged, he would end his days cut off, prisoner of this pain.

  He spoke to the family doctor, and was told heartily: ‘Nothing wrong there, we’d have seen damage before if the fall had had anything to do with it. Eating properly? None of this hasty-biteand-rush-out-gallivanting. Waterworks all right? Bowels? No toxins in the system … If you were a young woman I’d say, get married. But a young fellow like you – wild oats … No trouble there, I hope?’

  In a way the doctor was right, or would have been if Dick had been a girl. He did need to marry – Gwen.

  He went to see Maria, without getting permission or telling his family. He made the excuse of a visit to Ida in the south. We are not a family, he thought, who confide much in each other.

  The Home was outside Ramsgate but in sight of the sea. He was directed into a great garden that seemed all laurel bushes and yews, dark and damp. It was a mild spring day and many of the patients were sitting outside. A frilly-capped nurse in white told him, ‘We don’t know whether she’ll see you. Some days she won’t speak at all. And when she does it isn’t in English.’

  Maria was sitting on a bench, alone, wearing a dark blue dress too large for her, on her feet carpet slippers.

  He sat down beside her. ‘It’s Dick,’ he said. For a long time she said nothing but continued to stare in front of her. ‘I’ve come from Thackton.’

  ‘I know,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Is there anything I can get for you, or do for you, dear?’

  ‘Dick,’ she said dully, ‘Dick.’ Then again, ‘Dick,’ as if holding on to him. ‘They took my son, you know. I’ve been in the dark since – I don’t see very well –’ She stumbled over the words.

  He feared she might ask, ‘How can I get him back?’ But she had lapsed into silence again. He risked telling her: ‘They love him and look after him well. He’s very bonny now.’

  ‘Good,’ was all she said. Then: ‘I want to speak of him, but no one will talk.’

  ‘They say you won’t talk.’

  ‘Why should I? Why should I ever? It doesn’t do any good, it frightens me. Dick, I’m frightened.’

  ‘What of?’ he asked anxiously. ‘What of, dear?’ But as suddenly as she’d opened out, she was silent again.

  After a while she said, without looking at him, ‘Pip Carstairs wants to marry me.’

  A sick fantasy surely, Dick thought. To humour her, he asked, ‘Is that so?’

  ‘No, no. Of course not. It isn’t true.’

  ‘I’m your brother,’ he began. ‘Just remember that. If there’s anything at all I can do. Ever. You’ve only to ask.’ But he thought: If I am her brother, so is – or was – Peter. I should not have spoken.

  But she seemed to take little notice of what he’d said. She did not speak again. His last glimpse of her was sitting on the bench, staring over at a small ornamental lake, with a piece of chipped Greek statuary to the right of it. Somewhere in the distance was the sea.

  The summer passed slowly. In July, Nancy invited him to a dance at the Carstairs home. He made his leg an excuse to refuse
. On Sundays in St Mary’s Church, he would see her turn, pretending to brush fluff from her coat, stealing a glance at him from the family’s front pew.

  In August, Maria left the Home and went on holiday with Ida and Lettice, staying at a farmhouse near Truro. After a few weeks there was even a card from her. Except for some shakiness in the handwriting, it seemed to come from the old Maria.

  Dad hadn’t mentioned Gwen again even though it was apparent Dick was still seeing her. He had a new motorbike now, an Enfield 2-stroke. He was able to cut twenty minutes from the journey time to Bradford.

  The Adelphi Tea Rooms were to be closed for decorating and alterations. Gwen’s cousin Stan was coming up to be foreman. Just as Dick had been jealous of the cousin from Australia, now he felt threatened by Cousin Stan. ‘Do you love him?’ he found himself asking. Then changed it hurriedly, ‘I mean, you like him well enough?’

  ‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘He’s family. If you get on with someone, and they’re family – that’s good.’

  ‘What’ll you do when the café’s shut?’

  ‘I thought of taking Mother to the sea. Only she’ll never go. She fancies herself the king pin, and nothing done right if she’s not there to see it. She’ll not trust Stan.’

  ‘So then – you could go away?’ A wonderful hope, and fear, possessed him. She must agree. Before, she’d always been too busy. It had been he, Dick, running to Bradford, snatching what time she found free for him. ‘Could you come over to us? To Moorgarth. A real rest, and a change. North Riding instead of West Riding.’ His hands were clammy with fear.

  ‘I don’t see why not. I’d like that, Dick.’

  He took the time off. He didn’t ask. Dad was away in Lancashire. In the days before, he worried about everything. He saw it all going wrong. She would be unhappy, or not able to get on with Elsie or Aunt Dulcie. She would find being with him all day too much and she would end it all.

  Suppose something weren’t right about her room? He nearly drove Elsie mad with his fussing. He didn’t like the wording of the text that hung above the bed – that had hung there ever since he could remember. The washbasin had a small chip. ‘It won’t do,’ he said. Elsie grumbled, saying that the chip hurt nobody and didn’t even show if the bowl was turned. He solved the problem by substituting the blue jug and basin from his own room. The day of her arrival he gathered late yellow roses and massed them on the dresser. On the little round table near the window he placed the latest numbers of The Queen and John Bull, and two new novels: Dodo by E.F. Benson and Pleasure by Alec Waugh, which he’d bought for her before leaving Middlesbrough.

  They would need a motor. He couldn’t expect her to ride on the flapper bracket of his Enfield. He drove over to collect her: Aunt Dulcie thought it would be all right if he borrowed the Crossley.

  Aunt Dulcie liked her. That was the first hurdle over. The next was Elsie. Her face broke into a smile and she nodded to herself in the way he knew spelled approval. Gwen said, in her matter of fact voice, ‘If that’s your baking on the range there, I can’t wait to get sat down.’

  During tea she told stories about her early days as a VAD. She made his aunt laugh, that fluffy abandoned laugh he so liked to hear. She loved Moorgarth. He showed her the fireplaces from the old house when it had been a silk mill, with the water in the beck used for milling. He told her about their right to have seven sheep wandering the moors. ‘Dad used to say, “Seven Graingers – I reckon it comes to the same.” ‘ Trimmer, so loved by Maria, sat beside her, his head on her knee.

  She was to sleep in the double bed that was usually Ida and Jenny’s. That first night, he lay awake, tense, thinking about her a few feet away. Once he got out and saw a light under her door. He pictured her with the candle lit, sitting up reading one of the novels. It was all he could do not to cross the landing and burst in, to say ‘Will you marry me?’ Perhaps she would say yes, and he would climb in beside her and she would draw them both down into the deep softness of the feather bed. His head would lie between her breasts and then his hands would seek, and she might hide, and he would seek, and … But he always stopped there, forced himself to stop.

  I ask so little, he thought. He told himself the tale again of the Golden Lion. The hidden prince who must find the princess, who must recognize the princess. The voice, the face that had come out of the darkness when he didn’t know if he was alive – he had recognized them. The Princess.

  They visited Eleanor on a day when Mrs Dennison was out, although Dick would have liked to see Gwen do battle with her. He said as much to Eleanor.

  ‘Gwen wouldn’t be afraid. She’s used to difficult customers in the tea-shop.’ He said it defensively, to remind Eleanor that he knew Gwen wasn’t top drawer and what did he care? And then felt ashamed when Eleanor took no notice, saying only, ‘To be frank, she’s not improving with old age –’

  ‘The child, doesn’t he keep her young?’

  ‘No, Dick. He keeps me young.’ And indeed she did look younger, softer, than the Eleanor he’d known as a boy, who had often seemed so fixed, even a little elderly.

  He said now to Gwen, ‘Miss Dennison and I – we spent a night together out on the moors, one bitterly cold January. Lost. We’re fortunate to be alive.’ Telling the story again now, remembering the bond there’d been, the close, almost intimate feeling that had persisted for weeks after, he wished that it could by some wild chance have been Gwen and he bedded down in a sheep hollow, ready to die in each other’s arms.

  I think of death too often. He cleared his throat which felt gritty, sore. He hoped he wasn’t sickening for something.

  Guy, just two years old, was brought downstairs by Amy. Sturdy, with a confident walk and Maria’s heavy-lidded eyes, he stared at Gwen.

  ‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said. ‘If you’re Guy. Are you Guy?’

  Clapping his hands, he said solemnly, ‘I Guy. Guy come down, down.’

  She opened her handbag and brought out a clockwork mouse, grey silky fur and a long tail. Eleanor commented that it looked almost too real. Guy gave squeals of pleasurable fear as it raced over the Indian carpet. My nephew, Dick thought. And Maria’s child. When Guy had gone upstairs again, he said:

  ‘The news of Maria’s better. She sent us two picture-postcards of Fowey.’

  It rained the next morning. He had a heavy cold. At least I don’t have a migraine, he thought. Tomorrow was her last full day. He planned they would drive to the coast, only an hour away.

  Next day he woke early to a blue sky with white trailing clouds. His head was blocked, his nose hurt and his throat was dry and scratchy still. But he was happy. He had determined the night before that he would be happy. Today was to be quite perfect for her.

  Perfection ordered, perfection delivered. They drove in the Crossley through Lealholm, Glaisdale, Egton Bridge – much of the picturesque route the railway took. The river Esk, brown and swollen with rain, was running fast. There were glimpses of muddy track, ochre-coloured, glistening with the wet and running in channels. They came down into Robin Hood’s Bay. The tide was out and they walked amongst the slippery flat scaurs and the rock pools. In the distance Ravenscar promontory pointed out to sea. Gwen had used to come here as a child. She showed him the cottage in St Martin’s Lane where they had stayed.

  The morning was almost over as they climbed back up the steep cobbled hill. Driving to Whitby, they ate an enormous lunch of fresh caught haddock and chips, and then blackcurrant pie and cream washed down with lots of tea, for the salty air had made them thirsty.

  ‘It’s good,’ he said, ‘but of course it’s not like your cooking.’

  ‘I’ll soon be back. It says a lot for the good time I’ve been having, Dick, that I’ve not given it a thought –’

  He nearly said, ‘You need never go back to it.’ But sensing the fragility of a perfect day – the risk of snatching at greater happiness and perhaps losing everything, he said:

  ‘After all you’ve eaten, I’ll be
t you couldn’t climb the hundred steps to St Mary’s –’

  ‘Of course I could.’ Then suddenly serious: ‘Dick dear, what are you talking about? With that leg …’ He wished then he hadn’t teased her because she became suddenly concerned. His cough too, he had a fit and couldn’t stop. ‘Are you all right?’

  They watched the catch come in, strolling amongst the boats in the harbour. On the pier before that, she refused to have her fortune told. Dick didn’t want to know his either. They bought sugar pebbles, pink rock for Elsie and bright pink and white false teeth for Cousin Stan.

  He was reluctant to drive straight to Thackton, imagining the last evening sitting by the fire, sharing her with Aunt Dulcie.

  ‘I’m going to turn off here,’ he said as they came to the Goathland signpost. It was quiet in the village: sheep and halfgrown lambs strolled about as they did in Thackton, but with more space. To either side and beyond stretched the moors. No green hillsides crisscrossed with fields, but an expanse of dark purple blending with the mauve and grey of the evening sky.

  He took the turning for the Roman road. They left the motor and struck out along the muddy track through heather and sodden bracken, but when they reached the ford before the climb up to the Roman road, they saw it was in full spate and impossible to cross. They climbed up in the other direction, a grassy path to a beck, and sat on a rock above the water, shaded from the evening sun by an oak tree. Some of its leaves had turned and fallen. There was a small rowan, overshadowed by the oak, its berries scant and pale.

  She was worried for him. ‘It’s not just your cold. That leg –’ He said gruffly, ‘My leg doesn’t stop me doing anything. Motorbike, car …’ He thought: Don’t spoil the day. His lameness, that he tried to forget, but that he could never wish away or how would he have met Gwen? ‘There are others so much worse. Limbs missing, blind, or can’t find work …’

  The full beck beneath was partly a waterfall. The twisting, turning flow fell with such violence that droplets shot up, charged, clear, bright. They sat without speaking. He felt a sudden twist in his heart. The thought he’d been able to hide all day. She goes tomorrow.