Consider the Lily (59 page)

‘
Qui est là?

A head poked out of an upstairs window and Kit stepped back and launched into his explanation as to why a lone man, holding a baby, had arrived on the hotel doorstep at one o’clock in the morning.

Madame Regne proved to be one of those women to whom emergencies were the breath of life. Within minutes, Kit was ushered inside, the baby had been commandeered and tucked into a cradle, which just happened to be spare, and Mademoiselle Motte had been conveyed to bed. The doctor was summoned.

‘It could be serious,’ he said, after he had made his examination. ‘Acute seafood poisoning. She ate
moules,
you say? She must stay where she is.’

At first, Madame Regne was horrified when Kit explained that he would continue the journey alone with the baby. ‘You cannot, Monsieur, it would be highly unwise.’

But Kit, nagged by unease and by the need to settle things with Matty, was not prepared to take Madame Regne’s advice. He left a large sum to pay for Mademoiselle’s medical expenses and promised Madame faithfully that he would let her know when he arrived in England.

Eyes pricking with fatigue, Kit drove on through the night towards Paris, pulled home by connections more numerous than he had imagined – some so tenuous that a jolt would sever them, others that were pulsing with life.

He glanced at his watch. According to the wonderful Madame Regne the baby would want his milk in twenty minutes or so. Kit picked up the map lying on the passenger seat and squinted at it; providentially he would reach Auxerre in twenty minutes or so where he would give his son and himself their breakfast...

When, at last, he drove into Paris, back aching, head throbbing, seat damp with sweat, Kit congratulated himself on managing the journey so well. At Auxerre the baby had taken his milk without a murmur and fallen asleep, leaving Kit free to observe the snub nose with its funny sunburnt look, and eyelids so transparent that he could see a suggestion of the pupils underneath. He was getting the hang of it, Kit concluded.

He was getting the hang of having a son.

Negotiating the Place de la Concorde, a thought struck Kit. It was neither a philosophical thought, nor one that was to have huge ramifications in his life, but it was important all the same.

He had forgotten to change the baby’s nappy.

*

Grabbing another sheet, Matty scraped hair which felt like red-hot wire out of her eyes and looked up at the flames. They were inching closer to the house. Tyson and Ned were heaving buckets and throwing the water feverishly into the flames.

Matty hovered in front of the stalls, willed herself to go back in, and with a little cry, pushed herself at Vindictive’s stall. At her entry, the horse reared – a black, quivering mass. Matty froze, cast a look over her shoulder – at the rolling flames and burning debris – and almost ran for it.

This is Kit’s horse, said a voice in her head. It’s his, you are not going to leave him to burn. Or his house.

It’s your house.

Matty flung the damp sheet over the horse’s head. ‘Come on, Vindictive, boy, don’t let me down.’ Slowly, far too slowly for comfort, she coaxed the sweating, trembling beast through the doorway. ‘Come on, boy, come on...’

‘Get out, ma’am.’ Tyson appeared in the doorway. ‘You must get out. It’s too dangerous to stay.’

‘Help me, then,’ she panted, dragging the terrified horse at the end of the halter. With a slither and high whinny of distress, Vindictive ejected himself from the stall and bucked over the hot stones, with Tyson clinging to his mane.

‘Here,’ Matty thrust the rope at Ned, ‘tether him by the walled garden.’ She did not wait for Ned’s reply. ‘Tyson!’ she shouted. ‘The house. We must do something.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Matty saw that Robbie and Ivy had appeared, drenched ghosts in cotton nightdresses. They were taking turns to fill the buckets. Ivy’s nightdress hampered her and, with a deft movement, she knotted the hem around her thighs, revealing a pair of slender white legs. Robbie’s nightdress was even more of a hindrance, its soaked lace and flounces flapping under her dressing gown.

‘We must try to save the house!’ Matty shouted.

Matty fetched, carried, threw and ran because she was not going to let it happen. It was as if the fire had penetrated to some secret, molten source in her, a lava-flow of energy which burst to the surface. A spark scorched a hole in her jersey and, at one point, she was too near the flames and felt the ends of her hair frizzle and split. The heat burnt through her slippers and her hands were raw. But she pushed on.

‘They’re here,’ shouted Robbie, stumbling across the yard. ‘It’s here.’

Clanging the bell, the village fire engine drove up the drive with ten or so men hanging off it and skidded to a halt.

Ned caught Matty as she staggered away from the flames and pulled her out of the yard into the garden, where they stood, huddled together, and watched.

Like an offering from the Spanish Inquisition, the cupola, now a blazing cross of fire, collapsed with a hiss into a whirlwind of ash.

I saved three horses, she thought, in bewilderment.

Nether Hinton’s fire engine might have taken its time to arrive, but it was efficient when it did. Amid the roar and the crackle, the men set to and directed the hoses onto the west side of the house and fanned out ready to tackle any new blaze.

‘Go on,’ prayed Matty through gritted teeth, thinking of Kit’s face if he came back to a burnt-out shell, and how she would do anything to prevent it. Hardly conscious of what she was doing, she clung to Ned’s arm and he steadied her. They watched the sparks rain over the garden, and spill softly onto the roof of the house.

A figure staggered out of the trees and over the lawn.

‘I’ve come to help,’ shouted Danny.

‘Right,’ said the chief fireman. ‘Over there.’

The wind was dropping and Matty, Ned, Robbie and Ivy watched in silence for the next few minutes. ‘How do you think it happened?’ she asked Ned at last.

‘Tyson thinks a lamp went over. Maybe Jem left it. He isn’t sure. Either that or the wind blew the electricity cables together and they shorted.’

But Matty was not listening. ‘What am I doing standing here?’ she said. ‘We ought to be getting the paintings and the furniture out of the house.’

‘Easy.’ Ned restrained the small figure with both hands. ‘Look, they’ve got it under control, Lady Dysart. See?’

With a hiss, the water hit the roof and pooled in the gutters, sending eddies of steam into the dark. Men ran in all directions, shouting orders, their boots ringing on the stones. Gradually, the glare dimmed into yellow, then red and eventually extinguished. The air was thick with the smell of burnt hay and wood.

Matty tasted scorch on her own lips and salt from where she had sweated and cried. Clinging to Ned, she shuddered with shock and anti-climax – and, because it was a strange and unrepeatable situation, Ned put out his arm and drew her to his corduroyed chest as he would have done to Betty.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Don’t take on.’

‘I must tell the men what to do,’ Matty said, through chattering teeth. Ned let her go. Stumbling, aching, eyes and skin smarting, bones made of water, Matty walked forward to organize the aftermath of a disaster in her house.

‘Ivy,’ she called. ‘Could you and Ellen organize hot water and some tea?’

Teeth amazingly white in her black face, Ivy nodded, untied her nightdress which was causing some merriment among the men, and disappeared.

‘Robbie.’

Matty looked round for Robbie, and a virtual stranger stepped forward. ‘Oh, Lady Dysart,’ she said.

Matty looked at Robbie. Someone must have driven a hat pin into her: the large figure had shrivelled. ‘It’s all right, Robbie,’ she said gently. ‘Would you like to go down to the cellar and bring up a couple of whisky bottles? The best malt. I think we all need some.’

Robbie fingered the torn, blackened lace on the sleeve of her nightdress. ‘If you wish.’

‘What to do next, ma’am?’ said Tyson, materializing out of the dark.

They were all expecting something from Matty – the men from the village and the people who lived in her household: courage and direction, perhaps, and Matty had never imagined she possessed much of either. But perhaps – perhaps, after all, she did.

After the storm, a mist came down over Calais and hung over the huddle of buildings at the port. Seagulls swooped, screaming, up to the sun which shone above. The air was chilly: Kit turned up his coat collar and tried to light a cigarette. The thought of his home warmed him, and he pictured it in the spring sunlight, surrounded by brown and green fields.

The loading was due to begin any minute. He scrutinized the ferry boat, then the rough, crested sea outside the soothing influence of the port, still unsettled from Hurricane Betsy. Almost three years ago, Matty had proposed to him on a ferry and set in train a series of events, of causes and effects. Hurt, unsure, hung-over, Kit had gone with her.

On such half measures, he thought, as embarkation began, are lives made.

The hotel in Paris had telephoned through his reservation for a private cabin, and instead of settling himself in the first-class lounge with a brandy as was his habit on crossings, he remained in the cabin with the baby. The baby fussed and grizzled. Remembering his previous transgressions, Kit sighed and picked him up.

‘Nappy, is it? You’re testing me again.’

He wrestled with the pins. The little bottom was red from insufficient changes and Kit dabbed at it with a dampened towel. That produced a real shriek. To quieten him, Kit laid his hand on the round, froggy little belly.

‘I’ll get you some of my famous ointment,’ he told his son.

The baby opened light blue eyes and focused on his father. With its huge head and spindly limbs, there is a curious imbalance about a baby’s body, and Kit, who had never studied one before, found himself stroking the diminutive pelvis and ribcage, and offering his finger to be grasped.

Apparently enjoying the air on his bottom, the baby made a feeble kick and Kit caught his foot. Like tiny molluscs, the toes were almost transparent, traced with hairline veins and studded with pearly nails. All this had come from Daisy. For a moment, Kit stared at the foot, hating the baby for what he had done to Daisy. For her suffering. Then the baby kicked again, and the blood pulsed under the tender skin. Deep inside Kit a new emotion stirred, powerful, adhesive, fiercely novel, and he surrendered to it. This was his son and he loved him.

With it came fear for the preservation of a small life, and then a second, more profound, terror – that he might have to give up his son. The idea made him shake inside.

Matty was in her garden when Kit arrived, and did not hear the car spin over the gravel and stop with a jerk in front of the burnt-out stables. Nor did she hear his shout of anguish at the sight.

Kneeling in front of the main bed under the wall, partly because her feet hurt, partly because she needed to feel the earth on her fingers again, she snipped, pruned and pulled up straggles of couchgrass and bindweed. The earth smelt of spring and crumbled between her fingers into a satisfying loam.

Compost and manure, she thought.

The tail-end of Hurricane Betsy blew over the garden from the Harroway and whipped up over Jonathan’s Kilns but, protected by the wall, her garden was secure and still. A curlew dipped above Matty’s head and sent out its cry. Soon, the swallows would be coming in from Africa. Matty thought that in future she might keep a record of them, when they came and when they departed.

A clump of infant cat-mint gave off a spicy smell: Matty had chosen the giant kind to sprawl in the bed beside the path. Behind that rose the spikes of a white bearded iris and the buds of a ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ peony. Matty sat back on her knees and contemplated her creation. Perhaps the effect needed a little more greenery? Perhaps a grey-green senecio?

Did it need more compost? She rubbed her hands together and got to her feet.

Where was Kit? The wind sent a chill through her contentment. Except for yet another brief telephone call from Paris saying he was on his way back, there had been nothing.

The ‘Perle d’Azur’ clematis was in need of more pruning – she should have cut it right to the ground last winter but had been too tentative – and she stopped to tidy it up. She was so busy clipping and tying it in that she did not hear Kit.

‘Matty... Matty? Are you there?’

She shaded her eyes. Kit was hurrying down the path through the birch trees. The secateurs dropped by her feet, and she made a gesture as if to run to him, to tell him she was so glad, so very glad, that he had returned.

‘Matty, I’m home.’ He stopped a little way from her and, suddenly, her elation vanished. Out of habit, she fumbled for her handkerchief, no longer sure about her capacity to continue suffering for love. Kit moved towards her.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, in the voice she now knew so well and had longed to hear. ‘I’ve just heard the news. You’re not hurt.’

After so long, he was almost a stranger. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Perfectly, apart from my hair... and my hands.’ She held them out.

‘Thank God for that and thank God no one else was hurt.’

‘No. Everyone is fine.’

He came closer. ‘I’m back now, Matty, and I want to talk to you. Please.’

‘Yes.’

Matty’s heart thudded, and dived. The terror of new anguish made her sound cold and distant. Riven with doubt now that he was here, and with the enormity of what he was going to ask, Kit faltered. He took off his hat.

‘Daisy is over, Matty.’ He took a step closer to his wife and she saw his hands were trembling and that helped to steady her. ‘I have to ask you something.’

To give herself time, Matty picked up the secateurs and dropped them into the trowel. Despite the scorched hair, she looked well, thought Kit. He had forgotten how small and exquisite she was, and how the brown eyes suggested comfort. Unfamiliar tenderness took him by surprise, and he wanted to snatch up her damaged hands and cherish them between his own.

Matty rubbed her forehead with her forearm and pushed back the frizz from her face – just as she had so long ago on the ferry and as Kit had seen dozens of times since. She was wearing an expression with which he was also familiar, a still, frozen expression which now he understood: the look of a woman who was frightened to be happy in case it was taken away. With a flash of guilt, he also knew he had helped to keep it there.