Dear Laura (2 page)

‘Not
called‚’
said Mrs Padgett rather too sharply, for Laura Crozier had never been a favourite with her. ‘Not
called,
surely?’

‘Those who have laid violent hands upon themselves,’ mused Padgett, cutting up his mutton.

She did not answer, thinking, ‘Or those who have had hands laid violently upon them?’

T
HE
weather had been finer than of late and there was no ice on the mere, though the two boys had been hoping for it since they arrived home for the Christmas holiday. Each morning the grass upon the Common stood stiff with frost and the ground rang beneath their boots, but by afternoon a wet mist obscured the view. So the brothers lingered at the drawing-room windows, waiting an eternity of children’s time, obedient and subdued. They had, after all, said their mother, been out that day and walked as far as the Windmill and fed the ducks on the pond. Now she rustled forward, very fine and delicately scented in her best green watered silk, to draw the curtains against the winter evening.

‘Besides,’ she added, touching each son’s head and smiling, ‘it is Christmas-day, and that should surely be pleasure enough.’

Edmund and Lindsey Crozier glanced at their father, who sat reading yesterday’s
Times,
wondering whether her little sign of affection had been noted. For at fourteen and twelve years old they were almost men, and Theodore considered that she spoiled them.

‘Their pleasure is not important,’ Theodore said into the guilty silence, ‘since this is a religious festival and should be
remembered
as such. The fact that they have been generously – nay, lavishly – endowed with gifts, should be regarded as their great good fortune and not their right. The poor,’ he continued,
folding
the newspaper neatly into one readable half-column, ‘are always with us. It would be less than my duty if I did not remind you all of those less fortunate than yourselves. Do you
comprehend
me?’

‘Yes, Papa,’ the boys chorused, with one last wistful look at the Common in the evening light.

‘Then why do you not amuse yourselves instead of worrying Mama?’

‘Play with your new toys,’ Laura whispered, giving them a little push towards the Christmas-tree, ‘and say something
appreciative
about them to your Papa. Tell him how much you value his kindness.’

She shut out temptation with a swish of blue wool-brocade.

‘They are not, in any case, merely toys,’ said Theodore, hearing and seeing everything without apparently lifting his eyes from the print. ‘That would be superfluity. Lindsey!’ Suddenly
pouncing
on the younger lad as he set out a battleline of lead soldiers. ‘Do you know how our firm advertises Crozier’s Toys?’

The boy scrambled to his feet again and hooked his hands
behind
the back of his Norfolk jacket. He concentrated on the wax flowers imprisoned within a glass dome which stood on the mantelshelf.

‘“Dolls that instil correct notions into the young mind,”’ he began. ‘“Merry games – and – pastimes …”’

‘“… combining,”’ Edmund whispered, and was checked by a look from his father.

‘Pray continue, Lindsey,’ said Theodore Crozier, one
forefinger
on the line he had been reading.

‘“… combining …’”

‘“Pleasure,”’ Laura dared to suggest, and smiled brilliantly as though pleasure was her birthright.

‘My dear Laura!’

‘I beg your pardon, Theodore. The phrase is turned so adroitly.’

‘“… pleasure,”’ Lindsey finished, helped by mouthings from his older brother, ‘“with instruction.”’

‘Exactly! Blanche!’

The child turned so quickly that she overset the dining-table in the doll’s house, and righted it as quickly.

‘Yes, Papa?’

‘Do you know what the advertisement means?’

‘No, Papa.’ She had not been listening, as usual, rapt in her
own world and talking quietly to each small perfect room as she set it out.

‘It is a most extraordinary thing,’ said Theodore testily, ‘that when I spend time in the bosom of my family I am rewarded with so little attention!’

‘My dear,’ Laura cried, sacrificing herself out of habit, ‘I
wonder
whether you could not look at the safety chain of my new brooch? I should not like to lose something so exquisite.’

She moved towards him, presenting a white neck and
shoulders
for his attention. He examined both pieces of property.

‘It is well enough,’ he said, of the enamelled green heart pricked out with pearls, ‘and looks well upon you.’

Released, she smiled at him, paused prettily so that he might admire her longer, and said, ‘How long should we wait tea for Titus?’

The deliberation of his hand, bringing out the gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, chilled her. But her smile remained wide and sweet. The three children sat in silence: their attention a tribute to the coming visitor.

‘We shall not wait a minute after five o’clock.’ He returned to his paper, saying fretfully, ‘This influenza is reaching
epidemic
proportions.’

‘I do not think it is a matter for great concern,’ Laura replied automatically, listening for the caller. ‘It is in Europe, after all.’

‘My dear Laura, Europe is only across the Channel.’

‘A stone’s throw away …’ she agreed hastily.

‘Twenty miles from Dover to Calais, to be precise – that is, if you wish to be precise.’

‘Indeed, you are quite right.’ She smoothed her long skirt and lifted both hands to her pale crown of hair. ‘My lack of precision is monstrous.’

The children were merely playing with time now. Waiting, as she did, for the best surprise of the day. The sound of the lion’s brass head on its brass base, the refined voice of the parlourmaid, an answering laugh both deep and hearty, fetched them from the drawing-room in a tumble. Titus was there, ruddy and bright from the cold, punching the boys – who punched him back with
glee – swinging Blanche up in his arms, nodding to his elder brother, smiling at Laura.

‘My dear Titus,’ cried Theodore, renouncing the influenza epidemic, ‘how delightful to see you. Come now, leave him be!’ almost indulgently to his sons. ‘Sit down, dear boy, sit down.’

While Blanche cried that Uncle Titus was not a boy; while the lads searched his pockets for sweets and found them; Titus let himself be pillaged without protest. A handsome man in his middle thirties, he was a total contrast to Theodore in appearance and temperament. Charming, and he knew that very well, with his thick chestnut hair and curling sideboards; possessed of a caressing voice, to coax his own way; having an adamantine courtesy to cover a volatile nature and a wary heart. So he allowed them to make much of him until they were weary, and then announced that his Christmas present was outside – to wring the last drops of excited affection.

‘A
Negretti
and
Zambra’s
Magic Lantern and Slides,’ he
whispered
to his brother and sister-in-law. ‘Perhaps after tea?’ Then turning to her, who stood in cool green splendour, cried, ‘My dearest Laura, how very well you look! A new brooch? Let me guess. A gift from Theodore. His taste is impeccable.’

The older man, gravely pleased, received the compliments due to his choice of wife and jewellery.

‘Now if I could meet with a lady such as Laura,’ said Titus, laughing, keeping the conversation always on himself, ‘you would find a twin case to that of my brother – the happiest married man in England.’

Composedly, her eyes fixed on him, her smile unfaltering, Laura rang the bell for tea.

*

Afterwards, Henry Hann the coachman came in, flushed with more than one spirit of the season, and secured a sheet to the picture rail so that it acted as a screen. Titus took Blanche on his knee and let the boys rest their elbows on his shoulders, while Henry slipped the slides in place. Solemnly they stared at
coloured
views of Venetian canals and Swiss mountains, exclaiming politely at their beauty. Respectfully they listened to Theodore’s
dissertation on the grandeur of Scotland, the wildness of Wales. Then obeying a summons of their mother’s eyes they thanked Titus roundly. But he was up, setting Blanche in his chair, taking Henry’s place at the Magic Lantern: a greater child than any of them.

‘The best is yet to be!’ said Titus, and looked at Laura.

‘What further astonishments can there be?’ she asked serenely. ‘What a tease you are, Titus!’

‘Look!’ he commanded them, fitting a particularly thick slide into the socket, and turning its little handle.

And there was a fat man asleep in a chair. Titus snored, raising a shout of laughter, and as he snored a mouse strolled straight into the fat man’s yawn.

‘Do it again, Uncle Titus. Do it again,’ cried Blanche, clasping her hands together.

Again he snored, and turned the handle. Again the mouse soared into the pink cavity. They were beside themselves with delight. Laura laughed almost as much as her children.
Theodore
relaxed his dignity sufficiently to say, ‘What a nonsensical idea, Titus!’ but watched nevertheless. And when they were tired of the fat man and the mouse there was a thin man, on a penny-farthing bicycle, who pedalled faster and faster; and a policeman who knocked a ruffian on the head with his
truncheon
; and a dozen more farces.

‘But however hard that gentleman pedals he always stays in the same place!’ said Blanche, and plucked at her bottom lip, puzzled.

‘Well of course he does,’ Titus replied. ‘He cannot cycle off the slide, Miss Goose!’

So that she ran to him, giggling, and hugged his legs and said he was the best uncle in the world.

‘What did
you
give Papa for Christmas?’ Titus asked, when the last curiosity was done to death, and Blanche’s arms were fast about his neck.

‘Two pen-wipers that I worked myself.’

‘Two
pen-wipers. Papa will have to write a great deal, will he not?’

She ducked her head modestly, looking at Theodore.

‘But Nanny had to wash them first, because of unpicking all the mistakes I made, and getting them dirty,’ she added honestly.

‘Oh, but the mistakes are best of all, for one does not expect them. I shall order a pen-wiper from you that is full of mistakes, so that I can laugh over them.’

‘Papa does not approve of mistakes,’ said Blanche, ‘and would not find them funny.’

‘Who gave you this new dress, Miss Goose?’ Titus asked, covering her statement tactfully.

‘Mama. Mama made it herself, and she made the sash too.’

‘I shall ask her to make
me
a
white muslin dress with a blue sash.’

The boys roared in unison, but Blanche said shyly that the blue would match his eyes, and found herself the cause of greater amusement.

‘And Mama embroidered that beautiful waistcoat for Papa, did she not? Do you suppose she would embroider one for me if I asked her very nicely?’

‘No,’ said Blanche, twisting the string of corals round her neck, ‘because you are not Mama’s husband.’

And was bewildered by the hilarity of their response.

‘What an accomplished mama you have,’ cried Titus, as the laughter flagged.

His eyes courted Laura. She sat in her green bower of watered silk, her husband’s gift at her breast, a slight flush on her cheeks.

‘Yes, Laura does all these things well,’ said Theodore, ‘and with some tastefulness.’

The vastness of Christmas lunch, the heaviness of Christmas tea, had sated appetite, and dinner was a lighter affair. Blanche, wayward of stomach, and only allowed to join the party as a special concession, cut everything up minutely and left most of it. The boys plied their knives and forks nobly. Laura ate little. But Titus and Theodore paid tribute to Mrs Hill’s culinary
achievements
without difficulty. Excellent trenchermen, they took their wine with each course, and were still ready for their decanter of port and walnuts afterwards. The question of a pantomime
occupied
the rest of their attention. Should it be
Jack
and
the
Bean
stalk
with Dan Leno at Drury Lane or
Cinderella
at Her
Majesty’s? Blanche would have preferred
Cinderella
and was too timid to press her claim. Laura smiled and let the discussion pass her by, and Titus and the boys won the day with Dan Leno.

‘Shall you join us?’ Titus asked his brother, who shook his head sombrely. ‘Then may I escort Laura and the children?’

‘It would be very good of you to do so.’

‘It will be my pleasure,’ said Titus frankly. ‘I am a boy myself where Dan Leno is concerned.’

Conversation lagged. Blanche’s fair head drooped with
exhaustion
. The boys grew silent. Laura rang for Nanny Nagle, who bobbed an iron curtsey and stood inexorably by the door. One by one, the children made a mute circuit of parents and uncle, giving and receiving goodnights. Then each picked up a candlestick from the table in the hall, and mounted the stairs under the guardianship of Nanny’s eyes and tongue. The table was cleared and swept, the decanter set ceremoniously between the two men.

‘I will leave you gentlemen to your port,’ said Laura softly.

Titus held the door wide as she passed by him, head slightly lowered. In the fragrance left behind her they lit their cigars and settled to serious matters. As they talked, the core of their
working
lives took shape and flowered abundantly. Crozier’s, the great toy-makers, now in its third generation and growing in size and scope, was a future upon which they could live in some luxury.

‘Though neither of my sons will be concerned in the business,’ said Theodore. ‘Edmund is intended for the medical profession, and Lindsey for the army. You must look about you for a shrewd manager when I am gone.’

‘Come, brother, at forty-eight you have many years ahead of you.’

‘I am not robust,’ said Theodore soberly, remembering the influenza epidemic.

Titus laughed.

‘No one would think it,’ he said lightly, of the big well-fleshed frame. ‘You worry too much, brother.’

‘So Dr Padgett tells me, and says that worry will not assist my blood pressure. I worry about the blood pressure, then.’

‘Console yourself with Crozier’s profits. We have had the best sales of any Christmas so far – which brings me to a question of some personal import.’