Dorothy Eden (19 page)

But he couldn’t have so deep a love for this reticent pale-faced girl. It wasn’t possible. She simply had to be right about that. She told everyone that he was not well, that his chest was troubling him, and that he would probably have to spend the next winter abroad. But in the meantime he would remain with the children until she sent for him to accompany her home with his new child.

It was a difficult time for everybody, but it would pass. In three months Florence would have got over her unfortunate devotion for Miss Medway. Edwin almost certainly would have, since he was not a sentimental child. And William, realising life had not ended, would sometimes smile again.

Dear heaven, wasn’t she making a big enough sacrifice to deserve his smile?

Lake Maggiore was a beautiful lake. In the early autumn mists hung over it until the sun rose, then it was a sparkling blue, and the Islands of the Borromées floated in a gentle haze. They stayed in a small austere but comfortable pension on the lakeside. They had exchanged names and were Mrs Overton and Miss Medway in reverse. When the baby was born it would be registered as an Overton. Beatrice had had to discard her wedding ring, and Miss Medway had had to wear one, a thin gold band she had produced as soon as they had arrived. Where she had got it Beatrice didn’t ask. She refused to think that William had slipped it on that thin fragile finger. Though he probably had.

On arrival a doctor who spoke sufficient English and who had a kindly manner had been found. He had immediately ordered a nourishing diet for Miss Medway. The patient, he said, was much too thin and delicate for approaching motherhood. Her English doctor had shown good sense in ordering her abroad to a beautiful sunny place like this, where she could rest and build up her strength. He personally would see that the bambino was born strong and healthy.

Beatrice’s ruthless honesty made her examine her feelings about that. Did she want a strong healthy child? Wouldn’t she have preferred it to be stillborn? If it were extremely delicate, would she try hard to rear it?

She endeavoured to put these disturbing thoughts out of her mind, but knew by the expression in Miss Medway’s large luminous eyes that she was well aware of them. She knew also the young woman’s desperate unhappiness, although after two or three weeks in the relaxing sunshine, she seemed more composed. She liked to go for walks alone, and to sit in the garden alone. Once, unknown to Beatrice, she hired a boatman to take her across to the little island of Isola Bella with its famous formal gardens, made for another lonely much-loved woman. When she came back she talked about the white peacocks, the statue of the unicorn, the little pointed cypresses and the camphor trees, the monks in brown habits, the peace. There had been a species of butterfly she had never seen before. It had black wings edged with a coquettish white frill.

At once she wished she hadn’t mentioned the butterfly. The flash of alarm showed in her eyes. But Beatrice said composedly, “I’d like to have seen it. Perhaps I’ll go with you the next time.”

They didn’t seek each other’s company. The enforced intimacy of mealtimes was enough. The endless weeks were not so much torment as excruciating boredom. Beatrice had not been able to sustain her hate for this hapless creature. Her nature was not revengeful. The girl had made a tragic mistake and was now paying for it to the best of her ability. She was also being honourable, for she wrote no letters and none came for her.

The packets of mail were always addressed to Mrs William Overton, and although the formality of handing them to Miss Medway (the pseudo Mrs Overton) had to be made, Miss Medway immediately passed them over to Beatrice and then discreetly vanished to let Beatrice read the letters in peace. She was adhering strictly to her part of the bargain, and for this she had Beatrice’s respect.

But what had made William love this gentle quiet person, he who had always admired the spectacular, the vivacious, the witty? That was the torturing question that nagged at Beatrice. And did she imagine that sometimes Miss Medway looked at her with pity? She certainly hoped she imagined it, otherwise the stiff conversations they had at the luncheon and dinner table would cease altogether.

It was Mary Medway who was to be pitied. It was she who had lost William.

One didn’t know how to make the endless time pass. Beatrice read books and wrote numerous letters and thought of plans for Bonnington’s. One day she hired a fiacre to take her to Como to visit the silk manufacturers. She wanted to enquire into importing of Italian silk which was expensive, but superior to that which she had been buying from Macclesfield in Cheshire. There were leather goods and shoes which also might be imported with profit. A foreign department stocked with luxuries from different countries? The notion stimulated her. She must write to Adam about it. She was keenly missing the shop, and the excitement of creative ideas. It had become a necessity to her, a drug, perhaps.

The night away, the business which had fully occupied her mind, and the escape from Miss Medway’s inhibitingly quiet company, cheered Beatrice up. She returned to the pension to find Mary more animated too, although there was a blurred look in her eyes that suggested recent tears.

She had had a letter from England! Beatrice’s alarming intuition was operating again. William had broken his word. He had written to his lost love.

Carefully she kept her voice even.

“And what have you been doing while I have been away?”

“Oh, I’ve been to Isola Bella again. I sat in the gardens all morning watching the peacocks. The sun was shining, and it was so peaceful. I’m sure all that peace is good for the baby.”

“Peacocks are vain creatures. Perhaps you will be making the baby vain.”

Mary smiled faintly. “Surely not. But I was wondering, if I have the right to suggest that if the baby is a girl she might be given the name of a flower. There are so many flowers in this beautiful spot. Don’t you think Azalea would be very pretty?”

Pretentious, Beatrice thought. And what is giving you these sudden romantic thoughts?

“Shall we wait and see what the baby’s sex is? Did the English mail come in?”

The barest hesitation. “Yes. There are letters for you.”

And for you, Beatrice thought, more certainly than ever, noting the averted gaze. My dear vulnerable husband has been swearing his undying devotion, and you are finding that enough to live on at present, you romantic little fool.

However, a more worthy impulse made her refrain from asking questions. Must one grudge everything, even the name of a flower for the unwanted child? In a few weeks she would say goodbye to Mary Medway forever. At least let her distinguish herself by a little generosity.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and read my letters.”

Florence wrote in her small tight unchildish writing.

“Edwin and I don’t like Miss Sloane. I am sorry to tell you that Edwin kicked her on the ankle. Yestidy I went into Papa’s study and he was crying. Lizzie said I imaginned it because men don’t cry.”

Beatrice dipped her pen in the ink and wrote to Miss Brown, stabbing the nib into the paper.

“I have ordered several bales of silk for delivery in the spring. It is of very fine quality and we must advertise it as desirable for gowns for Easter weddings and summer garden parties.” As always, work was the panacea, shutting out a little that loved haunted face with red-rimmed eyes in the library.

He
couldn’t
have been hurt that badly, not her dear ephemeral flirtatious William. He was simply bored and lonely, having to remain at home with the children until she returned.

“Darling Florence and Edwin,” she wrote, “you must obey Miss Sloane whether you like her or not. Comfort Papa if he is lonely…”

She thought a long time before she began the third letter.

My dearest William,

I have been visiting Como, to do some buying, among other things, and I have been put in touch, through an agency, with a German banking family living in Zürich who require an English governess. They sound eminently suitable, and I am writing to them today. So have no more worries about Miss Medway’s future.

We both go on very well, but I miss you and the children more than I can say…

The candle guttered in the stream of balmy air coming through the open window. The moon was sailing high in the sky above the lake, and no doubt Mary Medway was gazing at it, lost in her sad romantic dream. She was obviously the kind of person who thrived on dreams of the unattainable, otherwise how could she have been foolish enough to get herself into this situation?

Beatrice firmly closed her own shutters, and the candlelight steadied.

She must begin her next letter now, to Herr Gunter Wasserman in Zürich, father of three children, and solidly wealthy.

If only that tiresome baby would hurry up and arrive…

Her ardent longing must have had good effect, for two weeks later the birth began. It was long and exhausting, and at one stage the harassed Italian doctor was afraid he would lose both mother and child. However, he finally emerged from the sickroom crying triumphantly, “
Bella bella bambino
!” and a little later Beatrice went to see the child lying in its cradle beside its mother’s bed.

It was small, with minute features, and a girl. It had been born in all the sighing beauty of an Italian evening as the sun dropped over the lake.

“It’s not an azalea,” Beatrice said gruffly. It was hers now, she told herself. She was going to have to love it. Surely it would be easy to love a baby. “More like a daisy.”

Mary raised herself to look at the baby. For a moment her guard was down and her white exhausted face had a shining radiance that made Beatrice realise in a painful flash why William had fallen in love with her. She must have looked like that for him.

“Call her Daisy if you want to,” she said softly.

“Yes, I believe I will. It will be easier for Florence and Edwin, too. They would never have got their tongues round Azalea.” She sounded too brisk, too practical, for this darkened room with its just finished drama. But life went on, hopefully without any more such dramas.

And one day William would forget that lustrous radiance in a face he scarcely remembered.

When he met her in Milan three weeks later, Mary Medway had already set out for Zürich, and Beatrice had engaged a young French woman, Mademoiselle Laurette, to care for the baby. She was coming to England with them. Everything was organised. William had no need to look so surprised. Didn’t he know he had a capable wife?

And the baby’s name was already decided on.

“Daisy? Isn’t that a bit ordinary?”

He had already spent more time hanging over the cradle than Beatrice would have wished. He certainly hadn’t shown that much interest in either Florence or Edwin, but he had been younger then, and perhaps less ready for fatherhood.

“Her mother has agreed to it. I hope you don’t think I have been too heartless, William.”

Surely he had some appreciation of her generosity. Didn’t he think it was generosity? When he didn’t answer, she persisted recklessly, “I’m sure not many wives would have behaved as well as I have. The baby will be properly brought up, and Miss Medway has gone out into the world without a blemish on her character.”

But with what scars on her heart? Beatrice had to drag that slight sad figure boarding the train at Milan railway station back into her memory. Now she was glad William didn’t look at her for she was afraid she would see too much desolation in his eyes. He really had aged distressingly in the last three months. The last trace of his attractive boyishness had gone.

When he spoke at last it was not to express any appreciation of her behaviour but to say, “I’m not happy about that German family. You know I have never liked Germans.”

She repressed her exasperation.

“If Miss Medway doesn’t care for them she doesn’t need to stay there. But it’s a start for her. I found her a good position as I promised to do.” Her voice was brisk and determinedly cheerful. “Now we must do our part and give Miss Daisy Overton a good upbringing.”

F
LORENCE DIDN’T BELIEVE THAT
mamma was bringing a baby home, although Edwin said that it was true. An Italian baby, too. There was something funny about that. Would it look different from an English baby? Florence wondered. She suspected that it would, because of the expression on Lizzie’s face.

“Innocent little creature,” Cook called it, and Lizzie tossed her head and said, “Innocent!” in a peculiar voice, as if the baby had been caught red-handed in some crime.

“Then why did she have to go to foreign parts to have it?” she demanded.

“To rest in the sun, as you very well know,” Cook said. “She had enough trouble with the other two. But that was before your time, of course.”

Lizzie sniffed and said, “She looks the breeding type to me.

“Appearances don’t always speak the truth.”

“I daresay. But why couldn’t she have gone to Harrogate or Bath or somewhere civilised, and at least give the poor mite the chance of being English?”

“What’s so wrong with Italians, then? They’re all right. Opera stars and such like.”

“I’ve never been one for foreigners,” Lizzie said and spun round, as if she had eyes in the back of her head. “Miss Florence! Master Edwin! What are you doing down here, you naughty children? Back to the nursery, quickly! Really,” she sighed to Cook, “it’s been bedlam ever since they heard their Mamma was coming home. And that Miss Sloane is worse than useless. Says now that Master Edwin bit her hand. Fancy! He can be a bit of a terror, but he isn’t a wild animal.”

Florence, lingering long enough to hear that choice piece of information, trailed back to the nursery. She still hadn’t heard what she so longed to hear. Was Miss Medway coming back with Mamma?

If she were, horrid Miss Sloane would go, and Edwin wouldn’t cry so much. He had turned into a terrible crybaby since Miss Medway had gone to Italy with Mamma, not only because he disliked Miss Sloane, but because he had loved Miss Medway. So had Florence. But no one had consulted them when it was decided that Miss Medway should be Mamma’s companion on the journey to Lake Maggiore. “Who is Majory?” Edwin had asked pitifully, and Florence had snapped, “Don’t be such an ignorant lout. It’s not a person, it’s a place.”