Dorothy Eden (40 page)

“Stay home more, Bea. I’d be glad of your company.” He meant that. His eyes were full of affection. Here they were in their sixties, a true Darby and Joan.

Beatrice smiled faintly, finding the situation wryly humorous as well as heart-warming.

“Perhaps I will. I could have the department figures sent up on the days I stay home. But business hasn’t been too good lately. Florence says there’s a depression coming. I don’t know how she knows.”

“She always seems to know everything,” said William.

Florence’s flat-chested narrow-hipped figure absolutely fitted the fashionable twenties. She wore the low-waisted dresses and the fringed shawls with great panache. She had her hair bobbed and smoked cigarettes in a long ivory holder.

Beatrice told her that at her age she looked ridiculous. She merely gave her faint supercilious smile and said that as the head of a fashion department one had to be in the vanguard of fashion.

“Miss Brown never found that necessary. She believed in being inconspicuous. It was her customers who had to shine.”

“Mamma, when will you realise that those days are past? Business is done in a different way now.”

“Is it?”

Florence met her mother’s impassive gaze and sighed.

“Oh, I don’t mean one adds up figures differently or replaces stock differently. It’s the way things are presented to the public. This is the age of advertisement, of public relations, of making the right impression.”

Beatrice looked at Florence’s short-skirted clinging silk dress. “If that’s what you mean by the right impression—I just call it ugly and immodest.”

“Mamma, where are our customers going to be if you flout the Paris couture houses?”

“Very well, I’ll turn my attention to other things. At least people still want damask table cloths and silverware. Your father has a point, you know, in cherishing beautiful old things.”

“That’s a disease of old people.”

“Yes. Perhaps even you will have it one day, my dear.”

“Who knows? Only don’t interfere with me now. James and I are planning a willow-green week.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a new colour we’re launching. We’re inviting actors and actresses to a luncheon.”

“In my day it would have been royalty,” Beatrice remarked.

“Which shows again just how old-fashioned you are,” Florence cried in exasperation. “Is Princess Mary likely to be so daring as to begin a new fashion? Could she even wear it to advantage? Of course she couldn’t, but someone like Marie Tempest can.”

“Why don’t you send for Daisy?” Beatrice said sourly.

“Daisy! In her dream world! To think she can begin a film career when she’s in her thirties!”

“You know, you started all that for Daisy when you insisted on having your Russian exhibition.”

“Stick to the point, Mamma. We’re talking of a business venture, and it had better be a success because our figures are down on last year. If we’re not careful Bonnington’s is going to be too old-fashioned for words. Be reasonable, Mamma. You fought that with your father.”

“I suppose so. But all this streamlining. So ugly. Bonnington’s has always meant luxury and spaciousness.”

“And prices that no one nowadays will pay, or can afford to. James says that before nineteen thirty half the big shops in London will have failed.”

“Is James a prophet?”

“He doesn’t look into a crystal ball. He merely understands economic trends. If you know what I am talking about.”

“I still understand the department figures, if that’s what you mean.”

Florence sighed. “It isn’t. It’s the stock market, the whole business economy of the country. World trends.”

“A willow-green week is hardly going to remedy all that,” Beatrice said tartly.

She decided to take a slow walk through her beloved shop, covering the ground floor, always the gayest, most colourful part, with its banked flowers at the entrance, its glittering displays of crystal, jewellery, lamps and lampshades, silks and brocades, then mounting the stairs to the pretty restaurant, and beyond that to the furniture and carpets, the acres of gleaming white linen and damask, the ice-blue chilly fur department with its expensive minks and sables, the gentlemen’s wear run by the one-armed astute James Brush, the colourful pottery and porcelain, and then Florence’s domain, ladies’ fashions, guarded by slim-hipped dummies in those unattractive straight dresses with dipping hems, and closely-fitting cloche hats coming down to their eyebrows.

Before she had completed her perambulations her hips were hurting her rather severely. She had to make her way back to her refuge, the gilt cage that still stood on its dais facing the front doors. Recently Florence had been campaigning to get rid of it, saying it was hopelessly old-fashioned. Anyway, it was
infra dig
for the owner of a large department store to be sitting up there like a madam in a house of doubtful repute.

Florence’s similies were unfortunate. Beatrice replied coldly that no better way for receiving cash and keeping watch on the honesty of salesgirls had yet been invented, and while she lived this method would not be changed.

But many things, she feared, would be changed when she could no longer take charge.

That day had not yet come, although her painful hips were a wretched nuisance. In another way, however, they were a blessing in disguise, for she could make it the excuse to stay home more frequently with William.

He had had another mild heart attack in the summer. It had sapped his strength, and he was now a complete invalid, never venturing farther from the house than on to the terrace. He spent a great deal of time over his butterfly slides, as if he were reliving his youth, reminding himself where this and that specimen had been captured.

“Bea,” he would call. “Come and look at these incredible colours. Did you ever see such a marvellous creation as a butterfly. I know that child of Daisy’s thinks this is a cissy occupation. Therefore people who make stained-glass windows or wonderful tapestries must also be cissy. She must learn not to discount beauty in life. Teach her that, will you?”

“You could do it yourself,” Bea said.

“We don’t seem to have any means of communication, unfortunately. I’m a selfish old man. I resent her because she isn’t like her mother. Because she upsets this household.”

“It’s time for your rest, my love. Shut up those cabinets.”

“I suppose I wasn’t much of a man, by the standards of our time. I cared too much for beauty.”

“Well, you didn’t get beauty in me,” Beatrice said in her dry voice.

“Don’t denigrate yourself, Bea. I don’t like you doing that.”

“We’ve grown to fit each other, that’s all.”

“Whatever way you like to put it. But I really don’t want exhausting awkward grandchildren around. I’ve too little time left to have it dissipated in this way.”

“I know, dear. I’ve forbidden Anna to worry you.”

Yet when the next crisis with Anna occurred she could not follow both William’s and Florence’s urgent advice and cable Daisy to come and take her troublesome child away. She found that it was as impossible to turn out the exasperating creature as it had been to turn away the barefoot beggars who had haunted Bonnington’s doors in the past. She simply could not live with herself if she did so. The little strange closed face would haunt her always, as Mary Medway’s had done. She had the entirely unreasonable feeling that she owed this awkward unattractive changeling a debt.

It seemed that on her return to school after the running away episode, Anna had found herself a heroine. She had actually defended herself with a real gun! This notoriety had made her the leader of a small clique who flatteringly expected her to invent other daring exploits. She was not lacking in imagination. The summer term, consequently, was full of illicit excitement, until the inevitable climax. One day her grandmother was sent for by the headmistress, and told that Anna must be removed.

Anna had an exasperating ability to seem to shrink to half her size when she was in trouble.

The little figure, thin and wizened, facing Beatrice in the morning room, was too vulnerable for comfort. Or was the little wretch a remarkable actress, with a devious insensitive heart?

One must not be taken in by her pathetic appearance.

“Anna, I hope you’re not imagining that I won’t send you back to school. I will. You have to learn to face the consequences of your mischief-making. So you will start tomorrow at a new school I have found for you in Highgate. Bates will drive you there in the morning, and pick you up after school. I won’t have you lurking about the streets at all. And I warn you that the rules in this school are very strict. If you break any of them the headmistress has my permission to punish you in any way she sees fit. She knows all about you, but the pupils don’t. So you have another chance. I hope you will find yourself equal to living up to it. Well? Did you want to say something?”

“I thought you might send me back to my mother,” Anna said in a strangled voice.

“Did you want to go?”

“
Nyet, nyet, nyet
!”

Real emotion always made Anna revert to Russian, to her babyhood, no doubt. Beatrice wouldn’t allow herself to be moved. It just may have been another trick.

“Then for goodness sake, behave yourself. Try to please people. It’s so much nicer being liked than disliked.”

After that, although Anna remained prickly and unfriendly, there was no more major trouble. Which was fortunate, because William’s health was now causing Beatrice grave concern. Another attack of bronchitis had left him with great difficulty in breathing. All the usual remedies failed. Watching his thin bluish face, and listening to his shallow struggling breaths, Beatrice realised that the time had come to write to Daisy begging her to return home to see her father.

She shrank from the upset this would cause, not only to her household, but probably to Anna. For William’s sake it must be done.

However, Daisy answered:

I am desolated to hear about Papa, but all my life I remember these crises and he always gets over them. And you must admit, Mamma, that you always did exaggerate his illnesses. You went about on tiptoe if he only had a bad cold.

It would be dreadfully inconvenient for me to come to England just now. Randolph has just begun a new film and I have a part—a small one, but vitally important for my future. I know Papa will understand. Kiss him for me and wish him to be well soon.

I would say my prayers for him, but I stopped believing in God when my darling Sergei was killed and I had that terrible time just trying to keep myself and Anna alive. Now I know that in this life you just have to grab things for yourself.

Tell Anna that I will be sending her a parcel of pretty clothes soon. I am eternally grateful to you and Papa for having her. I am sure you are mending all her awkward ways. She’s such a funny little duckling, and I have always been mean to her because she reminds me of what I have to forget. Children, poor little devils, are so much at the mercy of their parents’ emotions.

Beatrice didn’t show anyone this disturbing letter. It contained too much truth. It highlighted Daisy’s self-absorption, but absolved no one from guilt.

One simply had to find a way of telling William that Daisy was not coming home at present. In the summer when he was better and could enjoy her visit, she would come.

If he lived until the summer. Each day that seemed less likely.

Beatrice deserted the shop, and stayed at his bedside day and night. When Florence brought her the department figures she waved them away. Which was just as well, said Florence, because they were poor figures. There was still a slump in trade. Perhaps it would pick up in the new year. On the other hand, it might not. Department stores were terribly expensive to run, and the rent for that valuable site in the Edgware Road which Grandfather Bonnington had obtained so cheaply was shortly going to be astronomical.

Florence studied her new bob, which was cute, but rather showed up the lines round her eyes, and wondered if a beauty department on the top floor would pay. Girls were beginning to spend fortunes on their hair and faces. She must talk to James about it. No use talking to Mamma, either now or after Papa’s death. It was Mamma’s stubbornness about changes that was making Bonnington’s go downhill. She would simply have to retire. That old-fashioned cash desk could be swept away and something diverting put in its place.

Papa was going to die, of course. His chest rattled with every breath, and they were spending a fortune on day and night nurses, even though Mamma never left his bedside, and resented extremely the presences of the nurses.

What a greedy woman she was. She had always wanted everything, Papa’s entire love, the obedience of her children, the absolute control of her shop and the consequent authority which that gave to her. Yet had she ever been happy?

Well, happiness was the most elusive of human conditions, Florence ruminated. It was partly because one was the victim of one’s own nature. Look at her, and the way she had deliberately allowed her heart to wither after Desmond had jilted her. It had been a dramatic gesture, a strange masochistic pleasure which now she could not do without.

And look at Edwin, with his retreat from reality. Look at Daisy, pursuing the fleshpots. What a family! Mamma and Papa should have been warned. Why hadn’t they bred butterflies?

All the same, what were they thinking now, in that darkened too-hot sick room? Were they remembering their romantic happiness, long ago, before any troublesome children had arrived?

Florence brushed her short hair furiously, and set her lips in a thin line. It wasn’t fair. What was she to remember when she lay dying? Her business triumphs?

In the early hours of a November morning Beatrice drew back the curtains because William had asked her to.

The moon, hazed by mist, was sinking. The sky was dark, the night utterly still. William was trying to say something, something about Italy, the country he had always loved best. Venice? The gondolas on the darkly gleaming canals? The sea lavender? The islands drowned in sunshine?