Dorothy Eden (41 page)

“The white peacocks,” he said distinctly. “You told me about them.”

As she sat with his hand growing cold in hers she remembered the white peacocks on Isola Bella, and Mary Medway, and Daisy’s birth.

And knew, with a deep aching bitterness, who had been in William’s last thoughts. Had he even thought it was Mary’s hand he held?

The bedroom door opened softly. The light from the passage illumined Anna’s tentative face.

“Grandmother!”

“Go away!” Beatrice whispered.

“Is Grandfather dead? I’m not afraid of dead people. I’ve seen them before.”

“Go away!” said Beatrice harshly. “Leave us alone!”

Daisy had sent an enormous extravagant wreath of white hot-house roses and carnations. The Overton vault was opened again, and one more slender casket was being added to its hoard.

Beatrice steeled herself to watch. Anna and Edwin and Florence stood beside her. Edwin was suitably dressed, thank goodness, in a neat dark overcoat, but when he let it fall open Beatrice was horrified to see the Death or Glory badge of the 17th Lancers, the macabre skull and cross-bones, incongruously pinned to the lapel of his jacket. Really, she thought, fury exploding in her head, why hadn’t Florence, why hadn’t someone, checked his dressing? Now everyone could see what a doomed family the Overtons were, Edwin mentally deranged, Florence, with her flat sexless figure, opting out of marriage, only that queer little foreign child to represent the future.

The old General must be hating her for failing him so badly.

A
FTER GRANDFATHER’S DEATH, ANNA
thought that life became frightfully boring. Grandmother spent a great deal of time shut in the bedroom where Grandfather had died. She wasn’t saying her prayers because she wasn’t a praying person. She dealt in facts, said Aunt Florence, not illusions, whatever that meant. It was a mistake, said Aunt Florence also, to live so much for one person. “Remember that, young Anna, if ever anyone wants to marry you.”

An unlikely prospect, her expression said. Anna made faces at herself in the mirror, deliberately exaggerating her slanting eyes, until she looked positively Chinese. When a parcel arrived from Mother in California containing a party dress with ruffles round the neck and hem, she exclaimed scornfully, “Where would I wear it, even if it suited me? Mother must have forgotten what I look like.”

“It’s very pretty, Miss Anna,” said Finch. “You should be grateful.”

“Is it?” said Anna, and when she was alone she got a pair of scissors and cut the dress to pieces, a fiendish satisfaction possessing her as she did so.

Uncle Edwin understood. He said, “That’s the spirit. Defy the enemy.” But everyone else was deeply shocked. She would have to be punished again.

Grandmother, looking at Anna with her sad eyes (she hadn’t really seen Anna or anyone else since Grandfather had died), said that even if the dress was one that she personally would not have chosen, she could not condone destructiveness.

“Are you going to send me away?” Anna asked belligerently.

“Where to, I wonder. That’s the problem I can’t solve. I don’t turn children, even such a bad one as you, on to the street. But in the meantime I must warn you that you’ll have to wear your old clothes for another season. I am not spending money on expensive clothes, simply to have them destroyed.”

Yours wouldn’t be such silly pink frilly ones, Anna wanted to say, feeling a sudden impulse of friendship (not for the first time) for Grandmother sitting like a stout old queen in her upright chair. Hawkins had told Finch, and Finch had told Anna, that Grandmother suffered a good deal of pain from her bad hips, and this made her short of temper. But she didn’t want pity. The best thing was to pretend one didn’t notice her limp, or her difficulty in getting out of a chair.

So Anna, relieved that she had got off so lightly from this last escapade, went on one of her silent enjoyable tours of the house. Being sent away would have been the greatest punishment anyone could devise because she loved this house.

But no one must know that. It made her too vulnerable.

So, like the tax men who, after Grandfather’s death, had studied and listed every picture and piece of porcelain, she quietly gloated over the yellow Worcester and apple green Derby, she took a Chelsea sauceboat, decorated with flower sprays, caterpillars and butterflies, in the palms of her hands, feeling its cool smooth shape with pleasure, she admired the little fluted beakers and cream jugs made so long ago and still perfect, the Worcester teapot and tea cups decorated with fruiting hops and trellises, the strange bird paintings in lacquered frames, the eighteenth-century Irish and English glass, decanters, wine glasses, candlesticks.

These things were the blood running through the veins of the old house, keeping it alive. Grandmother felt the same as she did. Nothing was to be sold. Grandfather’s famous butterfly collection (the best in England, people said), had been bequeathed to the British Museum, but apart from that everything had been left to Grandmother, so the treasures remained intact. The death duties would have to be found out of revenue from Bonnington’s, Grandmother said, to Aunt Florence’s anger and dismay. Was Grandfather, even in death, going on soaking the shop? she demanded. After all, who was to inherit all these things eventually? Edwin only wanted the military collection, and she only wanted money.

No one thought of making the suggestion that Anna, the strange foreign child, should inherit them. But no one had forbidden her to look at them, and this was much easier to do now that Grandfather was not there to catch her prowling about. He hadn’t liked her to touch a thing.

Now he was gone, no one noticed her. She might have been invisible.

She didn’t understand her destructive urges, or the wild malevolent glee that seized her when she was being particularly wicked.

She simply didn’t know why, shortly after Grandfather’s death, she stole the string of beads from the shop near the school where she had gone to buy an exercise book. This act was all the more inexplicable because she didn’t like beads.

But there they were in her school satchel when the woman behind the counter came rushing after her, and seized her roughly as she was going out of the door.

“Them kids from that school!” the woman said angrily. “Bert! I’ll hold this one while you call the police.”

Uncle Edwin knew all about being in jail. He said it wasn’t to be recommended. The food was terrible, worse than the troops had lived on during Wellington’s Peninsular campaign. This time he couldn’t promise to hide her, because look at the trouble that had caused the previous time. She would simply have to stand up and face the music.

From the time the policeman had brought her home, and talked to Grandmother, saying a charge had been made by the owner of the shop, and therefore the young lady would have to be taken before a magistrate in the juvenile courts, Anna had lived in a cloud of terror. She couldn’t run away because Grandmother had ordered that she was never to be left alone. One of the servants must be with her all day and Finch must sleep in her room at night.

At first, when Grandmother had said, “Why did you do it, Anna?” she had taken refuge in her mute act. But even that hadn’t been effective for long, for she had burst out, in spite of herself, “I don’t know. I don’t even like those horrid beads.”

“Well, I’m glad of that. I hoped you had better taste.”

“What—what will happen to me?” Anna asked urgently.

Grandmother sighed and put her hand over her eyes.

“Whatever the magistrate orders.”

“J-jail?” Anna whispered.

“Children aren’t put in jail in this country. Aunt Florence insists that your mother be sent for.”

“H-has she been?”

“Not yet. And don’t stutter, child. Try not to do so in front of the magistrate.”

“Will—will you be there, Grandmother?”

“Yes. I’ll be there.”

“Then I’ll try not to s-stutter, Grandmother.”

It wasn’t so terrible in the little drab courtroom, after all. The magistrate was old, with a pink-cheeked kindly face, and oddly enough Grandmother did most of the talking. She was dressed in her grey shop dress, and looked particularly severe, her little round chin jutting out stubbornly, her eyes tired and angry.

But she was allowed to sit by Anna, and halfway through her explanation of how Anna had come to live in England, and of her earlier unsettled childhood, she suddenly took Anna’s hand in her gloved one, and held it hard. She didn’t seem to know she had done so.

Then the magistrate leaned forward and asked Anna if she would like to go back to her mother in America.

“Oh, no!” Anna gasped.

“Why not?”

“She sends me silly clothes.” That was all Anna could think of to say.

“Would she give you a stable and loving home?”

“What’s that?”

“I can answer that question,” Grandmother interrupted. “She would not.”

“You understand your daughter, Mrs Overton?”

“I do.”

“Then are you prepared to be responsible for this child, and to see that she reports to the probation officer once a week for the next year?”

“What would the alternative be?”

“She could be sent to an approved home.”

“Certainly not!”

“Then can you keep her out of trouble, Mrs Overton?”

“If I knew why she got into trouble, perhaps I could keep her out of it.”

“These offenders usually act from the rather pathetic desire to draw attention to themselves. So perhaps, beginning on that basis, you could achieve something, Mrs Overton?”

“The impertinent old fool!” Grandmother said as they left the court. “Telling me how to bring up a child. I can tell you this, my girl, if you let me down, and I have to go back and eat humble pie in front of that petty God, I will certainly never forgive you.”

Anna climbed into the Daimler and sat as close to Grandmother as she dared. She was cold, and trembling violently.

“I’ll never steal beads again, Grandmother.”

“I should hope not.”

“I don’t always know why I do bad things.”

“Because you want me to notice you. That’s what the old fool said. Well, I’ll try to do so more often. This is a situation we must just make the best of.”

“Why didn’t you let me be sent away?” Anna dared to ask.

“Because I won’t have anyone telling me what to do with William’s grandchild. That’s why. Not even your know-all Aunt Florence. I’m still in charge, and if I say you stay, you stay. Wrap the rug round your legs and stop looking so nipped and frozen, like an east wind. I suppose I must give more time to you now. We could make a start by going to the Russian ballet when it comes to London again. Your father used to like the ballet.”

“Did he?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you? That’s where she met him. He wasn’t a member of the ballet, but Daisy said he should have been. He was a great admirer of Anna Pavlova. You were named after her.”

“Was I really?”

“Well, don’t sound so surprised. Most people are named after somebody. She was a celebrity, but that doesn’t mean you will take after her. Those skinny legs don’t look so artistic, do they? Perhaps you’ll be musical instead. Piano lessons might be a good thing.”

“Why?”

“Because all Overton women learn to play the piano. Your great-aunt Caroline used to sing very prettily. Family talents can be inherited. Why are you squinting like that?”

Anna hastily smoothed her ferocious scowl.

“I—I hadn’t ever thought of being part of a family.”

“Of course you’re part of a family,” Grandmother said irritably. “Did you think you came into the world belonging to nobody? You’re an Overton and you’ll behave like one. You won’t bring shame on the family. We’ve had enough of that from your Uncle Edwin.”

“Yes, Grandmother,” said Anna, speaking meekly for perhaps the first time in her life.

S
O SHE HAD COMMITTED
herself. Anna was to stay. The house was to echo once more with simple piano exercises, there would have to be the tribal rites of birthday parties, theatre treats, excursions here and there.

One was too old and tired and too frequently in pain. On the other hand, even such a withdrawn and troublesome child as Anna did something to take the edge off the unbearable quiet and loneliness since William’s death. One had to stir oneself to think of something other than bereavement and grief; and of someone other than oneself.

“You had to stop brooding, madam,” Hawkins said, with the brisk familiarity of forty years of service. Hawkins, Beatrice was almost certain, had always known the truth of Daisy’s birth. She had shared Beatrice’s cool disapproval of that pretty, vain and self-indulgent child. But Anna, discarded and deprived, was another matter. Decency insisted on kindness towards forlorn children.

“Anyway, she seems to have turned over a new leaf, wouldn’t you say, madam? I think it’s the piano lessons. She has talent.”

“Oh, yes. Those sort of children usually do have, if you can dig it out. Fortunately, she hasn’t advanced yet to Chopin.”

“Chopin, madam?”

That had been an unintentional remark.

But of course only she had been acutely aware of those wistful Chopin ballades on spring evenings. And still heard them…

“A composer who must be played with skill.”

It was a great triumph when they got rid of that interfering probation officer at last, after a year of good behaviour on the part of Anna Overton. (That outlandish name Pavel had had to be dropped—William, one was sure, would have approved, even though he had never got over regarding Anna as an unwelcome guest.)

The highlight of the year had been the night at the Russian ballet when Anna, her bony shoulders hunched forward, had sat on the edge of her seat and literally had not stirred an eyelash until the curtain had come down on the last gorgeous scene.

She didn’t speak all the way home. But, as they got out of the Daimler, she whirled into Beatrice’s arms, nearly knocking her over and sending a shaft of acute pain through her hips.

“Grandmother, thank you, thank you!”

It was her first spontaneous action since her arrival at Overton House. It suggested, more than her misdirected and miserable acts of destruction, a warm and fiery spirit. Something might be made of her, after all. Something would be made of her, Beatrice told herself doggedly. She did not embark on projects which were not a success.