Heart and Soul (27 page)

In her childhood memory, her father was a giant, whose head touched the clouds and whose feet bestrode the world. And her mother had fostered this idea. While he was gone, and she was alone with Hettie, it was all “Papa says this” and “Papa says that.”

It had taken Hettie till the early years of her adolescence, in the excellent day school to which her parents had sent her, to find that the best thing one could be was not first mate on a carpetship. And it had taken her till now to realize her father looked aged and faded. Certainly as nothing to Captain Corridon.

She took a deep breath, “Papa, you realize if you were abetting a dragon, your life and Mama’s and mine, too, would be forfeit.”

Her father looked over his paper, with a wry expression. “Hettie, my dear, the only dragon I’ve abetted is your mother’s temper, and that I’ve abetted for the last sixteen years.”

“Joseph Perigord,” came her mama’s voice from the kitchen, where she was preparing dinner. Most of their friends could afford servants, and Hettie knew that they, too, could have had them, except that her parents preferred to save all their money so that they could send her to a good school and give her a good dowry. Something for which she should feel grateful, instead of resentfully guilty because her mother was forever striving to keep the house working and to do this and that, madly, while other mothers could enjoy shopping and parties with their daughters. “Joseph Perigord, I heard what you said!” Her mother’s voice tried to sound censuring, but had just that edge of amusement that matched her father’s.

“Thank you, my dear. All my wit would be for naught if you did not pay attention to what I say. It is having an attentive audience like you that quite makes my life worthwhile.”

Somehow, the fact that both her parents’ voices trembled with amusement—the fact that she knew their humor responded to and echoed each other’s—only made Hettie more upset. After all, once upon a time she had been the center of their lives. Oh, if she had to admit it to herself, she probably still was. But what did that matter when, in fact, her parents made jokes over and around her, and if she should throw a tantrum they would probably accord it as much respect as they give the tantrums of small children?

“My dear, do you remember I told you of my friend from my youthful days, George Farewell, Lord St. Maur?”

“Yes, I do,” her mother called from the kitchen. “Wasn’t he the one with the russet hair? The one who stayed in the best bedroom in the northeast wing, and brought with him his own bottles of claret, so that he shouldn’t go to the expense of tipping the wine steward?”

“The very same. Do you remember I told you I read his death news in the
Colonial Times
?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Well, now there is the following news: Lately, in New Delhi, Miss Sofie Warington, daughter of Mr. Warington, esquire, of New Delhi, India, was wed to Peter Farewell, Lord St. Maur. The couple is expected to reside in Summercourt.”

Mama came from the kitchen, wiping her water-reddened hands with a dish towel. “The daughter of a nabob?” she asked, significantly.

“I presume,” Papa said. “Not that I blame him. If George’s son wanted to keep that pile that is Summercourt, he would need to lay a great deal for it. George married a great heiress himself, but I think her money came as too little too late. And for the newly created St. Maur to marry a girl from India, with no connections, no real name…Well, it stands to reason she, too, must be an heiress.”

“Wasn’t it George’s father who used to spend all his money…” she coughed, and looked toward her daughter and added, “…on those terribly expensive actors?”

“Indeed,” Papa said, mildly, but smiled as though enjoying a very private joke. “Patronage of the arts can be a very expensive endeavor when one takes it…er…personally.”

Hettie had had enough. Through the last few parts of this conversation, something very much like a rage had been growing in her, and now she stomped her foot again. “I think it is abominable the way you talk about people I’ve never heard of. I think it’s abominable the way you keep secrets from me, and the way you treat me as though I were only about two years old, and the way you—”

“Hettie!” Mama said.

And Papa was so surprised that he opened his mouth and let his pipe drop. It shattered on the floor, and Papa set his paper aside, and knelt to retrieve the fragments and the burning tobacco, before it should mar the floor. “And it was just starting to get a good color, too,” he said, in the tone he used when something didn’t quite go his way.

“I don’t care about your pipe,” Hettie said. “It is all you care about, your pipe, isn’t it? Your pipe and your creature comforts and—”

“Hettie, go to your room,” Mama said, in a very displeased tone. “And let me never have the grief of hearing you speak to your father this way again.”

Hettie hesitated. She knew that tone in Mama’s voice, and she could hear the grief at the back of the anger as well. She knew she had upset and hurt her parents. And yet, she thought, they should not treat her like a child. “Very well,” she said, cuttingly. “And when the were hunters come for us, to punish us for abetting a dragon, you may inform them I am in my room.”

Mrs. Perigord sighed, and seemed to not notice Hettie’s most impressive flounce as she turned to leave the room.

It was not until Hettie was halfway up the narrow stairs that led to the upstairs floor that she heard her mother speak, and her tone was far less angry or cutting than Hettie expected. In fact, her tone was so bafflingly tender that Hettie stopped on the step, listening.

“She’s not such a bad girl, Joe,” she said.

“Oh, I know that,” Papa said. “She is a good girl, and pretty, too. She reminds me of you at that age.”

This was answered with a small giggle and then, in a serious tone, “But you know this is a very difficult age, and this is a very difficult situation for her.”

“Do you mean having been raised above her station?” Joe said. “Yes, I imagine it would be. But, Charlotte, I couldn’t stand the idea that she would marry one of the men hereabouts, craftsmen and workers and…people without future. I had hopes by giving her a better upbringing we could get her married to at least a well-to-do tradesman or lawyer.” He sighed. “And we might still.”

“I doubt it,” Mrs. Perigord said, and sighed. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me, my dear. I’m not faulting you—indeed, us, since I agreed with you. But though we’ve saved what we can for her dowry, surely you see it won’t be enough to make people ignore her lack of connections in attaching themselves to her. As your friend’s marriage proves.”

“My friend’s…? Oh, George’s son. But…but, Charlotte, you know there is nothing I can do. When hands were washed of me, they were washed very thoroughly.”

Hettie frowned at this, trying to imagine what her father might mean, more so as she heard her mother’s tart response—one of the few times she had heard her be tart to Papa. “Yes, I do. But I think a lot more money might pass through them before they think themselves quite free of the stain.”

“Charlotte! You are not suggesting I go begging to my brother for money?”

“I’m suggesting you do what you have to do for your daughter.”

Hettie could not see them, but she could imagine them, facing each other, each of them paler than the other. The only times she’d seen them argue, it had been like that. Things said, and words flung, and those pale faces staring at each other. Perhaps she should be happy that her parents loved each other enough that they could not stand to argue, and that argument against each other only hurt themselves in the process.

What she felt instead was a confusion of resentment, embarrassment and guilt. And hearing her mother say, in a soft voice with just a hint of tears in it, “I’m sorry, Joe. I did not mean it. I just worry. I realize what you gave up for me.”

“Indeed,” Papa said, and now there was no humor at all behind that word, and there was probably a great deal of paleness, too, and a stiff upper lip, to boot. “I understand, Charlotte.” And then, more softly, “Perhaps if we didn’t have just the one chick…”

And on that Hettie’s feet flew up the rest of the stairs, taking great care to make next to no sound, but wanting to get away from the intimations of that argument below stairs.

She started to go into her room, then realized that none of her things were there still and, what was more, the dragon attack had somehow stripped the window of its lace curtain, which meant it was, by now, probably quite full of mosquitoes.

Instead, she backtracked into the cramped bedroom that had been her nursery when she was really young. Now, with a small bed in it, it served as a guest room on the rare occasions when they entertained guests, which was, normally, when Papa brought a promising underling to spend the night at the house because the young man couldn’t find suitable lodging in Cape Town or looked likely to get in trouble if he tried.

When this happened, they did everything but set a guard on Hettie’s door. It was clear they believed that she was worth more than her mother—worth more than a carpetship employee for a husband. She had often wondered where they got the idea, and after listening to the conversation right now, she wondered even more.

The narrow bed had been outfitted with her pretty, lacy bedspread, because Papa had said he was sure that the carpetship magician wouldn’t care for it, with that edge of joking in his voice that meant he would have found it very strange if the man had.

Perhaps it was too gaudy or too girly, but Hettie didn’t mind. Mama had made it herself, and it was lace and flounces all over, the solid bits made of an old satin dress of Mama’s, so that they sparkled a pretty cream color. Mama had said that Papa had bought her the dress when they’d first come to live in Cape Town, but she’d found very little occasion to wear it.

It didn’t occur to Hettie till now that clearly Mama and Papa had had some money when they’d first gotten married. More money than they had now.

She was piecing together in her mind what they had said, just like Mama had pieced together this bedspread from the bits of the dress she never wore and several different kinds of lace.

Papa had said something about his family having washed their hands of him. Because she knew her own dear papa was neither a gambler nor a drinker, nor anything of the kind, it must be—it could only be—because he had married Mama. In fact, her comment about knowing how much she’d cost him meant only that there must have been some very great objections to Mama on the part of Papa’s family.

All of which meant…all of which meant that Papa’s family must have money. Not lords, Hettie judged. If her father were a nobleman and had enough power to fly a carpetship, he would have taken that post, instead of the less well paid administrative ones he’d taken on his way to becoming carpetship first mate. Which meant, surely, that poor Papa was indeed jealous of carpetship magicians, and it explained how he spoke.

His post, though, required him to read and write fluently and to have some knowledge of accounting. Were it not for that, he would never have risen as high as he had in the carpetship line. That meant he had to come from a merchant family. Probably a well-to-do merchant family. Which also explained why Papa had chosen to send Hettie to the school he had sent her.

Hettie reached for the center of the bed, where Mrs. Beddlington sat. Mrs. Beddlington was a wax doll, with a realistic face and limbs, a cloth body and an endless collection of gowns, all of which had come packed in an exquisite wooden trunk. Papa had brought it back to Hettie from one of his flights, and had assured Mama, who was alarmed at the expense, that he’d gotten it very cheaply, indeed, in Paris, where his carpetship had stopped on the last trip.

Even back then, Hettie hadn’t been so foolish as to believe that the doll had been cheap. Perhaps cheaper than it could be gotten in Cape Town. But nothing that came with that array of gowns could fail to cost a great deal of money.

Hettie had a vague recollection that Mama had sighed, and for a while they’d eaten a lot of bread and soup, and that Mama hadn’t bought a new dress for quite a while. But that didn’t matter, because Mrs. Beddlington with her gowns and her painted countenance, her hair set in hair by hair so it seemed to be growing out of her scalp, just like real human hair, and her eyes that opened and closed, had been the pride of Hettie’s childhood, and the thing that set her apart from her playfellows. Even in school, none of her classmates had anything quite so fine as Mrs. Beddlington. Some had wax or porcelain dolls, but they were—obviously—of much inferior manufacture.

Now Hettie held Mrs. Beddlington to her chest and looked down at the round blue eyes. If only things could be as simple, again, as they’d been when she was young and all she required was having a doll that she adored.

She remembered once, when some childhood disaster had befallen her, running to her mother, who had held her tightly and consoled her by saying, “May your worst mishap ever be that one, my daughter. And may it always be something I can resolve by showering you with love.”

At the time this seemed like a nonsensical thing to say, but now Hettie found herself wishing this very much, indeed.

She reviewed things in her mind. First, her papa had come from a better family, or a better background, and only left it to marry Mama. Very well, perhaps he was madly in love with Mama. In fact, Hettie had no problem at all believing this, as her parents still seemed to be in love, all these many years later.