More Tales of the West Riding (9 page)

Dazed and frightened, Edward did not even venture to ask which of his grandmothers was meant. He did not care for either of them much. Mrs Lacy was handsome and elegantly dressed, with beautiful white hair, but there was never much to eat in her flat, and she was rather hard and a bit of a liar. Mrs Milner was a good deal older; she always gave one plenty to eat and she was not sarcastic, but her iron grey hair, her clothes and her morals were all decidedly grim. They were both widows, and lived in widely separated seaside resorts on the south coast.

Edward's father, looking really very ill, drove Edward and Annie to the station, and kissed Edward goodbye with a kind of despairing warmth, as if he never hoped to see him again. Edward's mother was not visible that morning, and Edward dared not ask for her. In the uneasy rush his bear was left behind.

It turned out that Mrs Milner was to be his hostess. She met her guests at the station, and though looking extremely unhappy, greeted them very warmly. Her house in South-stone was a large old-fashioned affair, well situated near the sea, well appointed, well kept, with an old neat maid in the kitchen, who turned out to be Annie's sister. Annie was to stay at old Mrs Milner's to assist in the burden understood to be caused to the household by Edward's presence.

This was reassuring, for Edward was attached to Annie, and after a few days he settled down fairly well. The spring proved warm and the sea was a pleasure, often agreeably rough and with plenty of ships passing up and down. The beach was pebbly, but Edward was too old for a bucket-and-spade routine nowadays, as he told himself proudly. The holidays went, term-time approached; to Edward's surprise he learned he was not to return home yet, but stay in South-stone and go to school there. His grandmother told him that his mother was not well, and had been advised to spend some months in Switzerland.

“She's not
ill
?” said Edward, alarmed.

“Not very ill,” said his grandmother in a constrained tone.

“Then why must she go to Switzerland?”

“Just a precautionary measure.”

Edward felt that there was more behind this than he was told. He was disappointed about school, too, for he had had hopes of the junior football team in his Hudley school. Of course he was too firm in character to show his dismay. He held his head up and was ready to bark in north-country style at any boy who showed a lack of proper respect for him. But as it turned out this didn't prove necessary. The first lad he met was Jack Clarkson; they became friends at once and the friendship lasted for life.

A few days before Christmas his father turned up. He looked older than Edward remembered him, for his hair was quite plentifully streaked with grey. He had come to fetch
Edward home. Edward perceived at once that his grandmother opposed this. There were long arguments between old Mrs Milner and her son, which ended abruptly whenever Edward entered the room. Really grown-ups were extraordinarily simple, quite foolish in fact, reflected Edward impatiently, if they believed they could conceal happenings of that kind from their children. Eventually his father won the argument—his father usually won arguments; he was a determined sort of man, thought Edward approvingly—and the two set off on the long journey north together. Annie had preceded them by a couple of days.

At first Ted Milner was cheerful. He seemed happy to have his son with him and heaped small indulgences on him—ice-cream and orange squash and comic papers. Edward found this affection warming. He enjoyed lunching with his father in the restaurant car, and felt very grown-up when one or two men came and had a word with his father on textile subjects. Ted introduced him: “This is my son, Edward.” The men, puffing comfortably at their cigars, said in their deep Yorkshire voices: “Chip of the old block, eh? He's the image of you, Ted. What's your name, sonny?” It was all very pleasant.

But when the train entered Yorkshire and the first mill chimneys began to appear, suddenly cheerfulness fell from his father's shoulders like a doffed coat. He looked not only old but haggard, almost ill. Often he turned to Edward as if about to speak, but as often turned away without saying anything. Edward began to feel uneasy, chilled. What was wrong? He gazed imploringly at his father, and suddenly, when the train was actually puffing up the cutting towards Hudley, Ted exclaimed roughly:

“You've got a little sister now, Edward.”

Edward almost laughed with relief. Was that all? Did his father really think that Edward, whose recent birthday had brought him into double figures, knew nothing about women
having babies? Of course it was all a trifle vague as yet, Edward was not at all sure exactly what—or how—people were always squeamish about mentioning it, he knew—but still, a lot of fellows' mothers had babies. It was nothing to make a fuss about.

“What's her name?” he asked, putting the matter firmly on a practical basis.

“Leila.”

Privately, Edward thought Leila rather a silly name. But girls were rather silly in many ways, he reflected; one just had to put up with it. He said no more on the matter.

It was dark when they got out of the train at Hudley, and Hudley always looked its best in the dark. The chains of lights shooting along the sides of the valleys and climbing laboriously up the dark hills—“diamonds on black velvet”, somebody had once said in Edward's hearing, and he thought that a very good description—made beautiful patterns, and suddenly he found he had missed the West Riding terribly, and was terribly glad to be home. This feeling mounted and mounted as they drove towards the Hall, so that he actually ran into the drawing-room, which was very bright and warm with a glorious fire and a great many flowers, as usual, and when he saw his mother standing by the hearth, looking very beautiful if rather pale, he burst into tears and rushed to her and threw his arms round her waist and buried his head in her breast. His mother put her arms round him and kissed him and smoothed his hair and kissed him again, and her warmth and her lovely scent quite overcame him and he really quite sobbed. (It was disgraceful in a ten-year-old, he knew, but he simply could not help it.) His father prowled about the room, and it seemed to Edward, on raising for a moment his tear-stained face, that he saw tears standing in his father's eyes too.

“Where's the baby?” asked Edward hoarsely, wanting to recover his composure and be polite.

“Annie will show you, dear,” said his mother, putting him gently aside.

So in a moment he found himself gazing at this small new being. She was asleep in her elegant cot. One tiny fist was stretched above her head, the other hand lay outside the white satin coverlet. To tell the truth, Edward was rather impressed. Those very tiny fingers, which now moved, curling and spreading, were remarkably accurate in design. The fair lashes lying on the clear round cheek—really they were rather pretty. Moved by an unexpected impulse, Edward gently inserted his forefinger into the tiny palm. The fingers closed round his, and Leila gave a very quiet, very sleepy, very tiny coo.

“Darling little thing! You're a darling, aren't you?” murmured Annie fondly, bending over the cot.

“She's not at all bad,” said Edward in a grown-up masculine voice. “Prettier than most, I should say.”

Annie laughed, and Edward condescended to smile.

In a postcard written to Jack about this time, he confirmed the opinion he had formed: “My new sister is a pretty little thing, as infants go,” he said.

So now there were four in the Milner household. Edward's father, Edward's mother, Edward, Leila.

His father yielded to his mother in everything, went out of his way to provide her with the luxuries she loved, and showed the greatest tenderness and warmth to little Leila. He did not show extra tenderness to Edward, but then that was not necessary. Ted and Edward had always been close friends, and now it seemed as if they were in a kind of pleasant conspiracy together to make the lives of their womenfolk as comfortable and happy as possible. Neither Claire nor Leila seemed to appreciate this quite as much as they might have done, Edward sometimes fleetingly reflected; his mother's smile was sometimes weary, her drawl sometimes cold. Women were like that, he supposed.

As for little Leila, who grew rapidly, she was a perfectly healthy and very beautiful child. She had lovely pale gold hair and gleaming dark blue eyes. As soon as she could walk she ran about all over the place, so that poor old Annie grew short of puff (as Edward phrased it to himself) running after her. For it must be admitted—Edward admitted it gravely—that Leila was rather a naughty little girl. When carried away to bed in Annie's arms, for instance, she was capable of hitting Annie quite hard about the face, so that the kind-hearted Edward was shocked. Also, she treated his old bear, which had been found in a cupboard and presented to her by Edward with some ceremony—he was far too old for it now, of course, but all the same the gift was a real sacrifice—with savage disrespect. (Its eyes fell out under her callous handling, its fur came off in patches.) As she grew older, when displeased she threw breakable objects to the floor and laughed at the sound of breakage. When rebuked, she ground her teeth, her beautiful little face became distorted with rage, her lovely eyes flashed fire.

“You mustn't be a naughty little girl, Leila,” said Edward to her a few years later, when speech had been added to her powers of provocation. (She had been very rude to Aunt Audrey. “I don't like your dress as well as Mummy's,” she had said. Considering that Uncle Gerald was not at all well-off, this was really rude.)

“I shall be naughty if I like,” said Leila, tossing her beautiful head.

“People don't like naughty little girls,” said the serious Edward.

“Yes, they do. I don't care anyway,” said Leila.

The difficulty was that she was right. Guests to the house (except Aunt Audrey) were entranced by her beauty and her spirit. When Edward and his father took her out—always elegantly dressed and as it were polished to the nines—she invariably attracted admiring comment. She could put on
the most charming manners when she had a mind, of course. When she raised those beautiful eyes and gazed softly at the speaker, or lowered her head modestly and gave a delicious shy smile, she was irresistible. Even Edward's school friends (except Jack) admired her, were eager to help her over fences or fetch a chair or ice-cream at prize-givings—any excuse to be able to touch her hand. After a while, when Edward had grown up a bit, this kind of universal courtship—or at least Leila's coquettish response to it—sometimes made him a trifle uneasy, but he did not allow himself to take it too seriously, for after all, Leila was still only a little girl.

Then one day, when he was strolling round the Hall grounds with Jack, who had come to stay with him in the holidays, they came upon Leila being kissed by one of his schoolmates behind the rhododendrons. It was a very fervid kiss, and the attitudes of the participants were fervid too. Edward was furious.

“Leave my sister alone!” he shouted, springing forward.

The lad who had been kissing, laughed. Edward hit him. The lad hit Edward. He was a good deal bigger than Edward, and things might have been unpleasant if Jack had not stepped between them and saying in a calm commanding tone: “Stop it, you two!” struck up their fists.

“I shan't stay to tea!” laughed the older boy, vanishing over the wall.

“Good riddance,” called Jack after him cheerfully.

“Leila, that was very naughty, very naughty indeed,” said Edward, seizing Leila's wrist and turning her towards him. “I'm shocked, I really am. What would Mother say if she knew?”

“She wouldn't care,” said Leila. She snatched her wrist away and ran off towards the house.

There was something hard and ugly in her tone which distressed Edward.

“I must apologise to you, Jack,” he said stiffly after a moment. “I'm sorry you were let in for that.”

“Oh, come off it, Edward,” returned Jack. They turned and strolled away from the house. “She's right, though, isn't she?” he added after a pause.

“How do you mean?”

“Your mother wouldn't care.”

It was a moment of severe shock, and Edward came out of that shock with memories supporting Jack's statement swarming in his head like angry bees. Yes, it was true; his mother did not care what happened to Leila. In fact, she was beastly to her. He recalled how rarely it happened that the four Milners went out together. If something suitable for children were planned, Claire was tired and stayed at home; if the excursion were designed for grown-ups, Edward was pronounced just old enough to go, but Leila was far too young. Edward recalled his mother's angry tone when she summoned the child to have a thread removed from her dress or a collar turned down, her ungentle gestures when she brushed down Leila's skirt or pulled up a sock. He remembered that once when Aunt Audrey had drawled: “How did you come to choose Leila's name, Claire?” his mother had replied: “Oh, I just turned over the pages of a book of names and stuck in a pin.” Leila, her face dark with rage and grief, had rushed from the room. Ever since Leila's birth Edward had been regarded as too old a boy to receive a goodnight visit and kiss from his mother in his bedroom. Now he thought he saw that the cessation of this custom for him was just an excuse to omit Leila from it too.

He felt choked, and his heart pained him. Then came a melting rush of compassion.

“Poor Leila,” he said. “It's no wonder she's a bit—”

“No,” agreed Jack gravely, nodding.

Edward was now in his mid-teens, and the time had come for him to go away to some large public school. Of course he
went to the school where Jack boarded, and they were very happy together. Edward wrote a joint letter to his father and mother every week, as was the custom; he also wrote cards quite regularly to poor little Leila.

Coming North in his first holidays at the big school, he was met at the station by his father, who told him of a party for Edward's friends which was being planned. Amongst the guests' names occurred that of the boy found kissing Leila. Edward demurred.