Nightingale Wood (48 page)

Looking down at
Mithraic Emblems
again with a sigh, she caught the flutter of a white apron moving between the trees. Oh dear, that would be Davies; she had said that she was going down to the orchard for ten minutes’ peace and asked the Welsh girl to let her know if people began wondering where she was.

Yes, it was Davies. But there was somebody with her, an elderly, shortish, slender and stooping man, wearing no hat and carrying – surely – a pile of books under one arm. In the other hand he held a round white parcel, stiffly upright.

Now they were coming under the canopy of apple-blossom, and the stranger, who wore glasses, was gazing up at the bloom as though he were more interested in it than in Hetty, who got doubtfully to her feet as they came near.

Little Merionethshire hurried up, while the man followed more slowly.

‘Oh, Miss Hetty,’ began Davies, ‘I hope you won’t mind me bringing the gentleman here, indeed, but Madam’s talking to Lady Dovewood and as he said it was you he wanted to see I thought I’d best bring him along here—’

‘And when I heard that you were down in the vegetable garden reading by the water-butt, I knew that you wouldn’t mind my coming,’ interrupted the stranger, looking at her with mild yet enthusiastic light eyes behind thick lenses, ‘because that’s just what your father used to do – steal away with a precious volume whenever he got the chance. I’m his brother, my dear. I’m your uncle, Frank Franklin.’

And, stooping unembarrassedly to put the parcel of books on the ground, he held out his hand, which Hetty bewilderedly took.

‘There, Miss Hetty,’ smiled Merionethshire, looking from one to the other, ‘isn’t that a nice birthday present for you? Your uncle.’

‘Yes … thank you, Davies,’ muttered Hetty. She went on staring, all her usual composure gone, at the thin fresh-coloured face of her uncle, in which she could see not the faintest likeness to her own.

‘I’d best be getting back, Miss Hetty, if you don’t mind?’ suggested Davies; ‘and if I were you, Miss, I wouldn’t stay down here too long, for Madam’s sure to ask for you in a minute.’

‘All right, Davies. Thanks very much, we’ll be along soon,’ said Hetty, then looked round confusedly to see if there was anywhere for Uncle Frank Franklin to sit down. But he, without a word, pulled out another three bricks from a pile near by, arranged them neatly, seated himself, and pointed to the other three. Still in silence, Hetty sat down facing him.

‘Before I say anything, I want to give you these,’ he began eagerly. ‘They were my suggestion. You see,’ holding out the rounded paper parcel, ‘we don’t know your tastes yet, Hetty, (though we hope to) but everybody must like violets.’

Opening the parcel with a mutter of thanks she found a bunch of the largest, darkest and finest violets she had ever seen. She breathed in their faint scent, and said warmly:

‘I
do
like them. How very kind of you; I could not have had anything that I liked better. You knew it was my birthday, then?’

‘They are the famous Windward violets,’ he said with a touch of complacence, gazing at the flowers. ‘Oh yes – indeed we did. Your Aunt Rose and I have followed your progress (
so far as we could, Hetty
) with deep interest ever since you were a baby. We wanted to adopt you, you know.’

‘Oh, are you
that
uncle? I just knew that there was someone …’

‘Yes. Your Aunt Rose and I, you see, have no children. We … no, we have no family. But your Aunt Spring thought it better for you to go with her, and no doubt it has all been much more comfortable for you … you have a beautiful home here, have you not? so spacious.’

‘I hate it,’ she answered simply.

‘Do you? Do you indeed?’ he said eagerly, looking pleased. ‘Why is that? Perhaps you cannot enjoy it because you are thinking of all the millions who can never hope to have enough to eat, let alone a place like this to live in, is that it?’

‘Oh no, it isn’t that, I’m afraid, Uncle Frank. It’s just that life here is so tedious, and they will not let me do what I want to do.’

‘And what is that? dear me, how I am running on, and I haven’t yet given you half your Aunt Rose’s messages, nor told you how I come to be here today … and perhaps you ought to be getting back to your friends?’

‘Oh, they can wait, and they aren’t my friends anyway, they’re Aunt Edna’s. I’m so enjoying it here. Do tell me why you came.’

‘Well, there happened to be a sale of books this morning at a place called Blackbourne (perhaps you know it, yes) and as I had to come down for that, your Aunt Rose said, Frank, why not take the bull by the horns and call on the Springs and
try
, at least
try
, to see Hetty.’

‘Uncle Frank,’ interrupted Hetty slowly, ‘you said you “had” to come down here for a sale of books. Why was that?’

‘Well, my dear, I’m a bookseller, you know. Your Aunt Rose and I have a bookshop on the corner of Acre Street in the Charing Cross Road. Did you not know that?’

‘No,’ said Hetty, staring at the pear-tree.

‘Well – but did your Aunt Spring never tell you anything about us?’

‘Uncle Frank,’ she said steadily, ‘I never knew that you existed until five minutes ago. I was always told that my father’s people were … not very well-off, you know, and bookish … and they’d never got on or anything – you know—’

‘Made money,’ he nodded. ‘Yes, I can imagine what you were told. Hetty, before we go any further, I must tell you that your Aunt Rose is a Communist, an active Communist working for the Revolution in Great Britain, and that I am a Socialist. A Fabian. Yes, well. Now go on.’

‘– and I just knew that there were two uncles, and one of them wanted to adopt me—’

‘That was me, your Aunt Rose and me. Your other uncle, Henry, is not married. He is a librarian in York.’

‘– and I certainly rather got the impression that my father’s people didn’t care much about me but just—’

‘– wanted to adopt you so that they could manage your money,’ nodded Uncle Frank. ‘Yes. Go on—’

‘– I never knew that you kept a
bookshop
,’ she ended, ‘or else of course I should have written to you years ago. Books are my chief interest in life.’

‘Are they, are they indeed. They were your father’s too, so that is quite natural. Of course,’ went on Uncle Frank, looking at once indignant and pleased, ‘your Aunt Rose and I supposed that you never wrote to us
because
of the bookshop. We thought that you were a shocking little bourgeois snob, Hetty, idle and pleasure-loving, a typical product of the capitalist system at its worst. Yet we could not help feeling an interest in you, my dear, because we remembered you as a baby and so we wrote sometimes to your Aunt Spring for news of you.’

‘She never told me. I was told nothing. It is
too bad
. Stupid, rude, narrow …’

‘She did not answer our last three letters, Hetty, and so naturally we did not try to see you, because we thought that you did not wish to see us. Your Aunt Rose it was,’ went on Uncle Frank, with relish, ‘who first thought that it might have been your Aunt Spring who was keeping you from us. Your Aunt Rose, though an out-and-out materialist in religious matters, of course, has these intuitions occasionally. Divine visionings, I always think of them as. But I do not say so to her, for of course she is rather sensitive about her intuitions.’

‘You must have thought me a detestable creature,’ said Hetty in a low tone.

‘Oh no, Hetty, not that. Just the helpless product of a corrupt and decaying system,’ said Uncle Frank tolerantly. ‘We are all cogs in it, Hetty, we cannot help ourselves. But we must leave all that for another talk, must we not? The main things now are that I have
seen
you,’ checking off the points on one open palm, ‘that we have
talked
together, and that the next time you are in London you will come to see us, will you not? and meet your Aunt Rose. Your Aunt Rose, though deeply affectionate, does not give her affection lightly. She needs knowing; I am the first to admit that, but when you do come to know her …’ He shook his head, as though the visions inside it were too dazzling to be put into words, then got up from the three bricks without difficulty (and anyone who has sat on three bricks will appreciate this achievement), collected his books, and glanced inquiringly first at the way through the orchard and then at Hetty, as though suggesting that it was time they made a move.

But Hetty stood with her back pressed hard against the water-butt and said resolutely:

‘Uncle Frank, may I come to live with you and Aunt Rose in London? Paying for myself, I mean? I have a hundred pounds a year of my own and I’m twenty-one today, so it’s mine to do as I like with. If I gave you and Aunt Rose a pound a week, could you keep me for that? If you have a spare attic room I should like that better than anything. I wouldn’t be any trouble. I only want to read all day, and later on perhaps I might get some kind of a job.’

‘Good gracious me, Hetty, you go so fast, I cannot keep up with you!’ cried Uncle Frank, looking alarmed and pleased and triumphant all at once. ‘You can’t arrange things like this in five minutes, you know. And what is your money invested in, my dear? Your Aunt Rose disapproves of invested income, of course, and I am afraid that if it were invested in armaments or anything of that sort she would not for a moment entertain the idea of having you as a paying guest … a boarder, shall we say? … a
lodger
! How easy it is to be a snob, is it not? Well …’

‘I never heard my cousin (he looks after my money) say it was in armaments,’ said Hetty. ‘I think it’s mostly in Government stock … I suppose Aunt Rose’ (she tried to keep a satirical note from her voice) ‘would not approve of that, either?’

‘Bad enough, Hetty, but not so bad as armaments.’

‘Well, you will try, won’t you, Uncle Frank, to persuade Aunt Rose to let me come? You see, I was going to tell Aunt Edna today that I mean to go and live in London and you can see what a difference it would make, can’t you, if I could tell her that I was going to live with relations and not with strangers?’

‘But your Aunt Rose and I, Hetty,
are
strangers to you,’ he pointed out, beginning to lead the way back through the orchard. (‘Good gracious, we have been away here nearly an hour!) It is a very big step, you know, to give up all this comfort and luxury and beauty,’ glancing round him with a sigh, ‘for life in one room over a bookshop.’

‘But that’s exactly what I’ve always wanted,’ she cried. ‘I hate all this. It’s dead. I can’t be myself in it. It may be other people’s kind of beauty; it isn’t mine. I want something … I don’t know yet. Harder.’

He nodded as though he understood.

‘And it won’t come as a shock to Aunt Edna, either,’ she went on. ‘She’s always known that I wanted to get away from here, and go to college.’

‘You won’t be able to manage college, my dear, on your income, and keep yourself as well.’

‘Then I’ll borrow from my capital,’ recklessly, ‘and pay myself back when I get something to do.’

‘Jobs are not so easy to get nowadays, and I don’t know what your Aunt Rose would say to a girl with enough invested income to live on trying to get a job. You see, you would be taking the work away from some girl who might need it to keep alive at all.’

Hetty was silent. She had a feeling that she and Aunt Rose might not get on together. Aunt Rose’s principles were lofty, her taste in flowers impeccable, but she sounded as though she might be a little difficult to live with.

‘But that can be discussed later, of course,’ he added. ‘Your Aunt Rose will be willing – eager, even, I am sure – to discuss
all
your problems with you at length. Where she gives, she gives unsparingly. But what we really must decide, before I hurry off to catch my train, is whether you
really do want to come to us
. Now think, Hetty. Take your time. Do you, or do you not, upon reflection, want to come? Speak the truth: I shall not take it the wrong way, or misunderstand, if you change your mind.’

They had instinctively turned aside to walk in the rhododendron shrubbery where Hetty had sat with Viola in the summer, and now halted there, out of sight of the players on the tennis courts above. Hetty looked into her uncle’s eager, commonplacishly sensitive face. He was just a little absurd, with his literary way of talking and his veneration for his wife, but Hetty knew that he could be managed, and that at a pinch he would show himself a sensible man. She had no fears about Uncle Frank. Aunt Rose was the snag. Just the kind of earnest, passionately sincere, talkative person that is not easy to deal with, thought Hetty. One is forced to respect their sincerity and that gives them an unfair hold. Suddenly it occurred to her that she could always leave Aunt Rose’s house if she did not like it. If she tries to manage my affairs, I shall just walk out, she decided. She said:

‘Yes, Uncle Frank, I do.’

‘You are sure?’

‘Yes. You see, even from the little you have told me I can see that you live the kind of life I have always wanted to live.’

He looked flattered

‘Yes, I can understand that. We do know a number of very interesting Left Wingers whom your Aunt Rose has met in her work for the Party – and not only Left Wingers. George Crumley often drops in (you have heard of George Crumley, I am sure, the Miner’s Friend, you know, the Quaker) and Alice MacNoughton and E. E. Tyler, and Donat Mulqueen and Roger Brindle—’

‘Donat Mulqueen?’

Her tone made him glance at her sharply: then he smiled. She did not return his smile. She thought: No, he is not clever but he is not stupid. He is ingenuous, but it would not be easy to deceive him.

‘Do you know his work?’ asked Uncle Frank, letting his smile die in deference to her grave, rather bored look.

‘I do.’

‘And admire it, I gather?’

‘Extremely.’

‘Yes; well, we know him quite well. He often comes into the shop. Your Aunt Rose feeds him, poor boy.’

‘Why? Hasn’t he any means?’

‘None, I gather, except what he earns by writing, and, of course, the commercialized papers will not touch his stuff because it is difficult, as well as obscene (I personally do not care for it, but your Aunt Rose says that he is the modern Keats) and the other papers, the intellectual ones, pay so badly, they have so little money behind them.’