September (1990) (40 page)

"If you think I'm going to palm Henry off onto Isobel-"

"Then you'll have to take him yourself."

"You're a bastard, Edmund. You know that, don't you? You're behaving like a selfish bastard."

"Where is Henry? I'd like to speak to him before I
go.

"He's not here," Virginia told him with a certain malicious satisfaction. "He's buying his sweets from Mrs. Ishak."

"Well, when he comes home, tell him to ring me at the office."

"You can ring him yourself." And on this biting exit line, she slammed down the receiver and put an end to the miserable exchange.

Her raised voice had penetrated to the kitchen.

"What was that all about?" Edie asked, turning from the sink as Virginia stormed in with a face like thunder, and arms filled with rumpled linen, to stride across the kitchen towards the open door of the utility room and hurl her burden in the general direction of the washing
-
machine.

"Is something wrong?"

"Everything." Virginia pulled out a chair and sat, her arms folded and her expression mutinous. "That was Edmund, and he's going to New York today. Now. And he's going to be away a week, and he promised me . . . he promised, Edie . . . that he'd drive Henry to school tomorrow. I told him that it was the one thing I wouldn't do. I've hated the whole idea of Templehall from the very beginning, and the only reason I finally relented was because Edmund promised that he would take Henry tomorrow."

Edie knew a nasty temper when she saw one. She said reasonably, "Well, I suppose if you're an important business man these things are bound to happen."

"Only to Edmund. Other men manage their lives without being so bloody selfish."

"You don't want to take Henry yourself?"

"No, I do not. It's the last thing in the world I want to do. It's inhuman of Edmund to expect it of me."

Edie, wringing out her dishcloth, considered the problem.

"Could you not ask Lady Balmerino to take him with Hamish?"

Virginia did not let on that Edmund had already made this sensible suggestion and got an earful for his pains.

"I don't know." She thought about it. "I suppose I could," she admitted sulkily.

"Isobel's very understanding. And she's been through it herself."

"No, she hasn't." It was obvious to Edie that she could say nothing right. "Hamish was never like Henry. You could send Hamish to the moon, and all he'd worry about would be when he was going to get his next meal."

"That's true enough. But if I were you, I'd have a word with Isobel. It's no good working yourself up into a state if there's nothing to be done. What-"

"I know, Edie. What can't be cured must be endured."

"That's true enough," said Edie placidly, and went to get the kettle and fill it with water. A cup of tea seemed to be in order. There was nothing, in times of stress, like a good hot cup of tea.

They were drinking the tea when Henry returned, his carrier-bag bulging with goodies.

"Mummy, look what I got!" He emptied the contents out onto the kitchen table. "Look, Edie. Mars Bars, and Smarties, and Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and some Jellybabies, and Jaffa Cakes, and Chocolate Digestives, and treacle toffees, and Rolos; and Mrs. Ishak gave me a lollipop for going away. I didn't have to pay for the lollipop, so can I eat it now?"

Edie surveyed his loot. "I hope you're not going to eat that lot all at once, otherwise you won't have a tooth left in your head."

"No." He was already unwrapping the lollipop. "It's got to last a long time."

By now Virginia's fury had simmered down. She put her arm around Henry and said, in consciously cheerful tones, "Daddy phoned."

He licked. "What about?"

"He has to go to America. Today. He's flying from London this afternoon. So he won't be able to take you to school tomorrow. But I thought I'd . . ."

Henry stopped licking. His pleasure flowed from his face, and he turned enormous, apprehensive eyes upon his mother.

She hesitated, and then started up again. "... I thought I'd ring Isobel and ask if she'd take you with Hamish . . ."

She got no further. His reaction to the news was even worse than she had dreaded. A wail of dismay and floods of instant tears . . .

"I don't want Isobel to take me. . . ."

"Henry . . ."

He jerked himself out of her embrace and flung his lollipop onto the floor. "I'm not going to go with Isobel and Hamish. I want my mother or my father to take me. How would you like it, if you were me and . . ."

"Henry . . ."

"... you had to go away with people who weren't your own mother and father? I think you are being very unkind to me. . . ."

"I'll take you."

"And Hamish will be horrid and not talk because he's a senior. It's not fair!"

Furiously weeping, he turned and fled for the door.

"Henry, I'll take you. . . ."

But he was gone, his footsteps stamping up the stairs to the sanctuary of his bedroom. Virginia, gritting her teeth, closed her eyes and wished that she could close her ears as well. It came. The deadly slam of his bedroom door. Then silence.

She opened her eyes and met Edie's across the table. Edie gave a long sigh. She said, "Oh, dearie dear."

"So much for that bright idea."

"Poor wee soul. He's upset."

Virginia leaned her elbow on the table and ran a hand through her hair. All at once the situation had become more than she felt able to cope with.

She said, "This is the very last thing I wanted to happen." She knew, and Edie knew, that Henry's tantrums, though rare, left him vulnerable and touchy for hours. "I wanted this to be a good day, and not miserable. Our last day together. And now Henry's going to spend it bursting into tears and blaming me for everything. As if things weren't bad enough. Damn Edmund. What am I going to do, Edie?"

"How would it be," said Edie, "if I just came back this afternoon and took Henry off your hands? He's never so bad with me. Have you finished his packing yet? Well, I could finish his packing and do any wee bits that need to be done, and he can just be around the place and have time to collect himself. A quiet day, that's what he needs."

"Oh, Edie." Virginia was filled with grateful love. "Would you do that?"

"No trouble. Mind, I'll have to go home and see to Lottie, give her her dinner, but I'll be here again by two."

"Can't Lottie see to her own dinner?"

"Well, she can, but she makes such a hash of it, burns the pans, and leaves my kitchen in a midden, I'm better to do it myself."

Virginia was repentant. "Oh, Edie. You do so much. I'm sorry I shouted at you."

"Good thing I was here for you to shout at." She heaved herself onto her swollen legs. "Now, I must get on, or we won't get the baby bathed at this rate. Up you go and have a word with Henry. Tell him he can spend the afternoon with me, and what I'd really like would be one of his bonny pictures."

Virginia found Henry, as she knew she would, under his duvet with Moo.

She said, "I'm sorry, Henry."

Racked with huge sobs, he did not reply. She sat on his bed. "It was a silly thing to suggest. Daddy suggested it to me, and I thought it was silly then. I had no right even to mention it to you. Of course you won't go with Isobel. You'll come with me. I'll take you in the car."

She waited. After a bit, Henry rolled onto his back. His face was swollen and tear-stained, but he seemed to have stopped crying.

He said, "I don't mind so much about Hamish, but I want you."

"I'll be there. Perhaps we'll take Hamish with us. It would be kind. Save Isobel a journey."

He sniffed. "All right."

"Edie's coming back after lunch. She said she'd like to spend the afternoon with you. She wants you to draw her a picture."

"Have you packed my felt pens?"

"Not yet."

He put out his arms, and she gathered him up and held him close, rocking him gently, pressing kisses onto the top of his head. After a bit, he emerged from beneath his duvet, and they found a handkerchief and h
e b
lew his nose.

It was not until then that she remembered Edmund's message. "Daddy wanted you to ring him up. He's at the office. You know the number."

Henry went to her bedroom to do this, but Virginia had left it too late and Edmund had already gone.

The playroom was peaceful and warm. Sun poured through the wide windows, and the breeze sent the wistaria branches tapping at the panes. Henry sat at the big table in the middle of the room, and drew. Edie was on the window-seat, stitching the last of the name-tapes onto his new socks. In the mornings, for work, Edie wore her oldest clothes and a pinafore, but this afternoon she had turned up looking quite smart, and had put on her new lilac cardigan. Henry felt flattered, because he knew that she was keeping it for best. As soon as she arrived, she had set up the ironing-board, and ironed the morning's load of washing, fresh from the line. This was now stacked, crisp and folded, on the other end of the table, and emanated a pleasant smell.

Henry laid down his felt pen and searched in his penbox, making scrabbling sounds. He said, "Bother."

"What is it, pet?"

"I want a Biro. I've drawn people with balloons coming out of their mouths, and I want to write what they're saying."

"Look in Edie's bag. There's a pen in there."

Her bag was on the chair by the fireside. It was large, made of leather, and bulged with important things: her comb, her fat housekeeping purse, her Old Age Pension book, her Post Office Savings book, her rail-card, her bus pass. She didn't have a car, so she had to go everywhere by bus. Because of this she had a timetable, a little booklet, "Relkirkshire Bus Company." Henry, rooting for the pen, came upon this. It occurred to him, out of the blue, that it might be a sensible and useful thing to own. Edie probably had another at home.

He looked up at Edie. She was intent on her sewing, her white head bowed. He removed the booklet from her bag and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. H
e f
ound the Biro, closed her bag, and went back to his work.

Presently, Edie asked, "What would you like for your tea?"

He said, "Macaroni cheese."

Dermot Honeycombe's antique shop stood at the far end of the village street, beyond the main gates of Croy, and at the foot of a gentle slope that leaned between the road and the river. Once it had been the village smithy, and the cottage where Dermot lived, the blacksmith's house.,Dermot's cottage was painfully picturesque. It had tubs of begonias at the door, latticed windows, and a thickly thatched roof. But the shop was much as it had always been, with walls of dark stone and blackened beams. Outside was a yard of cobbles where once the patient farm horses had stood, waiting to be shod, and here Dermot had set up his shop sign, an aged wooden cart, painted blue, with dermot honeycombe antioues emblazoned tastefully on its side. It was an eye-catching gimmick, and brought in much casual trade. It was also useful for tying dogs to. Virginia clipped the leads onto the spaniels' collars, and knotted the ends around one of the cartwheels. The dogs sat, looking reproachful.

"I shan't be long," she told them. They thumped their stumpy tails, and their eyes made her feel like a murderer, but she left them and went across the cobbles and in through the door of the old smithy. Here Dermot sat, in his paper-piled birdcage of an office. He was on the telephone but spied her through the glass, raised a hand, and then reached out to turn on a switch.

Within the shop, four dangling bulbs sprang to light, doing a little to alleviate the gloom, but not very much. The place bulged with every sort of junk. Chairs were piled on tables, on the tops of chests of drawers. Huge wardrobes towered. There were milk churns, jelly pans, stacks of unmatched china, brass fenders, corner cupboards, curtain rails, cushions, bundles of velvet, threadbare rugs. The smell was damp and musty, and Virginia knew a small frisson of anticipation. Visits to Dermot's were always something of a lottery because you never knew-and neither did Dermot-what you might, by chance, turn up.

She moved forward, edging her way between the tottering stacks of furniture, with the wary caution of a pot-holer. Already, she felt marginally more cheerful. Browsing was a comforting therapy, and Virginia allowed herself the self-indulgence of putting Edmund, the morning's traumas, and tomorrow, all out of her mind.

A present for Katy. Her eye wandered. She priced a chest of drawers, a wide-lapped chair. Searched for the silver mark on a battered spoon, poked through a box of old keys and brass doorknobs, turned the pages of a dignified old wreck of a book. Found a lustre cream jug, and wiped the dust from it, searching for chips or cracks. There were none.

She was joined by Dermot, finished with his telephone call.

"Hello, my dear."

"Dermot. Hello."

"Looking for something in particular?"

"A present for Katy Steynton." She held up the lustre jug. "This is sweet."