The Children's Hour (2 page)

Nest thought: Why do I feel so fearful? Georgie's my sister. She's getting old. What's the matter with me?

She swallowed some tea and set the mug back in its saucer, cradling it on her knee, trying not to ask: ‘How long is a “short stay”?'

‘What did you tell Helena?' she asked instead.

‘I said we'd talk it over,' answered Mina. ‘After all, this is your home as much as mine. Do you think we could cope with Georgie for a month or two?'

A month or two. Nest battled with her sense of panic. ‘Since it would be you who would be doing most of the coping,' she answered evasively, ‘how do
you
feel about it?'

‘I expect I could manage. What I feel is,' Mina paused, took a deep breath, ‘or, at least, what I
think
I feel is that we should give it a try.' She looked at her sister. ‘But I suspect that you're not happy about it.' She hesitated. ‘Or frightened of it? Something, anyway.' She didn't press the point but stroked Polly Garter's head instead, crumbling a little of her shortcake and feeding her a tiny piece. Nogood Boyo was up from his beanbag in a flash, standing beside her, tail wagging hopefully. She passed him a crumb and in a moment all three dogs were beside her on the sofa.

‘You're hopeless.' Nest watched her affectionately as Mina murmured to her darlings. ‘Utterly hopeless. But, yes, you're right. I've been feeling odd all day. Hearing voices, remembering things. I have this presentiment that something awful might happen. A hollow sensation in my stomach.' She laughed a little. ‘But this is probably just a coincidence. After all, I can't think why poor
old Georgie should be cast as a figure of doom, can you?'

She leaned forward to place her mug and saucer on the tray and then glanced at Mina, surprised at her lack of response. Her sister was staring into the garden, preoccupied, frowning slightly. For a brief moment she looked all of her seventy-four years, and Nest's anxiety deepened.

‘Your expression isn't particularly reassuring,' she said. ‘Is there something I don't know about Georgie after all these years?'

‘No, no.' Mina recovered her composure. ‘Let's have some more tea, shall we? No, I'm simply wondering if I can cope with Georgie, that's all. I'm only a year younger. Rather like the halt leading the blind, wouldn't you say?'

‘No, I wouldn't,' answered Nest sharply, not particularly comforted by Mina's reply. ‘You don't burn out kettles or go for walks and forget where you are.'

‘Just as well.' Mina began to laugh. ‘There wouldn't be anyone to find me up on Trentishoe Down.' A pause. ‘What made you think it was Lyddie?'

‘Lyddie?' Nest looked at her quickly. ‘How d'you mean?'

‘The phone call. You asked if it were Lyddie. Has she been part of this presentiment you've had all day?'

‘No.' Nest shook her head, grimacing as she tried to puzzle it out. ‘It's difficult to explain. More like a very strong awareness of the past, remembering scenes, that kind of thing.' She hesitated. ‘Sometimes I'm not certain if it's what I actually
do
remember or if it's what I've been told. You were always telling me stories, interpreting the world for me. Giving people names of characters in books. Well, you still do that, of course.'

Mina smiled. ‘Such fun,' she said, ‘although a little bit tricky when you called Enid Goodenough “Lady Sneerwell” to her face. Poor Mama was horrified. I was praying that
Enid hadn't a clue what you were talking about. Still, it was a sticky moment.'

‘It was fright,' Nest excused herself, laughing at the memory, ‘coming upon her unexpectedly after everything you'd said about her.'

‘Lady Sneerwell and Sir Benjamin Backbite. What a poisonous pair the Goodenoughs were.' Other memories were connected with this thought and Mina bent to stroke Nogood Boyo, her face momentarily grim.

‘I was remembering the stories,' Nest was saying, ‘earlier when I was crossing the hall. I was thinking of us all down the years. Sitting on the sofa listening to
Naughty Sophia
and
Hans Brinker,
or the
Silver Skates
. Do you remember?'

‘And
A Christmas Carol
on Christmas Eve while we decorated the tree. How could I forget? So. Not Lyddie, then?'

‘Not particularly. At least, I don't think so.'

‘Good.' Mina fed Captain Cat the final piece of shortbread and dusted the crumbs from her knees. ‘So what do we do about Georgie? Are we up to it? Perhaps we should ask Lyddie what she thinks about it?'

‘Why not? Let's clear up first, though.'

‘Good idea. By then she'll have finished work for the day and we won't be interrupting her.' Mina put the tea things onto the tray and, with the dogs at her heels, crossed the hall to the kitchen, Nest wheeling more slowly behind her.

Lyddie made a final note on the typescript, fastened the sheets of the chapter into a paperclip and leaned both arms on the desk, hunching her narrow shoulders. Black silky hair, layered into a shiny mop, curved and flicked around her small, sweet face: ivory-skinned with a delicately pointed chin. Dressed warmly in a cloudy-soft mohair tunic, which reached almost to the knees of her moleskin jeans, nevertheless she was chilly. Her tiny study, the back bedroom, was cold, the light dying away, and she was longing for exercise. The large dog, crammed into the space between her desk and the door, raised his head to look at her.

‘Your moment just might have come,' she told him. ‘You just
might
get a walk. A quick one.'

The Bosun – a Bernese Mountain dog – stood up, tail waving expectantly, and Lyddie inched round her desk and bent to kiss him on the nose. He had been named, after consultation with her Aunt Mina, for Byron's favourite dog,
Boatswain, whose inscription on the monument to him at Newstead – ‘
beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of Man without his vices
' – was particularly apt for his name-sake, at least so Lyddie believed.

‘You are very beautiful,' she told him, ‘and good. Come on, then, and careful on the stairs. You nearly had us both down yesterday.'

They descended together and he waited patiently whilst she collected a long, warm, wool jacket and thrust her feet into suede ankle boots. As they walked through the narrow alleys and streets that led into the lanes behind Truro, Lyddie's attention was concentrated on keeping the Bosun under restraint until, freed at last from the restrictions of the town, he was released from the lead. She watched him dash ahead, smiling to herself at his exuberance, remembering the adorable fluffy puppy that had been waiting downstairs for her on the morning of her first wedding anniversary: a present from Liam.

‘You need company,' he'd said, watching her ecstatic reaction with amusement. ‘Working away up there, alone all day while I'm at the wine bar.'

It was just over two years since she'd given up her job as an editor with a major publishing house in London, married Liam and moved to Truro, to live in his small terraced house not far from the wine bar that he ran with his partner, Joe Carey. It was a trendy bar, near the cathedral, not sufficiently prosperous to employ enough staff to enable her and Liam to spend many evenings alone together. Usually he was at home for what he called the ‘graveyard watch' – the dead hours between three o'clock and seven – but this week one of the staff was away on holiday and Liam was taking his shift. It made a very long day.

‘Come in as soon as you've finished,' he'd said, ‘otherwise I'll see nothing of you. Sorry, love, but it can't be helped.'

Oddly, she didn't object to going to The Place; sitting at the table reserved for staff in the little snug, watching the clients and joking with Joe; eating some supper and snatching moments with Liam.

‘No fertilizer like the farmer's boots,' Liam would say. ‘We have to be around for most of the time. The punters like it and the staff know where they are. It's the secret of its success even if it means irregular hours.'

She never minded, though. After the silence and concentration of a day's copy-editing she found the buzz in The Place just what she needed. Liam's passionate courtship had come as a delightful, confidence-boosting shock after a three-year relationship with a man who'd suddenly decided that he simply couldn't commit to the extent of he and Lyddie buying a house together or having children, and certainly not to marriage. James had accepted the offer of a job in New York and Lyddie had continued to live alone for nearly a year, until she'd met Liam, after which her life had begun to change very rapidly. She'd missed her job and her friends, and the move had been a frightening rupture from all that she'd known, but she loved Liam far too much to question her decision – and her darling old aunts were not much more than two hours away, over on Exmoor.

Aunt Mina's call had caught her within ten minutes of finishing work but she'd let her believe that she was all done for the day. They were such a pair of sweeties, Mina and Nest, and so very dear to her, especially since the terrible car accident: her own parents killed outright and Aunt Nest crippled. Even now, ten years later, Lyddie felt the wrench of pain. She'd just celebrated her twenty-first birthday and been offered her first job in publishing. Struggling to learn
the work, rushing down to Oxford to see Aunt Nest in the Radcliffe, dealing with the agony of loss and misery: none of it would have been possible without Aunt Mina.

Lyddie hunched into her jacket, pulling the collar about her chin, remembering. At weekends she'd stayed at the family home in Iffley with her older brother, Roger; but she and Roger had never been particularly close and it had needed Aunt Mina to supply the healing adhesive mix of love, sympathy and strength that bound them all together. In her own grief, Lyddie had sometimes forgotten that Aunt Mina was suffering too: her sister Henrietta dead, another sister crippled. How heavily she and Roger had leaned upon her: sunk too deeply in their own sorrow to consider hers. The small, pretty house had been left to them jointly and it was agreed that Roger, an academic like his father, should continue to live there until he could afford to buy Lyddie out. Until she'd met Liam, Lyddie had used the house as a retreat but, when Roger married Teresa, it was agreed that between them they could afford to raise a mortgage which, once it was in place, would give Lyddie the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Running the wine bar meant that she and Liam rarely managed to visit Oxford but Roger and Teresa had been to Truro for a brief holiday and, for the rest of the time, the four of them maintained a reasonable level of communication. Nevertheless, Lyddie felt faintly guilty that she and Liam had more fun with Joe and his girlfriend, Rosie – who worked at The Place – than they did with her brother and his wife.

‘It's all that brain,' Liam had said cheerfully. ‘Far too serious, poor loves. Difficult to have a really good laugh with a couple who take size nine in headgear. Roger's not too bad but dear old Teresa isn't exactly overburdened with a sense of humour, is she?'

Lyddie had been obliged to agree that she wasn't but felt the need to defend her brother.

‘Roger can be a bit insensitive,' she'd said. ‘He's generally a serious person but there's nothing prissy about him. At least he's not patronizing about other people having a good time.' She'd added quickly, ‘Not that I'm implying that Teresa . . .' and then paused, frowning, trying to be truthful without criticizing her sister-in-law.

Liam had watched her appreciatively. ‘Careful, love,' he'd warned. ‘You might just have to say something really unkind if you're not careful.'

She'd been embarrassed by his implication but Joe had intervened. They'd been sitting together in the snug and Joe, seeing her confusion, had aimed a cuff at Liam's head.

‘Leave her alone,' he'd said, ‘and get the girl a drink. Just because you can't understand true nobility of spirit when you see it . . .' and Liam, still grinning, had stood up and gone off to the bar, leaving Lyddie and Joe alone together.

As she paused to lean on a five-bar gate, watching the lights of the city pricking into the deepening twilight, Lyddie attempted to analyse her feelings for Joe. He was always very chivalrous towards her, unlike Liam's rough-and-tumble way of carrying on, and his evident admiration boosted her confidence which, because of Liam's popularity, could be slightly fragile. She'd been taken aback by the hostility she'd encountered from some of Liam's ex-girlfriends and it was clear that a few of them did not consider his marriage to be particularly significant. Two or three women continued to behave as if he were still their property: they obviously had no intention of changing their proprietorial habits and treated Lyddie as an intruder. Liam tended to shrug it off and she quickly learned not to expect any particular public support from him: they were married
and, having made this statement, he expected her to be able to deal with these women sensibly. This was not quite as easy as it sounded. Apart from the fact that her confidence had been seriously damaged by James's departure, her husband was extraordinarily attractive – hair nearly as black as her own silky mop, knowing brown eyes, lean and tough – and he knew it. Without his presence The Place was a little less exciting, the atmosphere less intimate. He had an indefinable magic that embraced both sexes, so that men called him a ‘great guy' whilst their women flirted with him. There was a sense of triumph at a table if he spent longer than usual talking and joking: the male would have a faintly self-congratulatory air – Liam didn't waste too much time on dullards – and the woman would preen a little, a small, secret smile on her lips, conscious of the other females' envious stares.

Joe's quiet, appreciative glance, his protectiveness, helped Lyddie to deal with the competition and she rather liked to hear Liam protesting against Joe's attentions. Of course, there was Rosie to consider. Lyddie had hoped that she and Rosie might become more intimate but, although she was friendly, Rosie had a touchy disposition, and a searching, calculating gaze that held Lyddie at arm's length. There might be several reasons for this: perhaps Rosie felt less secure in her relationship with Joe because of Lyddie's married status; maybe she slightly resented the special treatment that Joe, Liam and the other members of staff accorded Lyddie. At The Place, Rosie was one of the waitresses and that was all. Lyddie was careful never to respond too flirtatiously to Joe when Rosie was around but it was often hard, when Liam was chatting up an attractive female punter, not to restore her own self-esteem by behaving in a similar manner with Joe.