The Children's Hour (29 page)

It is only as I make one last desperate search before going to the police station that I see her, standing on the pavement in a small side-road, staring up at a terraced house. Something, the way that she is standing, prevents me from calling out impatiently to her. I walk towards her. ‘I wondered where you were,' I say calmly, as I approach. ‘Are you OK?' She turns, her brow puzzled, sad. ‘I've been looking for Jenna,' she says wistfully, ‘but I can't find her. They say they don't know her here.' Jenna, the girl who looked after us when we were children, has been dead for more than ten years. She and her husband moved into Lynton in the sixties – into this very house, in fact, where the curtain twitches aside as a suspicious face peers at us. I take Georgie's arm. ‘Jenna's moved,' I tell her – it's not altogether a lie although I hope
she won't ask where, it's a fair step to the cemetery – ‘and we must be getting home.' She comes along, willingly enough, and I ask if she might like a little trip along the coast or to Simonsbath, to distract her. By the time I'd got her settled and found that Nogood Boyo had gnawed the end off the loaf I could have burst into tears. As we set off, I saw a mind's-eye image of the pair of us: two potty, white-haired old biddies, wrestling an aged camper round the steep bends – and quite suddenly, I have to say, I began to laugh and laugh. Georgie, bless her, joined in and the dogs barked wildly until I pulled up at Brendon Two Gates to get my breath. ‘That was fun,' observed Georgie cheerfully. ‘Now where shall we go next?'

So, Elyot, a thumbnail sketch of our day. How has yours been, I wonder?

From:
  Elyot
To:
      Mina

Dear Mina
I have to say, dear old friend, that I laughed too, although I felt
such
a twinge at the picture of Georgie outside Jenna's house. This kind of situation is one with which I can identify only too easily. This flipping between normality and – well, what shall I call it? – ‘losing the plot', as William would say. For us, sadly, those periods of lucidity are decreasing. We have hours of repetition: the same question or a single word, which is utterly maddening yet so pitiable.

However! I have taken your advice and stopped trying to persuade Lavinia that her wild imaginings about our GP are simply not true. I go along with it now, and merely murmur something agreeable or nod or look suitably shocked. I have
to say that it goes against the grain – which is foolish, I know – because it seems that I am colluding in lies against an admirable, hard-worked and very tolerant man. At the same time, I suspect that he wouldn't be the least bit surprised at how poor Lavinia is feeling about him. He's seen it all before, no doubt. My real anxiety is that she refuses to see him. At present we drift along in this twilight world but, like you with your nemesis, I fear that something will happen shortly over which I shall have no control. The point I want to make, though, is: yes, you were right about accepting the situation and ‘going with the flow'. Lavinia is calmer and, because she no longer has to persuade me to believe these horrors that cloud her mind, she dwells on them less and is more readily distracted from them.

My dear Mina, I too am amazed at the ease with which we've slipped into such comradeship. We've come a long way from that chat-room, haven't we? To be honest, I believe that we've both managed better in our different situations because of this ability to let off steam. Perhaps it is because we cannot see each other that we are able to confide in each other so openly. Like you, I have wondered about the aspects of disloyalty and have decided that what we are doing is no different to being ‘counselled' or other like things. We discovered that we are of the same generation, of like mind, and our friendship developed quite naturally from there. Maybe it was foolish to be so trusting but I think that time has proved that we were justified and you have nothing to fear from me. You have given me far too much comfort for me to begin to contemplate the possibility of harming you. Not that I can imagine how it could be done. But I know how you feel. We haven't just told each other about ourselves; we have told about those who are close to us and sometimes we
feel we are betraying a trust. Well, so be it. We have done it out of love and concern for them, in an effort to understand and to gain strength to continue with the task.

So, I offer you a toast: to family life.

‘The thing is,' Lyddie said, ‘the really unbelievable thing is that I still love him.'

Her three-day sabbatical was nearly over and she planned to return to Truro after lunch. Meanwhile she was kneeling on the kitchen floor, business-like in jeans and thick roll-necked jersey, brushing the recumbent Bosun. He groaned occasionally, and stretched luxuriously once or twice, but for most of the time he lay passively, tired by a long early-morning run over Trentishoe Down. After breakfast, Mina and Georgie and the dogs had walked down to the beach whilst Nest remained with Lyddie in the sunny kitchen, watching the grooming process.

‘Well, of course you do,' agreed Nest. ‘It would be odd if you didn't. Love isn't nearly so convenient as that. I've often wondered how it must be for those poor wives of serial murderers, suddenly discovering this whole other side to someone they love. How do they deal with it?'

‘I suppose it doesn't have to be a partner.' Lyddie was
distracted from her own pain for a moment. ‘It might be a parent.'

‘Yes,' said Nest, after a moment. ‘It might be. Or a child.'

‘The helplessness of little children is appalling,' said Lyddie. ‘Jack said that he lives in terror of something happening to Toby and Flora. The worst thing is, he said, that you're constantly having to encourage them to do things that might hurt them so that they extend themselves otherwise you would make them prisoners. Having to decide whether they're ready for the next big step. How terrifying the thought of parenthood is!'

‘There's something worse than that,' said Nest grimly – and fell silent.

Lyddie looked at her curiously. ‘What?' she asked.

‘Watching other people making those decisions for one's own child,' answered Nest at last.

Lyddie, looking thoughtful, resumed the long sweeping strokes so that the Bosun's black and tan coat gleamed.

‘That's twice,' she said. ‘First you talked about your lover being unfaithful and now you say that, about children, as if you really know.'

Nest stared at her, as she crouched beside the sleeping dog. Her small face, pale beneath its shining mop, was full of innocent affection – she looked like a child herself – yet Nest knew instinctively that the moment had come at last. Her hands clenched upon her lap in terror but she spoke out bravely.

‘I
do
really know,' she said. Her heart seemed to flutter in her throat. ‘I had a child, you see, years ago.' She looked away from the expression of surprise on Lyddie's face, concentrating on her story lest she should lose courage. ‘It wasn't so simple, in those days, to be a single parent. Apart from the stigma there was none of the financial support that
can be claimed now and you had to be very well off to provide child-care while you earned a living. I taught English – well, you can remember that – and at the time I worked in the private sector . . .'

‘Did they throw you out?' Lyddie sounded so indignant that Nest managed a faint smile.

‘No,' she said. ‘The headmistress was a very fair woman. And very sensible. She gave me a sabbatical. I became pregnant in the autumn and took the spring and summer terms off. If anyone at the school suspected they never said anything and I was very glad to have work to go back to the following September.'

‘But what did Grandmama say?' Lyddie was sitting back on her heels, the grooming forgotten, shocked but full of sympathy for this beloved aunt. ‘And Aunt Mina? Did she know?'

‘Oh, yes. Mina knew. Your grandmother was horrified, to begin with, but it was Mina who calmed her down. As much as anything it was the terrible stigma of having an unmarried pregnant daughter. That's probably so difficult for you to imagine in these enlightened days, but even in the middle sixties it was a disgrace . . .'

‘But the father,' interrupted Lyddie. ‘Couldn't you . . .? Was he . . .?'

‘He was married.' She spoke so low that Lyddie got up and came closer, sitting down on the chair beside the table, the brush still in her hand.

‘Oh, Nest . . .'

Nest looked at her. ‘It wasn't an affair,' she said with difficulty. ‘Nothing like that. It was just once. But I loved him, you see.'

Her face crumpled a little – and then she smiled again, shaking her head at Lyddie's quick impulsive gesture.

‘You mustn't be sorry for me,' she said. ‘Wait. I'm trying to think.'

‘So Grandmama made you have the baby adopted?' Lyddie prompted her gently, full of compassion.

Nest took a deep breath, her eyes looked unseeingly out into the courtyard and she nodded.

‘Mmm.' She steadied her voice. ‘It was agreed that . . . the baby must be adopted. Even Mina pressed for it. Everyone decided that it was the best thing for— The best thing.'

Lyddie got up, dropping the brush, and came to kneel beside Nest's chair: in the face of this pain her own suffering receded.

‘How awful.'

‘It was awful.' She stared down at Lyddie's hand, warm upon her own, and then into the green-grey eyes that watched her so lovingly.

‘But who was “everyone”? Did all the family know?'

‘No, not all. Josie and Alec had gone to America by then and Georgie was with Tom doing some kind of exchange posting in Geneva. Timmie was with the army in Germany but he knew. Timmie was a great comfort.'

‘And Mummy? Did she know?'

Nest stared round the kitchen, out into the courtyard and, at last, back at Lyddie.

‘I've thought this through a million times,' she said, ‘and there is no way except plain truth. Yes, Henrietta knew. She knew because it was she who adopted my baby girl.' She watched confusion give way to realization and the sudden wash of colour flood into Lyddie's cheeks. ‘Forgive me, if you can, for breaking the silence now. It's just—'

‘
Your
child?'

‘Henrietta had great difficulty in carrying a baby. She had several miscarriages and she couldn't have any more
children after Roger.' Nest spoke quickly, as if by words she could alleviate the effect of such a bombshell. ‘And she so longed for another baby . . . Oh God! This is awful.' Nest tried out various phrases and rejected them; they were, ultimately, simply pleas for pity. She felt weak and ill but strove to hide it from the girl who still kneeled beside her, her eyes wide with shock.

‘I could say all the obvious things: we felt it was the best thing for you; you had a better chance with Henrietta and Connor; you were staying within the family.' She gave a little gasp of self-disgust. ‘None of it is relevant to how
you
feel, I imagine. The trouble is, I don't
know
how you feel. Utterly shocked, well, of course. Betrayed?' Nest swallowed in a dry throat.

‘And my father?' asked Lyddie after a moment. ‘Was it the man you talked about who left you?'

Nest looked down, surprised to see that Lyddie was still clasping her hands. She rallied herself for this next hurdle.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I loved him.' Somehow this was important, terribly important. ‘And he . . .' She could see all the pitfalls, knew that Lyddie, in her present raw state, would judge according to her own lights . . .

‘And he was married.' Lyddie finished the sentence for her – but almost calmly, as if she were making her own assessments, coming to her own conclusions.

‘It was Connor.' Nest couldn't bear to hear her guessing. ‘Your father is . . . was your father. He and I—' She stopped: how to tell this without condemning Connor as an adulterer? ‘He and I . . .'

‘Were in love before Henrietta came on the scene.'

They both started as Mina spoke from the doorway behind them, their joined hands clutching convulsively together.

‘Georgie's pottering in the garden with the dogs.' This was clearly to reassure them and she smiled at Nest. ‘I have a feeling that you've been telling the story the wrong way round. You know the rule? Begin at the beginning? It sounds as if you've started at the end. Come, child.' She held a hand out to Lyddie, who climbed stiffly to her feet. She looked dazed. ‘Nest needs to rest and I have things to tell you. When you've heard the whole of the story you and Nest shall talk again.'

She slipped an arm about her shoulders and led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. After a moment Nest wheeled herself across the hall into her own room and closed the door behind her.

As soon as she was alone she began to tremble. That it should happen like this after more than thirty years of silence; after these last few weeks of heightened anxiety and strain. The moment had offered itself and she'd taken it; the relief was enormous. She gulped down great, ragged draughts of air, steadying herself, trying to control the shaking of her limbs. What had Lyddie actually said? How had she reacted? Mina had come to her rescue as she always had; right from the beginning when, in the early days after the flood and the arrival of Henrietta's letter, Nest had taken her fully into her confidence. Mina might be able to make more sense of it to Lyddie just as she had, somehow, made sense of it to Mama all those years ago.

She stands between Nest and the appalled expression on Mama's face.

‘It's not the end of the world,' she says firmly. ‘Is it, Mama? This happens to all kinds of people. Doesn't it, Mama?'

There is an intensity in the question that slowly penetrates Mama's shock until she blinks and turns away.

‘Yes,' she says, ‘yes, of course; nevertheless . . .'