The Children's Hour (3 page)

Lyddie turned away from the gate, called to the Bosun – who gazed reproachfully at her, as he always did, amazed and aggrieved that his fun should be cut short – and headed back towards the town, thinking about the Aunts. It seemed rather unfair of Helena to ask Aunt Mina to cope with her older sister for so long.

‘Two months?' she'd repeated anxiously. ‘It's an awfully long time, Aunt Mina, especially if she's being a bit dotty. I wish I could help but I'm booked up for the next six weeks . . .'

She could hear that Aunt Mina was battling with several emotions and so she'd tried to be practical, pointing out the obvious problems of dealing with an elderly and strong-minded woman – who was probably in the grips of dementia or Alzheimer's – with no help except limited assistance from another sister who was confined to a wheelchair. At the same time, Lyddie was able to identify with Aunt Mina's need to help Georgie.

‘She is our sister,' she'd said – and once again, Lyddie had remembered how, ten years before, Mina had had the strength to bear the horror not only of Nest's injuries but also of the death of their sister Henrietta.

Lyddie had swallowed down an onrush of sadness.

‘You must do what you think is right,' she'd said, ‘but do tell me if it gets tricky. Perhaps we could all club together for you to have some help if Helena and Rupert don't suggest it themselves. Or I could work at Ottercombe if necessary, you know.'

‘I'm sure you could, my darling,' Mina had answered warmly, ‘but we'll probably manage and it will be a change for us. Now, tell me about you. Is everything all right . . .?'

‘I'm fine,' she'd answered, ‘absolutely fine. And Liam too . . .'

By the time they'd finished talking she'd had the feeling that Aunt Mina had already made up her mind about Georgie, and suspected that the telephone call had actually been to make certain that all was well with her niece in Truro rather than to seek advice. Lyddie was filled with a warm affection for her aunts; there was a toughness, an invincibility about them both. Nevertheless, a trip to Exmoor would put her mind at rest. Lyddie put the Bosun on his lead as they made their way back through the narrow streets, thinking now of the evening ahead, her spirits rising at the contemplation of supper at The Place with Liam and Joe.

Later, in the scullery at Ottercombe, Mina was clearing up after supper. The routine was generally the same each evening: Mina prepared to wash up whilst Nest, sitting beside the draining-board, would wait, cloth in hand. Once dried, each item would be placed on the trolley next to her chair and, when it was all done, Mina would push the trolley into the kitchen whilst Nest went away to prepare for the remainder of the evening's entertainment: a game of Scrabble or backgammon at the gate-legged table, a favourite television programme, or a video of one of Mina's much-loved musicals. She had never lost her talent for reading aloud and books were another mainstay of their amusement. Their simple diet included not only the well-loved classics – Austen, Dickens, Trollope – but also included Byatt, Gardam, Keane and Godden and was interleaved with travelogues, a thriller or
The Wind in the Willows
, depending on their mood. Lyddie occasionally brought along a current best-seller or the latest Carol Ann Duffy volume to liven up their appetites.

Mina dried her hands on the roller towel behind the
scullery door and wheeled the trolley into the kitchen whilst the dogs continued to lick at their empty, well-polished bowls.

‘You've finished it all,' she told them. ‘Every last scrap.'

Polly Garter and Captain Cat pattered after her into the kitchen but Nogood Boyo remained, quartering the floor, just in case some morsel had been mislaid.

As she put the plates back on the dresser and slid knives and forks into the drawer, Mina was making plans for Georgie's arrival. Although she'd known almost immediately that this visit couldn't be avoided – how could she deny her own sister? – nevertheless, she was deeply unsettled by the thought of it. Her own anxieties about whether she could cope had been overshadowed by Nest's formless premonitions. Or were they formless? Every family had skeletons of one shape or another – and Georgie had always loved secrets. She'd used them as weapons over her siblings, to shore up her position as eldest, to make herself important.

‘I know a secret' – a little singsong chant. Mina could hear it quite clearly. Her heart speeded and her hands were clumsy as she arranged the after-supper tray, lifted the boiling kettle from the hotplate of the Esse, made the tea. Was it possible that Georgie knew Nest's secret?

‘Don't be more of an old fool than you can help.' She spoke aloud, to reassure herself, and the dogs pricked their ears, heads tilted hopefully.

If Georgie had suspected anything she would have spoken up long since. And, if she'd kept silent for more than thirty years, why should she speak now? Mina shook her head, shrugging away her foolish forebodings. It was Nest's fear that had infected her, bringing the past into the present. There was no need for all this silly panic. Yet, as she refilled
the kettle, her heart ached suddenly with a strange, poignant longing for the past and she thought she heard her mother's voice reading from
A Shropshire Lad
: Housman's ‘blue remembered hills'.

Mina stood quite still, her head bowed, still holding the kettle. The land of lost content: those happy, laughter-filled years. The tears had come much later . . . Presently she placed the kettle on the back of the stove and bent to caress the dogs, murmuring love-words to them until the moment passed and she was in command again. Picking up the tray, willing herself into calm, Mina went to find Nest.

Despite the games of backgammon, Mina's thoughts strayed back to the past; to those long-ago years with Papa away in London for much of the time so that the children had Mama all to themselves, reading to them, taking them to the beach, for excursions on the moors; the rules belonging to the smart London house relaxed into permanent holiday.

Mina is eight years old when her mother, Lydia, is sent down to Ottercombe for a long rest. The youngest child, Josephine – for Timmie and Nest are not yet born – has just had her fourth birthday and in the last three years there have been two miscarriages. Ambrose believes that the sea air will do Lydia good, strengthening her, so that she will be able to give him the son for which he craves.

‘All these women!' he cries – but she hears the irritation rasping beneath the geniality and feels the tiny tick of fear deep inside her. She has had twelve years in which to discover the seam of cruelty buried deep in Ambrose's bluff
good temper. He is not physically cruel – no, not that – but he uses language to prick and goad so that Lydia learns that a voice can be both instrument and weapon.

Her own voice is an instrument: pure, sweet, controlled. She sings to her babies, lulling them with nursery rhymes, and reads to them.

‘All these books,' says Ambrose. ‘Oh, for a boy to play a decent game of cricket.'

Ambrose is an attractive man; not much above average height, with brown curling hair, which is cut very short. His eyes are a bright, sparkling blue and he has an easy, confident approach which makes people, at first, feel very comfortable with him. It is he who names the children: Georgiana, Wilhelmina, Henrietta, Josephine. Only later does Lydia understand that these lovely names are part of his strange humour, related to his frustration at being the father of girls. He is not the type of man to be interested in babies, and she thinks it is just a joke when he asks after George or Will, but, as they grow, the joke wears thin. She hates to hear her pretty daughters addressed as George, Will, Henry and Jo but he does not relent.

‘Don't be so sensitive, darling,' he says, the blue eyes a little harder now, less sparkling, as they look at her; she tells herself that she must be careful not to irritate him, and that it's simply, like most men, he longs for a son. She feels inadequate, as if she is failing him, and hopes for another child to follow Josephine; a little boy, this time. After her first miscarriage Lydia begins to suffer asthma attacks and during the winter of 1932, so as to avoid the London fog, she is despatched to Ottercombe. She cannot quite believe her luck. Since a child, Exmoor has been her idea of paradise and, although Ambrose has consented to summer breaks in the old house at the head of the cleave, he does
not like to leave her behind when he returns to London. He is a senior civil servant and his delightful wife is a great asset to him. Lydia is beautiful, popular – and useful. So she is deeply touched when he announces that he is prepared to manage without her for as long as is necessary. Her health, however, is not the only reason for Ambrose's unexpected attack of philanthropy. Ambrose has made a new friend, a wealthy widow whose robust appetites and tough ambition match his own, and he seizes this opportunity to know her better.

He is too clever, though, to rouse Lydia's suspicions, and he makes certain that – by the time the party is due to set out for the South-west – she feels too guilty at leaving him to think of her husband with anything but gratitude. He drives them himself, in his handsome, much-cherished Citroën, and settles them at Ottercombe. The young local couple, who are glad to earn extra money to caretake the house, are given instructions to shop and clean and care for Lydia and her children so that the following morning, when Ambrose drives away, his thoughts are all directed towards a certain house in St John's Wood.

As the sound of the engine dies in the distance, Lydia gives a great sigh of relief. Her children run shouting and laughing on the lawn and Wilhelmina tugs at her arm.

‘May we go to the beach, Mama? If we wrap up warmly?'

Lydia bends to hug her. ‘Of course we shall. After lunch. Afternoons are the best times for the beach, even in the winter.'

‘And we'll come back and have tea by the fire, won't we? Will you read to us?'

‘Yes, my darling, if that's what you'd all like. I'll read to you.'

So it begins.

*

In her bedroom, which had once been the morning-room, Nest was very nearly ready for bed. The room, adapted for her needs, was austere, simple and unadorned, no roads back to the past by way of photographs or knick-knacks; no idiosyncrasies by which to be interpreted; no possessions with which she might be defined. Only necessities stood on the small oak chest, although several books were piled upon the bedside table along with her Walkman. She was able to stand for short periods, to haul herself along using furniture and her stick as aids, but she tired quickly and the pain was always there, ready to remind her that she was severely limited. At first, in the dark months immediately following the accident, she hadn't wanted to move at all. Suffering was a penance for her guilt. She'd lie on her bed, staring at the ceiling above, reliving the appalling moment: Henrietta at the wheel, Connor beside her, head half-turned to Nest in the back seat. If only she hadn't spoken, hadn't cried out in frustration, maybe Henrietta wouldn't have been distracted for that brief, vital, tragic moment.

It was Mina who had propelled Nest back into life, both physically and emotionally; bullying her into her wheelchair so as to push her into the garden, manhandling Nest and her chair into the specially adapted motor caravan, forcing her to live.

‘I can't,' she'd mumbled. ‘Please, Mina. I don't want to see anyone. Try to understand. I have no right . . .'

‘Not even the deaths of Henrietta and Conner give you an excuse to wall yourself up alive. Anyway, Lyddie needs you . . .'

‘No!' she'd said, straining back in her chair, head turned aside from Mina's implacability. ‘No! Don't you see? I
killed
them.'

‘Lyddie and Roger know only that Henrietta misjudged the bend, not why. They need you.'

Lyddie's love and sympathy had been the hardest burden to bear.

‘I think you'll find,' Mina had said much later, ‘that living and loving will be just as cruel as self-imposed seclusion could ever be. You'll be punished quite enough – if that's what you want.'

So Nest had given herself up to life as best she could, withholding nothing, accepting everything – nearly everything. She still refused to allow Mina to push her down to the sea. The sea was the symbol of freedom, of holiday; the reward after the long trek from London. Oh, the smell of it; its cool, silky embrace on hot hands and feet; its continuous movement, restless yet soothing.

Now, as she lay at last in bed, exhausted by the exertions of getting there, she could picture the path to the sea. Here, between Blackstone Point and Heddon's Mouth, the steep-sided cleave, thickly wooded with scrub oak, beech and larch, cuts a deep notch into the cliff. At the head of the cleave, a quarter of a mile from the sea, stands Ottercombe House, sheltered and remote in its wild, exotic garden. A rocky path, stepped with roots, runs beside the stream which rises on Exmoor, on Trentishoe Down. A tiny spring at first, it gathers speed, trickling from the heights, spilling down the rock-face in a little waterfall behind the house, welling through the culvert in the garden and pouring along the narrow valley until, finally, it plunges into the sea.

Her eyes closed, Nest could picture each bend in the path to the beach; she could see the rhododendrons flourishing, despite the shallow covering of soil over the rocks: those Morte Slates, which run in a narrow band from Morte Point, across Devon and into Somerset. In early May drifts of
bluebells grow beneath the terraces of trees, a cerulean lake of falling, flowing colour. In August, when the heather is in flower, the shoulders of the moor, which hunches above even the highest trees, shimmers bluish-purple in the afternoon sun. The path itself holds tiny seasonal treasures: bright green ferns, a clump of snowdrops, yellow-backed snails. How the children dawdle, postponing that delicious moment when they can at last see the sea; the cleave widening out as if to embrace the crescent-shaped beach, the cliff walls descending steeply into the grey waters. The stream, which has been beside them all the way, tumbles into a deeply shelving, rocky pool and then travels on, carving a track across the shaly sand until it is lost in the cold waters of the Bristol Channel.