The Diamond Waterfall (23 page)

She explained to her producer that as soon as he could make satisfactory arrangements she must leave. “I am expecting a child, I cannot afford to take risks.” It was given out that she left for reasons of health, the full truth to come later. The convenient folding of another show, releasing an actress who had first been suggested for Princess Violet, making it all simple.

In early July she traveled back to Yorkshire. She felt a sense of relief but also of failure. She thought with longing of her two children. Of the happiness she had had with Theodora, the late joy (please God not too late) with Hal. She could not wait to be a mother again.

A letter from Paris awaited her. “My darling, darling, what wonderful news. An actress again. Surely you are the toast of London! My news is that I am absolutely certain to come the end of July! Mimie Billaud wrote to me that she had forgotten to forward a letter and what was she to do? I have been since Christmas on a tour of the Far East, with a dear but very ill uncle. Write
at once
that everything is all right for my London visit—I can't believe we are really to be together…. O my lily of the valley, we shall.”

She grew much larger, much sooner than with either Teddy or Hal. Nan-Nan assured her it was a boy. The missed reunion with Valentin caused her sleepless nights. She wrote a despairing letter, and received his heartbroken reply. She told herself, One day,
but not now,
I shall have to admit it is all The Past. Meanwhile, she sent him cuttings of Teddy's uncompromisingly straight hair, some photographs, two large-fisted drawings.

She wondered sometimes why, in the end, Robert had allowed her return to the stage. She was not deceived. He was a selfish man, as well as often a cruel one. She decided that temporarily he had enjoyed the reflected glory. He had taken a calculated risk (was he not in the end a risk taker?). At least he had not summoned Lionel for that evening of the new baby's conception. How odd other people are, she thought. All I want is so simple: to love, to be loved,
as Val and I love each other.
Yet there are people whose satisfactions can be obtained only, if at all, in such strange ways. (Lionel, and those poor little virgins. It isn't bearable. Yet fortunately, perhaps, I have always been able to think of him, to see him, as two persons. Would it not help if I could do the same with Robert?)

A week of violent winds and gales toward the end of November. Standing at the drawing-room window she saw, moving among the trees, a bent shabby figure. It was late afternoon, the light going fast.

She rang the bell. “There's some sort of—tramp outside. If the matter could be seen to?”

Only a few moments later a breathless parlormaid knocked.

“A gentleman's here, m'lady, that'll not give his name but you'll know him and be glad, he says.”

A disreputable-looking figure. And surely the one she had seen outside. He smelled, of dirt, of drink. His thin brown overcoat was torn and stained. Red-veined bulbous nose, watery eyes set in a dry, wrinkled skin. She thought with sudden disloyalty, Someone from Joszef's family. Someone who will trade on my love for Daisy.

“I rather think—” she began, but she was interrupted:

“Lily!” The voice, although cracked, husky, was well-bred—exaggeratedly so. Then: “Queen of my heart!” he cried.

She saw, thankfully, that the maid had left. She felt a sudden overwhelming nausea. Don't let him touch me. The smell as he came nearer was worse.

“You're drunk,” she said, moving back a little. Her condition of obvious pregnancy embarrassed her. He said more quietly:

“Is that the welcome I get, my
Queen,
eh?” He'd come into the center of the room, was fingering the raised embroidery of an antimacassar. She saw that his hands were not only dirty but blue. I must beware of pity.

“What is it you want?”

“Didn't I come just to see you? Weren't we very close, once? Ought I to say
how
close?”

She didn't answer. He shall not refer to that time.
When I'm carrying a child, I must never think of what happened to Vicky.

“Not a thing did I know. Didn't Frank try to make a living Down Under? Australian touring companies. Constance died, you know. 'Twas then I returned. Only, these days they've nothing for me. Didn't I learn then of your comeback? That you were famous. And a Lady. You've done better than Frank—”

She said, “It's drink, isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said, beginning to cry.

She didn't soften.
I am not the Lily Greene of 1890.
“What is it you want? Money? It's not, I'm sure, a visit for old times' sake.”

“Yes, money.” Then he added, “Or else—”

“Oh nonsense,” she said. “Sir Robert wouldn't believe a word of it. Threats indeed!” She turned away from him. He had taken out a large red handkerchief and was alternately blowing his nose and wiping his eyes. “If it's money you want, you shall have it. As a gift. Only—do not ask again, or I shall inform the police.”

She crossed over to her desk. There she wrote out a check for three hundred pounds. She placed it in an envelope and handed it to him.

“Now—go.”

This must be the sweetest dearest baby ever. Alice's darling, Sylvia. With a cloud of fair curls, and in this summer of 1905, fifteen months old. Sylvia, universally adored. Already it could be seen that her nature was sweet and gentle. Alice thought, Best not to suspect even for a moment that she might not be a Firth. She had hidden away what she'd learned. For weeks at a time Teddy was just her little stepsister. Then suddenly memory, betrayal, would flood back.

They had been dark days, those first weeks back in Yorkshire. Despairing, hopeless, above all, unreal. Reality was holding a letter up to the looking glass, hiding behind the oleander bushes, hearing
those
words.

She longed sometimes for the consolations of religion, remembering
when she had been attracted to Roman Catholicism, before Aunt Violet had let her down so badly. Of course one should not let other people's conduct influence one's beliefs, but it
had
had an effect. If she left home, perhaps it would be better. But where to go, what to do? And to leave would be to lose the one certain, most important thing in her life: her friendship with Gib.

She did not often discuss religion with him. Church and home, they were one to him, the very air he breathed. For me, she thought, a church should be a mother. She thought sadly of the shrine, long since dismantled, she had had for Mama.

My future, she asked herself, what will it be? Continued studies in German, visits twice a week to the poor, horrid social appearances in the hope someone will pay court, and, over the years, less and less time with Gib. Until we are separated and there is none at all.

But I smile and manage well enough. I am sharp, she thought, opening the nursery door, going in to where Nan-Nan sewed by the firescreen, and Hal, seated on the rocking horse, Teddy pulling at the reins, waved a mock saber.

“Give it
me,
Hal!”

“Shan't!”

“Shall”

“It's
my
horse, I was born first!”

Then the reassuring voice of Nan-Nan:

“Whatever's all this? Both of you away from that horse! Look at Baby, nearly in tears. You'll have tea with us, Miss Alice?”

I shall eat, Alice thought. I may still be very thin, but I don't reject food any longer. Because of Gib.
For his sake.

It happened the July after the Riviera visit when he came home for the holidays. He seemed to like school well enough. He'd enjoyed, he told her, some dressing up, singing, that sort of thing. It didn't please her. She didn't care for that side of him. When he clowned, for her he lost something.

But that summer she had had him to herself. To be with him was peace. Excitement too, for they were to experiment with her new camera. He was to do her portrait first. She had stood happily while, cloth over head and camera, he had busied himself focusing. Afterward, she had said:

“The shutter, Gib, it oughtn't to stick. I rubbed it with a soft pencil.”

As if he hadn't heard her, he burst out, “I can't bear it!”

“What? Can't bear
what?”

“You are so thin, I can't—”

“What do you mean? I'm the same as ever, I'm Alice.”

“No, you look like, I can't—it mustn't be—” His voice trembled. He said urgently, “A shadow, that's what you're like.”

“I look perfectly all right,” she said sharply.

“No. No. Look, you mustn't … Thin like
that
means … She, my
mama, was thin when the sickness began. Then always thinner, Father and I could see it, I heard him say to Aunt Ettie, ‘It's the thinness—that she fades before our eyes.'
Alice,
I
cannot bear it that you are so thin.”

Shocked, she couldn't speak. When she did, it was some technical remark about the Watkin's actinometer, and had he the pendulum? That evening when the dish came around she took a second helping of potatoes, one of summer pudding too. Curiously she enjoyed it, not for any pleasure she received but because by eating she gave pleasure.

Curiously also, after a month of eating, when she looked in the glass she did not seem much bigger, just softer, calmer. Too, the bleeding started again. This time she shrugged resignedly.

When Hal could get away from everybody, he liked best to wander about. Library, conservatory, gallery, unlocked bedrooms, guest wing, or down below in the kitchens where if the mood was good they made a fuss of him. But best of all: the garden. The whole north part, stretching from the rose walk to the copse, was his kingdom.

Red, Violet, Green, Blue, Yellow Fairy Books. Read to him by Alice or Mother, best of all by Mother. Read on his own (he could talk in all the voices: witch, beggar, princess, goatboy). In the evening Mother might come to the nursery, sparkling with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and be seen to
be
the Princess, the Queen.

I am King Henry. I reign over the little wood behind the orchard. Willow and hazel and ash—it was here long before they built The Towers. It is my very ancient kingdom.

I walk boldly into it. My voice is full of echoes.

Once upon a time the king of the Goldland lost himself in a forest and try as he would he could not find the way out. He saw a man coming toward him. “What are you doing here, friend?” asked the stranger. “Darkness is falling fast and soon the wild beasts will come from their lairs.”

“I have lost myself,” answered the king.

“Daft beggar,” said a voice. “Who're ye talking to?”

A stranger. A stranger in the kingdom. The boy was about Hal's height, but older. He had on very thick breeches of rough material and his jacket was torn.

“Who are you, what are you doing in my grounds?”

“A lad can walk an' all, can't he?”

“I am Henry Reginald Francis Exelby Firth. I command you to leave my kingdom—”

“Right fluffed up wi' yourself, aren't you? Well, I'm
Stephen
—Ibbotson.”

Hal said mockingly, “You're a reet fluffed-up beggar yoursen.”

The boy grew suddenly angry. “Ye've no call to tak off way I talk.” He
kicked at a piece of dead wood. “Any road, I'd not want to talk
grand
—like you.”

“I've two sisters,” Hal said in a conciliatory tone. “What about you?”

“A sight more. There's Will. Then Meg as died, our James, and Ted. Olive—she's eight year. And I were ten a week since.” He added, “But Ted, he's been two days badly, can't fetch his breath—can't swallow, like. Dad says we've to call doctor if he's not mended soon.” He paused. “I'd best be gone. Ye'll not tell on me? It were just a notion I had, to walk about, see for missen like, how it is. Our Will, he says in France they're rid of all rich folk. Heads off—King and Queen an' all. It'll happen here too, he says—one day.”

As he made toward the fence, he turned a moment. “I like ye, Sir Henry,” he said, and grinned.

Gib sang: “Teddy, I've a little canoe
                Room for me, my Teddy, and you.
                Then Teddy, we might canoodle, we two.”

He swung her. She giggled.
“My
birthday song, sing it again, more, Gib, please!”

“Gib, enough,” said Alice. “You'll make her queasy. After cream cakes. Really.” She felt impatience rising but kept her voice steady. She could not bear the look his face would wear if she showed disapproval. And yet all this afternoon, Teddy's birthday, he had played the high-spirited fool.

Everyone was out on the great lawn before the house, eating birthday tea. Jack Hawksworth was playing with Hal, Mrs. Hawksworth and Belle Maman were talking, laughing, trying to include Alice. She planned to leave them in a moment and, until Gib was hers again, talk to poor Fräulein.

Voices:

“Dr. Sowerby told Charlie there's a second case. The same family. I guess, well, diphtheria, if they can just keep it down. Alice dear, you've not been sick-peopling about there?”

“No, Mrs. Hawksworth. Just my usual visits.”

Gib, bowling gentle underarm cricket balls for Jack and Hal. And then tomorrow morning, setting off with his uncle and two boy cousins walking in the Swiss Alps. When he came back, there would be only two weeks of his holiday left. He had almost finished with school. One more year and then Cambridge.

She remembered now her one visit to Marlborough, to Speech Day. Flushed, proud, he had shown her about. Afterward he told her, “It was really frightfully jolly. The other chaps had their mothers. But I had
you
watching out for me, Alice.”

“Darling,
Hal,
it's Alice here, Alice is with you.”