The Diamond Waterfall (25 page)

“Someday perhaps
I
shall be able to persuade you?”

“No, not even you.”

“Not
even
me? Then I am a little—special?”

She ignored this flirtatious remark. He said then:

“A change of subject perhaps? Have you the theme of bicycles in your home? Young Jack speaks of little else and I understand Hal is as enthusiastic. Would you agree we should wait till ten years old, possibly even eleven?”

The castle was large and drafty, although architecturally pleasant. It stood above a loch with woods of pine and fir rising behind. Real winter had not yet arrived and the wind that blew across the water was a mild westerly one.

Charlie was asked to take her in to dinner the first evening. She was grateful. In her vulnerable state, she dreaded fresh acquaintance. Conversation at the dinner table was predictable. The poor cubbing season, the lockout at Paisley Thread Mill and dreadful ever-present fears of revolution, of anarchy.

She ached dully, with loss. Perhaps because she looked less frivolous than some of the other women guests, she became on the second day the confidante of one Teresa Mildmay, just twenty and married for about eighteen months. She desperately wanted to conceive an heir. Her mother-in-law reproached her continually. The third day, during afternoon tea, a packet was brought Teresa by special messenger. She opened it in view of the other guests. Inside, a small celluloid baby doll, dressed in blue. The sender, her mother-in-law. She ran from the room in tears. Lily would have followed her, except that her husband, coming in a moment later, went himself. Such distress made Lily feel ashamed of her own, intractable, pain.

The last evening, as she came downstairs, she knew that she looked well, beautiful even. But the realization brought only sadness.

After dinner, the gramophone. Walnut cabin, immense brass horn, it blared out from the minstrel gallery.
The Girls of Gothenburg, Floradora.

Charlie said, “They play nothing from
The Duke and the Shopgirl.”

“No records were cut.”

He said, “I worshiped at your shrine that summer. Jubilee summer.”

“Oh, fooey. You were in Philadelphia.” His mood irritated, and at the same time, touched her. He seemed suddenly terribly young (for all that he was such an authority—Sadie with her “Charlie says”). She put out a hand, touched his lightly. “Fm sorry. My tongue is often sharp these days.”

He laid his other hand over hers, pressed it hard, holding it there even when she tried to move. “Yes,” he said, “yes—Lily.”

And what does that mean? she thought, feeling uneasy. Fleetingly, something in his manner, his eagerness, reminded her of Edmund. That old story, she thought. And yet at the same time his mention of that summer, the Diamond Jubilee, and her triumph, all gone sour. The wrong choice made.
And now Val has left me.

“Such a sad look. I think of you always as the one who lightens our dinner parties. Do you miss Sir Robert?”

“No,” she said. “No, Charlie.” She was horrified to feel a tear slide down one cheek. She brushed it away, hoping he would not have seen it. She said brightly, falsely:

“These records. They are not modern at all. Ask them, would you, if they have a cakewalk?”

Upstairs, after her maid had brushed her hair, she lay in bed in the darkness, unable to sleep.

The corridor creaked outside. Footsteps, slow, then growing quicker. They went past her door. Ten minutes, twenty minutes. The clock struck one. Again the creaking in the corridor. Steps, nearer, stopping.

The door opened. She heard her name, whispered.

“No,” she said. “No. Please go,
at once.”

She did not dare to speak louder. I should have locked it, she thought. What was I about? It was suddenly too late: she did not mean, would never have chosen to,
was not that kind of person
—and yet here it was happening.

Caresses. How she had missed caresses. It was the first touch, perhaps, that was her undoing. If it, he, could only stop there. If she could stop him. But she found it impossible to resist this
caring,
for that was what it felt like.

“No, no,” she repeated. And then did not speak again. She clung to Charlie and tried to forget.

She did not sleep afterward, but lay awake till morning, trembling. Remorse and guilt
(my best friend)
lay thickly, painfully, over her unhappiness. What have I done, she thought,
what have I done?

Home again, she sealed up in a leather box everything to do with Val. Letters, pressed flowers, his shirt, even the opal ring. Lover's opal. It was all over.

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, there'd been enough sun to make you think it was May or even June. Today, decided Hal, didn't look half as good. By afternoon, when he thought of going out on his own, the sky had grown dull and heavy. The tutor, Mr. Pettinger, that bandy-legged purveyor of Latin and Greek, had gone home to his family in Leicestershire. Otherwise some horrid idea would have been thought up for today: a nature outing, perhaps, with Mr. Pettinger (who knows nothing about anything unless it's out of a book, and who has
never been fishing in his whole life).

But “Jack has the measles, Jack has the measles” he chanted now, going through the thicket, out at the back behind the orchard. Probably there wouldn't be any lessons for a while, since he mustn't go near the Hall (soon something would be arranged—Mr. Pettinger would come to The Towers, alas). And all, he thought, because I have to be extra careful, on account of my—my—but he didn't want to say the word, or there might come suddenly that beating in his chest.

I nearly died. They told him that, often. Worse, the suggestion that for a nothing, it might happen again—if he didn't take care. The shadow on the bedroom wall when the wax night-light flickered, the enormous shadow with its changing shape, open shut open,
got you!
Death.

This afternoon Nan-Nan said he might do as he pleased. His parents were both out. Father he had no idea where, but his mother was with Mrs. Hawksworth. They were working together on a plan for curing children with rickets, which could make you lame. Mother was to speak to important people about obtaining funds, especially supplies of milk. He had heard Father call it, in a cross voice, “Mother's
good works.”
(But it
is
good, he thought.)

Because he didn't care to stay indoors, he decided on a walk. He said to Fräulein, who was passing along the corridor, hatted and gloved, “Fräulein, if anybody looks for me, I'm over the hills and far away—”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Good. And nice.”

“Die wetter, das wetter ist gut, ja, nein?”
he said. But she had already passed by.

For a while he followed the stone wall as it went up the hillside. Looking back, he could see The Towers and the fenced thicket behind, all growing more distant. It was cold, and wispy clouds had run together. Beneath, lowering almost, were the brown outlines of the moors. He knew where he was, but wasn't sure what happened when you climbed over into the next valley. Farther up, he looked back to where he could see the river run: Flaxthorpe Bridge, the houses grouped on the green, the church tower square and dark; the patterns of the dry stone walls as they crossed and recrossed the hillside.

The ground was dry and springy from yesterday's weather. As he came down into the valley he wasn't so sure where he was. I
might
go back now. He wouldn't, anyway, climb up on the high moor. He followed a grassy lane for a little, passing a cow barn. Below was meadow, and he could see farm buildings.

Then a sheepdog, brown and white, rough-haired, came through a gap in the stone wall higher up the hillside, running in his direction. A moment later a boy appeared. He was carrying two rabbits on a string. Seeing Hal, he stopped, stared a few seconds. Then began walking toward him.

“Tess,” he called to the dog, “way here, way here, Tess …”

The chill air, the lowering sky. I wish now I'd turned back, Hal thought. Faint rumble of thunder …

The boy drew nearer. “Tess, Tess, way here!”

(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. As he was wandering down one path …)

I know that face….

(“What are you doing here, friend?” asked the stranger. “Darkness is falling fast.”)

“Bye, hell,” said the boy, “if it's not His Lordship from The Towers.” He grinned. He had still that friendly grin, which at once altered his face.

Hal shivered. The sky, darkening rapidly, the air growing chiller.

“They call me Stephen,” the boy said. He pointed ahead. “Ibbotson. Lane Top Farm. You mind we met afore?”

“Yes, yes,” Hal said. “Yes, I remember.”

“And ye never told on me, eh?” He stood, swinging the rabbits from his arm.

The wind was getting up stronger. Earlier, Hal had noticed the sheep huddled together.

Stephen said, “Look at sky. We're in for a storm.” Tess, the dog, was crouched at his feet, head on ground, eyes darting warily from side to side. “Birds—they've hushed singing. And Tess, she knows right enow—

“Tess, way home. Home then!” He shooed her suddenly. “Me dad, me brother Will, he'll be vexed and all—that I've took her. He's forbid me—”

The lightning came first, flashing the grass to the west of them an electric
green. Tess, who'd been moving reluctantly, shot forward in sudden fear. Claps of thunder followed.

“Bye—hear that! We'd best—” Stephen's voice was drowned.

Down it came, across it came, sleet, great hailstones, battering, stinging, against his ears, his cheeks.

Stephen grabbed the sleeve of Hal's Norfolk jacket. “Come along of me. Come by our place.” Together they ran down the stony grass to the track leading to the farm. Looking too near his feet, Hal stumbled over the cart ruts. Now, Stephen was ahead of him, the rabbits' bodies swinging.

The violence of those hailstones. He was running into them, it seemed. And then it seemed they came at him, icy, from every side.

As he went through the gateway, he saw a door slightly open. Stephen's face came around it. “Bye, but ye're slow.” He pulled him inside roughly. Both of them shook themselves like wet dogs.

Seconds later he found himself in the big farm kitchen which seemed full of people—more than he could count, all staring at him. Or perhaps they weren't? When he looked again he saw that two of them at least were paying him no attention at all.

“Come close to fire, then.”

But he was afraid to move. A man sat one side of the fire, mending something, tying, or was it untying, knots. He wasn't noticing Hal at all. In a wooden armchair a little bit away there was an old woman wearing a grubby cotton cap. Her feet, planted firmly, were in what looked like men's boots, without laces. She appeared to be asleep.

“Who's this now?” the man asked. He didn't look up.

A boy and a small girl, about his own age, sat at the kitchen table. The girl, who looked like a little brown bird, was watching him, gravely, with interest. A lanky boy of about eighteen, who'd been standing by the fire, crossed the room toward them.

Stephen said, “We got ourselves wetted and all—”

“Aye, I see that.” He was dark-haired, with a jutting underlip. He looked over at Hal. “Who's this, then?” But when Stephen told him, he only looked sour. “What were ye about, the two of you?”

“Just walking, Will. And him here, Mr. Firth, I found him. He were walking.”

It must have been their mother came in then. Pale, thin, tall: origin of Will's lankiness. Her head drooped on her neck. She spoke in a tired, kind voice:

“… summat hot to sup. Poor bairn. And a bite to eat.” Cloths were brought to rub down his hair, trousers and a heavy shirt found for him. Too big, but warm, dry. He changed in the room downstairs that Stephen shared with Will and the other brother, James. Stephen showed him the little cupboard
under the stairs. “That's where me sister, that's where our Olive sleeps.” Outside, the hail battered still.

“How many are there of you?” Hal asked.

“Will, that you've seen—he's all but head of us. Dad minds nowt. Then James, and—and me and Olive. Mam, Dad, and Granny Willans—her with the boots.”

“I noticed those,” Hal said.

“Deaf as a post, she is. And never sits near the fire. She's afeard she'll crack her boots. Alius worn them, she has, T feel
safe,
like,' she says, ‘I like to move me toes about.' “

Back in the kitchen, his Norfolk jacket, his sturdy tweed knickerbockers with their now damp leather knee bands, were hung by the fire. He said, “I really ought to go—”

“Not in this weather. No.” Mrs. Ibbotson sounded firm in spite of the faint voice and the feeble way of moving. She insisted that he sit by the fire.

It was Dad, Mr. Ibbotson, who hadn't much to say for himself. Nor James. Will spoke the most. The little girl, Olive, smiled twice at Hal, her mouth widening slowly.

Will asked, fixing Stephen with a look, “Where were ye then, our Stephen?”

“Out …”

“Ye didn't mebbe tak Tess along t'walls? Ye weren't after rabbits …”

Stephen shrugged his shoulders. Will said, “Dad, he were out again.”

“Bye hell—what if I did?”

“We'll not have any of that talk, son,” his mother said. “There's words we don't use.” She paused. “And ye boots … when we've rugs down and all …”

Hal looked around the kitchen. Cotton handmade rugs covered part of the flagstones. Above him, something like a ladder on the ceiling had lengths of what looked to be dough hanging over its slats. He asked, “What are those?”

Olive answered first. “Havercakes.”