The Diamond Waterfall (62 page)

Quite a lot of her time was still spent at the orphanage. Ferdy affected to be amused. Occasionally he was impatient. “Don't you take all this a bit too seriously? Orphanages manage to run without constant visits from well-meaning ladies. It's your money they want and need.”

He talked little of himself. She found she knew almost nothing, other than that he'd lost an older brother in the war. (We have that in common, she told him.) Once he was rude about marriage. “Ah, marriage, pah. Spider's web, you shouldn't walk in.”

Most of the time was just—fun. He became part of her life. She went with him when he visited London for a week, prior to spending three or four months there in the spring of '34. She did not bother to go up to Yorkshire.

Their last night in London, Ferdy had a slight fever, and she went alone to the Albert Hall for the Festival of Remembrance—and wished she had not. She had removed herself so much from her memories that to stir them was unbearable. And it was to begin all over again! From what she heard—sooner or later, probably sooner—there would be another war. The only possible
justification for the sacrifice of Gib and Hal and the millions of others had been that it would not happen again.

They sang “There's a Long Long Trail,” “Tipperary,” “Roses of Picardy.” She was back at The Towers Hospital—the twice weekly entertainments. Courage of the wounded and maimed, of the healed who went back. She thought, It is not the same for others who hear these songs. A million rose petals fell from the roof. The voice, boyish still, of the Prince of Wales recited,
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left …”

They sang
“Abide with Me, fast falls the eventide
…” She thought of Flaxthorpe church, and Gib, always of Gib. That night, sleepless in the small hours, the idea took hold of her: if Gib came back,
what would he think of me?

While Ferdy was based in Paris he went home to Belgium alternate weekends. She knew nothing at all about his life there. He spoke of his mother—the Boche hater—and of how he had to drive her out on Sundays. He never suggested that she should come with him, and she was glad he did not. “It's boring duty weekend again,” he would say. Grandpère was alive still, aged eighty-eight. He too liked a drive in the country. …

Before Christmas, Ferdy spent two weeks at his firm's Milan office. She could not resist joining him, although the weather was atrocious. She hardly knew Italy and felt it a bad introduction. He had a few days free and they visited Verona, and then Venice. While they were there the weather worsened. The tide rose steadily, reaching several feet in St. Mark's Square, which had to be navigated by boat.

They found themselves talking one day about Gib. She mentioned him seldom, telling Ferdy as little as he told her about his past, or present. Sometimes just to speak Gib's name to someone like Ferdy, she felt, was a betrayal. Once he said, “You're always so
solemn
when you speak of your husband— yet you laugh, talking about your brother. Could he have been, this Gib, just a very little bit
boring?”
In answer—the ultimate betrayal—she said, lightly enough, “Might have been, Ferdy, might have been …” And felt his arm tighten about her as they danced.

How they danced! She thought afterward, We danced across Europe.

London, February 1934. Henry Hall and his band playing a number called “Making Conversation (When We Ought to Be Making Love).” She and Ferdy slow fox-trotting. Occasionally his right hand, straying from her waist, would touch her elbow, lightly, beside the funny bone. Twisting it a little with his fingers. A secret signal of what would happen later. For him to touch her like that was as exciting sometimes as any direct advance. It said, later my fingers will do this, that. …

Making conversation, making love, making
children.
Gib and I never made a child. She had heard of people who chose men for eugenic reasons, to
father their children. She could not imagine it, the calculating common sense of it all. She half smiled at the notion.

“We walk about together, ‘neath a magical moon above, Just making conversation … when we ought to be making love …”

“What about a child, Ferdy? One of those little things I see at the orphanage—but made by us …”

He was never easily ruffled. He said smoothly enough, but she thought him a little embarrassed, “Come along, Teddy—every little baby needs a father.”

“Precisely. And why not you?”

He must have taken her seriously, for he looked for a few seconds genuinely puzzled and uncertain. And a little angry? “Darling Ferdy—I'm only joking.”

“I must say, I thought for a moment—some accident perhaps …”

“Gawd, no. I was
teasing”

“I should hope so.” He held her close, guiding her as they swung out onto the floor. He sang with the vocalist, his head close to hers. She felt his breath on her as he crooned:

“… We can't go on forever, counting stars in the sky above, Just making conversation, when we ought to be making love …”

It became their song. He could always silence her with it. The beginnings of an argument, perhaps, or when tired after some hectic social round, before their arms went about each other:
“Just making conversation,”
one of them would say, casually, barely singing the words,
“when we ought to be making love …”

It was the last evening but one of their stay in London, and the sitting room of his suite was full of flowers. She'd arranged that. They were to eat upstairs before going out much later to dance. She was on the sofa, smoking and reading
Vogue.
She remembered afterward that she wore a new dinner dress. Blackberry silk, with a high neck. Both the color and cut flattered her.

Ferdy had just gone into the bath. Beforehand he had rung room service for champagne.

When there was a knock at the door, she thought, How speedy their service is!

But it was a bellboy, with a telegram. She called through to Ferdy:

“A wire for you. Shall I bring it in?”

“God, no. Business. It can wait.”

He emerged a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel. “Let's see,” he said. As he opened it, she saw him frown. Then, for a moment, his face looked pinched, colorless.

“Everything all right?”

“It's rubbish,” he said, shaking his head, “the office really does pester
me.” Crumpling it up, he threw it into the basket. “Why are they taking so long with the champagne?” he said irritably. “Ring again, darling. If it's not there by the time I'm dressed …”

She was ashamed, while he went through to dress, by her curiosity, and in the end she gave way to temptation. She who was so scrupulous of another's privacy, so jealous of her own, picked it out of the basket, and she read it hurriedly. It was in French, oddly botched along the wires (scrambled deliberately?) but its meaning was clear. An angry Solange told him she knew he was with another woman and that he was a
charogne
and a
crapule
and … ten indecipherable words … ending
“va te faire foutre.”

She had already put it back in the basket as he came through. She said to him:

“I know I did wrong, but I read your wire.”

“Oh yes?” He looked uneasy.

“Someone
feels strongly. By the sound of it she may even turn up here.” “I don't think so,” he said. “It wouldn't be her style.”

She said angrily, “Why didn't you say? Some other woman—that you were in the middle of another affair?”

“It's not an—affair,” he said. “She's my wife.”

She could think of nothing to say. Then: “Oh
Ferdy.
You could at least have told me.”

“Why?” He looked puzzled. “We're not planning to marry. We haven't that intention. So what's it matter?”

“It's the deceit. I can't trust you. Why hide it all?”

“Why not? Who would it help if I told? To be honest, I didn't remember if I had or hadn't.”

“I don't believe that,” she said. “If I'm to take someone's husband, I want to know that's what I'm doing. I've the right to know the wrong I'm doing—”

“I never heard such nonsense.
Casuiste.
I didn't tell you, and that's all. Anyway, she's been angry before. She's often angry—”

“Not without cause—”

“You didn't think, my darling, that you were the first?” “No. Nor the last.”

“Curiosity,” he said, “it's the undoing of people, isn't it?” He added, “What a charming way to begin our evening.”

At that moment the champagne arrived. The waiter offered to open it. Ferdy shooed him out.

“You're
in a bad mood,” she said. “I don't know how you dare. If anyone's entitled to be furious, it's
me.”

They kept the argument up for another ten, fifteen minutes, then ended it abruptly, by common consent. Ferdy said, “Whatever are we doing? Nothing
but talking, talking, talking.” His hand beneath her arm, other hand holding out a glass of champagne for her, he murmured in her ear:

“… Just making conversation, when we ought to be making love …”

“Cuckoo,” Reggie said in a loud voice. Then again:
“Cuckoo,
cuckoo.”

“Please,” Sylvia said,
“please.
Your voice. The little ones, their door's open—”

“Means nothing to them, Sylvie. Cuckoo, cuckoo in the nest—”

“Willow—”

“If Madam Titwillow hears something to her disadvantage, none too soon, is it, eh?”

“You promised. My God, you
promised.”

“Can't learn too early what her bestest Mummy's like. Might have a bit more respect when she finds out what I've put up with, eh?”

“She might have more respect if you weren't drunk five nights of the week—”

“Bloody rich, that—coming from you. … Mote in my eye, beam in yours. Can't see it, can you, old thing?
Whoring
—that's what I have to put up with. Mess you've made of your hair, too,
permanent wave,
when we're on our uppers. It's to get men, isn't it?
Cave, cave
—mind we don't get another cuckoo's egg. Always room in the nest, eh? Titwillow. Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.”

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want … I shall not want
… I must believe this, Sylvia told herself, walking heavily around the small kitchen, flies buzzing in the summer heat, afternoon traffic rattling outside.
I do believe this.

Homesickness made her long for the Norman church in Flaxthorpe. Sleepless at night, she would imagine herself going through the doorway, walking up to the family pew. Smell of beeswax, of roses, cool stone. She would people the church—old Mrs. Matthews (was she still alive?), Mrs. Fisher, Mother standing always so straight-backed, wearing the very latest in hats. Erik in his place on the left, four rows back. Let us sing.
Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven …

The linoleum on the top landing. She saw, as she came up the stairs, a
big cut, the frayed edge showing. She hadn't noticed it before—yet it couldn't be new (Oh God help us if we have to replace even the
cheapest
of floor coverings) since it was surely one of the younger children's work, and they'd been gone four days now, were Mother's worry for the next three weeks. An August holiday in a seaside hotel (and I hope, I
hope,
that Beth doesn't strip off the wallpaper beside her bed as she did last year at the Grand, Scarborough).

Willow would look after them of course—far better than the nanny engaged for the holiday. With her they were as naughty and difficult as a real mother. She did not seem to mind.

“Mummy, you look
worried
—don't worry. It's much better without a nanny, we see
lots
more of you. And the other girls at school,
they
don't have nannies.”

She leaned too much on Willow these days. She should not, really should not. Nor should one child be more precious than another—that had been the first wrong. So much love for Lucy and Jessica and Margaret and Beth—but for Willow just a little more, because she is Geoffrey's.

Cuckoo, cuckoo in the nest.
It was that taunt that drove her to burden Willow with the truth. (But I would have told her one day, surely?) The risk that she would learn from Reggie, drunk so often now, was too great.

It was difficult to find the right words, to tell neither too much nor too little. “He was a truly good person, we loved each other so much but he wasn't free to marry. We would have had to hurt others—but I could not have borne you to be adopted so I married Reggie and …” Words dried up.

Willow stared at her, white-faced, then burst into tears. Flinging herself into Sylvia's arms, she cried:

“I'm so glad, glad. I can't bear
he
should be my father—when he's so rude to you and doesn't care and—”

“But of course he cares, darling. It's because of the Great War—he got that habit of drinking too much. Lots of them did. And then he's had terrible business worries …”

“It's
you
I'm worried about, always so tired. Oh Mummy, honestly, I
am
glad. I'm sure I knew somehow, even when he used to be nice, that he wasn't —that I'm not
his.”

It was only afterward she realized Willow had not asked for a name—or indeed for any detail at all. Instead she'd changed the subject, saying only:

“You looked so upset telling me that, Mummy. I want you to sit on the sofa, with your feet up, and I'll put the rug over and make you some tea and then you've got to let
me
give Margaret and Beth their baths. Promise, darling Mummy?”