The Hardie Inheritance (10 page)

‘Of course.' Grace could hear that her voice was not completely under control. She struggled to give an impression of calmness and normality, but recognized that she was failing. Ellis, though, spoke of nothing but the carvings until the moment when they reached the furthest point of the serpentine garden which Philip had created. Instead of turning to retrace his steps, he looked straight towards her.

‘You're not well, I think, Miss Hardie.'

‘Oh yes, perfectly all right, thank you. I find the heat a little trying, perhaps, but that's all.'

‘Are you sure? You look worried. Distressed, even.'

‘I'm quite sure. Perfectly all right.' But even as she spoke she could feel her bottom lip trembling. It was because she had had no time to prepare herself to face visitors. Clenching her fists, she willed herself not to cry. Ellis continued to stare at her in a serious manner.

‘I don't want to be impertinent; but if there's anything I could do … ? Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger than to one's own family.'

‘Kind of you to suggest it, but there's nothing to be done, thank you very much. Nothing to be done at all.' And then, to her great chagrin, Grace burst into tears.

‘Do sit down for a moment.' There was a bench in the hidden centre of the garden. She felt his hand under her arm, supporting her as she sank on to it. For a few moments she cried noisily, her breath juddering as she tried to control it. Then she accepted his proffered handkerchief and blew her nose violently.

‘Sorry about that. I've been bottling it up, I suppose. Trying to pretend nothing's wrong.'

‘And what
is
wrong? I promise to respect your confidence. Is it your health?'

‘Only in a way.' She bit her lip as though by doing so she could force herself to keep silence. But the need to talk to someone, anyone, overwhelmed her. ‘I'm expecting a baby. My mother doesn't know, so please –'

‘Of course not. Oh dear! Does the father –?'

‘He's a married man. I shan't tell him. It wouldn't do any good, and I'm not likely to see him again for a long time. But I just don't know what to do.' Once again her tears began to flow, but this time she sniffed them back. ‘It was only the once,' she said. ‘It seems hard, when it was never going to happen again anyway.'

‘I sympathize more than you might expect. My own experience … but in our case there was no impediment to a marriage except my own distaste for it. And to me professionally this is not an uncommon story. I take photographs of beautiful young women. Girls who are taken straight from the schoolroom and thrown into a whole summer of parties and dances. It goes to their heads, and chaperones are not always at hand. Accidents happen. The girls talk to me as they sit. There are doctors, Miss Hardie, if you know where to look. Doctors who –'

‘I don't suppose their services come cheap. I haven't got any money, you see. None at all. Anyway.' She stood up, straightening her back and stiffening her resolve. ‘I'm not like those girls, out in society and needing a good reputation to make a good marriage. I live here so quietly that really hardly anyone except my mother and brother would ever know that there was a baby on the premises. A reputation is only the opinion of other people, and we've never bothered about that.'

In a curious way, the act of making this statement helped her to believe it. Tomorrow she would tell her mother. Once she had confessed her sin and her predicament, this feeling of panic would surely calm itself. ‘I shouldn't have burdened you with my problems; but thank you for listening.'

She was anxious now to escape. It had been a relief to tell her secret, but she needed to be private again. Leaving him to set up his apparatus, she returned to the studio.

Trish, seated cross-legged on the floor, was working with a concentration remarkable in a six-year-old, but looked up to ask for help. Grace showed her how to coil and smooth the clay – and then, to amuse her, gave a demonstration of the use of the potter's wheel. They were both absorbed in watching what they hoped would become a jug rise and fall as her wet fingers squeezed the clay or pressed it outwards when Ellis Faraday came into the room.

‘I'm sorry to disturb you. If Trish can spare you for a moment, Miss Hardie, there's something I'd like to ask you.'

Grace followed her guest to one of her favourite stone carvings; a twisted figure of eight.

‘Let's sit down for a moment,' Ellis said. He looked around to make sure that there was no one within hearing. ‘I've been thinking about what you told me. And there are two suggestions I'd like to make. The first one concerns money. You said you didn't have any, but have you ever considered selling any of your carvings?'

‘Who'd want to buy them?'

‘I consider them very fine. Full of emotion, and most pleasing to the eye. Not to everyone's taste, of course, but it would only need one person to admire a piece. There's another woman – does the name of Barbara Hepworth mean anything to you?'

Grace shook her head.

‘She's also experimenting with abstract sculpture, and selling some of it. There are others, as well. A group which calls itself the Seven and Five. And one or two of the London galleries are sympathetic to new ideas. If you would like me to, I could show some of my photographs to the Leicester Galleries and ask whether they'd include you in a show. And then, you see, if they sold something, you could afford to have your pregnancy terminated. Even if you decided not to, you would have had a choice.'

‘I can't believe …' But it was stupid to challenge Ellis's opinion when she had no personal knowledge of the London art world. She concentrated instead on the secondary point of what she might do with money if she had it.

The answer was surprisingly clear. She was not like little
Trish, prepared to make something and then destroy it. The pleasure of creation had always lain in the knowledge that what she made would endure and outlive her. If she felt that so strongly about a lump of stone or wood, how much more must it be true of her own baby?

‘I should be very grateful for any help of that sort you could give me,' she said. ‘I shall need money. But to buy things for the baby, not to kill it.'

‘So you're determined to go through with it?'

‘I shouldn't be sorry if there were to be some kind of accident,' she admitted. ‘But I'm not going to the sort of doctor you mentioned; no.'

‘Good. Then I come to my second suggestion. Will you marry me?'

‘What did you say?' She could hardly believe her ears.

‘It's just as well, isn't it, that I made you sit down before I asked you. But it's a serious question. I would very much like to marry you.'

‘You hardly know me, Mr Faraday.'

‘Ellis, please. I agree that our acquaintance isn't a long one. But everything that I know, I like. I'm not pretending that this would be a love match. A marriage of convenience, I suppose you'd say – but the convenience on both sides would be very great.'

‘I can see that you'd be nobly doing me a favour. Making a respectable woman of me, as they say. But I couldn't possibly allow –'

‘Put yourself in my shoes for a moment,' he said. ‘For you, marriage would have the one small convenience of giving your baby a name. But for me …! To start with, Trish needs a woman's care, so straightaway, you see, I'd be asking for more than you'd be getting. And just as your reputation would be helped by a wedding, so would mine. It's a problem I have to keep continually in mind. The society ladies who ask me to photograph their daughters would feel much happier dealing with a married man.'

‘But you're free, aren't you, to marry someone you love. Not someone like me.'

There was a long silence while Ellis chose his words carefully.

‘This will shock you, I'm afraid. Something that I've never admitted to anyone. I'm putting myself in your power, because of course it's against the law. I shall never be able to marry the person I love, because he's a man. He acts as housekeeper for me in London. I would have to make it clear – I'm making it clear now – that although I think you and I could live very happily together as friends, I shouldn't want to consummate the marriage. But that – let me assure you – has nothing to do with your attractiveness. You're a very handsome woman.'

‘I really don't know what to say.' The arrangement he had in mind for herself was clear enough and the limitations he proposed were acceptable in themselves. She had taught herself to live without a man's love, and since her single lapse had had such disastrous results she felt no urge to repeat it. But that did not make the simple fact of his proposal anything but extraordinary, and she had no idea what he meant about his housekeeper.

‘You'll be wanting time to consider it,' he said. ‘I've been thinking about nothing else for the past couple of hours, but I must have taken you by surprise. And you do have to be quite clear that I'm asking for a great deal more than I'm offering. I'll leave you to think about it. There's no hurry on my part, although you may feel that there is on yours.'

‘Not today,' said Grace. ‘I can't possibly –'

‘Of course not. Could I persuade you to come to London next week, say? We could do the rounds of the galleries, look at the sort of work I was telling you about earlier. You'd be interested, I do believe.'

‘Yes. Yes, I'd like that.'

‘And then we could have another chat.'

Grace nodded. She had no notion what her decision would be, but in Ellis, she had found someone she could talk to.

Almost from the first moment of meeting him she had felt that. It was probably because neither of them would pretend to be in love that she felt sure they could discuss their future without embarrassment.

‘Yes,' she said again. ‘And Ellis – thank you very much. It's like your first suggestion, about the money. It's such a marvellous relief to feel that there's a choice.' It had not been merely terror that she had felt earlier, but anger that something alien had taken control of her body and that there was nothing she could do about it. Ellis had given her the power to make her own decisions, and she would always be grateful for that.

She soon discovered that he had taken the precaution of weighting the balance as heavily in his favour as possible. After he and Trish had taken their leave, Grace went into the kitchen to make herself useful and found her mother in a high state of excitement.

‘Grace, darling, I'm so happy for you. What a charming man! And dear little Trish. I shall love having a child in Greystones again. I told Mr Faraday, Ellis, that a grandchild is just what I need. I see David's family so rarely, and the rest of you have been most remiss about producing a new generation.'

‘What are you talking about, Mother?' asked Grace. She knew the answer, of course. But Ellis ought surely to have kept his proposal secret until it had been answered.

‘Well, naturally Ellis told me that he wanted to marry you. In the normal way, it's a girl's father who is asked for permission, but –'

‘I'm hardly a girl. Really, Mother!'

‘So of course I told him that you would make up your own mind. I think he mentioned the matter to me partly to reassure me about money. Trish would go to school, so we shan't need a governess, but we shall be able to have some help in the house again. He'd like to see the entertaining rooms back in use, and –'

‘Don't go too fast, Mother. We hardly know him. It's far too soon to make up my mind.'

‘But you will accept him, won't you? I never understood why you broke your engagement to Christopher at the end of the war. But you've had plenty of time since then to realize that it's not easy for someone of your generation to find an eligible husband after so many men were killed in the fighting.'

‘I decided that I didn't want to be married. I've never felt ashamed of being a spinster, on the shelf. I've been very happy living here just with you and Philip.' She paused, swallowing the lump in her throat. Was this the moment to confess that her way of life was about to be changed whether she liked it or not? It was not a secret which could be kept for long. But in the astonishment of hearing Ellis's proposal she had failed to ask a good many important questions. Her mother would want to know who the baby's father was. What should the answer be? Ellis proposed to claim paternity as far as the outside world was concerned, but would he want members of the family, and later the child himself, to know the truth? Probably not; but she ought not to risk making a wrong guess.

‘I'll be going up to London next week,' she said instead. ‘I'll see Ellis there. There's a lot to be considered. To start with, what should I wear?' The question, she knew, would divert her mother's attention from the larger matter – but it was a genuine one. There was nothing in her wardrobe which would look respectable in the West End, but she must try not to disgrace her suitor.

‘A well-cut suit never dates,' said Mrs Hardie with a confidence which came from a lack of any interest in current fashions. ‘What a good thing we're the same height. Let's go and see what I can lend you.' They went upstairs together.

Since Grace had as little idea as her mother whether the outfits she was offered would be considered old-fashioned, she allowed quality of fabric and unfussy styling to guide her choice. The peach colour of a wild silk suit did not suit her complexion;
but the tight-fitting skirt and loose jacket – for she was smaller in the bust than her mother had ever been – gave her an unaccustomed air of sophistication. Under protest she allowed herself to be bullied into wearing the matching hat and agreed that she would have to endure the discomfort of her only pair of smart shoes.

The effect was to make her feel a stranger to herself when she took the train to London, increasing the impression that this whole drama was happening to someone else. Perhaps it was a dream. But no; there was Ellis waiting for her at Paddington, and his look of approving admiration brought a smile to her own face. It was a very long time indeed since anyone had last noticed her appearance favourably.