The Hardie Inheritance (13 page)

‘And your parents never knew that it was your fault?'

‘No. I was waiting to confess. I
needed
to confess. But immediately after it happened I was ill; and when I was better they told me that the baby had died because he'd been too small when he was born. That story wasn't invented to spare my feelings, because nobody knew … Anyway, I believed it. I genuinely didn't think, after that, that I'd done any harm.'

‘When did you find out?'

‘Oh, not for twenty years or so. When both my parents were abroad. Felix had been living in a sort of nursing home all those years. It might have made me feel guilty again to see him, I suppose; but it didn't. He was so contented; smiling all the time. I didn't see much point then in raking up the past. But when I was told about Tom …'

‘You felt it was Mother Nature taking her revenge? Inflicting a punishment for a past crime?'

‘That came into it, yes. But also – when I met Felix for the first time as a young man, I understood why my parents had chosen that name for him. The happy one. A fortunate child, because he would never have the understanding to feel despair or disappointment or anything of that kind. And Tom would have been like that as well. It would have been selfish of me to cry because I hadn't got quite the sort of baby I wanted, when he wouldn't ever have cried for himself. And as for today –'

She paused, trying to be clear about her feelings. She had never quite felt that the baby belonged to her. The midwife had taken him away as soon as he was born, and did not bring him back. At first Grace had been too exhausted to notice and when, later, she expected to feed him, she was told that her breasts were too small and that he would thrive better on a bottle. When he was eventually put in her arms, he lay without moving or smiling and she felt none of the love which she had expected to overcome her. She had never bathed or changed or dressed him, because he had been taken to hospital while she was still lying-in. All this might have been upsetting, but she expressed herself sincerely now.

‘I decided years ago that I didn't want to have children. Tom was an accident, as you know. I'd have done my best to be a good mother, but –'

‘But you're relieved that it's not going to be expected of you after all.'

‘Well I'm sad, of course, about his death. But – yes, to be honest, it
is
a relief.'

‘And when you were deciding that you didn't want to be a mother, all those years ago, were you also choosing not to be a wife?'

‘Yes. I embraced spinsterhood as a vocation.' She laughed, suddenly carefree again after ten months of anxiety.

‘So would you like to be released from marriage as well as from motherhood?' Ellis let go of her hand and walked across to the window, standing with his back to her.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that we struck a kind of bargain, didn't we? What you were going to get out of it was a father for your child. You don't need that any more. Do you want to be free again?'

‘Ellis, are you trying to say that
you
–?'

‘I'm getting everything I could possibly want,' he said. ‘Trish is being loved and cared for. She has the kind of happy family life that I could never have provided for her on my own. As for myself …' He turned to face her. ‘Greystones is a country house which I can enjoy without being responsible for it. A house which my father built. A house where I feel welcome, where there will always be company and friendship. No, I don't want to change anything. All the advantage is on my side. I just want to be sure you realize that you have grounds for getting the marriage annulled if you choose to do so. Well, those grounds have existed all the time; but this is the moment when you might want to use them.'

There was a long silence. Grace tried to cast her mind back to the moment, years earlier, when at the age of twenty-two she had balanced the humiliation of being a spinster, left on the shelf, against the freedom to live a life of independence in
the house which she loved and owned – not caring that she would be poor, as long as she could devote herself to the creative work which brought her such satisfaction. Her decision had been definite and – as she thought then – final. Now Ellis was offering her a second chance to return to that kind of self-sufficiency. It was not a question to be answered lightly.

But although she was slow to speak, her answer was never in doubt. Because Ellis spent more than half his time in London, she still felt as free as ever; and when he came to Greystones she enjoyed his company and the excitement of feeling herself linked at one remove to London society and London art.

As for Trish, her presence was not a burden but a delight. Her enthusiasm for experiment was a constant pleasure; the kind of pleasure which baby Tom, had he lived, would never have been able to provide. She shared with her stepmother the ability to concentrate on a practical task, although the speed with which she discarded a finished object in order to move on to something else was alien to Grace's own attitude. She was intelligent and vivacious and, above all, affectionate. Even if Grace had been prepared to let her go, Mrs Hardie would have refused to relinquish her role as grandmother.

‘We can't do without Trish,' said Grace, making a joke of the truth. ‘And how shall I ever achieve a one-man show in London without my personal agent working away on my behalf?' Then she spoke more seriously. ‘Your companionship means a lot to me, Ellis. I may not have known that I wanted it until I had it, but now I couldn't do without it. I suppose it is a funny sort of marriage, but it suits me. So if it suits you as well, I hope you'll stay.'

‘Good.' He strode across the room to take her in his arms, kissing her cheek. It was unusual for him to touch her, but the pleasure revealed in both their smiles had more than a physical cause. They trusted each other to speak and believe the truth. It was a friendship rather than a real marriage; but a very special friendship.

Grace had a question to ask. She did not intend to let her conversation with David affect her behaviour, but could not quite dismiss it from her mind.

‘Ellis, if anything were to happen to me, and Greystones came to you, you'd let Mother and Philip go on living here wouldn't you?'

‘What do you mean, if anything happens? You're not feeling unwell, are you?'

She shook her head. ‘A purely hypothetical question. I'd like to hear you promise.'

‘I'll promise anything you ask me and yes, specifically, I'll promise that. But what you ought to do, Grace, if you're worried, is to make a will. You can set down exactly what you want to happen – and need never think about it again.'

‘That's what David's been telling me. I've been trying to think why he should suddenly become so concerned.'

‘I can tell you the answer to that. He wants to own Greystones himself one day – or if not himself, his children. I've noticed how he looks at us all. I don't think Trish bothers him much; a mere stepdaughter. But he can't be sure what you'd do about me. And of course when Tom was born, that must really have been a blow.' Only those members of the family who lived in the house had known that Tom would never have been capable of running the estate: his condition had been kept a secret from everyone else. ‘It seemed to me at the funeral that he was pleased that your heir had died.'

‘You're imagining things!'

Ellis shrugged his shoulders. ‘It's none of my business,' he said. ‘Greystones is your house and you must do whatever you like to protect its future. I don't want to know what you decide. But whatever I can do to keep it as a home for your mother and Philip would be done. That's a promise. Now you must get some sleep.'

‘Yes. Thank you, Ellis. For being such a support and – and for everything.'

After he had left the room she paced up and down,
undecided. It would be sensible to go to a lawyer and safeguard the future of the house. The trouble was that she had no idea what she wanted to happen. If she tried to envisage how the life with which she was happy would continue, she was always part of it herself. She could not nominate an heir without first pushing herself out of the picture, and found this impossible.

Besides, it was ridiculous to start considering the possibility of her death so soon. All this business of making wills could wait for a few years. There was plenty of time.

‘I hear that you're starting to produce your own wine. English wine.'

Even the liveliest dinner party may experience a sudden break in the general conversation, and it is always into such a silence that the most embarrassing remarks fall. Every head turned towards David Hardie and awaited his answer.

The occasion was one of a regular series of dinner parties given by The House of Hardie for faithful or potential customers. How on earth had one of these – the secretary of a London club whose members were for the most part artists and musicians – managed to pick up such a piece of gossip?

‘No, no,' David assured him with a smile. ‘We only deal in the very finest wines, the most respected names. The country wine business can be left to ladies in embroidered aprons, working away in their own kitchens and drinking their own produce.'

‘But the buzz is that this isn't a country wine. The real thing, they say. What are you going to call it? Hardie hock?'

‘I didn't know you owned a vineyard,' said the guest on his right. To David's dismay, the conversation had become general.

‘No, I don't. Not in any ordinary sense. The reference must be to an experiment which my brother is running on the family estate. He's planted half a dozen different grape varieties to see which of them, if any, will thrive in our climate. Without any encouragement from me, I can tell you. He's a botanist, interested in this sort of thing – and he's read about the Marquess of Bute's trials. Nothing will come of it, in my
opinion – and even if he does produce a few bottles of wine, I certainly wouldn't stock them in The House of Hardie. This is purely my brother's hobby.'

It must have been Ellis Faraday who had started the rumour going. He was just the sort of chap who would belong to an arty club – a club whose members sat at a single long table, chatting to each other instead of preserving a gentlemanly silence over meals. David silently chalked up another black mark against his brother-in-law, who had made an early bad impression by enquiring whether The House of Hardie was not yet sufficiently profitable to restore to Mrs Hardie some of the income which had been necessarily withdrawn when it was near to bankruptcy. As though it were any of his business!

What his guests should be concentrating on at the moment was the 1921 Château d'Yquem. It was the finest dessert wine ever produced, in David Hardie's opinion, and he voiced that opinion firmly now in order to change the subject, which had touched an awkward nerve. A man in his position, the proprietor of a family wine business which had been in existence for over two hundred years, ought to be able to live in some style. It was expected of him, and he was reluctant to disappoint such expectations: that was one reason why he always entertained on his Pall Mall premises and never at home. He did not in so many words claim to be the owner of a large country estate, but a photograph of Greystones hung in the room which was used for dinners like the present one, and it was his habit from time to time to use phrases like ‘the Hardie estate' or ‘our country place' in a manner which he knew must create a false impression. This made it more difficult than it ought to have been to disown activities which in fact were completely outside his control.

These House of Hardie dinners were always a strain. The food must be good and everything about the wines chosen to accompany it – suitability, temperature and manner of service – must be perfect. David was host and salesman at the same time. All the guests knew that this was a selling exercise, yet
both they and their host pretended otherwise. It was understood that he would bring to their notice the finer points of whatever they were drinking, but no actual business was done at the table.

The tension of the occasion made the food and drink lie heavily on David's stomach. When the last of his guests had departed he decided in the interests of exercise and fresh air to walk at least part of the way towards Baker Street, where he would catch his Metropolitan train. He set off from Pall Mall towards Piccadilly and Bond Street.

He was a good-looking man who held himself well and moved with a confident stride. From his father he had inherited a tall frame, strong features and dark hair and eyes. But there was one thing which Gordon Hardie had not been able to pass on to this one of his sons: the enthusiasm which had been so much a part of his character. David's dark brown eyes rarely expressed a lively interest in anything, but instead were dull, even uneasy. For David Hardie at the age of forty-two was a discontented man.

He would have found difficulty in specifying what it was about his life that disappointed him. He had a comfortable enough home in Harrow – although it was the wrong part of Harrow, at the foot of the hill instead of on the top. It had been a country house when he first bought it, of respectable size and set in its own grounds. But by now the surrounding fields had disappeared beneath rows of semi-detached villas and he found himself living in a suburb. This was something he did his best to conceal from his customers.

In other respects he should have had no complaints. His three elder children went to church every Sunday without protest and were, on the whole, well-behaved. Sheila was a good mother, a tidy housewife. His marriage had never been passionate, but it had run its course placidly for almost twenty years. Only since the birth of their last, unwanted, son had any problems arisen. Max proved to be an over-active baby who hardly slept at all. It had seemed reasonable that Sheila
should move into a separate bedroom to spare her husband the disturbance caused by frequent crying in the night. Even her unwillingness to return as the boy grew older was understandable, for David shared his wife's wish that there should be no more ‘accidents'. He might have been able to ignore the lack of warmth in his home life if his business career had brought him more satisfaction.