The Innocents (11 page)

How much of these exchanges Antoinette herself comprehended I wasn't sure. Cecilia was speaking in a rather loud voice; from the child's expression, or lack of it, Antoinette might have been experimentally closing her ears. That she remained mute meant nothing—wasn't she normally mute? However Cecilia, insofar as she considered her daughter an interested party in the matter, undoubtedly took silence for consent.

“Good-bye for now, honey!” called Cecilia, quite gaily, as we parted at my gate. “Tomorrow you're coming to Mummy for always!”

All the rest of the morning, as a treat, Antoinette and I played tiddlywinks with rabbit-droppings.

She played—docilely; because I suggested it. When as an extra treat I let her have supper as well as lunch in the garden, with no more than the same docility did she follow me as I carried our trays out. However much, or little, she'd comprehended, of my conversation with Cecilia, I felt her still taking refuge in strict obedience.

How often, under the stress of emotion, the tongue turns to banality! (Or else to unnatural elaboration; I remember once, as a girl, driving with my father and his curate, being halted by a desperate, bloodied figure standing by the wreck of an overturned car in which someone screamed like a tailored hare. “Is either of you gentlemen,” he asked, “a member of the medical profession?”) In my own case, the words were banal.

“Tomorrow you're going to stay with your pretty mummy!” I told Antoinette.

It wasn't searchingly she looked at me, this time, but—resignedly.

“In a lovely great big house just down the hill!” I babbled on. “In your own bed, with your own mummy! Won't that be nice?”

Of course she didn't answer. I didn't expect her to. But I was sure she had indeed comprehended, and that I need babble on no more.

So I fell silent as she. Even to repeat her favourite poetry to her, at that juncture, would have been no more than babbling. Mrs. Brewer gone, the silence of the house became absolute. As a rule Antoinette and I could be silent together so companionably, words or no words made scant difference; now, such was the constraint between us, I found myself trying to think of something to say.

Resignation belongs properly to the middle years. I myself was I suppose forty before I resigned myself to my humdrum lot. In one's thirties, one still hopes. But to be resigned to one's lot as a child is terrible. I wondered whether Mr. Pyke had been resigned to his lot, under his father's thrashings? It seemed only too possible; also to think of so unbearable, I determined to make a last bid on Cecilia's patience, to persuade her to leave Antoinette with me even a few weeks longer; and why I failed is for a reason I still dislike to recall.

2

Next morning I went down to Woolmers early, and alone, on the pretext of seeing whether there was space in Cecilia's room not only for Antoinette's cot but also for her steamer trunk.—Of course there was space, Cecilia having the biggest single room in the guesthouse; but what was my surprise to see a second bed installed already. Not a cot, but a bed. An adult's bed, very prettily counterpaned in pink chintz, with an extra pink cushion at the head, altogether most agreeable, but not a cot.

If I had been thinking more clearly, I must have realized that to Cecilia (unused to any sort of makeshift), no piano-stool extension would be acceptable for a moment; naturally she'd take her own measures, and in a guest-house easily enough. But it was extremely inconsiderate that she hadn't warned me the day before. I might well have had at least the stool with me there and then.

“Now
isn't Tony going to be comfortable?” smiled Cecilia, looking if anything pleased at my surprise.

It was a bad beginning. If on the one hand my resolve was strengthened by the thought of Antoinette bereft even of her familiar sleeping-place, on the other Cecilia's complacency so irritated me I was afraid of losing my temper too soon. I was fully prepared to lose my temper if necessary—if necessary to hector Cecilia just as I'd imagined Doctor Alice hectoring her, calling upon, instead of medical authority, the tycoon or fishwife side of my nature. But first I meant to advance every viable argument—such as Antoinette's obvious contentment, and improvement, where she was, her dislike, even fear, of every sort of change, and the ill consequences that might follow from any prematurely brought about. Sitting on the foot of the pink bed I began quietly and reasonably to advance them—until Cecilia, at my first pause, observed that it was of course twenty pounds a month.

To do her justice, I believe she almost immediately wished the words unuttered—so swiftly did she swoop towards me, and take both my hands between her own, and protest how well she knew no money could ever, ever repay all I'd done for her darling lamb. But spoken the words had been; and I, in an uncontrollable movement of false pride (since it was to be paid for by Antoinette) went away.

3

Our separation now inevitable, the last thing I desired, what I desired above all to avoid, was any emotional scene. I confess I was still hurt by the extreme composure—so complete as to seem to make foolish all my apprehensions—with which Antoinette, when the moment came, accepted her transference. Her small, round, Dutch face was expressionless absolutely; merely composed. She walked beside me down the hill to Woolmers for once without holding my hand; and when I left her there with Cecilia, it was only I who looked back.

All her toys—that is all her proper, New York-originating toys—of course went with her, though some had to be quite searched for, but no dead frog, or turd, did Antoinette make any attempt to smuggle. It seemed as though she could shrug off a whole way of life (myself included) as easily as ever; as easily as five years earlier she'd shrugged off the life with her parents on the other side of the Atlantic …

“Let me learn from babes and sucklings!” thought I; and spent the rest of the day dismantling Antoinette's cot ready to be returned to the Women's Institute, also collecting innumerable paper napkins from behind cushions in the sitting-room. This was not to remove all traces of my child, but simply a rational tidying up. To cut down the artichokes would have been pure sentimentality, and I am happy to say I refrained; indeed at the end of my labours I went out and stood for quite some time amongst them.

It was a beautiful evening. We were now towards the end of May, and in early summer, in East Anglia, if the weather is fine—that is, if we are neither flooded nor frozen—even to draw breath is an uncovenanted blessing. To say that we breathe the best air in England is an understatement: we breathe the best air in the world. It comes straight to us from the North Pole, just sufficiently tempered by a ricochet off Holland: a few deep breaths on rising and one is set up for the day. In fact one is continually being set up, as well as toughened.

All the plants in my garden are tough. In years I had lost nothing but fritillaries—and they strangers to our parts with which I was foolish to experiment; big white daisies and pinks, clematis and mock orange, throve year after year in sturdy independence of temperature or mismanagement. My artichokes whether cut down or left to rot each year towered higher; the chunks of catmint I'd separated were already rooting. In fact the character of my garden was so to speak durability; and who more blessed than I enjoying both a durable garden and incalculable weather?

It had been an error to attempt the fritillaries. Not all plants transplant as easily as catmint; only the hardier, less uncommon sorts that have nothing special about them and need no especial care.

Incalculable indeed is our weather; even as I noted the temperature just about right (here I speak as my father's daughter!) to
chambrer
a bottle of claret, a sudden cooler breath in the air suggested hock, and overhead a rising cloudbank rain. Nothing could be more welcome; we needed rain; and I felt myself more than ever blessed in the accident of my habitation. Re-entering the house—now properly tidy again, no danger of treading on a dead frog!—I indeed quite brimmed with satisfaction at my lot in general; yet still welcomed the distraction of dining at the Cockers'.

As I have said, I dined with the Cockers on about two occasions in the year, and that evening rather fortunately happened to be one of them. As usual they had offered to send their car for me; as usual I had refused, preferring the independence of Alfred's taxi; and though for once it was late, having been to Ipswich to meet a train, I scarcely noticed. For once I had time. For once I had time to take a bath and make myself presentable.—Or even more than presentable, so I flattered myself, now having time also to brush my hair (which I can still sit on) into a proper pompadour, and to choose between the jet and amber necklaces inherited from my mother. I in fact wore the amber, as more lightening to my only dinner gown (grey). Actually it was so long since I'd made any sort of
toilette
, Alfred regarded me quite in surprise, but also with approval. “Nice change,” he remarked; and promised to be there waiting for me even if later than usual. I thanked him, but said strictly ten o'clock.

It seemed strange to go out and leave the house dark—no light in any window to show even Mrs. Brewer in charge. It was strange to lock the door behind me because the house was empty. But it also, as Alfred said, made a nice change.

I thought I might even learn Greek.

11

1

Owing to Alfred's lateness, when I entered the Cocker drawing-room all the other guests were already assembled: the Admiral, our local M.P. and his wife, the American Colonel, and—Cecilia.

I was so astonished, I barely apologized to my hostess, and let myself be introduced to Mrs. M.P., before I asked, where was Antoinette?

“In bed, of course!” said Cecilia lightly.

“At Woolmers?” I asked foolishly.

“Where else?” returned Cecilia—very naturally with some slight impatience. “Not to worry, darling; I've bribed a chambermaid—Jane, or is it Jessie?—to keep an eye on her …”

Of course I knew it was Jessie, and a very nice, kind girl she was. But Antoinette didn't know her. To Antoinette, perhaps waking in the night, the face of Jessie would be as strange as all the rest of her new, strange surroundings; and if Antoinette woke in the night what she needed above all was the reassurance of the familiar.

“One must begin as one means to go on,” added Cecilia. “I don't suppose even
you
sat up all night by her pillow?”

In point of fact, during the first weeks Antoinette was with me, it was exactly what I had done. For a moment my impulse was to turn round and walk straight out again—walk if necessary, if my taxi had gone, the whole two miles back to Woolmers. Then I remembered Antoinette's utter composure at our parting, and asked myself whether Cecilia's method might not after all be the right one, and stayed.

It was really a most agreeable dinner-party. The food (as always at the Cockers), was both excellent and off-ration, so that one felt no guilt at enjoying it: green pea soup made from fresh green peas followed by salmon-trout with new potatoes and an equally fresh green salad, followed by mushrooms on toast. I will not say the conversation actually sparkled, but it was interesting: I had never known Sir David so entertaining; he and the American Colonel between them covered almost three generations of warfare by land and sea and air, and each had many anecdotes to relate—the Admiral of a last brush with pirates off Hong Kong, the Colonel of raids as deep into enemy territory as Berlin itself. I found these exchanges quite fascinating—as of an ironclad signaling to an aircraft carrier—but enjoyed even more the discovery that the M.P.'s wife, like myself, knew Henry James almost by heart. We had barely time to get down to
Portrait of a Lady
—(was or wasn't the little daughter such an innocent as she seemed?)—before the mushrooms on toast.

Cecilia was of course enjoying the party too. However interested in each other's conversation, both warriors were intensely aware of her. How should they not be, she lending such grace and animation to the feast? In fact it was actually during this evening that I first perceived the Admiral to have his eye—there was no other phrase for it—on Cecilia.

Of course they met daily and all day at Woolmers; but he could never before have seen her in a low-cut black velvet dinner dress with diamonds in her ears. (Black for mourning, diamonds equally a tribute to so good a husband.) Thus Sir David's glances of extra admiration, so to speak, were easily explicable. What suddenly struck myself was that they had also a quality of speculation. I do not in the least mean to imply that his motives were mercenary—I am sure they were not; I guessed her money more of a stumbling block—but it forcibly occurred to me that during the watches of some night—about two bells—Sir David (still seaworthy) had hauled up to the notion of making Cecilia his wife.

Cecilia for her part was far more flirtatious with the American Colonel, which in the Admiral's place I would have taken for a good sign, that is if he knew anything about women, which I doubted. And indeed, upon consideration (over the salad), why should not Cecilia, I thought be simply flirting with a more attractive male? Rich, beautiful and leader of New York Society as she was already, what had the Admiral to offer—except to make her My Lady? Then I remembered the incident of the bouquet stolen from Lady A.; and allowed Sir David a better chance …

Altogether it was a most interesting and enjoyable evening. I still left at ten, before the party settled down to cards. The Cockers made no attempt to detain me. They believed I couldn't afford their stakes; which was true, but by no means the whole truth. I have always felt I possessed remarkable card sense, hitherto so unextended in the mild rubbers played with my parents and a curate, I contrived to be dummy whenever possible. I should have played at Crockford's, at a guinea a point, or taken the bank at chemin-de-fer at Monte Carlo—and let the Greek syndicate beware! (
“Mon dieu! Void l'Anglaise!”
I heard them mutter!) The latter scene was so vivid before my mental eye, however high (in their own view) the Cockers and their friends might play, I personally saw them as staking no more than rabbit-droppings; and really couldn't have been bothered.