The Lotus House (11 page)

It was lucky that this particular nurse had younger brothers and sisters and possessed a fund of nursery rhymes and songs, for she had gone through many before Margot arrived.

“Doctor says, hold her hand and comfort her by repeating anything she used to hear from you when she was a baby, but you’ll know what is best to do better than I can tell you, Mrs Royce.”

Margot took the small limp hand in hers but she
experienced nothing but the repulsion that any illness always produced in her and she could not think of anything at all to say. The nurse, passing and repassing, glanced at her in surprise and Margot, always acutely aware of others’ reactions towards herself, felt both resentful and embarrassed.

Yet her touch seemed to reach through to Harriet after a little while, for she opened her eyes again and this time, seeing her mother sitting by her, she said quite clearly with a look of intense joy and relief, “Oh, I thought I had killed you dead.”

“Darling, what nonsense,” said Margot, “you’ve been having a horrid dream.”

Then she drifted off once more, but presently she spoke again. “Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re in hospital, there was an accident, you got knocked down by a van, but you’ll soon be well again now, so don’t worry and don’t have any more silly dreams.” Harriet gave her mother a long pleased look and then with a small sigh of contentment she dropped off into a natural sleep.

Andrew came in later and she woke again.

“I can’t move my leg,” Harriet confided to him in a whisper. She seemed puzzled rather than alarmed.

“You’ve broken it,” said Andrew cheerfully. “Not to worry, legs mend again quite easily, especially when they are young ones.”

But Harriet frowned. Something seemed to be troubling her again.

“I broke all their legs,” she whispered. “I know it wasn’t really you and Margot now, but I broke everything.”

“Well, I shouldn’t worry about that,” said Andrew firmly. “She seems still to be bothered with bad dreams,” he told the nurse.

“I expect it’s the leg paining her, but she’s doing fine.
Doctor’s pleased with her.”

“Harriet wants to see you, Mrs Sanderson,” said Margot a few days later, “she seems to have something on her mind about your doll’s house. We think it’s from a nightmare she had when she was coming round from the coma. Do you think you could fit in a visit soon, it would be so kind?”

“Of course,” said Letty, “I was only waiting till you thought it advisable for visitors other than you and Mr Royce.”

Before leaving for the hospital, Letty took Wilhelmina Rose Harriet out of her drawer and slipped her into her bag.

“I remember properly now,” said Harriet as soon as the nurse had left them alone together. “I didn’t at first. I smashed the little house as well as the people. I’m so sorry.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Is
everyone
killed?”

“Not everyone,” said Letty. She fished in her bag and brought out Wilhelmina Rose Harriet and laid her on the bed. Harriet clutched her with both hands but the tears came faster than ever.

“Why, whatever is the matter?” said Nurse Hutchinson appearing again. “We never cry, not even when our leg hurts.” She turned a reproachful eye on poor Letty. “We’re
such
a good girl
always
.”
She mopped away the tears. “I think she’s had enough of visitors for today,” she said rather severely.

Letty kissed Harriet’s damp cheeks and went away as she was told but, in spite of the nurse, she suspected that those tears were not a bad thing.

“Where did that funny little doll come from?” asked Margot that same evening.

“Mrs Sanderson brought her,” said Harriet.

“I should have thought she would have suspected you were too old to play with dolls,” said Margot.

“I shan’t play with her,” said Harriet.

“Well, she’ll do as a mascot, I suppose,” said Margot.

“What’s a mascot?” enquired Harriet the next day of her never-failing encyclopaedia.

“Something to bring you good luck,” said Andrew.

Harriet smiled.

A time came when the doctor said “I think you can look forward to having Harriet at home soon, Mrs Royce. Of course she’ll need nursing and careful treatment for some time yet, but we don’t want to hospitalize her longer than necessary. She could come to you in about another week, I should think.”

Margot responded after a very slight hesitation and not with quite the eagerness he had expected, but he thought her a delightful woman and sensible too, quite free from that neurotic fussiness he often met with in mothers.

“Andrew,” said Margot that evening, “the doctor says Harriet can leave the hospital next week.”

“Really!” exclaimed Andrew, “That’s good.”

“I suppose she’d better go to the guest-room.”

“Of course, her own’s much too small.”

“She’ll need a lot of care for some time,” he said.

“Well, you’ll be able to get leave, I’m sure,” said Andrew, “you’re too valuable for them to make any fuss, especially in these circumstances.”

There was a silence, then Margot said, “It’s no use, Andrew, I can’t face it, I’m the world’s worst nurse, I loathe it and it simply wouldn’t work. She’d do better in a convalescent home somewhere.”

This time it was Andrew’s turn to be silent.

“I know what you’re thinking,” burst out Margot at last, “that I ought to have gone to that bloody concert and that at least now I ought to be able to look after my own child, but how was I to know she’d take it like that, and am I responsible for that van being there just at that moment?”

“You’ve never let yourself realize how she adores you,” said Andrew.

“Yes, I have,” exclaimed Margot, “and it always exasperates me, it did with Dick, too, and with others. Oh, Andrew,” and suddenly she sounded humble and defenceless, “the truth is I don’t know how to love or be loved.”

Andrew got up and came over to her. He disliked emotional scenes and was certainly not used to them from Margot, and words seemed to him useless. He suspected that what she said was true and yet he had never liked her so much before. He put an arm round her and pressed her gently to him. After a while as they stood there he said “Harriet must come home here, you know that really, don’t you? We’ll manage all right somehow, you’ll see.”

But he did not quite see until astonishingly Miss Cook came to their rescue. She was astonished herself. She had been upset of course by the accident, well, that was natural, a child under the same roof, anyone would be. But unwarrantably, yes, she told herself, quite unwarrantably, she was still haunted by her last encounter with Harriet which would not have bothered her at all, she felt, had it not been for the accident, but there it was. Dian had told her that Harriet was coming home soon.

“Mrs Royce, she wanted to know if I could spare her some extra time; well, I’m that sorry but I can’t, it would mean letting down my other ladies, see — not used to having the child on her hands all day and don’t look forward to it, I can tell you.”

Janet Cook thought about this for some time. She had had very little experience of children but she supposed she could help look after a little girl as well as anyone else if she gave her mind to it. So one afternoon that week Andrew answered a knock on the door and found Miss Cook on the threshold. He ushered her into the sitting-room;
she had never been there before and looked around with interest.

Striking,
she thought,
but
not
at
all
pretty
—
that
picture,
just
squares
of
black
and
red,
not
worth
framing,
I’d
say,
and
that
huge
silver
lamp
hanging
on
a
chain
like
something
out
of
a
church,
not
proper
in
a
room.
And then she saw Crispin Keylock’s carved elongated female nude and decided she did not like the room at all. The thought darted into her mind, rather shocking her, that it, like Doris’ lounge, might be improved by some of Luke’s matchboxes.

“What can I do for you, Miss Cook?” enquired Andrew politely, for she had been so busy looking round that she had not spoken yet.

“Well, it’s like this, Dr Royce,” she said, “I hear that little Harriet is coming home soon, and if Mrs Royce wants a hand with looking after her, amusing her and so forth, and I’ve done a bit of nursing too in my time, I’d be glad to help. Neighbours should be neighbourly, you know.” Could this be her mother’s daughter speaking thus? Most unlikely, but so it was, and when all was said and done really it was those five little drowned kitten corpses that were responsible.

Miss Cook’s offer was gratefully accepted and Letty also promised help, so Margot was able to keep her job going and Harriet, in due course, came home.

AT FIRST ALL
went well. Harriet was happier now than at any period she could remember. She was a different Harriet, an important person, and yet at the same time someone for whom nothing was important. Time no longer mattered, nor lessons, nor what she said or what she didn’t say. The past didn’t matter, in fact she didn’t seem to remember the events that led up to her accident at all clearly — it was like a bad dream, though it seemed somehow important to keep the little doll’s house girl within reach. People sent this Harriet “Get Well” cards, which stood in a row on the mantelpiece opposite the spare-room bed in which she lay in splendour and gazed at them. There was one from Mrs Campbell and Lucy and Rebecca, and one from Squinty and one from Miss Johnson, and a large beautiful one of birds and flowers and rabbits signed by all her class, including Ben, in his big bold hand. Then there were presents, chocolates from Mr Stacey, a manicure set from Dian which gave her great satisfaction, it was the first really grown-up present she had ever had. Miss Cook brought her a pink geranium in a pot and Andrew a jigsaw called “Farmyard Friends”. Mrs Sanderson read stories to her and Miss Cook played games with her. Letty had wondered how Harriet would receive the ministrations of a murderess, but the drowning of the kittens also was now part of the bad dream;
besides Harriet, who heard the Bible read at school assembly and sometimes listened, remembered that Jesus had said God loves sparrows, and if He loved them, they must go to Heaven, and if sparrows, surely kittens, where presumably they get on well together. Also, because she was now an important person, Maisie was allowed to stay on her bed where, with the unerring instinct of a cat for comfort, she had located Harriet the day after she had returned from hospital, and Maisie was obviously now thoroughly contented and prosperous. Best of all, her mother spent the last waking hours of every day with Harriet. These periods however, were an increasing strain on Margot. She felt both inadequate and bored.

“How can any adult communicate with children? We live in different worlds,” and she marvelled irritably at the way others seemed to bridge this gap.

“How have you been today, darling? How is the leg feeling?”

“Better, thank you.” Then, what else was there to say? She fell back upon continuing the stories that Mrs Sanderson had been reading. Like everything else about Margot, her voice was attractive, low and clear, but she read aloud to Harriet badly, partly because she was not in the least interested in what she was reading, often indeed thinking her own thoughts simultaneously, and partly, because as if by doing so she could shorten the hour, she read very fast. But none of this mattered to Harriet, she knew Mrs Sanderson would read it all over again the next day. She was quite content to lie there and look at her mother and listen to the sound of her voice. But sometimes she sensed the impatience behind the reading and, thinking Margot was tired after her day’s work, she would pretend to be asleep. Her mother would shut the book and go quietly away. “She doesn’t kiss me goodnight because she’s afraid of waking me, and when I’m awake she doesn’t because we don’t, but when I’m fast asleep she does.”

But this halcyon period came to an end and before the geranium flower had withered or the “Get Well” cards had begun to curl at the edges, the indulgent reactions to “our little invalid”, as Miss Cook always called her, showed signs of strain. By the time that Harriet was well enough to be dressed and move around with the aid of crutches, the atmosphere had changed. She had reached that stage of convalesence which is apt to be more trying than actual illness.

What
a
pity
we
are
not
characters
in
the
kind
of
book
I
was
given
to
read
by
my
aunts
long
ago,
thought Letty Sanderson, ‘What Katy did’
and
‘The Daisy Chain’,
for
instance.
Then
Harriet
would
be
the
little
Angel
in
the
House
and
all
of
us
would
be
ennobled
by
her
misfortune.
But it wasn’t like that for, with returning health, Harriet felt frustrated and fretful and actually her leg hurt her more now she was trying to use it. At the same time the patience of the grown-ups was becoming frayed. Miss Cook caught her cheating at Ludo one afternoon and she could not explain that it was because she felt too tired to finish the game.

“I don’t play with little girls who cheat,” said Janet Cook.

Harriet would not say she was sorry, so Janet stumped away downstairs. She was sometimes left to herself now for what seemed a long time — while she was in bed the hours had melted into one another, for she had slept so much.

“Now you can be in the sitting-room, Harriet, you can look at TV again — isn’t that nice?”

But she didn’t want to, she didn’t want to do anything that she could do, only the things she couldn’t do. She tried playing the piano one day but it had turned into an enemy. Andrew found her crouched over it in tears.

“It hates me, it won’t do a thing I want,” she sobbed.

“It’s too soon, Harriet, it’s made your head bad, you
mustn’t try yet a while, promise.”

And Maisie was banished from the flat. “I can’t have that cat about any longer,” said Margot, “she leaves her hairs all over the place and she’s clawed the chairs.”

Margot felt she needed a holiday badly. The Christmas break had been ruined by Harriet’s accident. Now spring was in the air, always a time of restlessness. Crispin Keylock, whom she had been seeing fairly frequently, had suggested that she and Andrew might join him and his wife for two weeks trip up the Nile in April. She was attracted to the idea for it was less ordinary than Spain or Italy or Greece, where everybody went nowadays. Crispin’s wife, whom she had met once or twice, had seemed an unassuming little creature, unlikely to be a nuisance to Andrew. Had Harriet been quite well there would have been no problems. Mrs Campbell ran a holiday camp at Easter and in the summer in some suitable country or seaside resort where Oueensmead’s or other parents could park their young, but the child was still suffering from headaches and her leg was not yet fully serviceable.

“You go,” said Andrew, “I’ll take some leave at home and look after the infant. I’m not all that keen on Egypt, I prefer a cold climate.”

“Oh no,” exclaimed Margot, though eagerly, “I can’t let you do that.”

“Nonsense, I’m not under your orders, my gir!.”

“Crispin will be disappointed if you don’t come.”

“You know he won’t give a damn — come to think of it, I’m not sure I’d care for his company for two whole weeks.”

“Why, don’t you like him?” asked Margot curiously.

“I don’t think he’s a serious artist.”

It wasn’t the answer she had expected.

“What
do
you mean? His sculptures fetch very good prices.”

“I dare say.”

“Anyway, you’re not qualified to judge.”

“True enough. It doesn’t matter anyway. You go and do your Cleopatra stuff and enjoy yourself, don’t worry about me.”

“You won’t worry about
me
, I suppose,” said Margot slowly, “I might have an affair with Crispin.”

“Go ahead then,” said Andrew, “God knows there’s no value in our relationship, or any, that isn’t free.” He paused and then added, as if making a discovery —

“Come to think of it, God does know — of course that’s why Adam had to fall.”

“What
are
you talking about?” said Margot crossly, “Don’t pretend you believe in God.”

Andrew laughed. “Now I
have
shocked you!” He turned round on the piano stool upon which he was sitting and struck some bars of the Bach fugue that happened to be on the stand. Margot interrupted him.

“You never take me seriously. Why can’t you answer me?”

“Don’t I?” said Andrew, “I’m sorry, I meant this for an answer.”

But Margot then and there decided that she certainly would go on the cruise and also amuse herself with Crispin if she felt like it. She needed a complete relaxation after all the strain of Harriet’s illness.

One of Margot’s charms was that she always looked so fresh with a crisp elegance that yet managed to seem perfectly natural. Letty Sanderson, coming in one morning from the garden where she had been picking the March daffodils, saw her standing in the hall with a letter which she had just taken from the postman and was obviously intent on reading immediately. She was wearing a pink and grey striped dress of some soft woollen material with a wide skirt gathered in at the waist by a matching pink belt, and she had a string of pale corals wound several times round her neck. The spring sunlight
caught at the gold of the clasp and the buckle of the belt and at her shining hair. Letty found herself wishing she could keep her there, standing beside the curving white staircase beneath the graceful arch of the Lotus House hall. But then she looked up — her lovely eyes were sparkling and she was smiling to herself before she saw Letty, and though all she said then was a conventional greeting, it sounded like poetry.

“Really,” said Letty to herself, “she’s too delicious. How difficult life must be for her.”

The letter Margot had been reading was from Crispin Keylock, giving details of the cruise and expressing extreme delight in the prospect of her company. She had been conscious lately of a longing to bask once again in the warmth and excitement of admiration and desire, not of course of the grovelling kind, but there was an undoubted austerity in living with Andrew. She was certainly due for a change.

When Harriet heard that her mother was going away and far away too, she was curiously upset, for although she saw little of her, she was yet the pivot upon which her world turned.

“Andrew will look after you,” she was told.

“But what shall we do?” she asked Andrew disconsolately on the first evening after Margot’s departure.

“Listen to things and go to places,” he said, an answer which filled her with both curiosity and apprehension.

“What things and what places?” she asked.

“Wait and see,” said Andrew, “I don’t like talking while I’m eating” — they were at supper — “but we can begin now.” He put on a record of Vivaldi which made a cheerful noise until they had finished.

“That low-down part that goes on and on the same is like Margot reading aloud,” remarked Harriet thoughtfully.

Andrew laughed. “She wouldn’t thank you for that,” he
said, “but it’s true enough.”

Harriet looked shocked. “Oh, I didn’t mean it wasn’t nice,” she said.

“It’s nice in this bit of music, but it’s not a nice way to read aloud. Don’t think it’s a crime to admit that Margot can’t do everything perfectly or even very well. Music can be perfect, people can’t.”

Harriet frowned in the effort to absorb this.

“But it’s people who make the music, that’s funny!” Andrew looked at her appreciatively. “You’re right, it’s divinely funny. Actually there’s a lot of funniness around, and don’t forget your mother’s part of it.”

“
I
s
she?” said Harriet frowning even harder.

In the days that followed Andrew quite often took her out somewhere in the car. Sometimes they even went as far as the sea. Once they went to a lunch-time concert in London and ate sandwiches afterards in St James’ Park and fed the ducks. Except that he made her go to bed early and wash properly and do her exercises, Andrew treated Harriet as an equal, which was a new experience. She had never before felt herself the equal of anyone except perhaps Squinty. She did not always understand all the words he used nor exactly what he meant, but this did not matter. She had moved back to her own little bedroom now and she would lie and look up at her sky and think about what they had done and talked about during the day.

Sometimes in the evenings Andrew would say “Let’s be silly,” and they were — very silly. Letty Sanderson used to hear them laughing. She remarked on it once when she took a note up to Andrew which had been left for him.

“I like to hear it,” she said. “In the old days there always seemed to be laughter about this house.”

“I used to hear people laughing,” said Harriet unexpectedly,
“when I was in the guest-room before I could get up.”

“You must have been dreaming,” said Andrew.

“Yes,” agreed Harriet, “I was rather mixed up but it was nice.”

Meanwhile Margot was not feeling at all like laughing. She had supposed that the East would hold enchantment, the days beguiling her with exotic sights, sounds and scents, the velvet nights full of huge stars. Instead she found days of dust and dirt, and nights full of huge mosquitoes. The boat, boarded at Cairo, was the first disappointment. It was uncomfortably old-fashioned, no air-conditioning, verging on tawdriness, undeniably smelly and the few single cabins were the least supportable. Hers, she discovered, was the noisiest and had a broken fan, but it took Margot only one day to subjugate a fellow single-cabin passenger. This was a middle-aged, kind, dehydrated American lady, very vulnerable to charm.

“My little girl has been desperately ill,” confided Margot to her as they lay beside each other in their deck chairs, “and I’m ashamed to say that I am completely worn out by nursing her, so my husband insisted on this trip — oh yes, she is quite recovered by now, thank you, but I’m afraid I’m not too good about heat. They said April would be all right — it’s my cabin, you see, isn’t yours quite terrible too?”

It proved much less so, bigger and with a fan that worked. “It’s just too bad, your little girl having been so sick. I guess I’m first cousin to a salamander, heat never seems to trouble me. Now, Margot — I may call you Margot, mayn’t I? and I’m Dimity — why shouldn’t we change cabins? I’ve not properly unpacked — now don’t say ‘no’.”

“Oh, but I must,” said Margot, “I couldn’t possibly let you.” But she found it was possible after all.