The Spider-Orchid (7 page)

This was the latest entry. Amelia read it through once more, and then, sleepy though she was by now, she decided to make a start on the leather-bound diary of Dorothy’s grandmother. She had promised Dorothy that she would bring it back without fail on the following Sunday, and there mightn’t be much time for it during the week. She had already ascertained, by a swift glance through, that it was quite long, and that the writing, though neat and
carefully
penned, was in an unfamiliar style and, as Dorothy had said, somewhat hard to read until you got used to it.

Slowly, she unfastened the gilt clasps and raised the leather cover. On the fly-leaf was written:

“
What
CHOCOLATE-COATED
Swiss roll?” asked Adrian, just as Amelia had predicted; and Rita, equally predictably, burst into tears.

It was a difficult quarrel to launch, because Adrian, just sitting down to his work after driving Amelia home, really
didn’t
know what in the world Rita was talking about, had no recollection of the subject at all. And by the time she had explained it to him all over again, including the comparative prices of chocolate-coated Swiss rolls at Tesco’s and at Marks and Spencer, he once more had on his face the glazed expression which had so incensed her in the first place.

“You
never
listen to me,” she sobbed, “you never listen to a word I say!” and Adrian, knowing that he didn’t, said, “Nonsense, darling,” rather helplessly.

He was dismayed, and also puzzled by her outburst. It had seemed to him that the afternoon had gone off quite reasonably well, with Amelia down with Dorothy half the time, Rita chattering away, and he, Adrian, managing to get quite a fair amount of work done in spite of it all.

What had gone wrong? Whatever
was
she on about?

“Look, dear,” he said, trying to be placatory, “if Amelia has upset you some way about a Swiss roll, then I’m sorry. She
can
be rather a little pig sometimes, I suppose. Though actually I thought she was behaving very well most of the time. I mean, she could hardly have been less bother, could she? First down at Dorothy’s, and then just lying on the floor reading and getting on with her homework … she hardly spoke a word the entire afternoon.”

“And
that’s
what you call “behaving well?’ Is
that
the way you think a kid of thirteen ought to be? Let me tell you something, Adrian, if that child was
my
daughter, which thank heaven she’s not, I’d be very, very worried about her. I would, Adrian. All that reading, and writing, and so quiet all the time, it’s not natural. And so secretive, too, so sly—you’ve only got to stir out of your chair
and she covers up what she’s doing as if you were a spy, or something! What’s she trying to hide? What is it she’s so ashamed of? Morbid, I call it. At her age, she should be full of fun and chatter, she should be active, outgoing, communicative. I don’t want to scare you, Adrian, but as her father, I think you should be doing something about it. Get some advice about her. There are clinics….”

Adrian closed his eyes, crossed his legs, and leaned back in his chair.

“What you mean is, you’re bored,” he said to Rita. “Amelia and I both have work to do on Sundays, and you haven’t. And so you feel left out. Of course you do. But I did tell you. I warned you right from the start that our Sundays are like this. I knew you wouldn’t enjoy it, I knew it wasn’t your thing, but you
would
come….”

“‘
Came
’
?
I like that!” Rita was outraged. “Adrian, I
live
here! Hadn’t you noticed? Or are you telling me I’m to be chucked out of
my
own home every Sunday of my life for the sake of that little zombie? Why don’t you think about chucking
her
out for a change? It’d do her good, she needs a bit of fresh air. She ought to be out and about with her friends at weekends, not humped over her books in a bad light, and breathing through her mouth half the time! She’ll end up with short sight, adenoids, curvature of the spine….”

Adrian once again closed his eyes, and laid down his pen with an air of exaggerated weariness.

“You can’t ‘end up’ with short sight,” he explained patiently. “It’s a thing you’re born with. It’s genetic.”

The word was a trigger word. Rita’s brain was instantly ablaze with all the popular medical articles she’d skimmed through in magazines recently, and at once she plunged, with crusaders’ zeal, into a passionate account of this survey or something that some Doctor Somebody had been conducting in America or somewhere, which showed that more children who wore glasses had learned to read early, or was it that they stopped wearing glasses when they stopped reading, or maybe the other way round, but anyway, what is proved conclusively was that short sight
wasn’t
genetic, it was due to reading too much, and look at primitive man,
he
didn’t read at all, and didn’t need glasses either, so there!

*

Adrian sighed. His report would just have to be finished in his
lunch-hour, that was all. It was going to be the same next week, too, and the week after.

He swivelled round in his chair and faced Rita. In a way, he was glad they were quarrelling, because it absolved him at least for the time being of any obligation to feel in love with her. Since she had moved in with him, and everything was suddenly supposed to be so marvellous, the tepid quality of his feelings towards her had terrified him. He had searched for the old passion with the desperation of a man searching for his passport in an airport departure lounge … it
must
be here … it
must
… I
know
I had it….

But now, with Rita nagging and scolding like this, he had a sudden sense of reprieve. She wasn’t even attractive, her white forehead all screwed up and her eyes bulging with temper … he couldn’t possibly love her like that, no one could. And since this was a quarrel, he didn’t
have
to love her, in fact he could hate her if he liked, hatred is allowed during a quarrel. It’s the love-hate thing, hatred the reverse side of love, and all that. He felt thankful that it
had
a reverse side, it gave you a sort of rest now and again….

And what’s more, he didn’t have to put up with her stupid, female illogic, either.

“Look,” he said, “Amelia is
my
daughter, and so perhaps you’ll be good enough to allow me to be the best judge? She happens to be an intelligent child, and she likes to have a bit of peace and quiet now and again to read and think. Just as I do. We’re alike, Amelia and I. Hell, we
are
father and daughter….”

He stopped, realising that by this phrase he was laying himself open to yet another explosion of amateur psychology. He went on, in a slightly more conciliatory tone:

“And anyway, Rita, you must realise that Amelia’s only two years off O levels now. She has homework to do.”

“
Homework!
”
Rita drawled the word with heavy, deliberate insolence. “You don’t know you’re born, Adrian, the way you let that child pull the wool over your eyes. That wasn’t
homework
she was doing this afternoon, don’t you believe it! What sort of ‘
homework’
could it be that consists simply of scribbling page after page of huge, untidy writing, and never once having to stop to think, or to look anything up? Didn’t you
notice
what a scrawl it was? What sort of a father
are
you? Don’t you notice
anything
?”

“Notice? No, of course I don’t notice. Why should I pry into what she’s doing? She does her stuff, I do mine, it’s been like that for four years now, and we’re both perfectly happy with it. I’m sorry if you’re bored, Rita, but it
is
only one afternoon in the week. Can’t you do some sewing or something—?” and then, when Rita’s head jerked up in fury, he hastily amended “well, whatever it is you do like doing. It isn’t even a whole afternoon, usually. She’s down with Dorothy part of the time….”

“Oh, big deal! And that’s another thing, while we’re on the subject. What sort of company do you think that old woman is for your precious little ewe-lamb? Have you any idea what they
talk
about when they’re down there together? Of course you haven’t! Up here in your ivory tower, you haven’t the faintest inkling of what goes on! Well, I’ll tell you one thing: if it was
my
daughter I’d see her dead and in her grave before I’d send her down there to have her mind poisoned by that filthy-minded eavesdropping old harridan….”

“Let me see, they were making gingerbread this time, weren’t they?” Adrian remarked, as annoyingly as he knew how. “Amelia brought some up for tea, if you remember. It was rather good, I think you said …”

“
I
said? Why, I never even …”

“But of course,” continued Adrian smoothly, “the witch in Hansel and Gretel was also very good at making gingerbread, was she not? Is that what you had in mind?”

Rita clenched and unclenched her white knuckles. She knew that Adrian was taking the mickey in his effortless, intellectualising way, but she couldn’t grasp his meaning sufficiently to be ready with an appropriate come-back. So she did the only other thing she could do: she burst into tears.

*

The reconciliation was sweet, though perhaps a little perfunctory on Adrian’s part, as he was anxious to get back to his work. He was relieved, and very pleasantly surprised, that Rita seemed
unperturbed
by the slightly unflattering haste with which he scrambled back into his clothes and reseated himself at the desk. She even had a little smile playing around her lips as she lay and watched him.

“
I’ll
show
him!
” she was thinking. “Just let him wait!
I’ll
teach him!”

A
T THE SIGHT
of the careful, faded handwriting of so long ago, Amelia’s sleepiness left her, and with a little
frisson
of excitement she turned over the first of the fragile, whispering pages, and began to read:

There was something distinctly reassuring about this last sentence. If the hidden secrets of Miss Amelia Ponsonby’s heart were to be of this calibre, then surely one need feel no guilt at perusing them?

Because a few moments earlier, the Amelia of the 1970s
had
been feeling guilty. All that about, “No other eyes than mine…” —well, it did make you think. The long-ago Amelia could hardly have made her wishes in the matter plainer, or more emphatic.

Still—a hundred
years
! More than a hundred! The childish hand which had formed that careful copperplate had been dust these many decades; the secrets of the childish heart were gone as if they had never been, like a candle-flame long blown out.

A hundred years! How would
I
feel, Amelia asked herself, if
they were to find
my
diary after all that time, and read the things I’ve written about Mr Owen? About him leaning over Daphne’s shoulder, and what she said afterwards? I’d
die,
of course, if
anyone
were to read it
now
: but after more than a hundred years….?

In a hundred years, Daphne, herself, and Mr Owen would all be dead and in their graves. At the thought of herself and Mr Owen (she couldn’t be bothered about Daphne) being dead and in their graves, warm, delicious tears began to trickle down Amelia’s cheeks, and she began composing epitaphs for their lonely moorland tomb:

—as, indeed, it would need to do if the two of them were to fetch up in the same grave despite Mr Owen being a married man.

*

Brushing the tears from her eyes, Amelia turned another of the brittle pages, and read on:

And so on and so on. The modern Amelia began to skip bits here and there. It was quite interesting in a way, but what about History? What about the Crimean War? The Chartist riots? The publication of
In
Memoriam
?
This Amelia Ponsonby might just as well not have lived in History at all, for all the notice she took of it. While children in their thousands were starving to death in the streets, while the great cholera epidemic raged, and Sebastapol was falling, here was Miss Amelia Ponsonby lamenting her Mamma’s refusal to allow her to have a dress made up in figured lilac satinet.

“I’m
not
too young for it,” she raged in the pages of her Journal, “and if I am, then so is Hester, too! She’s not ‘out’ yet, she’s only in the schoolroom still, just as I am!”

Soldiers died. Politicians rose and crashed. Poor harvests plus economic bungling brought destitution to millions; and here is Amelia Caroline Ponsonby forbidden to wear figured lilac satinet.

And what about all those “hidden secrets of her heart”? Amelia skimmed through the pages … spring … summer … autumn … for her, they slipped by in seconds, but of course her namesake had had to live through them.

*

Ah, this was more like it!

“Mr B.” Amelia had a little trouble identifying this character, and had to turn back a number of pages before she discovered that he was the new curate, who had taken up his duties at the end of the summer. But from this point on, as page followed page, she never again had to seek out references to him: he featured in every single entry, though often in a sadly negative rôle:

This last entry ended with a little prayer:

Whether or not this prayer was answered must remain for ever in doubt, for there was no entry for the following day. Nor for the next … nor the next. It was more than a week later before the tale was taken up again:

Christmas. The January snows. For two Sundays running, deep snowdrifts kept the Ponsonby family at home, and so the young Amelia did not see her beloved at all, for two whole weeks. Her heart was broken, she confided to her Journal; she longed for death. Not until January 26th, the day of the Special Service for the Poor of the Parish, would she get a chance to see him again. The days until that distant, magic date were numbered off in her journal like a count-down. Seven more days—six more days—five more days—and so on, down to “one”.

And then—nothing. The great day, January 26th, comes and goes, and Amelia Caroline Ponsonby records of it not one word. Mr B. is never mentioned again.

Had the long-ago Amelia grown suddenly tired of him? Had he broken her heart in so dastardly a manner that she cannot bring herself to set his name on paper ever again?

The subsequent entries gave no clues, though from mid-February onwards the young lady was setting down plenty else. Fittings for dresses; a forthcoming visit to her cousins, the Honourable Ralph and his brother. A pony had strained its fetlock; Papa had been angry when some village children were caught throwing sticks in the paddock. More fittings for dresses.

Had Mr B. left the neighbourhood, perhaps? Taken another curacy elsewhere? Or had he—disaster of disasters—got married?

Amelia—Amelia Summers, that is—had at last to face the fact that she would never know. She skimmed through the book right to the very last page, but in vain. Mr B. had disappeared without trace, and forever.

*

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning by now, and Amelia’s eyes were pricking with tiredness. Slowly, she began to close the leather covers, but as she did so a passage caught her eye that she must have missed. About halfway through it was, still in the era of Mr B.’s glory.

“O, Posterity, Posterity!” she read, the words dancing before her tired eyes. “Will you not spare a tear for one so young, so innocent, whose heart is broken? I shall not see him now until
Saturday! How can I live through the bleak waste of days and hours that separate me from my love?”

It was impossible to read any further. Amelia was quite cross-eyed with exhaustion. She switched off her lamp and lay back among her pillows, her eyes closing of their own accord.

*

… are you there, Amelia Caroline Ponsonby? This is Posterity speaking. I
did
shed a tear for you, just as you asked, but not at that particular paragraph, which I found a bit soppy, actually, though I daresay it was all right in those days. It was the bit about your grandmamma that made me cry, because now you
are
a grandmamma and dead; and I’m sure you never really thought you would be.

But the bit that made me cry the most was the
happy
bit, the bit where you asked Posterity, which is me, to share your great joy—and oh, I did, I did! Because I too have known the rare and wonderful joy of which you write, and maybe that is why I have been able to get in touch with you like this, across all these years: because we are both so happy. Maybe happiness is like that?

Or maybe it’s because I’m called Amelia, too. Isn’t that strange?

I wish I knew what happened to Mr B., but I suppose I never shall.

I hope you had a happy life, and got married and everything. Well, of course you did, or you couldn’t be Dorothy’s grandmother….

The book slid from Amelia’s fingers, and her mother, hearing the thud from her bedroom next door, tiptoed in just in time to to hear her daughter murmuring drowsily, “I dreamed I was Amelia!”

Identity-crisis? Ego-disorientation?

Peggy was thankful, at least, that Maureen Denvers wasn’t here listening, or it would be all round the neighbourhood before the day was out that Peggy Summers was having teenage troubles at last, and wasn’t managing so marvellously as a single parent after all.