Two Silver Crosses, page 4
As it turned out, they behaved themselves surprisingly well, joining in the milder games, such as pass-the-parcel and grandmother’s footsteps, and content to watch the rougher ones, like tug-of-war and rounders. When it came to tea they sat in their high chairs, bibs smothered in jelly, and cheered with the rest when the birthday cake was carried out.
All in all, it was a lovely party…until the moment when the twins were standing side by side at the table, with the cake knife held firmly between their hands, ready to cut the cake.
The sun felt warm on their shoulders, their new silver crosses hung importantly about their necks, their guests watched them ready to cheer again and all was right with their world. Suddenly a man’s voice, shouting and swearing, erupted into the peace of the afternoon.
‘Who left that bloody chair in my way? Goddamn it all. You can’t walk for bloody chairs.’
It was their father, who’d come staggering round the corner of the house and crashed sideways into the stools they’d been using for musical chairs. Now he lurched towards them in his dreadful awkward way, legs straddled as if he was riding a horse and his body tipped forward and completely off balance. He was lifting his feet even higher than he usually did, so with every step his knees rose almost to the level of his waist, and he stamped his feet down with such violence that the impact spun gravel in all directions. His face was dark with bad temper. Worse than Ginny had ever seen it, even when he had one of his really bad attacks.
Maman was already running towards him along the terrace, beckoning to Nanny to follow her. And the tea party stopped in mid-giggle as all their guests turned their heads to stare at him, shocked and fascinated.
‘He’s going to be ill again,’ Ginny whispered to her sister, speaking in French for privacy.
‘I know,’ Emily whispered back. ‘I can hear it.’
That was all they had time to say.
He collapsed before Maman could reach him, falling in a heap as his knees gave way, and lay where he fell, still swearing, his arms thrown out like a rag doll’s.
‘Aren’t we going to cut this cake?’ Miss Babbacombe said, stepping up briskly to stand between her two worried darlings. ‘Poor Mr Holborn is very ill, you know,’ she explained, looking round the table at the startled children and demanding the return of their attention by the sheer force of her gaze. ‘The war, you know. We must all feel sorry for him, mustn’t we? Make allowances. Christian charity. Look away, if you please.’
One or two said ‘Yes Miss Babbacombe’ dutifully. And a village boy asked, ‘Was he wounded, Miss?’
‘Terribly,’ Miss Babbacombe said. ‘But Mrs Holborn will look after him. Now what about this cake?’
So the cake was cut, and the slices handed round. When Ginny looked up after the little ceremony the terrace was clear. Her father had been carried away into the house.
Their pleasure in the party was gone, drained away like blood from an open wound. They wanted to rush indoors, to see poor Daddy and protect Maman and find out what was happening. But, of course, they couldn’t. They had a duty to their guests. And if you were a member of the Holborn family, duty had to be done, no matter how difficult.
It was past six o’clock before the last car had been waved away and Miss Babbacombe finally nodded her approval and allowed them to run off into the house. Maman was in the morning room, curled up on one of the upholstered window seats like a cat, apparently enjoying the last rays of the afternoon sun. She looked far too bright and cheerful, and there was an odd note in her voice.
‘Come here my little ones,’ she instructed, patting the upholstery beside her. ‘Come and kiss your Maman.’
The twins sat in the sun together, worrying.
‘Is Daddy very ill?’
‘Oh no, no, no. A little fall.’
‘Is it his illness?’
‘Yes. But it is nothing, nothing.’
Emily pinched Ginny’s hand to show that she knew poor Maman wasn’t telling them the truth. And Ginny pinched back to show that she agreed.
‘Was it lightning pains?’ she asked. She knew all about lightning pains. Miss Babbacombe had explained them. They came and went like lightning.
Maman admitted that, but she was still too bright. ‘Yes, your poor Papa. But you mustn’t worry, my darlings.’
‘May we see him?’ Emily asked. Usually if they were allowed to see him, he wasn’t too bad.
But her mother gave them the wrong answer. ‘Not now. Doctor Stimson gave him something to make him sleep. In the morning, if you are good little girls.’
They were exemplary and stayed in the nursery all through a long sleepless night, even though they could both hear their father groaning, their mother soothing in her soft purring French, and somebody coming and going along the corridor. But when morning arrived, they didn’t see their father and there was no sign of Maman either. Nanny yawned as she strode in to get them washed and dressed, but she was no help at all.
‘No good asking me,’ she said, as she stripped their beds. ‘I’m the last one in this house to know what’s going on. You just cut on down to the dining room like good girls and don’t make a fuss.’
There was no one in the dining room at all and the twins knew things were serious. While they were eating what breakfast they could manage, Emily heard the doctor’s car arrive. They’d never known him to call as early as this. Then they heard urgent footsteps up and down the stairs, and voices speaking so quietly that even Emily could only hear a word or two. ‘…for the best… Hurry! …only to be expected, poor man.’
‘He’s terribly ill,’ Emily said.
‘Yes,’ Ginny said. There was no doubt about that now. ‘Poor Daddy.’
‘What shall we do, Ginny?’ Emily asked. ‘If we went up, would they let us see him?’
‘Not with all this going on,’ Ginny said.
‘I s’pose we’d better go to the schoolroom then.’
‘No,’ Ginny decided. ‘We’ll leave Babbers a note to tell her where we are, and we’ll go to the library and wait there. It’s the nearest we can get to the hall.’ The hall was always the best place to be because all family activity went through its central point at some time or other.
The library was quiet and musty with smoke from Grandfather’s cigars. They sat on the curly hearth rug beside his special chair and waited while anxious activity swirled and muttered on the other side of the door. Nine o’clock tinged, half-past, a quarter to.
Then there was a long ominous silence, as if the house was holding its breath. Just before ten, a strange car drew up outside the front door. Peering through the crack of the library door, Ginny saw two uniformed men carrying an odd sort of folding chair up the main staircase. The sight of it alarmed her more than anything else she’d seen or heard in the last eighteen, awful hours.
‘I think it’s a sort of stretcher,’ she said to Emily. ‘I think they’re going to take him away.’
Twenty minutes later their father was eased down the stairs one step at a time, strapped into the odd-looking chair, his face grey with pain and his eyes closed. Behind him came Maman, crying so much that her face was awash with tears.
‘Daddy!’ Ginny cried, and rushed out of the library, pulling Emily behind her.
‘Very ill,’ their father explained wearily, reaching out his hands to draw them to his side. ‘Got to go to…clinic. Be good girls. Help Maman.’
Ginny pounced forward at once to kiss him, but the doctor intervened, removing her gently with one hand and holding Emily back with the other.
‘Better not, Mr Holborn,’ he said.
And to the twins’ horror their father agreed. ‘No, I suppose not.’
The chair was carried out of the house, Maman following it, a handkerchief to her eyes. Miss Babbacombe appeared at the foot of the stairs, swished forward to catch her charges round the shoulders and hold them firmly against her sides.
‘Why have they taken him away?’ Ginny said furiously.
‘It’s for the best my precious,’ Miss Babbacombe said. ‘They’ll look after him.’
But Ginny couldn’t see it was for the best at all. ‘Why can’t he be nursed at home?’ she demanded. ‘He’s always been nursed at home before. He’s worse, isn’t he?’
‘Coats and hats!’ Miss Babbacombe commanded. ‘Chop chop. Time for a nice walk. I’ll take you down to the village.’
It was not possible to talk until Babbers popped into the chemist. ‘He’s much worse this time,’ Emily said. ‘You could tell by the way everyone was talking.’
Thank heavens for Em, Ginny thought. Until that moment she’d simply taken it for granted that her sister had the ability to hear what people were thinking; now she realised that it was a skill that was going to be very useful to them. ‘Does Babbers know what’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Yes. She was embarrassed when you asked her. She changed the subject.’
‘What do you think he’s got, Em?’
‘Well it’s not just lightning pains or a stomach upset. What did he look like?’
‘Very ill. Sort of grey.’
‘Worse than usual?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps Maman will tell us when she gets back.’
But she didn’t. Her eyelids were red, but she was even brighter than she’d been the evening before, and so cheerful that they felt she would snap.
‘What a lot we all have to do today!’ she said, kissing them briefly. ‘I must hurry.’ And was gone from the schoolroom before they could ask her anything.
There was nothing they could do but wait for a better moment, which never came.
The days passed, became weeks, and their father remained in the clinic. Babbers told them they couldn’t go and visit him there because it wasn’t that sort of place, and, when they asked her what sort of place it was, she pretended she didn’t know. Maman visited him every day but she didn’t tell them anything except that he was being looked after.
Nobody at all was prepared to talk about their father’s illness, and their concern for him became a perpetual nagging ache, like toothache.
They did their lessons as well as they could, ate their meals, went for obedient walks with Nanny or Miss Babbacombe, and to the comfort of mass on Sundays with Maman. Clutching their new silver crosses between their fingers, they implored gentle Jesus to make their father better, concentrating with such intensity that Hortense was riven with unspoken pity for them.
The weeks worried into months and their father still didn’t come back. There was no real news of him. Sometimes Emily gleaned a fragment of conversation and then they would know that he’d been sick, or that he was rallying, or that he had an ulcer on his leg. Once she heard that he’d been through a crisis of some sort.
‘I think she said “bronchial”,’ she reported to Ginny. ‘That’s breathing, isn’t it?’
But Ginny couldn’t say, and, in any case, all they really wanted to know was when he was going to get better and come home.
One lovely warm morning in the middle of July, they came down to breakfast to be told that Maman had gone to the clinic during the night. Neither of them liked the sound of that, but when they asked Nanny for an explanation, she said they were to ask no questions. So they resigned themselves to wait.
Each minute as long as an hour and fraught with prickling anxiety, the morning crept by. So inattentive were the twins that Miss Babbacombe gave up all hope of teaching them and took them out into the garden after lunch. They sat on a travelling rug under the shade of the willow beside the lily pond and did their best to listen while she read them two Just-So Stories. But their hearts weren’t in it.
‘Where is she?’ Ginny fretted, when the second story was finished.
‘She ought to be back by now, surely,’ Emily said.
‘I think he’s worse,’ Ginny said, ‘and that’s why she’s staying there all the time. Don’t you, Miss Babbacombe?’
‘Yes, my precious, I’m afraid I do.’
‘Much worse?’
They all knew where the questions were leading but Miss Babbacombe answered steadfastly, ‘Yes, my darling.’
‘Do you think he’s going to die?’
‘Oh my poor darlings,’ Miss Babbacombe said, wincing with grief. ‘I wish I could say no…’
‘Shush!’ Emily said, lifting her head to listen. ‘There’s the car coming up the hill.’
The two girls were on their feet immediately, running down the incline towards the terrace and skidding along the gravel path. They reached the front of the house just as the car rounded the bend of the drive. Ginny pulled her sister to a halt. The anxiety of that long difficult day had swollen into terror that filled her throat and made her knees tremble too much for her to walk any further.
Maman’s long slim legs emerged out of the car door. They looked all wrong somehow, awkward and inelegant, like a baby kangaroo’s legs poking out of its pouch. Then she got out of the car and stood in a most peculiar way, her handbag under her arm and her hat and gloves in her hand, looking as if she didn’t know where she was. She seemed to fall towards them, eyes shut like Emily, her lovely face so changed that Ginny could hardly recognise her mother; all the colour had been drained from her cheeks, except for the flesh round her eyes, which was bright pink and puffy. There were streaks of dirt on her cheeks, and her dark hair was black with perspiration.
‘Oh my babies!’ she said, running towards them. ‘My poor babies! My little orphelines!’ She dropped her hat and her bag and her gloves as she ran and didn’t notice that Miss Babbacombe was behind her picking them up. ‘Oh your poor father! I loved him so much.’
The twins fell upon her to hold and kiss her in an anguish of grief.
‘He’s dead,’ Emily said.
‘I loved him so much,’ her mother choked.
As if she was a sheep dog herding them into cover, Miss Babbacombe chivvied them inside and they obeyed her instinctively. Together they stumbled into the house and through the hall into the morning room, with the twins’ arms wrapped protectively round their poor Maman, weeping and kissing. Here they cried for a very long time. Somebody tiptoed in with a tea tray and set it silently beside them, somebody else removed Maman’s crumpled coat, but the three of them were lost in their sorrow.
‘What shall we do without him?’ Hortense mourned, as gathering cloud outside softened the light in the room and their first terrible grief had been wept to a halt. ‘Your poor darling father.’
Emily recovered sufficiently to be practical. ‘We shall go on living here, Maman,’ she said, ‘and Ginny and me will look after you.’
‘I suppose so,’ Hortense said, wearied by grief. ‘Yes I suppose we will.’
‘Of course, we will,’ Ginny said, comforting her furiously. ‘It’ll be all right, Maman. You’ll see. You’ve still got us, and we’ve got a good home and a garden and lots of friends and lots of relations. We’ll look after you always, won’t we, Em? It’ll be all right.’
But they were reckoning without Uncle Claud.
Chapter 3
The last ten years of Claud Everdale’s life had not gone according to plan. Not that anyone who met him socially would ever have suspected it. On the face of things he appeared to have achieved all his ambitions. He’d married Agnes Holborn after a two-year courtship and, despite her father’s opposition, had risen from junior salesman to assistant manager of overseas sales. He was now living in a comfortable suite of rooms in the west wing of High Holborn, having produced two sons to carry the fortunes of the family into the fourth generation. But it was all to no purpose.
In public, he was courteous and urbane, universally accepted by his many acquaintances as a charming man, generous both with his time and his attention. In private his sense of injustice rankled like poison, bubbling and seething in his brain and belly until it spilled out into irritability and violent stomach upsets. For no matter how polite he was to Mr Holborn, no matter how often he kow-towed to fools, guarding his tongue and exercising iron self-control, he was still an outsider, still the office boy made good.
The obstacle to his preferment had always been Mr Edward, of course. Despite his illness, his outbursts of foul temper and his totally unpredictable behaviour, Edward Holborn had been the apple of his father’s eye. As far as Claud could see it was simply because his brother-in-law had seen service in the trenches. As if that were a virtue! But now he was gone, and everything was changed. If he played his cards right, he, Claud James Everdale, could be the future director of the firm. The way could be cleared. In fact, it had to be cleared. He knew that. There was no point in being squeamish or paying attention to sentimental nonsense about women and children. If he wanted power, he would have to take it. God knew he had a right to it after all this time.
The Fates were on his side. Three days after the funeral, when the women and children were breakfasting on their own upstairs, old Mr Holborn gave him a piece of unintentionally helpful news.
‘I’m off to South America,’ he said, ladling marmalade on to his third slice of toast. ‘Thought you ought to know.’
‘When would that be?’ Claud asked, at his most urbane.
‘S’afternoon,’ the old man said gruffly. ‘Bad timing, eh? I know what Agnes’ll say.’
Claud made a face to deprecate anything Agnes might say.
‘Can’t be helped,’ Mr Holborn went on. ‘I’ve postponed it twice because of — um — er. Can’t be put back a third time or I shall lose the order.’
‘Of course.’
‘Business is business.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thought you ought to know.’
There was something about the set of the old man’s jaw that gave lie to the casual tone of his words. He’s running away, Claud realised. This house is wallowing in emotion, all those women weeping and carrying on, and he can’t take it. He’s running away. The thought gave him hope and an idea. ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do while you’re away?’ he asked.
Mr Holborn screwed up his eyes to consider the offer. ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Keep things ticking over. Look after Hortense and the funny faces. The factory can run itself for a week or two.’
