Dorothy Eden (39 page)

Did Grandmother know about the German soldier living in her house?

“Now don’t be a silly girl. You’re not over-tired, and with all that moving about Europe you can’t be shy. There’ll only be Grandfather and Aunt Florence and Uncle Edwin and myself. Family. Or don’t you want to be part of our family?”

Anna pressed the edge of the sheet to her lips, and tried to say that she would never leave the safety of this room. Never.

Grandmother stared at her some more, then shrugged and sighed.

“Very well. Finch may bring you a tray upstairs for this once. Perhaps today has been a little much for you. But tomorrow we expect an improvement.” She came and kissed Anna’s damp forehead. “It was only Uncle Edwin, you know,” she said. “He’s not at all a person to be afraid of. Poor boy.”

But she was afraid, perhaps not only of Uncle Edwin so curiously dressed as a German soldier, but of everything, the strange house and the strange people, the inevitable new school and the English girls she would have to meet. It was all too much. She would stay safely in this, her mother’s old room. She wasn’t afraid of Finch, or even the older woman, Hawkins, very bony and wrinkled. They were two old hens who cackled softly about her and didn’t scold.

But nothing else and nobody else could be faced.

“Send for the doctor,” said William impatiently. “If the child isn’t physically ill, then it must be something mental.”

“It’s plain stubbornness,” said Florence. “Like a mule, that one.”

Edwin gave his small secret smile. He spoke almost as little as Anna did. But they were used to that. The prison doctor and then old Doctor Lovegrove had said that he was suffering a personality change as the result of his long incarceration. He had withdrawn into himself, perhaps permanently. He was not unhappy. He found his fantasy world made no demands on him. He had always had a too highly strung nature. The servants didn’t mind him in the house, and he made no trouble.

But Daisy’s young minx was another matter, said William. She was just wilful.

“No,” said Beatrice quietly. “Let her be.”

“You mean just let her stay in that room forever!” Florence exclaimed.

“Until she’s ready to come out. I think perhaps we made a bad start with her. She’s more disturbed than we knew. She’s been neglected. Yes, William, I am criticising Daisy. It’s quite obvious that she’s never been very maternal and with Sergei dying and leaving that child to remind her mother of her loss she hasn’t been able to cope. That sort of thing needs a stronger character than Daisy ever had.”

“Her character’s fine, Bea,” William said stiffly.

“No, it isn’t, it used to be shallow and selfish, and it still is,” said Florence. “All that girl wanted to do was to preen herself in front of men.”

“Women who love men too deeply don’t make good mothers,” Beatrice said. “Speaking for myself—”

“You have been a splendid mother, Bea.” William had his withdrawn look.

“I fancy Florence and Edwin may not entirely agree. However, let’s see if I have more success with Anna.”

“You won’t if you leave her shut up in her room,” Florence said. “She’ll go cuckoo.”

“She talks to Finch. I think she has a large inferiority complex, poor child. That second husband of Daisy’s seems to be a very insensitive person, and he has this spoiled daughter, Olga, who is pretty.”

“It’s a pity about Anna’s looks,” William commented. He was surprised and resentful that Daisy’s daughter should be so plain.

“She may improve. Does it matter so much?”

“Bea, this isn’t like you, spoiling the little brat.”

It was even just a little amusing that Daisy’s daughter should be such a failure with William. Beatrice gave him her usual loving smile.

“No, that used to be your prerogative, didn’t it? But apart from dragging her screaming out of her room what else can we do but give her time to settle down?”

“I just don’t want her taking up too much of your time,” William said.

A week later, on a sharp bright afternoon, a small figure crept from the house and came upon Edwin preparing his spring borders. Crocuses, narcissus, daffodils. He loved the flaunting yellow of daffodils. He wouldn’t have any help in the garden. The previous gardener had left at the beginning of the war. He had died, in mud that was bereft of all seeds and growth, on the Somme. He hadn’t been replaced and when Edwin had come home the garden had been a jungle.

Every soldier needed physical exercise for fitness. Since he didn’t care to go on route marches over the Heath he decided to work in the garden instead.

Now he loved it passionately. He wasn’t going to have any skinny little girl (Daisy’s girl, they said) interfering with his work.

However, she didn’t interfere. She merely came creeping up close, as silent as the advance of a caterpillar, and stood watching. After a long time he said, “I’m your Uncle Edwin.”

“I know.”

“You yelled when you first saw me.”

“I know.”

“Fair enough. I was a Uhlan Kapitan and they command respect.”

“You’re different now.”

“This is my working kit.”

“I like it better.”

“You’ll like the other when you’re used to it. Would you like me to teach you the Napoleonic wars?”

“The retreat from Moscow?”

“You know that, do you? I suppose you would, being half Russian. Waterloo, too?”

“No.”

“Good God! We’d better repair that omission.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

“In that—room?”

“I’ll be the Duke this afternoon. Scarlet tunic with gold braid. Very fine. You can be my trumpeter and sound the battle charge. I say, that will be jolly.”

With the child coming out of her shell at last, although speech still had to be dragged from her, Beatrice set about finding a suitable school. William was adamant that he couldn’t have her and a hockey-playing governess about the house all day. He had felt so differently about Daisy, but then he had been younger and in much better health. With his habitual courtesy and kindness, he had tried to make one or two advances to the child, but when she rejected his famous butterfly collection, saying coldly that she preferred Uncle Edwin’s guns, he gave up trying.

“How long do we have to put up with her?” he asked plaintively.

“I suppose until her mother has a settled home for her. We can’t be inhuman, my dear. You’ll hardly notice her, once she’s going to school.”

“Let’s hope so. She isn’t one of us, Bea.”

Once she herself, a solemn little outsider, had not been one of the Overton family but she had become one. The years took care of those things. Beatrice sighed, and wished that Anna’s complex problems didn’t take the valuable time she would have preferred spending with William. But such an acutely vulnerable child needed time and understanding. That was one thing experience had taught her.

“It’s only a day school, my dear. You can come home every night, and do your homework in the old nursery.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I’m afraid you must, and that’s all about it. One thing I won’t tolerate is an uneducated granddaughter.”

She gave the cold little paw a firm unemotional clasp.

“Uncle Edwin can teach you at weekends. You must learn something other than wars, you know.”

The next letter from Daisy came from California. She had left Vladimir. He was a beast. She had renounced all claim to being a princess, she didn’t want even a title from a man who had proved to be so selfish, gluttonous and cruel. Ugh! He hadn’t even let her keep the ruby pendant, he was going to use that to lure a new wife. But what did she care, she had met the most attractive film producer. He was promising to make her another Gloria Swanson or Mary Pickford. (“Which?” muttered Florence. “Make up your mind.”) As soon as her divorce was through and she had married Randolph she would send for Anna. Although if the child were happy, as she must be with dear Mamma and Papa, it was a pity to disturb her. Poor brat, she had had such a lot of being dragged about in her short life. It was a plain miracle that she was going to school and staying there.

Daisy had even acquired a breathless American way of expressing herself. She was a chameleon, taking on the colour of her surroundings. Perhaps she actually would make a successful film actress.

“Dear Daisy. Still the complete opportunist,” said Florence.

“She’s always looking for another Sergei,” William said, but less certainly now. Sadly, he was finding his faith in Daisy difficult to sustain.

“No, no, Papa, she was an opportunist long before she met Sergei. Unconsciously then, perhaps. And you can’t tell me that tragedy changes people. It only brings out their latent characteristics.”

“Goodness, Florence, what a lot of long words,” Beatrice murmured.

But Florence was right. Daisy was completely self-centred, or how could she feel so little guilt about abandoning her child?

School was hell, Anna told herself cynically. However, partly because she was scared of Grandmother, and partly because she was afraid of what the alternative might be, she endured it.

She hadn’t made any friends and she was always bottom of the class because her previous education had been almost non-existent, and because she was still limited in her understanding of the English language. Her spelling was something to marvel at, one of the mistresses told the whole class.

But that wasn’t why she eventually ran away. It was primarily because at last she had somewhere to run to. Uncle Edwin had told her that if ever the enemy were too much for her, he would defend her. She could hide in his room, and no one would ever think of looking for her there.

She did this for two days, crouching behind the bamboo screen in the corner during the day, and sleeping on the hearthrug in front of the fire at night. Uncle Edwin smuggled food to her, wedges of bread and butter and apples and glasses of milk spiked with rum. Rum was for fighting men, he said. He also gave her a gun, a revolver with a wicked little snout that she cradled to her breast and pretended that it comforted her, since obviously that was what Uncle Edwin meant it to do. She was half dazed with the rum, anyway.

The police came and searched the whole house. When they knocked on Uncle Edwin’s door he demanded, “Who goes there?” so loudly that the constable who appeared gave only a cursory search to the room.

“Chap in there’s balmy,” he said audibly, as he left. “Shouldn’t think he even knows the time of day.”

They left the house, having found no sign of Anna, and from then on concentrated on searching the Heath.

However, after two days, Anna was thoroughly bored with the game. Fiddling with the revolver, it suddenly exploded and made her shriek with terror. The shot hit the ceiling, and bits of plaster fell.

When Grandfather and the servants burst in (it was during the day when Grandmother and Florence were at the shop) Uncle Edwin was standing defensively behind his serried ranks of toy soldiers, his sword unsheathed.

“It wasn’t me,” he babbled. “It was her.”

Scruffy, exhausted, her eyes swollen into slits, Anna was dragged out. Grandmother was sent for, and the court martial began. (Uncle Edwin had warned her that the operation would probably end in a court martial.)

“Edwin, if ever you give Anna a loaded gun again, we will have to send you away,” Grandmother said in her steady voice.

“It isn’t Edwin, Bea, it’s the child who’ll have to go,” said Grandfather, whose voice did betray considerable agitation. “She’s uncontrollable.”

Anna, using her only effective weapon, that of silence, stood looking at them defiantly out of her aching eyes. She was suddenly realising that she loved this house. Not the people but the house. Although Uncle Edwin was all right, and Finch was tolerable.

Uncle Edwin had left off his monocle and put on thick-lensed glasses that made him look boyish and quite unimpressive. He hung his head and mumbled that he had forgotten the revolver was loaded. It would never happen again.

“Just to be safe, I think you had better give me all your guns,” Grandmother said. “Oh, you can keep the old flintlocks, if you like. But nothing modern. And you must never play military games with Anna again, do you hear?”

“It was only a siege,” Uncle Edwin muttered.

“It was very dangerous. The police will have to be informed. Have they been informed, William?”

“Not yet. I was wondering if we couldn’t tell them Anna had just come home of her own accord. Haven’t we had enough scandals?”

Grandmother suddenly looked very tired.

“We have, but I’m afraid we can’t do anything but tell the truth. Anna’s headmistress will have to know exactly what happened if she’s to take the child back.”

Alarm proved greater than Anna’s capacity for silence,

“I won’t go back to that school!”

“But that’s what has been the trouble in the past, hasn’t it, Anna?” Grandmother said quite kindly. “You have never had to go back and face your disgrace. This time you will.”

“She isn’t our responsibility,” said Grandfather peevishly. “We’re too old for this kind of thing.”

“I know, my dear,” said Grandmother. “I know. However, here we all are. Anna, you had better go upstairs and take a bath and change your clothes. Then you’ll be ready to talk to the police.”

The next day, sitting beside Grandmother in the Daimler, Anna was driven back to school. Quite apart from her dread of going back, she hated her ostentatious arrival. She knew that Grandmother had done it on purpose, but whether to show up her guilt, or to make things easier for her, she didn’t know.

She only knew that once more she hated everything, and Grandmother had gone over to the enemy.

B
EATRICE FOUND HER FEELINGS
about Anna extremely confused.

Here, with this upsetting affair, had been a chance to completely rid herself of those two troublesome women who had haunted her life, Mary Medway and her daughter.

Yet she couldn’t take the chance. She could even defy William over it. She could quarrel over defending Mary Medway’s grandchild!

The whole thing was completely ironic, for now William had only her welfare at heart. He didn’t like to see her tired and frowning and troubled. The rheumatism in her hips was troubling her, too, and he kept urging her to rest.