Dubious Legacy (8 page)

Antonia, yawning, came into her room and joined Barbara at the window. ‘What’s going on?’ she whispered.

‘They are getting ready for the party.’

‘Aha, here comes Henry with chairs—’

‘And attendant dogs.’

They watched Henry unstacking chairs. He spoke quietly to Pilar. ‘Leave the table-cloths till later,’ and, ‘Thank you, Trask. This table here, I think, for the buffet and that one for drinks.’

‘How many people?’

‘Lay for a dozen, some may not turn up. It doesn’t matter—‘

Barbara whispered, ‘Bones.’

‘Bones?’

‘The bones of the party, the bones of our lives.’

‘Getting engaged has made you poetic, you must keep your head Antonia teased. On the far side of the yew hedge a mistlethrush burst into song, to be answered by a rival in the distance.

‘I feel so much older,’ whispered Barbara.

‘You are a prototype; we are both prototypes, Henry said. Do you know what a prototype is?’ Antonia teased.

‘I know what a tangle is.’ Barbara watched Henry. ‘Why did he suggest tangle?’

‘Because his marriage is a tangle,’ hissed Antonia. ‘It doesn’t mean yours will be—or mine.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Barbara whispered, then, ‘Of course not,’ more robustly. ‘Listen to that bird, and the cuckoo is nearer this morning.’

‘Do you want children, Barbara?’

‘Not much.’

‘Me neither. But it’s another way to earn a living and a better way than working in a boring office. I loathe typewriters. Anyway,’ said Antonia, ‘if I can’t have a nanny, if Matthew can’t afford one, I shall have an au pair.’

‘Antonia, you think of everything.’

‘I am not going to allow myself to be blocked,’ Antonia muttered between gritted teeth. ‘My mother,’ she said, ‘gives in to my father in everything. I don’t want to be like her.’

‘No need for you to worry. Matthew isn’t masterful, like your pa.’

‘Of course he’s masterful—’ Antonia protested.

‘Not like your pa, that’s all I meant.’

‘Oh. And James?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ The girls giggled, leaning shoulder to shoulder, elbows on the windowsill, blond hair brushing against brown as they watched the activity below.

‘The best silver,’ said Pilar. ‘I clean the chandeliers. Tall white candles.’

‘Chandeliers!’ whispered Barbara. ‘Candle-light.’

‘Don’t go overboard.’

Standing immediately below the girls’ window, Henry surveyed the scene. They heard him murmur, ‘Flowers?’

‘A beautiful setting for beautiful people,’ said Pilar, hands on hips. ‘They have the best.’

‘Beautiful girls.’ Ebro steadied a table. ‘Eh, Trask?’

Trask, who had not spoken, smiled, shrugged and walked away.

‘Hear that?’ Antonia nudged her friend. ‘We are beautiful.’

‘Here comes that exotic bird—’ Barbara pointed.

They watched the cockatoo insinuate itself through the bars of the garden gate and approach Henry with its sideways hop. Henry put his hand down, offering his wrist. ‘I think you had better be shut in tonight. Don’t nip,’ he said, as the bird clawed itself up onto his shoulder. ‘Sit tight.’

The bird put its head on one side, raising and lowering its yellow crest.

‘Matches the tulips,’ murmured Barbara.

‘He invited our children here,’ whispered Antonia. ‘Shall you—’

‘Probably—oh certainly, yes. I
wish
—’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Antonia glanced sharply at Barbara. I wish it too, she thought, drawing in her breath, don’t I just. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that Henry is a prototype himself.’

‘Do you?’ said Barbara. ‘Really? But what about the horses? Was she pulling our legs?’

Antonia giggled. ‘It’s not possible,’ she spluttered.

‘Are you two girls going to stay up there all morning tittering, or would you like to come for a swim or a ride before breakfast?’ Henry neither raised his voice nor did he look up.

‘Oh!’ the girls exclaimed, ‘Oh!’ and sobered, wondering what Henry had overheard.

Henry said, ‘Well?’

Looking down at Henry, Antonia said, ‘We shall have to telephone our parents and tell them about getting engaged. That is, if you don’t mind us using your telephone.’

Henry said, ‘Please do. And what will they say?’ He smiled up at them.

Antonia said, ‘My mother will say, “Oh, goodness. I must break it to your father,” and he will say, “What about your job?” and “You are awfully young, darling, for such a big decision.”’

‘And what will yours say?’ Henry asked Barbara.

‘The same tell your father bit and, “Isn’t it rather sudden?” and “Have you really thought it through?”’

‘And have you?’ Henry caressed the cockatoo, which now clung to his upper arm and peered up at his face with its basilisk eye.

‘We have. Long ago,’ said Antonia, ‘haven’t we, Barbara?’

Barbara said, ‘Definitely.’

‘We only have to get parental consent,’ said Antonia cheerfully. ‘My father is known as “Stuffy Lowther”, but I know how to work on him.’

‘They do not want us to rush into marriage and regret it afterwards,’ Barbara explained. ‘They think “rushing into marriage” is a bad thing.’

Henry said, ‘What sensible people.’ He transferred the cockatoo from his arm to the wisteria. ‘Are you coming or not? If you don’t want to swim until the day has warmed up or wait for your future husbands to wake, I could take you for a spin in my Bentley.’

‘A Bentley!’ Barbara was impressed. ‘Oh!’

‘1926. It was my father’s.’

‘Thirty years old!’ Antonia gasped. ‘Wow! Love to.’

Henry said, ‘Buck up, then, I haven’t got all day.’

Spinning along in the Bentley Henry, raising his voice, asked, ‘And what else will your parents say? What will their reaction be? Will they be pleased?’

‘Oh, they will be pleased once they are used to the idea. They have been so afraid we might want to marry some penniless person for love and then fall out of it, they will be greatly relieved,’ said Antonia.

Henry said, ‘I see.’

Barbara said, ‘They don’t really know us. They don’t know that long ago, at least two years, we decided about marriage.’

Henry said, ‘And?’

‘We decided to be detached,’ explained Antonia. ‘You might not understand, but we made up our minds not to go overboard, not to go for perfection, to settle for—’

‘Security.’

‘Well, that too, but what we decided was to choose the kind of husband who would be picked by our parents if they went in for arranged marriages; presentable, right sort of background, enough money, that sort of thing. Do you think that hard-headed and calculating?’

Henry asked ‘Do James and Matthew know about this, your detached attitude?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if James’s and Matthew’s attitude were not the same as ours, with a few minor differences,’ said Barbara, ‘except that they would never admit it.’

Henry said, ‘I dare say you are right there,’ rather grimly. Can all the old battleaxes one meets have started out like this? he wondered. ‘Over there,’ he said, ‘is the lake I swim in. I ride out, have a swim and hack home.’

‘Does, I mean, did your wife ride and swim with you?’ asked Barbara.

‘My wife does not care for horses,’ Henry answered evenly. Presently he said, ‘Would you two do something for me?’

The girls said, ‘Of course, what?’

‘If you could pick a few flowers, make an arrangement for the dinner table—’

‘That was not what you were going to ask us,’ said Antonia astutely.

Henry said, ‘No, well, it’s this. I bought a dress for my wife. I wondered whether you could pretend it’s one of yours, offer to lend it to her for the party.’

‘But she never gets out of bed,’ said Barbara.

‘There are occasions—I rather hoped’

Antonia said, ‘Of course we’ll try. We can take one of ours with it, it would look more natural. She is sure to choose yours.’

‘If you are prepared to risk a snub, it would be a kindness,’ said Henry.

‘We’ll do the flowers too, of course,’ said Barbara. ‘It will be wonderful if she comes to the party,’ she added encouragingly.

Henry said, ‘Yes,’ and, ‘Thanks. Nearly home.’ Turning the car into the drive, he said, ‘There are your intendeds wondering where I carried you off to. Shall you delay telephoning your respectable parents until after breakfast?’

Antonia said, ‘Before breakfast would be fatal. My father is not human until his digestion has worked and he’s been to the lavatory.’

‘Mine, who has given up smoking, has to have a surreptitious cigarette. He’s all right after that,’ said Barbara. ‘Ten-fifteen is a good moment.’

‘We’d better toss for who telephones first,’ said Antonia, waving to Matthew standing on the doorstep with James. Matthew waved back. Barbara, watching Henry’s dogs, who had been drooping despondently in his absence, prick up their ears and wag their tails, said, ‘How dearly your dogs love you. Look, they are rushing to meet you.’

Henry, slowing the car to a walking pace as the dogs galloped to meet him, said, ‘Ah, dogs.’

Comparing Henry’s dogs’ unstinting affection with his wife’s apparent lack of it, Barbara asked pertly, ‘Don’t you admire us for not rushing as you did into a romantic trap? We shall probably have happy, stable marriages.’

Letting this impertinence pass, Henry said, ‘Such hard little heads on teenage shoulders.’

Barbara said, ‘We are almost twenty, Henry, not quite the prototypes you thought us.’

Henry laughing, said, ‘I agree I got you wrong there.’ Bringing the car to a stop, he said, ‘I wonder what sort of children you will have.’

‘H
ERE, GIVE ME THE
secateurs. Crying like that, you can’t see what you are doing.’ Antonia snatched the secateurs from her friend. The girls were in the walled garden cutting flowers from a border which ran along one wall. Here flowers grew separately from the vegetables, but whereas the vegetables were tended with exactitude, the flowers had to fend for themselves, springing up through disorderly weeds. ‘These are marvellous.’ Antonia snipped at some nettles and reached towards a clump of Regale lilies. As she cut she laid each stem horizontally in a trug half-full of Mrs. Simpkins pinks. As she picked, she sneezed; prone to hay fever, she was affected by their scent. ‘These are marvellous,’ she repeated. ‘I shall make an arrangement backed by artichoke leaves.’

‘They’ll make it look heavy. And you can’t put those on the dinner table, they smell too strong,’ said Barbara disagreeably.

‘Then I shall put my arrangement on the bar,’ said Antonia equably. ‘Why must you be so negative? Honestly, Barbara, do stop crying, your face will be a mess. You know your nose swells when you cry.’

Barbara whimpered, ‘O-o-o.’

‘Nor can I grasp what there is to cry about,’ continued Antonia, snipping at the lilies. ‘Oh, delicious.’

‘My mother—’

‘But you said she took it well. And your Pa is pleased, too. Oh, I say, look at these lilies of the valley.’ Antonia pushed away some invading buttercups.

‘They also smell too strong,’ said Barbara morosely.

‘Oh, there is no pleasing you. They will do beautifully for a centrepiece, we don’t need a “cache-mari”.’

‘What’s a cache-mari?’ Barbara snuffled.

‘A tall arrangement the Edwardians had on dinner tables to conceal their flirtations from their husbands and vice versa; my great-aunt told me.’

‘Husbands—’

‘Why don’t you walk it off, Babsie? Leave the flowers to me,’ said Antonia, kindly.

‘I—’

‘Go on. But come back in time to try Margaret with the dresses. I’m not braving that woman on my own. Here, take my handkerchief.’

Barbara took the handkerchief and left, blowing her nose and mopping her eyes.

Left to herself Antonia muttered, ‘Some people!’ and crouched down to pick lilies of the valley.

Barbara let herself out of the garden by a door in the wall, crossed a stable yard and climbed a gate into a field of buttercups. As she walked she repeated to herself what her mother had said on the telephone. ‘Such a nice young man,’ she mimicked her mother. ‘Your father and I used to know his family. In a good job, too! Your grandparents will be pleased. A sensible age, not too young. We liked him so much when we met him (she said graciously). I am sure you will be very happy—No, I can’t tell your father this minute, he’s in the—Of
course
he will be pleased, darling (voice rising optimistically). Such a relief to know you will be safe.’

‘Safe,’ Barbara shouted. ‘Safe!’

A flock of starlings pecking after ants flew up, startled, their wings rustling, and two horses standing nose to tail under a hawthorn pricked their ears and turned towards her in polite enquiry. Barbara walked up to them and stroked their noses. The comforting smell of horse mingled with the acrid smell of may. She said, ‘Oh, silly me,’ letting her fingers linger round the horses’ nostrils. ‘Silly, silly me.’ She had stopped crying. ‘I bet you never cried over parental approval,’ she said, fingering the whorls of hair on the horses’ foreheads, pressing her forefinger against the hard skulls.

One of the horses leaned forward and nibbled her shirt, its grey lips making a plopping sound. It tweaked at the shirt with yellow teeth.

Barbara picked at the hair on the bony skull, short and bristly as cliff grass, and remembered how, long ago when she was small, she could not have been more than three, her feet had been bare on the cliff-top and her father said, ‘Hold my hand, I won’t let you fall. Look at the waves smashing against the rocks; aren’t they magnificent?’ And, ‘Trust me, stupid,’ he had said angrily as she stuck in her toes and pulled back from the edge. ‘Nothing to scream about. Don’t be such a coward,’ he had said. ‘I have hold of you, you are perfectly safe.’ She could still in screaming nightmares feel the stiff grass between her toes as she dragged away from her father and the sheer drop.

‘Oh, don’t ring off,’ her mother had said. ‘Here comes your father, he’s out of the—It’s Barbara, darling, she has news for us. She’s engaged to James Martineau, she wants to tell you herself, here’s the phone. Tell your father, darling, he’ll be so pleased.’

And he had been pleased. ‘Congratulations,’ he had said. ‘Of course you are very young, but I suppose you know your mind or you wouldn’t—James Martineau is a sound chap,’ her father had said. ‘He will look after you. I knew his father, it’s a family firm, they say it’s likely to expand. And of course there is backing from his mother’s family, and someday he will inherit. There’s no male heir.’