A Gathering Storm (10 page)

‘Why don’t you?’ Beatrice whispered back. ‘Love your father, I mean, not mine.’

‘Course,’ Angie said, and her voice was husky. ‘It’s just that I never see him. Well, hardly ever. We always used to live in London. We have a big white house with a view over a lovely park where Nanny used to take us. But then it all went wrong. Ed says that they quarrelled, and they agreed we should all live here more. It’s not fair. I mean I like it here, especially now I’ve met you, but I did like London. There are always things happening there, and lots of other children and wonderful parties, much better than here, and the shops, you should see the shops, full of all the things you could ever think of. Beautiful clothes and toys, and Mummy would take us to tea at lovely hotels like Brown’s and Claridge’s. She must miss it all. But I miss my father so much, that sometimes I feel like . . . like running away and taking the train up to London and finding him.’

‘Why don’t you?’ Beatrice replied, excited by this idea.

‘As if I had the money!’ Angie said. Anyway, he’d have to send me back. I couldn’t live with him all alone. Though Ed says he stayed there once when he had an exeat from school and Daddy wasn’t alone for dinner. There was a woman there called Grace. I wonder if Mummy knows about Grace. Ed says I’m not to tell her.’

Angie sighed in the darkness. Beatrice tried to think what to say. The grown-up world floated just beyond their vision, full of secrets and puzzles. After a while she realized Angie was crying.

‘Oh, don’t,’ she whispered, touching the other girl’s shoulder and was thrilled when Angie rolled over and lay in her arms, sobbing softly. ‘I’m sure everything’s all right. It must be that he’s very busy and can’t come here very much, like you said.’

‘I miss him so much,’ Angie gulped. ‘If you could meet him then you’d know.’

Beatrice thought of her own father, but could only remember the sour look he had given her last week, before his illness, when he’d arrived home unexpectedly and slipped on the ball she and Jinx had been playing with in the hall. She hadn’t seen him since his heart attack. The hospital had been judged by her mother ‘no place for a child’. She tried to squeeze out a tear, just one tear, for him, as she pictured him pale and sort of dead-looking in a narrow bed with crisp white sheets, but it was only when she remembered her mother’s anxious face that tears came.

It was during this stay that she met Angie’s father for the first time. He arrived one afternoon and immediately departed again to a meeting, his wife told the children, with local tin miners about a proposed mine closure. He returned shortly before dinner, and when Beatrice was introduced to him she suffered such a fit of shyness she could do little more than shake his hand and answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to his questions, blushing all the while.

She’d never met anyone before who exuded such a strong physical presence, a sense of authority, and she found it rather thrilling. She finally plucked up the courage to meet his gaze and saw humour in his hazel eyes, and warmth.

He left for London again the next morning. Late that afternoon, Mrs Wincanton called Beatrice into the drawing room.

‘Sit down a minute,’ she said. ‘I’d like to talk to you. Have you enjoyed staying with us?’

‘Oh yes,’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s been lovely.’

‘Well, we’ve enjoyed having you,’ Mrs Wincanton murmured. She smiled. ‘But you’ll be pleased to hear that you’re going home. Your mother telephoned from the hospital a few minutes ago to say that your father has been discharged. So you must run up and pack, and Pengelly will drive you back after tea.’

Beatrice’s face must have betrayed her sadness because Mrs Wincanton looked at her tenderly and said, ‘Don’t you want to go? You are a dear little thing. I’m so glad we found you, you’ve been so good for Angie. She needs somebody steady and sensible. You know, she’s sometimes . . . a little nervy.’

Beatrice nodded. She was proud that Angie’s mother was pleased with her. She waited uncertainly, wondering if the woman wanted her to go now, but when Mrs Wincanton stood up, it wasn’t to signal that the interview was over. Instead she went to take a cigarette out of a box on the mantelpiece and lit it, then draped herself elegantly against the fireplace, contemplating Beatrice. She smoked, Beatrice saw, as though she wasn’t used to it, holding the cigarette clumsily in her slim fingers and pursing her lips to exhale. ‘Beatrice,’ she said, ‘Bea, do you mind being called Bea?’

‘I rather like it.’ She couldn’t help glancing at the carving. Mrs Wincanton followed the line of her gaze.

‘Oh yes, our own little bee, I had been going to tell you about him. This house belongs to my husband’s family, Beatrice. The bee is the Wincanton family symbol. There was some Wincanton in Tudor or Stuart times who did something particularly plucky in one of the Cornish rebellions, I’m not sure which, the Cornish always seemed to be rebelling against something. And the chief rebel, Lord Somebody-or-other, was telling him what a brick he was when a bee landed on the Wincanton ancestor’s sleeve and someone cried, “It’s a sign!” Something like that, believe it if you will. Anyway, here is the little creature, and here’s the family motto.’ She traced a Latin tag carved along the rim of the mantelpiece with her finger. ‘Michael assures me it means brave and faithful, and we’ll have to take his word for that.’

‘It is a honey bee, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it might well be. A dutiful member of a hive.’ She laughed and threw her cigarette into the grate. ‘Not very much like the current generation of Wincantons at all.’ She contemplated Beatrice for a moment then said, ‘In fact, you suit the motto better than the rest of us. How strange.’ She reached out and took Beatrice’s hand. ‘I sense you’ll be a faithful friend to us, and to Angie in particular. You’re almost a part of the family, child. Now,’ she rumpled Beatrice’s hair and said, ‘you must be going back to your own family. Your mother’s missing you. Off you go!’

And Beatrice went, pondering the conversation. Although Oenone Wincanton had asked nothing specific of her, why did she feel that, with all those veiled hints, a pact had been asked of her? All that talk about faithfulness and duty. It was silly. Being Angie’s friend was no effort at all. She liked pleasing Angie and was grateful to the girl’s mother for her kindness. If Angie’s mother chose to put another cast on it, that was nothing to do with her.

The Rowans, April 2011

‘At the time,’ Beatrice Ashton said, ‘I forgot about this conversation, for I was racing up the stairs to pack. Suddenly, I badly wanted to see Mother and Father and Jinx again. For things to be normal and ordinary . . .’ She smiled and trailed to a halt, a soft expression on her face as she relived those events of so long ago. She was telling her story so vividly that Lucy was spellbound.

The girl glanced at her watch and was surprised to see that two hours had passed. The only interruption had been the arrival of Mrs P., a pleasant local woman in her sixties, who could be heard clattering about in the kitchen. Seeing that Mrs Ashton had a guest she’d promptly insisted on finding Lucy something for lunch.

Lucy said, ‘It’s extraordinary hearing stories about Granny when she was a girl. She told me some things – that she loved Carlyon – but the part of her childhood she talked about most was when she was younger. I suppose her mother and father were happier together then when they all lived in London. She had dancing lessons and amazing children’s parties with conjurers and magic lantern shows and fancy dress.’ She didn’t like to tell Beatrice that Granny Angelina had never mentioned sharing lessons with a shy little half-French girl.

‘Perhaps we all need a part of our childhood that we think of as golden, a time we imagine that we were completely happy,’ Beatrice murmured. ‘Well, mine was Carlyon.’

‘My mum used to take me to stay with some art college friends in Wales every summer,’ Lucy said, remembering. ‘I had a brilliant time with their children. You wouldn’t believe the things we got up to. It seemed like paradise compared to primary school in London.’

‘Where was your father while you were there?’

‘He ran his own business and never gave himself holidays.’

‘Any holiday we had,’ Beatrice said, ‘was staying with one side of the family or another. My father liked home and routine best.’

Hugh Marlow came home but he was sadly weak. When, after several days in bed, he was able to get up, he was pale and exhausted and could hardly leave the house. The manager at the bank did his best to keep the job open. After all, Marlow was valued by ‘our classier customers’ and was ‘one of our heroes’. When he’d recovered a bit more, Beatrice’s father tried working half-days, but even this tired him and as a result her mother wore a permanently strained expression. The doctor visited once or twice, then there came several evenings when Beatrice lay awake to the sound of arguing in the drawing room beneath. One phrase her mother uttered frequently and with mounting exasperation was, ‘Write to him, Hugh, please, and just see what he says.’

In the end, it seemed that the terrible letter was written, for one Saturday the postman left one of the familiar thick white envelopes with a Gloucestershire postmark. It lay looking ominous all morning on the tray in the hall until Mr Marlow returned from work and opened it.

No one told Beatrice what it contained, but soon after that Hugh Marlow handed his notice in at the bank, and the monthly white envelopes became the most looked-for event in the household, opened by Beatrice’s father with a mixture of fury and relief. But there had to be economies, it was explained to her. Less good cuts of meat from the butcher, a fraying winter coat patched up to last another year. For a while Mrs Marlow took in pupils for French conversation, though this so disrupted her husband’s new routines that eventually it had to stop. Beatrice felt the household grow increasingly dismal, her mother and father wrapped up in one another more and more. Apart from schooling and meals and bedtime she began to come and go as she pleased.

Much of her time she chose to spend at Carlyon Manor.

When lessons were over, she went riding or rambled over the cliffs with Angie, or was driven to take tea with other girls, daughters of Oenone’s local network of acquaintances, well brought up, county types, for the most part, who were rather in awe of Angie’s glamour and who nervously suggested games of cribbage or croquet, whilst guessing rightly that they’d bore their Wincanton visitor. There were birthday parties, too, and, as summer came round, picnics, to which Beatrice sometimes found herself invited. But, conscious of her parents’ reduced circumstances, the plainness of her clothes, and the fact that she could never return these invitations, she knew she acted shy and awkward with the others. She did earn, though, the distinction of being good at dares. If there was a wall to climb or cartwheels to turn, she would try harder than anyone else, so getting Bea to perform became a regular entertainment at some of these gatherings. She got on with it grimly, but it gave her no pleasure, and sometimes she elected not to accompany Angie, even when she was specifically invited.

It was one such afternoon in June of 1937, her fifteenth year, that she remained behind at Carlyon, reading on the terrace and fortified by sips of Cook’s cloudy lemonade. She heard a car draw up outside the house. Surely it was too early for everyone to return? Mrs Wincanton had dropped Angie at a party at a neighbour’s and gone on to Truro in search of new shoes for Hetty, after which they were meeting friends for tea.

There came an exchange of voices – Brown the maid’s and a deeper, male voice – and then a man stepped out through the french windows. He was dressed in a camel-coloured suit and shiny brown brogues. It was Angie’s father. Beatrice half-jumped to her feet, clutching her book to her chest.

‘Beatrice, hello. They tell me you’re the only one here. No, no, don’t get up. Didn’t they get my message, the blighters?’

‘Nobody said they received one. Really, I’m certain they weren’t expecting you. Angie wouldn’t have missed you for anything.’

‘No, of course she wouldn’t.’ He settled himself on a chair near hers, dug out a pipe from his jacket, blew through it and filled it with tobacco, tamping it down with his thumb. He was a broad, muscular man in his early forties, with a handsome, cleanshaven face and sandy hair. She watched him light the pipe, then shake out the match. Every movement imparted masculinity, strength and purpose. He regarded her thoughtfully through a wreath of smoke and she crossed her ankles, feeling self-conscious.

‘I had a less busy patch, thought I’d motor down for a few days. Is everybody well?’

She had met the Hon. Michael Wincanton MP several times now and he’d always been polite and warm enough, but she usually hung back, knowing that he really came to see his family. Today was the first time she’d found herself alone with him. She searched about desperately for topics of conversation, about what everyone had been doing, nervous that she’d bore him.

‘And how’s your father?’ he asked. She was touched that he remembered, but stumbled out that he was managing quite well. All the time, she was aware of his eyes on her, a slightly amused look on his face. She was getting used to men noticing her. It made her feel awkward. When she woke up in the morning, sometimes it felt like bits of her had grown in the night. This man made her feel slightly uncomfortable, as though her hem was down or her hair was a mess. She wriggled under his gaze.

‘What’s that you’re reading? Anything good?’ he asked, but when she showed him the novel he didn’t seem that interested.

‘You said you were less busy,’ she asked bravely. ‘Is Parliament still sitting?’

‘No, we’re in recess, though there’s business to attend to here. It doesn’t do for a Member of Parliament to neglect his constituency or he won’t get re-elected. Now, when do you suppose my wife will return?’ He stood and began to pace about and Beatrice was rather relieved when he announced he was going up to change. Later, after the others came back, he insisted on his own driver taking her home. That night she dreamed about him: big, warm, masculine, with smoky breath.