A Winter's Child (53 page)

Perhaps he had been going to say ‘who used to clean my boots' but he had stopped himself in time. He was jealous and she saw how much it hurt and offended him, how resentfully he bore the pain, how contemptuous he truly was of this mean and savage feeling; far more than contemptuous of himself for feeling it.

‘I do love you, Benedict.'

He passed a hand over his eyes and shuddered. ‘I know. Forgive me. And it comes easily to you, doesn't it?'

‘I don't find it difficult.'

‘It even strengthens you, I think. How different we are.' They knew, and usually bore in mind, that fate had never intended them for one another. Yet Claire had still not managed to cross the limit of present joys and sorrows, the attitude of her generation that the future would be taken care of when, and if, it came. While Benedict, to whom the future had always been the subject of cool calculation, grew prone, for the first time in his life, to sudden and alarming swings of mood, becoming by fits and starts, intensely jealous, impossible to please and then, when the venom had coursed through him, just as impossibly charming, tolerant, urbane.

‘Why do you put up with me, I wonder?'

‘I wonder. Perhaps because, however bad you are – and you
are
bad sometimes, you know – it would be worse without you. Is that a good reason?'

‘Hardly.'

‘Better than nothing though.'

No. They were not made for each other. They had themselves chosen, contrary to the dictates of fate, or the natural order of things, to be together and not even Benedict himself was entirely on their side.

At the beginning of May – Miriam's lovely birthday month – Claire received a cool note from the matron of a hospital near Carlisle informing her of the sorry state of a Lieutenant Ash, who, when asked to reveal the identity of his next of kin, had eventually given her name. Could she, therefore, the matron wondered – wife, sister, cousin or
whatever
she happened to be – please communicate at once, since decisions both of a medical and personal nature ought not to be delayed and, one way or another, would have to be taken? Evidently Lieutenant Ash was proving something of a handful in Carlisle.

‘I have to go to Carlisle,' she told Benedict, dry-mouthed but lightly. And because he did not ask her why – being in a rational humour that day – she told him, making it clear, albeit calmly and sweetly, that whether he liked it or not, go she must.

‘Of course,' he said.

‘I'll come with you,' offered Kit and when she shook her head he shoved a fairly bulky envelope into her hand. ‘Well – he'll be short of money won't he. There'll be medical bills. And if there's any change buy him a decent overcoat or something. Don't tell him it came from me.'

She found him in the bleak, cheerless ward of a charity hospital, wearing charity pyjamas of coarse flannel several sizes too big; little of him left, as he lay in the narrow scratchy bed, but bones and the deep hollows they made in him, a six-foot skeleton with fine, flyaway hair and that fallen angel's smile.

‘Here comes my darling Claire to the rescue. Didn't I tell you, matron – my sister would never let me down.'

‘Yes, Lieutenant Ash, you did tell me that – several times!' And the matron's sharp eye and small, pinched smile made no secret of how little family resemblance she could trace between the fair-skinned, fair-haired Lieutenant and this exceedingly dark-eyed brunette.

He had been very ill. The matron, in an initial interview which had made Claire feel as if she had not come so much to enquire about a patient but to apply for a job, had made that very clear. He had been conducting his life in a most peculiar manner, sitting all night in public houses, it seemed, drawing sketches of the tap-room customers, to be paid in drinks, the good lady supposed, and sleeping in damp lodgings, taking no sensible, God-fearing precautions whatsoever. And in view of the existing condition of his lungs pneumonia had been no surprise.

‘He was gassed in the war,' said Claire.

‘Quite,' replied the matron who, being narrow in her views and near retirement, did not consider that an adequate excuse for sleeping rough or drinking alcohol. ‘He is lucky to be alive.'

‘Yes. He is.'

But they were not thinking of the same reasons.

‘And now, Mrs – ah yes, Mrs Swanfield, isn't it? – what is to be done with him? He is ready for discharge in the sense that we can do no more for him here. Yet it would suit neither my conscience nor the policy of this Foundation to turn him loose into the streets. Dear me no. Someone must take responsibility. And should you feel able to do so, Mrs – Swanfield? – you and your husband? – then your – er, brother? – could be discharged today.'

‘In other words,' chuckled Euan when Claire, sitting by his bedside, repeated the conversation, ‘Pack him up and take him away before he dies on us. The poor old girl was worried stiff that I might do just that and she wouldn't know what to do with me. Awkward for her, you see, if she'd shovelled me into a pauper's grave and I'd turned out to be a prince in disguise, or if she'd wasted hospital time and money keeping me on ice and I'd been a real pauper after all – since I claimed to be both. Big relief when I remembered my sister Claire. I expect she's given me to you, hasn't she, with both hands and not
too
many questions asked?'

‘More or less. You look dreadful, Euan.'

He grinned engagingly. ‘To tell the absolute truth I don't feel so good. Whitby was very cold all winter. Fun in parts,' but bloody freezing. I did some lovely pictures of sea mists though and gulls and crabs and grains of sand. I think I almost got the texture of the wind on one particular canvas. I got quite excited about it. Pity I can't show you. My last landlord kept it in lieu of rent – I think.'

‘You didn't get to Edinburgh, then?'

‘No.' He smiled sweetly. ‘I got pneumonia instead – in Carlisle. Not a bad try, really. There's a direct train.'

‘Do you want to get on it?'

‘Well – yes. But not right away. Pneumonia is a big event in a fellow's life you know. One has to give it some consideration. I rather thought I might go and consider it somewhere beautiful and quiet, like Ambleside or Grasmere.'

‘It rains a lot there.'

‘That doesn't bother me. Rain falling on still water. And have you any idea how many textures and shapes you can find in a puddle? It's another world.'

‘I expect so – especially when you're feverish and drunk.'

‘I expect so. What
are
you going to do with me then? I'm too deliciously weak to resist and wouldn't, in any case.'

She had kept on his room in Mannheim Crescent to avoid sharing the kitchen with a new tenant and she took him back there, spending Kit's money on coal, blankets, a mattress they picked up cheap from a market trader, a store of wholesome food.

‘I'll pay you back of course, like the gentleman I am –'

‘Of course.' She knew, as a gentleman, that he would find it easier to use what he believed to be her money, than Kit's.

‘I can't say when – naturally. Next week if I can get myself fixed up again with a stall in the market and sell a picture or a few quids'worth of junk.'

‘All right, Euan.'

‘Well, you know how it is. But before I set off for Edinburgh again, at the latest. All right?'

‘I said so. Just keep warm. And eat. Try not to drink.'

‘How is your brave Lieutenant?' enquired Benedict some little time later, his voice very neutral, his manner perfectly composed.

‘Oh – as well as can be expected, I suppose.'

‘I'm glad to hear it. A young man of good family, I understand – and it would be a pity to lose any more of those.'

‘I don't know anything about him, Benedict,' and she was speaking with great care. ‘Do you?'

‘Oh yes.' He smiled quietly, dryly, as she had seen him smile so often, so impersonally. ‘It has to be my business to know at least the essentials of any man who associates himself with any woman involved in the Swanfield Trust. No responsible trustee could do less.'

‘Benedict – you had him
investigated?
‘

And although his smile remained dry, ironic, and she was doing her best to make light of it – to make fun – they both knew how deeply he had shocked her.

‘Of course. Two young warriors, in fact, both together – Lieutenant Ash on your behalf and Roy Kington on Polly's. Regrettably Captain Kington did not pass muster. One heard rumours of debts – and only rumours, since the people to whom he owed money seemed afraid to say so I didn't like that. But the family of Bardsley Ash is very well established in Sussex.'

‘I'm not sure I want to know.'

‘Oh yes you do. His father is a high church cleric – very high.'

‘A bishop?'

‘I thought you didn't want to know.'

‘Well – you've just proved yourself right again haven't you – as always.'

He smiled, a shade less dryly.

‘Yes. A bishop. A younger son of the nobility making what sounds like a noble living in the church – although he's quite an old man now, rather older than you'd suppose. I expect aspiring clergymen don't have to marry young.'

‘And does his mother ride to hounds?'

‘Very likely. Her family tree bristles with masters of foxhounds, at any rate. So Euan Ash is extremely well-born and well-connected. And, furthermore, owing to the death in battle of four, or is it five, of his cousins, he's also heir to his uncle's baronetcy. So he'll be Sir Euan one day – if he lives long enough.'

He paused, giving her time to ponder about the future baronet she had just rescued from a charity hospital, possibly from a pauper's grave: although nothing he had said surprised her.

‘Poor Euan. I'm sure he can't want to be a baronet.'

‘He has no choice. One can't refuse a title. So – your lodging-house duckling has turned out to be something of an aristocratic swan. Just think of the pleasure it would give your mother, in Upper Heaton, to talk about her daughter, Lady Ash. Only think how pleased Edward would be then.'

She swallowed. ‘I wish you wouldn't say these things.'

He shook his head, looking taut and grim as he had done that day by the train; looking grey. ‘You will marry somebody, Claire – someday. I prefer to keep reminding myself of that. It is unlikely to be me, after all, and so I think it wise, at the very least, to be ready. Don't you?'

Unless, of course, she would accept the compromise of the blue chintz room. If she loved him as deeply and courageously and generously as she said she did, then surely she would bring herself to do that? Sometimes he certainly thought so. Sometimes she almost thought so herself.

Waking abruptly in the night, startled by the force which had propelled her straight from deep sleep to a state of acute consciousness, she knew how much he needed her. And to be needed was the grace note of her nature, the source of her most profound fulfilment. She wanted to be needed. She always had. Perhaps High Meadows needed her too. And it was then, as she returned to a shallow, secondary slumber, that she first dreamed of suffocation beneath soft, high-quality blankets, of earth covering her living face.

Nola remained in Eastbourne until the end of April, her return causing a surface ripple of minor inconvenience since in her telegram asking to be met in Leeds she had neglected to give the exact time of her train and then, when she finally did appear, had mislaid several small items of luggage, some of it being discovered in the restaurant car, some of it – the very things she needed most – having gone on to Manchester with Nanette.

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' she kept on saying.

‘There's no need to be sorry,' Benedict kept on answering.

‘I do apologize.'

‘It really doesn't matter.'

And so it went on, through the station to the car, all the way from Leeds to Faxby, Nola asking forgiveness for the loss of her dressing-case, her umbrella, her hat-box, Benedict politely requesting her not to worry, assuring her that only a minimum of inconvenience had been caused. It was only a year since Claire had first met Nola. Yet now she looked ten years older, smaller, oddly and tragically
unremarkable;
the plain, uncoordinated, uncertain woman she really was, had always been, beneath the dashing fox furs, the sequined turbans and trailing chiffon, the bold, careless swagger. For so many years she had stalked around High Meadows like a scornful, half-broken thoroughbred contemptuous of her captors, had used the house as a stage, making grand, eccentric entrances and exits through its doors, revelling in the consternation she aroused. She came in quietly now, not wishing – for the first time in her life – to make a fuss, her flamboyance all gone so that even the feather in her hat appeared to be wilting, her sage green coat with its massive apricot mink collar to have grown dowdy, somehow, and a size too big for her, as Eunice's coats always did.

‘My dear how
well
you look,' cooed Miriam, quite delighted to see she didn't.

‘I've been using your car,' said Polly. ‘Well – it was just standing there. I suppose you
do
want it back again?'

‘Lucky about your ring,' said Eunice, who had already written Nola two long letters about her emerald which had been discovered in the bathroom by Justin shortly after she had left for Eastbourne, ‘What a good thing Justin has such sharp eyes.' It was clear that Eunice, having got over her relief that Justin had not kept the ring and made some shameful, certain-to-be-detected attempt to sell it, now expected Nola to give him a reward.

Nola smiled politely, went upstairs, lay down in her armchair, her body still fluid in fatigue, and lit a cigarette, her fingers nervous and yellow with nicotine, her nails jagged at their edges and none too clean.