A Winter's Child (75 page)

It was too much.

He threw the letter at her and ran.

Miriam had persuaded Polly for the first time to come downstairs for dinner, having made up her mind that all this skulking about behind locked bedroom doors must not continue. The scene at Toby's graveside had been quite bad enough and, since another prospective husband must – the sooner the better – be provided, it would not do to have it said that the loss of her first fiancé had turned Polly's mind. Therefore, she had persisted. Polly, realizing that she could not stay in bed forever, had finally consented to sit at the dinner-table, pushing morsels of food around her plate with a fork. And the meal was just over, Benedict in his study, Miriam and Polly sitting in a silence Miriam found distinctly unnerving in the drawing room, when Eunice flew through the door, having run all the way up the hill to murder her sister.

‘Eunice dear –?'

‘Harlot,' she shrieked.

Instantly, leaping to her feet, Polly understood.

‘No –,' she whispered. ‘No.'

‘You killed my husband.'

‘No-no-please –'

‘Murderess.'

‘Oh no –'

‘You seduced him and you killed him. He ran his car into that quarry because of you.'

She had always hated Polly, or so she thought now. Always. And seeing Polly's terror, seeing how she shrank away, cringed and cowered like the whore, the vermin she was, she gloated, exulted. No weapon. Just her bare hands around Polly's throat. Just that. And Polly, who was taller and stronger and much younger, helpless to defend herself, doing nothing but whimper and shiver, because she knew she was guilty.

‘Oh dear God –' Miriam, chalk-white, flew from the room calling out for Benedict who could not, for what seemed a long time to Miriam, do more than hold them apart.

And although she was not particularly devoted to either of her daughters the sight of Eunice foaming and raging and of Polly cowering in such abject terror, the sound, the smell of so much hatred and horror clawed holes in her heart. And what were they saying? These terrible accusations about Polly and Toby. How could it be true? Nothing so unspeakable
could
be true. She wouldn't have it. Yet Polly, instead of denying it, did nothing but shake and sob and plead with Benedict to keep Eunice away from her. While Eunice – had she gone mad? Would it mean doctors, an asylum – oh please not that. Closing her eyes, a great swimming dizziness in her head, she remembered pictures someone had forced her to look at in her youth of maniacs, chained and raving who had terrified her then just as her own daughter was terrifying her now. Or had Toby gone mad? Was that it? Had he made the letter up? Men had strange romantic fancies sometimes, at that age. She tried to intervene, to present them with her solution, something, at least, which one could tell the servants and the neighbours. But although she opened her mouth and moved her tongue no voice came. Or had she, perhaps, spoken and they had drowned her with their din? That had been happening lately – those noisy boys wanting their dinner. And now Eunice. She tried to speak again, rationally, calmly, her wisdom, she thought, far better than their truth – far safer.

‘Children – do behave yourselves.'

All that happened was that Polly, suddenly locating a spark of fire, began to pick up the sofa cushions – what ridiculous weapons to choose – and throw them at her sister, who was still held back by Benedict. But – oddly, strangely – they seemed so faraway.

‘Children –' And then, ‘Oh dear – I think I am unwell.'

No one heard her. And it was, indeed, several moments before they noticed that she was not sitting quietly in her chair but had collapsed.

She was carried to bed, a doctor called.

‘Look after her,' Benedict snarled at Eunice.

‘Go to your room and stay there,' he rapped out at Polly.

They obeyed, Polly locking her door, her life at an end, she believed, whether Eunice killed her or not – And whatever happened to her now, she believed she deserved it. Nothing could be bad enough. She had gone to Toby as she would have gone to her father. And he had been so kind, so sweet, so familiar. She had liked him so much, trusted him, nestled against him so naturally, feeling so safe in a way she remembered feeling before, long ago, when she'd been very small. She had lost that feeling when her father died and now, meeting it again, how wonderful. ‘Toby, I do love you.' She remembered whispering that to him and what had happened next had seemed no more than an extension of that so miraculously recovered sense of being with a man who would make everything all right, in whose hands she was so blissfully secure. His kisses, even when they became prolonged, intense, had not seemed strange to her. He had been cherishing her not attacking her and even when he did what Roy Kington had done to her so shortly before, she had hardly felt it, hardly recognized it as the same. And it had been so brief, so soon over, that it had seemed scarcely to interrupt the nestling and stroking and ‘keeping her safe'of which she had been in such urgent need.

And he had died for it.

The next day he had asked her to go away with him and she had lost her nerve and her head. He had lost his life. Desperately she wished that Eunice would kill her. Kinder really, since she was not quite certain how to go about killing herself and it would be far better for everybody if she died. Yet, an hour later, when she crept furtively to the bathroom and came face to face with Eunice she pressed herself in terror against the wall and closed her eyes.

‘So now you've killed mother,' hissed Eunice.

‘No.' It was the only word Polly could say.

‘Oh yes you have.' Miriam was not dead, no longer in fact in any immediate danger, but the need, in Eunice, to kill had been suppressed now into a desire to maim.

‘She's dead and you killed her. She said it was your fault before she died. And now you're alone with me, Polly.'

‘Benedict?'

‘Oh no.' Eunice was staring and grinning. ‘He's gone off to make the arrangements.'

It sounded horribly likely.

‘So there's just me –'

Polly shrieked and pushing Eunice aside with the strength of raw desperation fled for what she believed to be her life, worthless to her though it seemed, along the corridor, down the stairs, and out –
out
– through the front door, down the drive, through the gates. Cast out. Anywhere. Away.

‘Is Polly still in her room?' asked Benedict, suddenly remembering her an hour later.

‘Yes,' said Eunice, sufficiently restored to sanity to know that she was lying yet unable to stop herself.

‘See that she stays there,' he said.

The road from High Meadows to Faxby was downhill, a fitting direction perhaps, which she accomplished far too quickly, much too soon. Where could she go? The river perhaps? The railway track? But she knew, even then, her head still reeling with shock, that she could not physically harm herself. She would have to punish herself in some other way. And it was in this mood that she encountered Arnold Crozier, his Rolls drawing up beside her, by no means surprisingly since she had wandered into the neighbourhood of the Crown, his voice inviting her, like the spider she had always known him to be, to step inside.

She remembered little else that night, for she had eaten almost nothing for several days and the first sip of wine rose instantly to her head. He had watched her for a long time, had-come to regard her rather as the original model on which his ever-changing series of young, fair-haired, long-limbed, scat-terbrains was based. Polly was the blonde among blondes, the flapper
par excellence,
the very spice his jaded palate needed. He had also considered her to be unattainable and now, seeing his chance, took it coolly and cleverly, aware that there was nothing to be gained in these matters by any undue consideration of scruples. And when, in the warmth of the Tangerine Suite, after a judiciously administered bottle of champagne, she became kittenish and coy, showing a great partiality for being petted and stroked, he placed her like a prize in the tangerine bed and made love to her in a way which even Polly, had she been sober, might have recognized as masterly.

Arnold Crozier, who had never been handsome, was nevertheless a man who not only enjoyed women but understood them, Polly's body, relaxed by alcohol, a jewel in his hands to be treasured and made to sparkle, a feast to be relished not greedily but with the delicacy of a
gourmet
who sips and savours, her pleasure to be carefully located from whatever sources it came and then released gradually through her limbs which were still virgin of pleasure, with a wizardry in which she had never believed and did not believe now. It was not happening. She was dreaming, most oddly, that she was in bed with Arnold Crozier and that something very strange was starting at the pit of her stomach and spreading all over her, something she'd dreamed about before once or twice, except that this time – Good Heavens – Good Lord – she had never got this far with it before. She had woken up, those other times, with a start and always missed the best of it. Not now though. And when, in the uncertain light of a rainy morning, she woke with Arnold Crozier still beside her, her head still swimming, and he made that incredible sensation come again, it seemed to her that she had found a fitting substitute for the railway track. The spider had caught her. And if what he was doing to her was repulsive – as it must be since it was Arnold who was doing it – it thrilled her as well. What better degradation?

She had told him she could not return to High Meadows. Where then? Normally such a declaration would have alarmed him, smacking as it did of involvement. But Polly was not only very much to his taste, she was also a Sjvanfield, a girl of good family, well-connected and rich. And he was beginning to tire of chance encounters, often costing more than they were worth, in hotels.

‘Come with me,' he said, and having been brought up to enjoy the authority of the older, powerful male, she got into his Rolls, wrapped in a velvet evening cloak his last blonde had left behind, and was whisked away, first to buy clothes in Manchester and then to a boat-train, a boat, another Rolls and an hotel room in Rotterdam where Arnold had been going on business in any case.

Was she safe? She knew he had made a telephone call, or instructed someone else to make it, to High Meadows. And since no one had come after her, here she was, still rather stunned during the daytime, unable to get her thoughts together, falling asleep a great deal: still amazed every night when, her eyes closed, her head obligingly swimming with her bedtime champagne, he unfailingly made those wild sensations come, and come again.

‘We could get married,' he said. She burst into tears. How could she do that without a white dress, a dozen envious bridesmaids, an embroidered veil?

He shrugged his narrow shoulders.

‘Think it over.'

‘Oh no,' she said. ‘I really couldn't.' An opinion she was obliged to reconsider, some three or four weeks later, when it became clear to her that she was expecting somebody's child.

Miriam had suffered a heart attack of adequate severity, brought on, she was in no doubt, by the shocking revelations of her daughters, her recovery, which was slow enough, further impeded by the mental collapse of Eunice, the moral collapse of Polly.

It had all been so terrible that even three months, four months later, she could not think of it without tears. And since she thought of little else, she spent a great deal of her time weeping. Benedict, of course, had done-she supposed-all that he could. But just the same, she could not help thinking he ought to have known that Polly was missing. True –
dreadfully
true – that Eunice had covered it up, pretending she'd spoken to Polly through her bedroom door when, in fact, she'd just chased her out of the house with threats of Heaven knew what. But Benedict – surely? – ought to have seen that Eunice had lost her reason, that it had all been too much for her, losing Toby and then finding out so brutally just
how
she'd lost him. Obviously she couldn't come to terms with that. What woman could? Because whether he'd set out to kill himself deliberately or whether he just hadn't seen that bend coming – either way – it didn't alter the fact that he'd been
leaving
her. Dreadful. And even more dreadful that Benedict had known nothing of Polly's flight, had thought her safe if not particularly sound upstairs in bed – if he'd given her a thought at all – until Arnold Crozier had telephoned the monstrous information that she was going away for a while with him.

And Benedict had let her go.

Naturally he said now that it had been because of Eunice who had chosen that moment to break down entirely, horribly, although her mother had been too ill to be aware of it. How could he leave two sick women, he'd said and four young boys, and – she supposed – whatever crisis was brewing at the mills, to go chasing off to the continent looking for Polly?

The damage would have been done by then, he'd told her coolly. ‘In fact, one assumes it had been done before he telephoned.'

Yes, he had said that to
her,
Polly's mother, standing by her bedside looking down at her in his unfeeling fashion, making no allowance for her helplessness, the weakness of her condition. And here she was now, an invalid still, unable to leave her bed for more than an hour or two every day when, weather permitting, she would be carried into the garden to sit in a
chaise longue
and take the sun. Yes, here she was, with Eunice hanging around her like a stray dog, not bothering to wash her face or comb her hair by the look of her, staring all the time at absolutely nothing, no help to her mother and no company. And Nola, with all her grand ideas of service to humanity, being no help either, finding nothing to interest her in adultery and nervous breakdown, suicide or despair unless it took place in a back-to-back cottage or a lodging-house off Town Hall Square. And those boys, slamming doors and shouting and ruining the furniture she was sure of it, scratching the parquet and smoking – oh yes, they might deny it and Eunice did not care, but she
knew
they did – in bed.