Grace Hardie (7 page)

‘Want to get down.' Jay, feeling himself forgotten in his tree, began to wail again until Frank lifted him to the ground. He ran across to his sister and tugged at her unresponsive hand. ‘Pepper's only pretending,' he said – and then, seeing that she was not reassured, ‘We were only pretending too.'

‘Leave her alone, Jay,' said Frank. He took off his jacket and spread it on the ground, indicating to Grace that she should sit on it. But she shook her head, continuing to stand motionless as the funeral got under way.

Frank dug a hole himself, dismissing the gardener's son as soon as he had handed over the spade. Philip disappeared to pick wild flowers, and David looked for a piece of sacking in which Pepper's body could be wrapped. When the grave was ready, all five boys stood round it, singing a hymn and reciting the Lord's Prayer, but Grace could not be persuaded to join in. Only when Frank picked up Pepper's body, ready to put it into the grave, did she give a little moan and step forward to touch her pet for the last time. There was a moment in which she seemed
to stop breathing. Then she turned away and ran through the wood in the direction of the house.

‘D'you think she'll tell?' asked David anxiously. Their father did not beat them very often, but he hit hard if he thought the crime deserved it.

‘Of course she'll tell,' said Frank resignedly. Grace was only six. ‘You'd better run after her, Kenneth. Not to stop her. Just to make sure she's all right. And then go and find Nanny Crocker and tell her that Grace is having one of her wheezy chests. I heard it, just before she went.'

Kenneth nodded and set off in pursuit. Frank put Pepper's body into the hole he had dug, and each of the boys threw in a handful of earth before using the spade to shovel the ground level. Although Grace was no longer watching, they continued to behave with the formal gravity that they supposed she wanted. Their ceremonial was mixed with an uneasiness which they shared but could not have explained. Each of them, on any day in the year, was accustomed to carry the guilt of a variety of sins: food stolen from the garden, rules broken at school, truths suppressed to have the effect almost of lies, neglected duties, small disloyalties – all these offences were to some extent matters of deliberate choice. In committing a small crime they took into account not only the likelihood of punishment but the probable disturbance of conscience. It seemed unfair that something which they had never intended to happen should now overwhelm them with guilt. Frank had spoken sincerely when he claimed that the killing of Pepper was an accident. But they all knew that Grace could not be expected to believe that.

The ceremony was over. Philip arranged his armful of poppies and cornflowers above the disturbed earth. Frank picked up his jacket and took Jay's hand. The four boys walked together through the wood and up the hill to face the music.

Halfway up the hill Grace was forced to pause, gasping for breath; but when she saw Kenneth emerge from the wood she set off again, panting and crying at the same time. Kenneth was a fast runner. If he did not catch her up it was because he was not really trying; but she did not look round again. He could say he was sorry as often as he liked: she wasn't going to listen. She was never going to speak to him again, nor to David. She was prepared to believe that Philip had had no hand in the death of her pet, and Jay was too young to have understood what the others were doing. With more difficulty, she could accept that Frank was horrified by what had happened. He never told lies, and she had read the shock in his eyes. But David with his arrow and Kenneth with his lump of wood had hurt Pepper and made him dead. Grace vowed that she would never forgive them.

She ran first to the nursery for comfort, but Nanny Crocker, who was usually there, was not there today: nor was there any sign of Milly, the nurserymaid. Disappointed, Grace pulled off her straw hat and threw it on the nursery floor. Then she hesitated for a moment. She was not supposed to bother her mother in the mornings, and for the past two weeks Mama had been ill, so that all the children had been restricted to a single short visit to her bedroom just before their own bedtime. But she would surely not mind being disturbed now, for such a special reason.

There was a strange atmosphere of bustle outside Mrs Hardie's room. Milly was carrying two jugs of hot water
along the corridor as Grace approached, and one of the housemaids was hurrying behind her with a pile of clean sheets. Grace tried to follow them in, but was stopped by Nanny Crocker. ‘Not now, dear,' she said, and closed the door in Grace's face.

It was the third betrayal of a day in which no one was prepared to love her or be kind to her. Her tearfulness turned to an angry resentment; but then she remembered that there was another way into her mother's bedroom. She opened the dressing room door.

In the middle of the room stood the cradle which had once belonged to Grace herself, and more recently to Jay. A strange woman in a blue uniform and white belt was bending over it.

‘Who are you?' asked Grace.

‘I'm Nurse Bruton. I've come to look after your mother and your new baby brother for a little while. He's just this minute arrived. Would you like to blow him a kiss? But you mustn't touch him or come near him, because he's very new and small.'

‘I want Mama,' said Grace.

‘Not just now, dear. She's having a little sleep.'

‘I want Mama.'

‘Run along back to your classroom, there's a good girl.' Grace felt herself being pushed, kindly but very firmly, out of the room. Once again a door was closed, shutting her out.

Banished to the corridor, Grace stamped both feet in frustration. What right had a stranger to keep her away from her mother? She tried the door again and found that it was not locked, so for a second time she went into the dressing room. Nurse Bruton had disappeared, but the way to Mrs Hardie's bedroom was still barred, this time by Milly.

‘I want … I want …' Grace struggled to force the
words out. But the wheezing in her chest, which had begun when she first saw Pepper's body lying on the ground and which had been made worse by her run up the hill, seemed no longer to be only inside her body, but to encircle it like an iron band which was being slowly tightened. She was unable to speak; almost unable to breathe. Milly's eyes widened in alarm.

‘Stay just where you are, there's a good girl,' she said. ‘I'll go and fetch the doctor to you. He's but this minute left your mother.'

The nurserymaid hurried away, leaving unguarded the connecting door to Mrs Hardie's room. Grace took two steps towards it but then was forced by a lack of breath to stop. Her wheezing was so loud and painful that perhaps it disturbed the new baby, who began to cry. The sound resembled the mewing of a kitten, reminding Grace how she had first held Pepper on her lap just after she had seen Jay for the first time in this same cradle. But Pepper was dead. She would never hold him again.

She looked down at the baby, whose red and wrinkled face screwed up as he cried. How could anyone want a baby as ugly as this? And why had Mama not insisted on having a girl, when that was what she had asked for and as good as promised? There were enough boys in this family already: horrid, rough, cruel,
hateful
boys. This new one should be sent back to wherever he had come from. Grace gave a petulant push at the cradle before forcing out another wheezing breath.

A crash was followed by a single cry. She had pushed harder than she realized, overturning the cradle and throwing the baby to the ground. A soft white shawl had been wrapped round his body and the top of his head, but he had fallen out sideways, banging his forehead on the ground. Had she killed him? It was not his fault that he had been sent by mistake. What should she do? Whom
should she tell? Guilt paralysed her, rooting her to the spot.

She heard a footstep behind her and felt someone brushing past. It was Kenneth. Following her, he must have seen what happened. He wasted no time in talking, but set the cradle upright again. Then, bending to the floor, he carefully picked up the baby. Grace put her fingers to her mouth and began to bite her nails without noticing what she was doing. The baby's head, unsupported by Kenneth's arm, hung downwards just as Pepper's had done when Frank was about to put him into the grave. There was no arrow and no blood; that was the only difference.

Now Kenneth was tugging at the shawl to make it look as though it had not been disarranged. Grace tried to help him; but, although most of her body was hot and sticky, her fingertips were as cold and clumsy as though she had just been making a snowman in December.

Kenneth looked at her across the cradle and the motionless baby. He was not interested in his new brother, any more than Grace was, as his anxious brown eyes appealed for understanding.

‘Pepper was an accident too,' he said. ‘We're all sorry.'

Grace was unable to answer. She had begun to cough, trying to expel the heavy weight which was clogging up her lungs, and in between the paroxysms her chest heaved with the desperate need to snatch a breath. She had to hold on to the edge of the cradle if she were not to collapse on to the floor, and was hardly aware of Dr Sibley striding into the room, nor of Milly picking her up and carrying her to bed. Too much had happened which she did not want to remember. It was a relief when at last the day slipped away into darkness and sleep.

For as long as Grace could remember, Sundays had been family days. As a family the Hardies walked down the hill to the church at Headington Quarry in the morning, and as a family they sat down to mid-day dinner when they returned. Even little Jay was allowed to leave the nursery for this one meal of the week. Grace had missed two Sundays while she was ill, and on this third one she was left at home whilst the others went to church. But she could get up for the meal, Nanny Crocker told her, and from then on could enjoy the holiday with her brothers as usual, as long as she was careful not to tire herself.

It felt odd to be wearing shoes and stockings again, and to hear her starched petticoat rustling as she walked. Even odder was the sight of her brothers. She had not seen them for three weeks, and looked at them now as though they were strangers. The four elder boys had been made to wear their best knickerbocker suits, although the day was hot. Their hair was sleeked down with water, and they sat stiffly at the table as though afraid of spoiling their unnatural cleanliness. Jay alone was his usual excited self, bouncing dangerously up and down in his high chair as he waited to be served.

The boys were not the only ones to appear restrained. Mrs Hardie looked pale and tired, whilst Mr Hardie silently concentrated on carving the meat instead of providing his usual lively comments on the morning's sermon. Only when he had said grace and nodded permission for them all to start did the grave expression on his face relax into a smile.

‘We're all glad to see you down again, Grace. Are you feeling better?'

‘Yes, thank you, Papa.' Grace looked down at her plate and discovered that she was not hungry. All morning, while the others were at church, she had wondered who would be the first person to mention the baby and to accuse her of hurting him. She ought to keep quiet, and wait to be told what had happened. But until she knew, she could not enjoy her meal or anything else. Fear made her sly: she approached the subject sideways. ‘Papa, what name did you give to the new baby?'

Her parents looked at each other, and the pause before either of them spoke increased her anxiety.

‘He was christened Felix,' said Mr Hardie. ‘But –'

‘I'm afraid he died, darling,' said Mrs Hardie. ‘He arrived early, you see. He was very small. Too small to live.' Upset, she looked down at her plate.

So the nightmare had come true. Over and over again while she was ill, Grace had re-lived the moment in which she knocked the baby to the ground in a fit of temper, and those following moments when she had stared at him in the hope that some movement or cry would indicate that he was not too badly hurt. If he was dead, then it must mean that she had killed him. She could not pretend that it was someone else's fault, because Kenneth had seen her.

‘I didn't mean,' she began slowly – but her father, speaking now with his usual briskness, interrupted her.

‘We're not going to pull long faces about this, Grace. It was a sad moment when we had to say goodbye. But there are eight people left in this family to be happy together. Not to mention Pepper. Come to think, I haven't seen Pepper around while you were ill. Has he been sleeping in your room?'

Even until that moment, the big dining room had been much quieter than on an ordinary Sunday. But the silence
which followed the simple question was of a quite different kind. It seemed that all the boys were holding their breath as they waited to learn what Grace was going to say.

She looked round at each of her brothers in turn. All of them had been brought up to sit straight-backed and tall, but Frank held his head higher and more firmly than the rest, as though taking it for granted that he was about to be punished, and determined to accept it like a man. David's chin was just as firm, and his black eyes just as steady, but there was a glint of defiance in them; he was not admitting to any shame. Philip's expression held a glint of resignation. He had had nothing to do with the killing of Pepper but no doubt recognized that he was likely to be tarred with the same brush as the others. Even Jay was still, waiting anxiously to be told by his elder brothers what he should say. Only Kenneth's eyes flickered uncertainly, and his mouth moved as though he were about to speak.

There was a moment in which Grace felt anger rising within her as though she were about to be sick. The boys deserved a beating for what they had done. But no beating could bring Pepper back to her. Had she been able to see her mother immediately after the funeral in the wood she would certainly have poured out the whole story, but now there seemed no point in involving the grown-ups. She would punish David and Kenneth herself, by never loving them again and leaving them out of her bedtime prayers.