Kirkland Revels (2 page)

But he had no children, so it was characteristic of him, greedy for life as he was, to cast his predatory eyes on his brother’s daughter and treat her as his own.

I had studied my reflection at the dressing-table before I got into bed that night. The light from the candles had softened my face so that it seemed—though not beautiful nor even pretty—arresting. My eyes were green, my hair black and straight; it felt heavy above my shoulders when I loosened it. If I could wear it so, instead of in two plaits wound about my head, how much more attractive I should be. My face was pale, my cheek-bones high, my chin sharp and aggressive. [ thought then that what happens to us leaves its mark upon our faces.

Mine was the face of a person who had had to do battle. I had been fighting all my life. I looked back over my childhood to those days when Uncle Dick was not at home; and the greater part of the time he was away from me. I saw a sturdy child with two thick black plaits and defiant eyes. I knew now that I had taken an aggressive stand in that quiet household; subconsciously I had felt myself to be missing something, and because I had been away at school, because I had heard accounts of other people’s homes, I had learned what it was that young child had sought and that she had been angry and defiant because she could not find it. I had wanted love.

It came to me in a certain form only when Uncle Dick was home. Then I was treated to his possessive exuberant affection; but the gentle love of a parent was lacking.

Perhaps I did not know this on that first night; perhaps it came later; perhaps it was the explanation I gave myself for plunging as recklessly as I did into my relationship with Gabriel.

But I did learn something that night. Although it was long before I slept I eventually dozed to be wakened by a voice, If and I was not sure in that moment whether I had really heard that voice or whether it came to me from my dreams.

“Cathy!” said the voice, full of pleading, full of anguish. ” Cathy, come back.”

I was startled—not because I had heard my name, but because of all the sadness and yearning with which it was spoken.

My heart was pounding; it was the only sound in that silent house.

I sat up in bed, listening. Then I remembered a similar incident from the days before I had gone to France. The sudden waking in the night because I had thought I heard someone calling my name!

For some reason I was shivering; I did not believe I had been dreaming.

Someone had called my name.

I got out of bed and lighted one of the candles. I went to the window which I had opened wide at the bottom before going to bed. It was believed that the night air was dangerous and that windows should be tightly closed while one slept; but I had been so eager to take in that fresh moorland air that I had defied the old custom. I leaned out and glanced dowr at the window immediately below. It was still, as it had always been, that of my father’s room.

I felt sobered because I knew what I had heard this night, and on that other night of my childhood, was my father’s voice calling out in his sleep. And he called for Cathy.

My mother had been Catherine too. I remembered her vaguely—not as a person but a presence. Or did I imagine it?

I. seemed to remember being held tightly in her arms, so tightly that I cried out because I could not breathe. Then it was over, and I had a strange feeling that I never saw her again, that no one else ever cuddled me because when my mother did so I had cried out in protest.

Was that the reason for my father’s sadness? Did he, after all those years, still dream of the dead? Perhaps there was something about me which reminded him or her; that would be natural enough and was almost certainly the case. Perhaps my homecoming had revived old memories, old griefs which would have been best forgotten.

How long were the days; how silent the house 1 Ours was a household of old people, people whose lives belonged to the past. I felt the old rebellion stirring. / did not belong to this house.

I saw my father at meals; after that he retired into his study to write the book which would never be completed. Fanny went about the house giving orders with hands and eyes; she was a woman of few words but a click of her tongue, a puff of her lips, could be eloquent. The servants were in fear of her: she had the power to dismiss them; I knew that she held over them the threat of encroaching age to remind them that if she turned them out, there would be few ready to employ them.

There was never a spot of dust on the furniture; the kitchen was twice weekly filled with the fragrant smell of baking bread; the household was run smoothly. I almost longed for chaos.

I missed my school life which, in comparison with that in my father’s house, seemed to have been filled with exciting adventures. I thought of the room I had shared with Dilys Heston-Browne; the courtyard below from which came the continual sound of girls’ voices; the periodic ringing of bells which made one feel part of a lively community; the secrets, the laughter shared; the dramas and comedies of a way of life which in retrospect appeared desirably lighthearted.

There had been several occasions during those four years when I had been taken on holiday trips by people who pitied my loneliness. Once I went to Geneva with Dilys and her family, and at another time to Cannes. It was not the beauties of the Lake which I remembered, nor that bluest of seas with the background of Maritime Alps; it was the close family feeling between Dilys and her parents, which she took for granted and which filled me with envy.

Yet, looking back, I realised that it was only now and then that the feeling of loneliness had come to me; for the most part I walked, rode, bathed and played games with Dilys and her sister as though I were a member of the family.

During one holiday when every other pupil had gone away. I was taken to Paris for a week by one of the mistresses. Very different this, from holidaying with the light-hearted Dilys and her indulgent family, for Mademoiselle Dupont was determined that my cultural education should not be neglected. I laughed now to think of that breathless week; the hours spent in the Louvre among the old masters; the trip out to Versailles for a history lesson. Mademoiselle had decided that not a moment was to be wasted. But what I remembered most vividly from that holiday was hearing her talk of me to her mother; I was “the poor little one who was left at school 13 during the holidays because there was nowhere else for her to go.”

I was sad when I heard that said of me and deeply conscious of that desperate aloneness. The unwanted one! The one who had no mother and whose father did not want her to come home for the holiday. Yet I forgot quickly, as one does when a child, and was soon lost in the enchantment of the Latin Quarter, the magic of the Champs Elysees and the shop windows of the Rue de la Paix.

It was a letter from Dilys which made me recall those days with nostalgia. Life was wonderful for Dilys, being prepared for the London season.

” My dear Catherine, I have scarcely a moment. I’ve been meaning to write for ages, but there’s always something to prevent me. I seem to be for ever at the dressmakers being fitted for this and that. You should see some of the dresses! Madam would scream her dismay. But Mother’s determined that I shan’t go unnoticed. She’s making out lists of people who are to be asked to my first ball. Already, mind you! How I wish you could be here. Do tell me your news….”

I could imagine Dilys and her family in their house in Knightsbridge close to the Park with the mews at the back. How different her life must be from mine!

I tried to write to her, but there seemed nothing to say that was not grim and melancholy. How could Dilys under stand what it was like to have no mother to make plans for one’s future, and a father who was so preoccupied with his own affairs that he did not even know I was there.

So I abandoned my letter to Dilys.

As the days passed I was finding the house more and more intolerable and spent a good deal of time out of doors, riding every day. Fanny smirked at my riding-habit the latest from Paris by the bounty of Uncle Dick but I did not care.

One day Fanny said to me: ” Your father’s going off to-day.” Her face was tightly shut, completely without expression, and I knew she had deliberately made it so. I could not tell whether she disapproved of my father’s going away or not; all I knew was that she was holding in some secret which I was not allowed to share.

Then I remembered that there had always been those times when he went away and did not come home until the next day; and when he did come back we still did not see him because he shut himself away in his room and trays were 14 taken up to him. When he emerged he looked ravaged and was more silent than ever.

” I remember,” I said to Fanny. ” So he still goes … away?”

” Regular,” Fanny answered. ” Once in t’month.”

“Fanny,” I asked earnestly, “where does he go?”

Fanny shrugged her shoulders as though to imply that it was no business of hers nor of mine; but I believe she knew.

I kept thinking about him all day, and wondering. Then it suddenly came to me. My father was not very old . perhaps forty, I was not sure. Women might still mean some thing to him although he had never married again. I thought I was worldly-wise. I had discussed life with my school friends, many of whom were French always so much more knowledgeable in such matters than we English and we thought ourselves very up-to-date. I decided that my father had a mistress whom he visited regularly but whom he would never marry because he could not replace my mother; and after visiting this woman he came back filled with remorse because, although she was long since dead, he still loved my mother and believed he had desecrated her memory.

He returned the following evening; the pattern was the same as I remembered it. I did not see him on his return; I only knew that he was in his room, that he did not appear for meals, and that trays were taken up to him.

When at length he did appear he looked so desolate that I longed to comfort him.

At dinner that evening I said to him: ” Father, you are not ill, are you?”

“111?” His brows were drawn together in dismay. Why should you think that? “

” Because you look so pale and tired and as though you have something on your mind. I wondered if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m not a child any more, you know.”

” I’m not ill,” he said, without looking at me.

“Then …”

I saw the expression of impatience cross his face, and hesitated. But I decided not to be thrust aside so easily. He was in need of comfort and it was the duty of his daughter to try to give it to him.

” Look here. Father,” I said boldly, ” I feel something is wrong. I might be able to help.”

He looked at me then and the impatience had given way 15 to coolness.

I knew that he had deliberately put up a barrier between us and that he resented my persistence and construed it as inquisitiveness.

” My dear child,” he murmured, ” you are too imaginative.”

He picked up his knife and fork and began paying more attention to his food than he had before I had spoken. I understood. It was a curt dismissal.

I had rarely felt so alone as I did at that moment.

After that our conversation became even more stilted, and often when I addressed him he did not answer. They said in the house that he was suffering from one of his ” bad turns.”

Dilly wrote again, complaining that I never told her what was happening to me. Reading her letters was like listening to her talking; the short sentences, the underlining, the exclamation marks, gave the impression of breathless excitement. She was learning to curtsy; she was taking dancing lessons; the great day was approaching.

It was wonderful to have escaped from Madame and feel oneself no longer a schoolgirl, but a young lady of fashion.

I tried again to write to her, but what could I say? Only this: I’m desperately lonely. This house is a melancholy one. Oh, Dilys, you congratulate yourself because you have left your schooldays behind, and I am here in this sad house, wishing I were at school again.

I tore up that letter and went out to the stables to saddle my mare, Wanda, whom I had taken for my own on my return. I felt as though I were trapped in the web of my childhood, and that my life was going on in the same dismal way for ever.

And the day arrived when Gabriel Rockwell and Friday came into my life.

I had ridden out on to the moors that day as usual and had galloped over the peaty ground to the rough road when I saw the woman and the dog; it was the pitiful condition of the latter which made me slacken my speed. He was a thin pathetic-lo king creature, and about his neck was a rope which acted as a lead. I had always had a special feeling for animals, and the sight of any one of them in distress never failed to rouse my sympathy. The woman, I saw, was a gipsy; this did not surprise me for there were many wandering from encampment to encampment on the moors ; they came to the house selling clothes-pegs and baskets or offering us heather which we could have picked for ourselves. Fanny had no 36 patience with them. ” They’ll get nowt from me,” she would say. ” They’re nob but lazy good-for-nothings, the lot of ‘em.”

I pulled up beside the woman and said: “Why don’t you carry him? He’s too weak to walk.”

“And what’s that to you?” she demanded, and I was aware of her sharp beady eyes beneath a tangle of greying black hair. Then her expression changed; she had noticed my smart riding-habit, my well-cared-for horse, and I saw the cupidity leap into her eyes. I was gentry, and gentry were for fleecing. ” It’s not a bite that’s passed me lips, lady, this day and last. And that’s the gospel truth, without the word of a lie.”

She did not, however, look as though she were starving, but the dog undoubtedly was. He was a little mongrel, with a touch of the terrier, and in spite of his sad condition his eyes were alert; the manner in which he looked at me touched me deeply because I fancied that he was imploring me to rescue him. I was drawn to him in those first moments and I knew that I could not abandon him.