Random Winds (14 page)

“Hell have to be told I’m not his mother.”

“Why, yes, sometime, of course. But he does love you, Fern.”

“And I adore him.”

Sometimes there is immediate bonding between two human beings. It has no connection at all with age or circumstance. It is simply there.

“You’ve handled him splendidly, everyone says so.”

She knew it was said she was “marvelous with Neddie,” making no difference between him and her “own” infant girl. They didn’t understand. Neddie
was
her “own.”

“He’s not been jealous of the baby at all! Usually they carry on dreadfully when a new baby comes into the house, or so I hear. Unfortunately, I never had more than one. You’re sure you’re not rushing things in that respect, Fern?” This last had been spoken with a glance, a light progression of the eye as it blinks in its rhythm and recovers from the blink, toward the midsection of Fern’s body, where the new swelling was just barely visible. “After all, Emmy’s not a year yet.”

“The doctor says I’m quite healthy.”

Fern’s own patience surprised her. Two years ago she would have had to swallow exasperation; now she was learning to see beneath the surface of people and things. Behind this pallid face with its indrawn lips, behind the accent—which, even here in England, was a fairly blatant imitation of the royal family’s accent—she saw a lonely woman who had striven foolishly all her life.

So she said gently, “If this one’s a boy, we shall name him Alex, of course. Will he be the fifth or the sixth?”

“He will be the sixth Alexander Lamb. Should you want
me to come a week or two ahead of time to plan for the christening, I’m sure I’ll be able to manage it. And I can stay on afterward, as long as you like.”

Poor soul! She was waiting to be invited to live with them at Lamb House. But that, Fern thought, I will not do. She’s perfectly well-housed at Torquay with all the other prosperous widows. No, that I will certainly not do.

“You know,” Mrs. Lamb had complained, “it’s Neddie who should have borne the name. Don’t you think it’s disgraceful that Susannah insisted on naming him for her father? True, her father had died that year, but even so, the firstborn son should be named after his father.”

“Well, anyway, he looks like Alex,” Fern had assured her, although it was probably not true. Neddie would be narrower and darker than Alex. But it was what the older woman wanted to hear.

Pregnancy, like love, she thought now, can be calming to the nerves. The doctor said some women became euphoric. This inner radiance then, this vitality and warm contentment with her own body, the home and the people who surrounded her—this must be euphoria. And, taking up the brush, she corrected some greens with a stipling of gilt where the sun had glazed them.

A little group came in sight around the corner of the house: Neddie, running ahead of the nurse who was pushing Emmy in the perambulator. Fern held out her arms and the little boy ran into them. She put her face down on his crisp hair which smelled of pine shampoo. It pleased her that this child who had been shy with strangers had so readily accepted her and loved her.

He wiggled free.

“Shall we have music again, Mummy?” he asked.

“Mummy’s busy,” Nanny Hull admonished.

“Later this after, darling. We’ll put a record on.”

“The singing man?”

She laughed. “Yes, yes, the singing man.”

Neddie had come into the room when Alex had a Caruso recording on the phonograph. Without making a sound, he had sat down to listen, and then had waited while Alex wound the phonograph again to repeat it.

“And will I have yellow cake, too?”

There had been a cake with yellow icing that day, and now they were turning into a ritual, the singing man and the cake.

“You’ll have cake, if you promise to eat your supper. You mustn’t stuff on sweets,” Nanny said.

“Of course he mustn’t.”

The baby Emmy was asleep. She was blond and already long for her age. She would be large-boned, as if she belonged entirely to Alex and not at all to her mother. With curiosity Fern touched the pink hand that lay curled like a shell on the blanket. I don’t know her yet, she thought Everything is closed up, a gift in a glossy box. It is delivered at the door, and one can only guess what is possibly inside. But it is all there, and there’s little we can change.

Still, at the same time, we could teach her anything, couldn’t we? Mandarin Chinese, if we wanted to, instead of English? Everything is so confusing. I feel light-headed.

“Have you had a bit too much of the sun, Ma’am? If you don’t mind my saying so, you ought to put up your work for a while today. You’ve been at it since noon.”

The woman spoke considerately and probably sincerely, except for her use of the word “work.” She couldn’t possibly conceive of what Fern did as “work.”

“Yes, thank you, Nanny. Perhaps I shall.”

“It’s fearful hot today.”

Funny what the English called fearful heat! It couldn’t be more than eighty. Still, she obeyed, as Nanny drew the wicker lounge chair into the shade and plumped the cushions.

“There you are! A nice bit of nap will do you good. I’m to take Neddie down to his pony and he’ll go for a ride with Mr. Lamb.”

Fern closed her eyes, letting the drowsiness of pregnancy have its way. She was so catered to, so loved and cared for! How many women with two children had leisure to go all deliciously relaxed and limp? One could feel so guilty thinking about one’s unearned privileges.

Old Carfax, stirring in the perennnial border, struck a stone with his hoe. He was being careful not to wake her.
He was a wiry little man, pasty-skinned in spite of a life out in the weather. For thirty years he had been tending this garden: it was an extension of his back, of his roped and sinewy arms.

Fern opened her eyes just as he stooped to remove a thread of weed which would have marred the perfection of the rosebeds. She watched him move on through the perennials: violet steeples of campanula, gold coreopsis, dusty dark-blue globes of echinops. Fragrance of stock and musky spice of phlox hung in the sweet air. Behind the border stood a solid wall of yews, still wet with last night’s rain.

“The yews are as old as the house,” Alex had told her the first time he had brought her here. “We’ve a priest’s hole on the third floor behind a false wall. I’ll show you. Part of the family was Catholic, you know, but it got to be too dangerous for them, I suppose, and we’ve all been C of E. for two hundred years at least. They also say Cromwell slept here, but I don’t know whether that’s true.”

“It’s like all those houses at home, where Washington’s supposed to have slept while he was chasing you or you were chasing him.”

They had been sitting on the stone bench, the one where Carfax had just now set a flat of Michaelmas daisies. They’d sat there talking for an hour or more, then quite suddenly Alex had asked her to marry him and as suddenly she had accepted.

Yet they had really been leading up to that moment from the time they had been introduced in the winter. Aunt Milly had pursued her purpose with utmost tact, to be sure! And ordinarily Fern would have been outraged by any such “scheme,” but because she herself was so strongly drawn to Alex, she hadn’t objected.

He was delightful. It was, quite simply, good to be with him. It was heartening—was that the right word? Yes, heartening was a very good word, she decided. There was a kind of crinkling good nature in his face even when he was being earnest, and she had told him so. She was not used to men who laughed. Certainly Father had done very little laughing!

He had a fine curiosity about practically everything. At dinner he could listen to Uncle Drew’s talk of securities and German reparations. He could ask pertinent questions of a guest concerning blight-resistant roses. With a cricketeer he talked scores and plays. One felt that he could manage anything. And he had a certain reserve; Fern was comfortable with that. Traveling through Europe, she had had to fend off too many young men on dark hotel terraces. To a girl whose life had been unusually reclusive, that sort of thing could be flattering at first, but after a while one got tired of having to decide between accepting sticky kisses when one felt nothing for the man or, by resisting, risk being labeled “prig.” But Alex had been satisfied to go slowly, sensing her wish to feel the way, to move as a river flows, deepening to the place where all the streams gather in a final rush, which would be the more marvelous for having come gradually.

So she had read, and so she believed.

Obviously he was affected by his responsibilities. He had inherited a substantial business in maritime insurance; but unlike many young heirs he had not turned it over to managers; he ran it himself. The greater responsibility, of course, was to his child.

She remembered the day he had first brought Neddie to the hotel. They had been on the way to the zoo. She had opened the door and there they stood, the tall man and Neddie, who was just two. She had knelt, putting out her arms, and the little boy had come quite willingly, while she murmured the things adults do.

“What a fine big boy you are! And is this your bear? How are you, Toby Bear?”

She had been fourteen, almost grown, when her mother died. The loss had seemed to mark her more than any other happening in her life until then, and perhaps that was why she had been so moved by Alex’s child, when he put his hand in hers.

“Strange,” Alex said. “He’s usually quite timid with people he doesn’t know.”

Alex’s eyes had been very soft and in that instant Fern had known he could be trusted.

All during the late winter and early spring they saw London together. Alex had friends in a variety of circles: business, music, society and art They ate with a pair of schoolteachers in Soho and dined at Claridge’s before the opera. They walked in the parks and on streets which Fern had visited with Jane Austen, with Thackeray and Galsworthy. And, as so many Americans do, she fell in love with the grand, old, mellow city.

In a mews near Curzon Street Alex had a flat furnished, as she was later to learn, like Lamb House. Oak and yew were seventeenth-century; mahogany was eighteenth-century; the landscapes were nineteenth-century. Here was the progression of the family, marching through history.

Alex had discerning taste. She told him he ought to be in some business having to do with the arts—antiques or a picture gallery. He had been pleased.

“But maritime insurance is more lucrative. I can always buy art. Some day I’ll be buying a Meig, you know.”

“You’ve never seen any of my work. How can you say that?” she had replied.

“Just a feeling I have about you.”

They had been having dinner at the flat, so he was a host being courteous and that was all. Yet she could remember everything that had been said.

She had sighed. “I’m so confused in my mind. I wish I knew whether I had any potential.”

“There’s only one way to find out. By doing. It’s a shame you haven’t had more encouragement.”

“More? I’ve had none at all.”

Except for Martin Farrell’s. He, admittedly knowing nothing about art, had nevertheless urged her to struggle on. And sitting there across the table from Alex, she had become aware of the letter in her purse which had arrived from Martin just that morning.

It had been written in a state of joyous excitement. She, with her own hopes, had understood that a door had been flung open for him, a wide and generous entrance to the future! And she was very, very glad for him.

But there had also been a faint sense of shame. She had thought, all the weeks of that hot, lovely summer in
Cyprus and especially on the last night, that something was growing—that given time, perhaps when she came home … She had obviously been mistaken. Three years of further study! Very likely he wouldn’t marry until long after that.

Women, herself included, tended to be foolish about doctors, as about pianists or romantic actors, whom young girls pursue and old ladies adore.

Foolish. Foolish.

“London suits you,” Alex had remarked abruptly.

And looking out at the shine of the expensive street, she had reminded him: “I’m also a country person.”

“What you need,” he’d said, “is to have a home in a quiet country place where you can paint, yet be near enough to the city for first-rate classes.”

And he had reached across the table to press her hand.

Not long afterward they had driven to his village. It had a cobbled High Street, a chemist’s and tobacconist’s and an ancient church.

“There’s where the Lambs are christened, married and buried. That’s the lich-gate. They used to rest the bier there, but now we trim it with white flowers for brides. There’s the riding club where I keep three horses. It’s only a stone’s throw from home, and it’s just as easy to stable them there. Do you ride? Yes? Oh, there’s nothing like riding just after dawn when everyone but birds and roosters is still asleep!”

So they had rounded the corner of the lane and come upon the house, drowsing in hazy, filtered light. There it lay, sturdy, secure and most of all so brightly cheerful. It seemed like a place Fern had always known. It seemed as if there could be no deeper joy than to stay here with this gentle, loving man, in this golden peace.

Promptly then, cablegrams went out to Father and Jessie at home. Letters went back and forth across the ocean. Lists were written and arrangements made. Aunt Milly rejoiced. Alex’s mother rejoiced. An engagement solitaire was bought at Asprey’s.

Fern sent instructions home. Father must bring the photograph of Mother in her room. They must crate and ship
her books and all her paintings. They were to bring the sterling which had been put aside for her, Tiffany’s
Audubon Birds
. (“Animals, naturally,” Jessie had remarked, with her usual tart humor, which happened to be accurate, for Fern had also asked them to bring along her collection of dog etchings as well as the two spaniels, who would have to remain for six whole months in quarantine.)

The wedding was held at Lamb House. Just as Alex had said, the lich-gate had been trimmed with white flowers. They had ridden back from the church in a carriage, also decked with flowers. Neddie had worn a powder-blue velvet suit and had his picture taken with the bride and groom, while old ladies wiped their tears.