The Carousel (13 page)

"So must I."

"Oh, don't get up. Stay there for another hour or so. Lily likes it when you do that. She can get on with her polishing without having to shunt you around all the time."

"I'll see," said Phoebe, but as I went out the door, I saw her reach for her book. She was reading C. P. Snow, and I envied her her warm bed and that wonderful sonorous prose and guessed that it would be midday at least before she put in an appearance downstairs.

In the kitchen I found Lily tying on her apron.

"Hello, Prue, how are you this morning? Lovely, isn't it? Ernest said last night, this was what was going to happen. He said that wind was going to blow the dirty weather away. And coming down the road from the church, you'd think it was warm as June. Had a good mind not to come in to work today; just go down to the beach and put my feet in the tide."

From the hall, the telephone began to ring.

"Now," said Lily, as she invariably did when this happened, "who can that be?"

"I'll go," I said.

I went back to the hall and sat on the old carved chest where the telephone lived and picked up the receiver. "Hello."

"Phoebe?" A woman's voice. "No. This is Prue."

"Oh, Prue. This is Mrs. Tolliver. Is Phoebe there?" "I'm afraid she's still in bed."

I expected her to apologise for the early call and to say that she would ring back later. But instead she persisted. "I must speak to her. Can she come to the telephone?" And there was an urgency to her voice, an unsteadiness, that filled me with nameless apprehension.

"Is anything wrong?"

"No. Yes. Prue—I have to talk to her."

"I'll get her.". I laid down the receiver and went upstairs. As I put my head around Phoebe's door, she looked up placidly from her book.

"That's Mrs. Tolliver on the telephone. She wants to speak to you." I added, "She sounds very odd. Upset."

Phoebe frowned. "What's it about?" She laid down her book.

"I don't know." But my imagination had already scurried ahead. "Perhaps it's something to do with Charlotte."

Not hesitating any longer, Phoebe pushed back her covers and got out of bed. I helped her into her dressing gown, putting her good arm into the sleeve and wrapping the rest of its voluminous folds around her like a cape. I found her slippers. Her thick hair still lay in a plait over one shoulder, and her reading spectacles had slipped down her nose. She led the way down to the hall, sat where I had sat, picked up the receiver.

"Yes?"

The call was obviously important, and, possibly, private. Perhaps, realising this, I should have taken myself off out of earshot to the kitchen. But Phoebe sent me a glance that beseeched me to stay at hand, as though she expected to need my moral support, so halfway down the stairs, I sat, too, watching her through the bannister rails.

"Phoebe?" Mrs. Tolliver's voice was clearly audible from where I perched. "I'm sorry I had to get you out of bed, but I have to speak to you."

"Yes."

"I have to see you."

Phoebe looked a little nonplussed. "What, right away?"

"Yes. Now. Please. I ... I think I need your advice."

"I hope Charlotte's all right?"

"Yes. Yes, she's all right. But please come. I... I really want to speak to you very urgently."

"I shall have to get dressed."

"Just come as soon as you can. I shall expect you."

And before Phoebe could raise any objections, she had rung off.

Phoebe was left sitting there, holding the humming receiver. We looked at each other blankly, and I could tell by her face that she felt just as apprehensive as I did.

"Did you hear all that?"

"Yes."

Phoebe thoughtfully replaced the receiver, and the humming sound ceased.

"What on earth can be wrong? She sounds quite demented."

From the kitchen we could hear Lily wielding the floor polished and singing hymns. This was a sure sign that she was feeling on top of the world.

"Guard us, oh, thou Gre-hate Je-he-hovah . . ."

Phoebe stood up. "I'll have to go."

"I'll drive you in the car."

"You'd better help me get dressed first."

Back in her bedroom, she took from cupboards and drawers a selection of garments even more haphazard than usual. When she was ready, she sat at her dressing table, and I did her hair, replaiting it and winding it up into a knob at the back of her head, and holding it while she skewered it into place with her old-fashioned tor-toiseshell pins.

I knelt to lace up her shoes. This done, "You go and get the car out," she told me. "I'll be down in a moment."

I found my coat and pulled it on and let myself out of the house. The pearly, brilliant morning shimmered all about me. I opened the garage and persuaded the old car to start. I had backed it out of the garage and was waiting by the front door when Phoebe appeared. She had put on one of her largest and most dashing hats, and, for warmth, had draped across her shoulders a brilliant poncho of wool, doubtless woven by some Middle Eastern peasant. Her spectacles were sliding down her nose; her hair, fresh from my inexpert hands, already looked as though it was about to collapse. None of this mattered. What did matter was that for once in her life she did not have a smile on her face, and this alone was enough to make me angry with Mrs. Tolliver.

She bundled herself into the seat beside me and we set off.

"What I can't understand," said Phoebe, giving her hat a tug to settle it even further down on her head, "is why me? I'm no particular friend of Mrs. Tolliver's. She's far more intimate with those nice ladies she plays bridge with. Perhaps it is something to do with Charlotte. She knows how fond 1 am of the child. That's it. It must be —" She stopped, abruptly. "Prue, why are we going so slowly? You're still in second gear." I changed up to third, and we continued our journey at a slightly increased speed. "We're meant to be in a hurry." 

"I know," I said. "But I want to tell you something and I don't want to get to Mrs. Tolliver's before I've finished."

"What are you going to tell me?"

"It may have nothing to do with what she's going to talk about. But, on the other hand, I have an uncomfortable feeling that it has. I don't know whether I ought to say anything. But whether I ought to or not, I'm going to."

Phoebe sighed deeply. "It's about Charlotte, isn't it?"

"Yes. Daniel's her father."

Phoebe's worn hands stayed where they were, quietly clasped in her lap. "Did he tell you so?"

"Yes. He told me yesterday."

"You could have said something last night."

"He didn't ask me to."

We were moving so slowly that I had to change down again as the car ground on up the slight slope towards the church.

"So they did have an affair, he and Annabelle."

"Yes. You see, it wasn't just a little flingette after all. At the end of that summer, Annabelle told Daniel she was having his baby. And Daniel confided in Chips. And Chips pointed out that it wasn't necessarily Daniel's baby; it could easily be some other man's. And Chips confronted Annabelle with this, and she finally admitted to him that she couldn't be sure whose child it was."

"I always wondered why Daniel went off so precipitately to America. I mean, he'd been talking about it all summer, and I knew he planned to go. But all at once he was going. And then he'd gone."

"And didn't come back for eleven years."

"When did he realise she was his child?"

"As soon as he set eyes on her, sitting there on the seawall trying to finish her picture in the rain."

"How did he know?" 

"Apparently she looks just the way his mother looked as a little girl."

"So there's no doubt."

"No. Not in Daniel's mind. No doubt."

Phoebe fell silent. Presently she sighed again, a long, troubled sigh. She said inadequately, "Oh, dear."

"I'm sorry, Phoebe. It's not a very nice thing to have to tell anyone."

"Perhaps in a strange way I already knew. I always had such a close relationship with Charlotte, just as I used to have with you. Just as I used to have with Daniel. And there were little things about her ... mannerisms . .. that were strangely familiar. The way she holds a pencil, with her fingers all bunched up around it. Daniel holds a pencil that way."

"Chips never said anything to you?"

"Not a word."

"Perhaps I shouldn't have, either. But if you're going to be faced by some appalling revelation from Mrs. Tolliver, it's as well to have a few facts at your fingertips."

"I've got those all right. What a proper turn-up for the books." She added, without much hope, "Perhaps it's just going to be about the Women's Institute tea. And then your bombshell will have been all for nothing."

"It's not my bombshell. And if I hadn't told you, Daniel would have. And you know as well as I do that this isn't going to be about the Women's Institute tea."

There was no time for more. Even driving at my deliberate snail's pace, we had already covered the short distance between Holly Cottage and White Lodge. Here were the gates, the neatly kept drive, the gravel sweep in front of the formal house. But today the front door stood open, and as we drew up at the foot of the steps, Mrs. Tolliver came through the door and down the steps towards us. I wondered if she had been waiting for us just inside the hall, sitting on one of those ugly, uncomfortable chairs that are not meant to be used for sitting on but other purposes, like dumping overcoats and leaving parcels.

There was nothing outwardly dishevelled about her. I saw the usual well-cut skirt, the simple shirt, a cardigan of deep coral, the good pearls around her throat and set in the lobes of her ears, the well-coiffed grey hair.

But the inner turmoil was all too evident. She appeared distraught, her face blotched as though recently she had actually been crying.

Phoebe opened the door of the car.

"Phoebe, how good of you . . . how very good of you to come." She stooped to help Phoebe out and caught sight of me sitting behind the driving wheel. I smiled weakly.

"Prue had to come," said Phoebe briskly. "To drive me. You don't mind if she comes in, too, do you?"

"Oh . . ." Mrs. Tolliver obviously did mind, but it was a good indication of her immediate distress that this single word was as far as her objection went. "No. No, of course not."

I didn't want to go in in the very least. In the course of the last two days I'd had enough of the Tollivers, but Phoebe obviously wanted me with her, so trying to appear both disinterested and colourless, I too got out of the car and followed the two women up the stone steps and into the house.

The hall was flagged in stone, scattered with Persian rugs of great antiquity. A graceful staircase with a wrought-iron bannister curved to the upper floors. I closed the front door behind me, and Mrs. Tolliver led us across the hall and into her drawing room. She waited as we passed through the door and then closed it firmly, as though wary of possible eavesdroppers.

It was a large and formally furnished room, with long sash windows facing out onto the garden. The morning sun had not yet penetrated these windows, and the atmosphere was chilly. Mrs. Tolliver gave a shiver.

"It's cold. I hope you're not cold ... so early . . ." Her instincts as a hostess rose to the surface. "Perhaps . . . light a fire . . . ?"

"I'm not in the least cold," said Phoebe. She chose a chair and sat firmly down in it, still bundled in her garish poncho and with her solid legs crossed at the ankle, like royalty. "Now, my dear. What is this about?"

Mrs. Tolliver crossed to the empty fireplace and stood there, supporting herself with a hand laid along the edge of the mantelpiece.

"I ... I really don't know where to begin . . ."

"Try the beginning."

"Well." She took a deep breath. "You know the reason Charlotte is with me?"

"Yes. The boiler at her school blew up."

"That, of course. But the real reason is that her mother—Annabelle—is in Majorca. That was why there was nobody to take care of her at home. Well ... I had a telephone call last night, at about half past nine . . ."

She took her hand from the mantelpiece and felt up her cuff and produced a tiny, lace-edged handkerchief. As she went on talking, she played with this, looking to me as though she were trying to tear it to pieces.

"It was my son-in-law, Leslie Collis. Annabelle has left him. She's not coming back. She's with this man. He's a riding instructor. South African. She's going back to South Africa with him."

The enormity of her statement silenced the lot of us. I was thankful that I was expected to say nothing, but I looked at Phoebe. She sat unmoving, and I could not see the expression on her face, because it was obliterated by the brim of her hat.

At last, "I am so sorry," she said, and there was a whole world of sympathy in her voice.

"But you see, that isn't the end of it. I... I really don't know how I'm going to tell you."

"I imagine," said Phoebe, "that it's got something to do with Charlotte."

"He says that Charlotte is not his child. Apparently he always knew this, but he accepted her for Michael's sake, because he wanted to keep his home together. But he's never liked the child. I always knew that he never had any time for her, though of course I had no idea exactly why. It used to distress me when I stayed with them. He was so impatient with her, sometimes it seemed as though she could do nothing right."

"Did you say anything?"

"I didn't want to make trouble."

"She's always seemed to me to be rather a lonely little girl."

"Yes. Lonely. She never fit in. And she was never pretty and engaging, the way Annabelle used to be. I don't want you to think that Leslie was unkind to her. It was just that all his time and affection seemed to be centred on Michael... and there wasn't enough left over for Charlotte." 

"What about her mother?"

Mrs. Tolliver gave an indulgent little laugh. "I'm afraid that Annabelle was never very maternal. Like me. I was never very maternal, either. But when Annabelle was a child, things were easier. My husband was alive then, and we were able to afford a nanny for Annabelle. I had help in the house as well. Things were easier."