The Diamond Waterfall (24 page)

The road through the forest is long and dark,
I cannot find my way out,
the prince finds his way through to rescue the princess, she has long golden hair, she hangs it out of the window, and he climbs up it like a rope. Where is the witch who spoils everything, she is old and wizened, she pretends to be a sewing woman, Princess Violet pricks her finger and falls asleep, I want to sleep, how do you sleep when you are hot hot hot?

“Hal, darling, Alice is with you. Fräulein, fetch Lady Firth. At
once.
His condition gets worse. Dr. Sowerby …”

… I want to
sleep,
how do you sleep when you are hot, where is the ice maiden? … The whole palace was made of ice, ice is like glass, the points pierce the heart….

“… Some salt-water injections, Lady Firth. Continue of course with the tepid sponging. The pulse just now at a hundred and forty-four. The temperature will continue to be raised for some time. It is for the
heart
we fear, of course. The great strain on it. To use the lay term, a murmur.”

The wicked witch grew and grew until she was thrice the size of him and then she leaned over and took him by the throat and
he couldn't breathe,
she sewed thick cobweb over so that he would never swallow or speak again, her fingers came around his throat and dug and dug so that
he could not swallow.

The king of the Goldland lost himself in a forest. “What are you doing here, friend?” asked the stranger. “Darkness is falling fast …”

“Really, Dr. Sowerby, I
cannot
understand. He is never allowed out alone. Never. And the only diphtheria cases, you admit this yourself, at Lane Top farm. It's not possible.”

“I have lost myself ” answered the king, “and am trying to get home.”

“But darkness is falling fast,” said the stranger, “and soon the wild beasts
…”

“Frankly, Lady Firth, I would prefer there to be a little more strength. Although to wait—while there is such difficulty with breathing … You understand my dilemma? I should wish to balance the risks, but I feel that you and Sir Robert should be prepared for the worst.”

“Listen, Hal darling, can you hear Mummy? I'm here, and shan't leave you all during the operation. You are going to be
very brave.”

“Diphtheria of the pharynx, yes, well,
if
the tracheotomy is successful— I have to say
if
there has of course been little nourishment lately, even with the esophageal tube …”

… Mummy, help me, help,
Mummy, help me!

The Queen of Goldland had a tiny waist, she had long fair hair, and her voice was like the water falling, she wore diamonds in her hair like a crown, and diamonds all over her bosom and to her waist like water falling … falling, falling, forget everything, black and blacker, down, down, down …

I never realized till now, Lily thought, how much deep deep down, I still
hoped.
Even after the heart-wrenching visit, and parting, in Beaulieu. And after my return to the stage, darling Sylvia's birth, the terrible week two years ago when my beloved Hal brushed with death—and survived. After all that, did I not have still at the back of my mind that one day
perhaps?
If I were to be widowed …

Oh, and then (but the notion must never be pursued) it would be simple to arrange everything.
He
would come from Romania to Flaxthorpe (since she would want to live here with Hal, till he was grown up), with God and man's blessing, together. So clear a picture: she ran to him, he wore the cloak in which she had first seen him—no, it was the Val of the Colony Hotel, coming to her across the crowded foyer. She melted into him.

No longer would the nights be furtive. I was never really one for intrigue: the creak on the stair—I only thrilled because it was Valentin, because he was coming. (Coming, coming, that most wonderful of words.) She would allow herself, wickedly, to dream a little of how it might be.

Now I am punished, punished, she told herself, that early autumn evening of 1907. Reading the letter at her dressing table, hair intertwined with diamonds and already up for the evening.

My darling, [he wrote], my darling, I don't think it's likely that you will hear from other persons what I have to say, but I don't want there to be any risk. I have decided to marry. And now it's written down, what I have been afraid of telling you. We have talked together of this moment so many times. I am thirty now, and head of the family. Ion was married last spring (I told you this), and so there has been much concern that I too shall be serious, because of the family name. My wedding will be at Christmas. She is quiet, dark, and
already a little fat. She is nineteen years and will do what I tell her. So that is how it is—life must go on, but oh my darling,
how I wanted you to be the mother of my sons.
Only the day gets very late. I say this not to rub in salt, but so you understand why I do this. I don't expect to be faithful in the body (who is?), and
you
know well enough how little they mean, all those
aventures
that aren't with you.
You are the only love of my life.
I shall always think of you and remember you, and care for you if you should ever need it.
Our Theodora, too, if she should need me.

And now I come to write a dreadful thing, which is that because I begin this new life, the best for us would be—good-bye. That we don't write any longer. You see, it has become
adieu
and not
au revoir.
And it is indeed
à Dieu,
because I will pray to God that he look after both of you. You, my darling, and our little Theodora, God's gift (and she is, is she not?). But it will be better really that she grows up without knowing of her father or any things of me at all. It will be better, won't it?
Won't it?
Write to me, my darling, write to me your own
à Dieu.

Hope must have been stronger than she thought. Now that it had happened:
I cannot lose him. I will not lose him.
But there was no choice. And as she sat with guests at dinner—a shooting party for the weekend—she felt weighed down by memories, once treasured, even if painful, now best jettisoned. I shall not always feel as raw as this, she told herself, but could not imagine how that might be.

The autumn of eight years ago returned to haunt her. The plaintive sound of the pipes, the
doina,
the lament that she had so loved, tinged as it had been already with farewells. The gypsy violins with their frenzied sound, faster, faster. She had been so happy—yet, why happy?—for the music whirling, twirling, always more frantic, had said to her, far more clearly than the plaintive
doina,
“Never, never again.”

Never. Never. Over the next few days she took to wearing as often as possible the ring, the lover's opal, remembering how they had joined hands to pledge their troth. (Misfortune to come to the faithless one.) The plaiting of the gold was attractive and opals were just now very fashionable. A visitor that weekend, a slightly affected young married, remarked on it. “Oh pwetty, pwetty!”

Lily told her, “It is just a little thing I bought in Nice.” That she still had hidden away Valentin's shirt, she tried to forget. He the faithless one, to whom misfortune … Yet why should he not marry?

If she could only have confided in Sadie! But the time to tell her had been many years ago. They who had shared so much—but never this. Who shared now their joint pride in their children. Jack and Hal, so near in age, were close friends. Soon they would share a tutor. Later Jack would go to Harrow. Hal, because of his damaged heart, legacy of diphtheria, would not.

But all that lay ahead. For now they were two happy small boys who bird-nested, collected moths, and on rainy days raced wildly about the corridors of the Hall or The Towers.

Even had she felt able to confide in her, Sadie was often away from home now for days at a time. When she had lost her last baby (a boy, making her grief all the stronger), she had soon after thrown herself into work for charity. Her concern was child poverty. She'd told Lily often over the years that she had a conscience about the money she had brought with her, so much over and above what they needed. And the manner in which that money had been earned. “By using other people, by
abusing
them.” She had added, “But then it's a luxury is it not, to worry about having too much money when some don't know when they will get a meal? And while there are children that go hungry.”

Now she had become very involved, partly helping, but mainly campaigning. In public she spoke well and movingly, and was much in demand. I, too, Lily thought, should be more useful.

She sent for a Braille apparatus that she had seen advertised, and several pounds of special paper, then set aside several hours, three mornings a week. She had to select articles and extracts from books and write them out in Braille for the blind to recopy and make money. At least I do something for those less fortunate.

But as she worked, she would find herself remembering suddenly something she had meant to tell Valentin. Of how this summer when King Edward's horse had won at Ascot, the crowd had called “Good old Teddy!” and an enchanted but puzzled Teddy had asked, “But how do they know me?”

Often she would be alarmed by the strength of her feelings for the child, both love
and
hate. Some days, visiting the nursery, she would want suddenly to shake her till the teeth rattled: those slant eyes, heavy lidded, that thick black hair, confident pretty little voice.

A week later an invitation came to a house party in the Midlands. Shooting, excellent hunting; Robert promised a mount. Their hosts were a couple Lily did not care for. She said to Robert, “You go if you wish. I shan't know what to do there. It is an uncomfortable house. And the company—I see from the guest list that it is mainly cronies of yours. Midlands
nouveau riche.”

“That is good, coming from you. Your family, grocers.”

She interrupted him, “You who are so rude about Jews—if you look, you will see for certain, Jewish financiers.”

“I shall not need either to borrow money, or to do business with them. Certainly I shall not invite them under my roof.”

“The King is not so fussy.”

He said irritably, “We have had this exchange before. If it's with the idea that I may permit or encourage your idle Jewish, Russo-Polish relations to come and call here …” He warmed suddenly to his subject: “What good
will it do our son if we are to see walking round here, the Leeds ghetto with Yankee overtones? What will people say?”

“What will people say? Nothing. Nothing that they do not say already.”

“And what is that? Perhaps we should hear?” When she did not answer he went on, “You are not going to tell me? Then allow me to tell you.”

“Robert, the exchange is over.”

“Because
you
wish to finish. I will tell you what they would say.
If they knew.
They would say that Sir Robert had married a whore, who has landed him with a gypsy child he must recognize as his own flesh and blood. That same whore is scheming even now for this Romanian's bastard to get the Waterfall. To borrow it, perhaps, if our son is not married. To pass to her secretly jewelry which belonged to our mother. That Lionel, that I—”

“Stop it!” she cried. “Stop your hatred, your bitterness. We agreed not to discuss it. An innocent child shan't be punished by your desire for revenge. And the Waterfall, the jewelry, as if she or I would
want
it.”

“All women want it. Every woman wants the Waterfall.”

But she did not wait to hear any more. She went out of the room in tears, going up to the nursery, suddenly throwing her arms about Teddy. “My darling, my darling.”

Later that day Robert told her he would be joining the house party. “You may do as you please.”

She did, accepting another invitation received the next day, a week in a castle in the West of Scotland. Her hosts were friends of the Hawksworths, who were of course on the guest list. She would journey north with them.

She had already settled in the carriage, cushions about her, stone hot bottles filled, reading
The Lady,
when, looking up, she saw Charlie Hawksworth.

“Oh, but—alone?” she asked, puzzled.

“Yes. She cannot come, Mrs. Hawksworth doesn't come. The time
was
free of meetings, and excursions—but not apparently, alarums.” He began unfastening his ulster. “A meeting this evening at which Lady Fordyce was to speak—but the good woman telegraphs from her sickbed—struck down by an ague. Nothing will do but that my Sadie should drop everything and talk in her place.”

She was disappointed. Not only would there be no Sadie, but also she would be left for many many hours in Charlie's company, someone she scarcely knew, except through Sadie. “Charlie says,
we
think, Charlie feels, Charlie believes …” At shooting luncheons, dinners, outings, a charming and polite host, or guest. But not known, not known at all.

The journey went well enough. She found him amusing, enjoying it when he spoke, with just a little malice, of social life in the South African War. Cape Town, a hotbed of gossip: the Duke of Westminster and Mrs. Tommie
Atherton, garden parties at the Rondesbosch. Scandal, intrigues. “All
vieux jeu
now.”

“You like that sort of thing?”

“Now and then. Now and then.” He pulled at the luxuriant moustaches. “A country boy at heart, though.”

Then as they were eating luncheon, he said, “I've often wondered, forgive my asking, why a woman who would look so fetching in hunting dress is never, never seen on horseback?”

“Simple. I feel certain I've said it before—I am terrified of the animals. From the front, from the behind—no, do not laugh, it is true. One must begin as a child. Although in Romania I rode a mountain pony, and there were persons there who might have persuaded—”