The Diamond Waterfall (30 page)

Stephen had turned Jack over, and was holding him half propped up. When Hal saw Jack's face, the front of his head, he began to scream.
“It didn't happen, it didn't happen—”

“Give over,” Stephen said sharply. “Give over.” Then more kindly: “That'll not bring him back….”

It was not true. It was not true.
Somehow, something, someone must make it all right again. But the seconds passed—and now Stephen, undoing the rod, the strap of Jack's bag, was lifting the body tenderly. He was smaller than Jack, and had to struggle. “Give us a hand, then.”

On the difficult, seemingly endless journey back down the beck and through some woodland which Stephen said was the fastest way to a road, Hal took only a small part of the weight. Every now and then he would find himself sobbing again, even shouting, not knowing what he was saying.

Stephen did not speak again. Not long after coming onto the Wadsworth road, they met a pony and trap. The farmer, who was on his way back from market, turned about at once.

Lily said, “I've come, Sadie, because …” She hesitated. “I thought, first I thought—but if it had been Hal … then I thought …”

Sadie opened her arms, and embraced her. Her face, hidden now, terrified Lily. The eyes, too wide open, too staring. Yesterday, when Sadie had heard the news, she had gone into a state of shock. Alone at the Hall, when young Stephen Ibbotson, accompanied by a farmer, had asked to speak with her …

“Lily, stay close to me. Darling Lily. If I ever needed a friend. We shouldn't ever let friends go—for anything. I just don't know how I'm to live, I just don't. I don't believe any of it, you see. I think maybe he just hurt his head a bit, and it's going to mend.

“But it
did
happen, Lily. It did. I guess I just loved him too much or something. You think you're having a bad dream, then you don't wake up— oh, Lily, stay close by me.
Close by me.”

The Christmas tree for 1912 had been placed in the main hall, and Alice, as she came near, saw the heavy figure of Fräulein busying herself with the holly, just brought in. With clumsy cold fingers she was tying tinsel, but Alice could see from her face (that revealing one known for so many years) that all was not well.

Fräulein would be going home for Christmas. Nowadays she went always for Christmas as well as several weeks in the summer. She was very much the family retainer now. Teddy and Sylvia were her pupils, and Amy
and Edith Hawksworth came for German conversation. Hal, who still imitated her excellently, had little to do with her—his time was spent with Gib. And that means, Alice thought, that Gib is every day at The Towers. Perhaps if she'd tried to think of something almost perfect: Gib, at The Towers, every day.

They all three ate together at midday. She had had more time with him since the autumn of 1911 than in all the years she'd known him. She remembered that she had kissed him (Yes, I kissed him) years ago, at Cambridge, that warm June evening. Gib of the bloodied nose. He had never ever in the slightest way alluded to it. She had wanted so much that everything should be ordinary again, and lo! it had been.

After the two years as a junior master at Marlborough (his degree had not in the end been as good as expected), here he was tutor to Hal. Beginning only a month or so after the terrible afternoon of Jack Hawksworth's death.

In the atmosphere of hysteria then she'd been surprised at her own calm. She had thought at first something had happened to Hal: brought back shaking, crying, occasionally calling at the top of his voice. She'd looked to see, expecting him to be injured in some way. And then she'd heard the story.

There was Belle Maman rushing over, as soon as Hal had been put to bed—rushing over to the Hall:

“Alice, I must see at once, at once, if there is anything I can do,
anything.”
And Alice, who had once so hated Hal, had gone upstairs to sit with him, his fever growing higher all the time, turning and tossing. From his ravings she'd learned more of the story.

At first she had been inclined to blame, as had Belle Maman, the Ibbotson boy, who she felt somehow should have been able to stop it happening. But at the inquest, which Alice attended, mainly to support Hal and Sadie Hawksworth, he had spoken clearly and frankly, and given a good account of himself. The coroner had gone out of his way to commend him. Indeed, it could be seen to have been simply a tragic accident. Jack's high spirits and excitability. She remembered that, alas, he had always been one to break away, run off, be just that little bit foolish.

And Hal was still friendly with the Ibbotson boy. Very much so. He was with him this very afternoon.

As Alice came nearer to the mound of holly, Fräulein looked up. At the same time she gave a great sigh as if she had been holding her breath.

“Alice
… such a letter I have had today. And when it is only four days before I shall go home. What sort of Christmas shall it be?” Her face shook. She looked at Alice, then said in a trembling voice, “I cannot, I can really
not.
… It is every time the same …”

I know my cue, Alice thought. She said gently, “It's Augustin, isn't it?”

“Every time the same. Only now, worse
und
worse. You know how he is used to borrow money from friends and those he is working for?
When
he is
working. Now he has visited those who lend money. It is a Jew and he writes me, Augustin writes me …” She paused to try and control herself. “I tell you this, Alice, only because I have told you many times before, and you know that Augustin is a
good
boy, except as—I don't know, I don't know at all—only that I love him and that I am doing anything for him,
anything—
and that I am very afraid for him. Of course”—and she attempted to speak in a brisk voice—“it is a Jew. What else? Augustin is borrowing—it is not so big, but it is
too
big,
und
perhaps he has borrowed to repay that which he has
before
borrowed. Now this Jew says, ‘Herr Schultz, I must have my money.' “

“Oh dear,” said Alice. “Oh dear. Your father?”

“Ach, I already tell you. Last time he has said, ‘This is the last time. Next time is prison.'
Und
so …”

The tears were crawling down now. The tinsel wound and knotted around her fingers.

“What shall become of him? Prison … when already his health goes —the bowels are not right, I
know
the bowels are not right. He has written me…. And now what? How is that—Christmas also. … We shall not be a happy family, Alice.”

She tried to think how she might help. But of what use
was
it to help Augustin? Perhaps if she asked Papa? She dismissed the idea at once.

“I think you'll see,” she told Fräulein, “that your father will help. When it comes to it … I am certain if it were Hal my father would help.”

“You are so sweet. Always so kind. From a little child, kind.” She sniffed. “I shall start at once to think of other things. Brighter things, yes?”

“Yes,” said Alice.

“I go now, and walk in the garden.”

Alice, leaving her, made her way up to the darkroom. She had a lot to do up there because her Christmas presents were to be mostly photographs. So she was rather annoyed when after only half an hour she found she needed pyrogallic acid and had run out of it. She thought, I can go and look for Gib and ask him. But if he had none? It would have to wait for a journey into Richmond.

It would be best, on the off chance, she thought, to look through the cupboards really thoroughly. She had finished with the first of them when she heard a knock. She tutted her way to the outer door (I am becoming an old maid—the way I fuss). It was Hal and, behind him, the Ibbotson boy.

“I can't find anyone,” he complained. “We want to go in the Stones Room.” He colored a little. “Stephen wants it for his Christmas treat. He saw them, that time, ages ago. And he wants to look again.” He added, “We could go, if you'd tell me where the keys are.”

“I certainly won't,” she said. “You can wait—can't you?”

“Suppose so.”

“You'll have to. I'm looking for something. When I've found it, I'll come
down. Meanwhile,
you
look for Gib, and ask him if he's got any pyrogallic acid at the Vicarage.”

And they had gone. She began the hunt again. All sorts of bottles which, far back in the cupboard, should surely have been thrown out—might, she supposed, even be dangerous. Boxes too. Old plates, old prints. (She had looked at a few once—and very boring they had been. Landscapes taken on foreign travels, and few of them as good as she and Gib could do.) At the back was a small sloping recess: a forgotten inner cupboard? If so, it might hold bottles. The knob was stiff and she had great difficulty. But inside was only another box, of photographs she supposed. It was very dusty. She took it out on impulse, and was glad to be wearing gloves.

There were half a dozen plates inside. Tissue paper, and then, underneath, a handful of prints. She brought them out. Picked one up and …

They were all of her mother. But her mother naked. Wearing nothing but jewelry. Covered in jewelry! That very jewelry Alice remembered from her childhood.

She didn't know where to look. What to think. She was shaking, breathing deeply. Suddenly very, very hot. She couldn't bear to look at them—yet her eyes went back again and again and again.

“Too heavy,” Mama had said. “It breaks my back—my neck.” But here, she was weighed down with precious metal and stones. Bracelets, necklaces, corsages. A tiara in her poor frizzed hair. In one picture, she wore a scarf over her face. (Yes, it was she, it was her body. As if she had pleaded, in her shame, to be covered.)

In the last one of all—there must have been a dozen altogether—she was wearing the Diamond Waterfall. And nothing else. Her face above it, the face of long ago, had an expression that Alice did not know, could not remember, had never seen. It wasn't patience. Nor was it anger. More, perhaps, a kind of tired defiance. “If that is what must be, it must be. But I am still
myself… me…

Why did she allow it? Why? Why ever?
That he should ever have thought of or done such a thing. For it must have been he. Must have been Papa. She couldn't still her trembling. Now her mouth had begun to shake as well. It is no excuse, she thought with sudden resolution, that it must, absolutely must, belong to more than twenty years ago. That doesn't make it all right.

My own father, she said to herself, my own father is no better than Uncle Lionel.
Worse.

She would speak to him. Now. As soon as the trembling stopped. If she did not find him and speak to him
now,
then she never would. In a white heat, still trembling, she cleaned up, put everything back into the cupboards, and found that she grew a little calmer. She gathered the prints into an envelope. She washed, and began to walk downstairs.

As she neared the main part of the house, she realized she hadn't
thought what she would say to her father. I shall say …
what?
Perhaps just to show them to him would be enough? But underneath, the dread thought, Once I have done that, where do we, where do I, go?
What happens?

And then in the hall, the worst thing. The two boys and Gib …

“It's all right,” Hal said. “We've been round the stones. Gib took us.”

She said, trying to keep her voice ordinary, “We should have thought of him. It's just I didn't know he was about.” She'd forgotten in fact that he knew where the keys were. She hoped he hadn't allowed the Ibbotson boy to see where they were kept.

Hal said, “Stephen has to practice carols at the church before he goes home. I might go with him. Though no one thinks much of my voice.”

“It's all right,” Gib said, “when you're not borrowing someone else's.”

Alice could hardly bear the teasing, the lightheartedness. At the same moment she recalled with a sinking feeling that her father was out. She was sure he had gone out.

“All right, then,” said Hal. “And thank you, Gib.”

Alice said, “I was just looking for Father.” She noticed suddenly that Gib was looking at her. He said as the boys moved away:

“Something's wrong, Alice.”

“Why ever?” she said in a false voice. “I'm not
Fräulein,
you know.”

He said, “I wouldn't ask, if you were … I'd be too afraid to be drowned in the tears.”

She smiled weakly. He persisted, “Alice, I haven't known you for all these years without being able to realize …”

She stood there, silent. Her tongue seemed to grow to fill her mouth.

“Let's go in”—he looked around—“the morning room.”

She followed him without protest. When they were inside, she clutched the envelope to her. She said, “It's in here, and I could never let you see it—
them.”

“Sit down,” he said. “It would be best if you sat down.” There was a coal fire burning high, and then an easy chair beside it. Across in the corner, a scrapwork screen made by Mama when she was a girl. She sat down—her knees would have given away. Her face felt frozen, even beside the heat of the fire. Tears pricked behind her eyes. Almost without her noticing, they began to course down her face.

Gib leaned forward, took the envelope from her. She said only, “Don't look at them here.”

He said, “If they're that terrible, I'll look at them behind the screen.”

She stared into the fire. She knew he was still in the room, but felt that behind the screen, from which there was no sound, he had left her….

She realized suddenly that he stood near her on the hearth rug. He had the envelope of prints in his hands. In front of her, very deliberately, he tore them once, twice, and then again. Then he put them on the fire.