The Diamond Waterfall (8 page)

Most of all now she missed that sacred half hour in the morning after breakfast, in Mama's sitting room. Before other people claimed her. Before my lessons began at nine o'clock, when Mama was just up, not even her hair done.

She talked to me then. She needed me (I think). I wasn't just a child, an alone child; she used to say, “Alice, you are my friend. Darling, sometimes,
you are my best friend.”
And then she would take my hand and lay her cheek against it. She would let me brush her hair some days. It had a lovely smell, something like roses but not so sweet. I used to bury my face in it, and laugh. I used to laugh a lot then.

But perhaps the early evening was better still. Because often I would be alone with her up there: not like other children, having to come down to the drawing room at five o'clock, brought by nurse, on their best behavior. I would sit with her often for a whole hour, she with her feet up on the sofa, resting. From as long as I can remember, she had to rest a lot.

I had to tell her about my day. “Yes,” she would say,
“everything. Of course
I want to hear it all.” Then if something wasn't right—her indignation: “No, no! They
shan't
say that, Alice/do that/rob you of that….” She even took sides against Nan-Nan, who had been her own nurse. (“Alice, we shall speak to her nicely, and it will be all right.” And it
was.)

I was allowed to be her friend. Because she wasn't always happy, I know that. But I would never have asked her. She would say to me, “We shan't bother today with how I feel. We mustn't ever bother with that. This is
your
time, Alice.”

Sometimes she complained, very slightly: her head ached, she was a little tired…. Sometimes Mrs. Anstruther, Aunt Violet, came to see her. Her friend. (My friend. Since Mama went, she's been mine too, although Papa doesn't like her very much.)

She thought now, standing quite still, I might go and see Aunt Violet. She wasn't a relation but she had been told to call her Aunt Violet. She was a Roman Catholic, which Papa didn't like. He said Romanists were bad on the whole—though not as bad as Jews. She heard him say once to Mama, “Violet is a bad influence on you.” But she, Alice, had never been forbidden to go and see her. She could talk to her about Mama. Now, when things got too bad, she would say to herself, “I can go to Aunt Violet.”

The evenings Mama went out, or people came. Dinner parties. Mama would say of those evenings, “Something I have to do, for your Papa. People can't choose, Alice, what they must do.” She'd come in to see me when she was dressed—always with so many jewels. Sometimes even, the Diamon
Waterfall. Then, after she'd kissed me good night, she would take my hand in hers and, half closing it, fill it with kisses. “Shut your hand up quick, and they will last
all night.”
(And they did, they did.)

Rubies, sapphires, emeralds—she wore jewelry always. Even in the daytime. Papa liked her to. Sometimes, alone, with me, she would take it off. “It breaks my back, my neck.” And she would give a little laugh, unclasping a heavy bracelet: “It breaks my wrist too.” But often I wanted her to keep them on because, wearing them, she was beautiful. Without them she wasn't. She was just lovely, plain Mama, with the little face that crinkled up when she laughed, showing small white teeth.

Such jewels.
They were beautiful all by themselves, without people. It was enough just to look. The stones too: kept in a special room and locked in heavy glass cases. But most beautiful of everything was the Diamond Waterfall. It gleamed not only about Mama's neck but tumbled as far as her waist, the diamonds fastened together in such a way that they moved as Mama moved. Lovely, so lovely.

Grandfather had been rich enough to buy the many diamonds it took to make it up. Just as he had been rich enough to build The Towers. Grandmother, Alice was told, had been very very proud of the Waterfall when it was new. Although Aunt Violet wasn't often rude about other people (she explained to Alice that Catholics were not allowed to be uncharitable) it was she who'd remarked, “Just a little bit vulgar. She wore it, you know,
before
luncheon.”

It was Mama who wore it in the painting halfway up the great staircase. She looked frightened and unhappy. Alice thought perhaps she'd known already she was ill. Dying, ill.

She didn't look at the portrait often. It was not necessary. She had her own picture, in her own shrine: one like Aunt Violet's for the Virgin Mary.
Hers
had a photograph of Mama, taken by Papa. In his youth Papa had been an eager photographer, with his own darkroom. (When I'm old enough, he has said that
I
may have his camera.)

In the shrine also: a small bunch of flowers, some heather, a pair of Mama's gloves (they still held a little of her perfume), and her little gold notebook and gold pencil. Mama had stopped using the notebook when she'd become really ill. In bed all day, too weak even to joke. Her face pale, except for two red spots high on her cheekbones. Toward the end, she was often delirious, each day weaker and weaker.

Aunt Violet never spoke of that time. “Let's talk about happier days,” she would say to Alice. “I was
so
careful with your mother always. We spoke only of happy things.”

Going out through a side door, she stood awhile in the courtyard. A gardener came by with a barrow, but didn't turn his head. In the distance she saw Fräulein, carrying a flower basket. She thought of joining her. They
might pick flowers together. I might do this, I might do that. Already it was after five. In a very little, it would be the time when once she had used to sit with Mama.

Mama's sitting room. It was no use to go in there. It was furnished still, but it was cold, cold, like Mama. It was covered with dust sheets. It waited— for what?

“Tell me, Miss Greene, what would amuse you? What would you like to do tomorrow? My brother, you see, has persuaded me to stay in Town, a further ten days at the least.”

Lily looked at him. Ah yes. Sir Robert, Sir Robert Firth. And beside him the smiling, sardonic face of Lionel. But she had not been listening.

“Some idea for the weekend perhaps?”

What? What idea? She scarcely heard in her humiliation. She could only think, Everybody knows. They will all have read
The Times,
the
Morning Post
They will know. I am humiliated.

Yet all was glitter in this room, as it had been glitter two months ago when she had been so happy. The Savoy again, but this time a private room for their, quite large, party. Twelve people. Everywhere masses of hateful chrysanthemums. Everywhere extravagances of decor, ordered no doubt by Lionel, whose party it was.

He was giving the party for his brother, visiting London again now, at the end of the summer. Lionel, in his bright red cummerbund. Ah yes, he knows, she thought; and I don't trust him not to suddenly humiliate me further—to send some remark flying the length of the table. The image of the newspaper burned behind her eyes, pricking them. This very morning, the Court and Personal column of
The Times:

An engagement is announced between the Viscount Tristram, son of the late Viscount Matthew Tristram and Mary, Viscountess Tristram, and Miss Augusta Mayhew, only daughter of Sir …

She had not been able to read on. Just thinking about it now made her tilt her chin higher. She tried to change the anxiety in her eyes to a proud gleam.
I do not care.

“Miss Greene, I know I sound like a deuced newspaper reporter”—there was the Honorable Freddie Moore, leaning forward eagerly, his turn to speak to her (it could not be about that; it must not be)—“is it true that George Edwardes is after you, and means you to star in his next…. The thing is that I should so like to be the first to know, officially.”

I do not care.

She had read the announcement alone in her bedroom over breakfast. At first, she hadn't believed it. She peered more closely. The name could be mistaken, but—no, it was
not
a mistake. And
who was she?
Miss Augusta Mayhew. Some little girl …

She had sat there, disbelief, anger, and humiliation struggling inside her. Her heart: she felt as if it had barely room to beat. I expect a letter, she thought. He will write, surely. Or he has written and I have not received it. Perhaps he will even write and say that he knows nothing of it—that it is the Mayhews, Augusta's family, who have announced a marriage. She had heard of such mistakes. Only recently—a prank played on some young man by his friends. An enemy, too, could do it. Soon perhaps there would be another announcement. And in it the wonderful words “… will not now take place.”

Then the fresh waves of humiliation: “…
will not now take place.”
But it is Lily Greenwood, shopkeeper's daughter, it is
my
wedding which will not take place. The pain was such that in her anger she could not remember how much, or even if, she had loved Edmund. The image of his face flashed past and together with it all the days of early summer, Jubilee summer. Of happiness. Of being wanted. She had been secure in her hopes. He had promised, had he not? But then—not exactly …

But perhaps exactly enough? Still in her wrap, she had hurried over to the drawer where the letters were kept. They were tied with white ribbon, as if, she thought contemptuously, I were a silly young girl.

They hurt. How they hurt. But trying to calm herself, she thought, I'll read them through now a second time, but as though written to someone else. Her head was suddenly hard. Dad's daughter.

The letters, they showed a progress through that summer, marking the enchanted moments, the highlights, where pride and vanity could not now be separated from notions of love. She tried to tell herself now, It is only my pride. But then she thought, I have a right to that pride. I have earned it….

Each letter, and how many there seemed now, for she had kept each note, even the hastiest (“half-past 2 A.M…. Dearest, I have been away from you only fifteen minutes and already I am dreaming of my dearest Lily and our next happy meeting!”). Had kept all of them just for the proud thrill
of his, in truth, rather badly formed hand. Read now, one by one, they formed a
chapelet,
a commentary on that summer.

Hurry on, and pass
this
one. Ironic now, referring to the evening out with Lionel when she had met Sir Robert for the first time.

Dearest, I know that when I am away my darling goes out with others. I think perhaps I must try never to go away unless with you —And yet I know when you are out at supper with
others,
that you are all the time thinking of me, as I am of you (and last evening in the hansom! Your lips are not cherries but strawberries, and that is why I crushed them. I wish, dearest, that I was a poet and not just a silly twenty-three-year-old man about town.).

And so on and so on—until August, and his departure abroad. He had had no choice about that. He had told her, again in a letter:

“… I know, dearest, that
you
could take a holiday this summer—You mentioned it would be possible. And I would have liked to invite you….” But she had not thought much about it because of the hint—reading between the lines—that soon they would be together always. She would become Viscountess Tristram. There would be the headlines, “Carlton Star Weds Peer.” And the customary nonsense: “… one of the loveliest flowers adorning our English stage has been plucked by the aristocracy….”

“I
wanted
to invite you,” he told her again later (his hand over hers beneath the tablecloth). “The trouble is—Mother.”

Lily had thought, I should have guessed. Earlier she'd said to herself, There will be trouble there. But she had thought herself equal to it. After all, his mother would be the dowager only. I would have always, in the end, the last word.

“… Mother. She hasn't been strong, or well, since Father's death. The shock. And upsets over the Will, and claimants. She would like to go to Austria or Germany, you see.” His dear face, the vivacity dimmed but shining with affection, with anxiety to please. (Might not that be, even now, the trouble?) “She wants me with her, although a great friend, Lady Bartlett, goes with her sons, and I believe too an aunt of mine. It will be good for her in the mountains. …”

Lily remembered that she had hoped even then that it was not too late to change…. She had said to him, saucily enough:

“Has she ordered you, Edmund? Is it a
command?”

“Not a command—just a plea, darling. She asked in such a way…. She said, and she's right, dammit, that Father would have wished—that she
expected.
… So, how not?” He had looked pathetic, torn both ways, distressed and (how to think of that now?) so terribly, terribly in love with her.

That same night he had written a letter which she first saw on opening
her eyes, which she had read over her coffee, wearing, she remembered now, her new negligee with its neck of coral swansdown.

Perhaps I wasn't able to say earlier this evening, when your dear sweet face was looking at me. I could not say how
very,
very much I am going to miss my dearest—except that I know she will understand. Soon we shall be together again. And next time—who knows, forever? You
do
understand, my darling? It is not just the duty I owe my mother—but even more, my Father. A man, that King, Country, and Empire could all have been proud of. I could not let him down, could I?

Their last supper together, at Gatti's. The promises of undying love, of daily thoughts. The drive back to her house in the hansom cab, his importuning, her fear that she might yield….

And then the long weeks: the rest of July, half of August. Letters had come. Shorter it was true, but no less protesting. Gifts. How was she to know, how could she ever have known? In the middle of August, his note: