A Daughter’s a Daughter

‘No. It’s almost a revelation.’

They sat quietly for a minute or two, then Richard said:

‘My wife always used to say that London was the only place to be when spring came. She said the green buds and the almond trees and in time the lilacs all had more significance against a background of bricks and mortar. She said in the country it all happened confusedly and it was too big to see properly. But in a suburban garden spring came overnight.’

‘I think she was right.’

Richard said with an effort, and not looking at Ann:

‘She died—a long time ago.’

‘I know. Colonel Grant told me.’

Richard turned and looked at her.

‘Did he tell you how she died?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s something I shall never get over. I shall always feel that I killed her.’

Ann hesitated a moment, then spoke:

‘I can understand what you feel. In your place I should feel as you do. But it isn’t true, you know.’

‘It is true.’

‘No. Not from her—from a woman’s point of view. The responsibility of accepting that risk is the woman’s. It’s implicit in—in her love. She wants the child, remember. Your wife did—want the child?’

‘Oh yes. Aline was very happy about it. So was I. She was a strong healthy girl. There seemed no reason why anything should go wrong.’

There was silence again.

Then Ann said: ‘I’m sorry—so very sorry.’

‘It’s a long time ago now.’

‘The baby died too?’

‘Yes. In a way, you know, I’m glad of that. I should, I feel, have resented the poor little thing. I should always have remembered the price that was paid for its life.’

‘Tell me about your wife.’

Sitting there, in the pale wintry sunlight, he told her about Aline. How pretty she had been and how gay. And the sudden quiet moods she had had when he had wondered what she was thinking about and why she had gone so far away.

Once he broke off to say wonderingly: ‘I have not spoken about her to anyone for years,’ and Ann said gently: ‘Go on.’

It had all been so short—too short. A three months’ engagement, their marriage—‘the usual fuss, we didn’t really want it all, but her mother insisted’. They had spent their honeymoon motoring in France, seeing the chateaux of the Loire.

He said inconsequentially: ‘She was nervous in a car, you know. She’d keep her hand on my knee. It seemed to give her confidence, I don’t know why she was nervous. She’d never been in an accident.’ He paused and then went on: ‘Sometimes, after it had all happened, I used to feel her hand sometimes when I was driving out in Burma. Imagine it, you know … It seemed incredible that she should go right away like that—right out of life …’

Yes, thought Ann, that is what it feels like—incredible. So she had felt about Patrick. He must be somewhere. He must be able to make her feel his presence. He couldn’t go out like that and leave nothing behind. That terrible gulf between the dead and the living!

Richard was going on. Telling her about the little house they had found in a cul-de-sac, with a lilac bush and a pear tree.

Then, when his voice, brusque and hard, came to the end of the halting phrases, he said again wonderingly: ‘I don’t know why I have told you all this …’

But he did know. When he had asked Ann rather nervously if it would be all right to lunch at his club—‘they have a kind of Ladies’ Annexe, I believe—or would you rather go to a restaurant?’—and when she had said that she would prefer the club, and they had got up and begun to walk towards Pall Mall, the knowledge was in his mind, though not willingly recognized by him.

This was his farewell to Aline, here in the cold unearthly beauty of the park in winter.

He would leave her here, beside the lake, with the bare branches of the trees showing their tracery against the sky.

For the last time, he brought her to life in her youth and her strength and the sadness of her fate. It was a lament, a dirge, a hymn of praise—a little perhaps of all of them.

But it was also a burial.

He left Aline there in the park and walked out into the streets of London with Ann.

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_d919f314-1160-589d-be9f-64f29072e854)

‘Mrs Prentice in?’ asked Dame Laura Whitstable.

‘Not just at present she isn’t. But I should fancy she mayn’t be long. Would you like to come in and wait, ma’am? I know she’d want to see you.’

Edith drew aside respectfully as Dame Laura came in.

The latter said:

‘I’ll wait for a quarter of an hour, anyway. It’s some time since I’ve seen anything of her.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Edith ushered her into the sitting-room and knelt down to turn on the electric fire. Dame Laura looked round the room and uttered an exclamation.

‘Furniture been shifted round, I see. That desk used to be across the corner. And the sofa’s in a different place.’

‘Mrs Prentice thought it would be nice to have a change,’ said Edith. ‘Come in one day, I did, and there she was shoving things round and hauling them about. “Oh, Edith,” she says, “don’t you think the room looks much nicer like this? It makes more space.” Well, I couldn’t see any improvement myself, but naturally I didn’t like to say so. Ladies have their fancies. All I said was: “Now don’t you go and strain yourself, ma’am. Lifting and heaving’s the worst thing for your innards and once they’ve slipped out of place they don’t go back so easy.” I should know. It happened to my own sister-in-law. Did it throwing up the window-sash, she did. On the sofa for the rest of her days, she was.’

‘Probably quite unnecessary,’ said Dame Laura robustly. ‘Thank goodness we’ve got out of the affectation that lying on a sofa is the panacea for every ill.’

‘Don’t even let you have your month after childbirth now,’ said Edith disapprovingly. ‘My poor young niece, now, they made her walk about on the fifth day.’

‘We’re a much healthier race now than we’ve ever been before.’

‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ said Edith gloomily. ‘Terribly delicate I was as a child. Never thought they’d rear me. Fainting fits I used to have, and spasms something awful. And in winter I’d go quite blue—the cold used to fly to me ’art.’

Uninterested in Edith’s past ailments, Dame Laura was surveying the rearranged room.