Help the Poor Struggler (9 page)

Jessie was not about to have any Smashing Sallys around.

Thus Jessie had never complained about any of them because she knew, every time one of them got sacked, there might be another just waiting in the wings. The Amiable Amy.

Jessie was an omnivorous reader — largely owing to Mad Margaret, who stuffed books and plays into her like sausage. Mad Margaret thought herself the heroine of all of them. Many was the rainy morning that found Jess curled up on the window seat in the library with Henry as a backrest, poring over
Jane Eyre
and
Rebecca.
Jessie knew just how sly some
women could be: soft and kind and quiet-spoken and so sly (and amiable) they might even catch Jessie in their nets.

Her uncle had once been married — years and years ago — to a dazzling but false woman who had broken his heart, left him shattered with grief — or, at least, that was the way she put it to him at the breakfast table. “I know it must have left you shattered. You can never look at another woman, can you?”

He did not seem, as he slit open the morning post, terribly shattered. This was, unfortunately, confirmed when he said, “No — I mean to the ‘shattered' part of your tale. As to the rest, I think I could bear to look at another woman again, yes. God knows I've looked at enough of them trying to find someone for you.”

She had placed a consoling hand on his arm. “But she was beautiful, wasn't she?”

“Indeed she was. But she hated motorcars.” He smiled.

“But she loved you madly.”

“Not really.” He went back to his paper.

All of those governesses over the four years they'd been at Ashcroft. Look what they would get: wealth, position, the glories of Ashcroft itself — to say nothing of one of the most eligible bachelors in the British Isles. And nine motor cars.

The only thing that stood between them and Heaven was Lady Jessica Allan-Ashcroft.

The funeral had been held in a parish, the body committed to the ground of a leaf-strewn cemetery in Chalfont St. Giles, where her father had been born and where Jessica's mother had died years ago. Her father had been the Earl of Curlew and Viscount Linley, James Whyte Ashcroft; her mother, plain Barbara Allan, but plain in name only. And between them they had passed on their names to Jessica.

When her father died, Jessie was six years old, and mere days before this she had been chasing her dog, Henry, all over the grounds of the old home in Chalfont.

They had dressed her in mourning. An aunt with eager fingers had affixed the boater with its black ribbon to her head, placed the gloves in her hand. Jessie did not know the aunt, nor any of the cousins — a great ring of them around the grave — nor anyone except for a few of her father's old friends.

She was dead silent, but Jessie wanted to scream when the vicar went on about Heaven and Rewards. She did not think her father would be tempted by Rewards. He would rather be back here with Jessie.

All around her stood those odd friends and relations, as stark and unmoving as pollarded trees. All in black and dreadful, some with heavy veils, or, hats in hands, expressions frozen, like skaters on a dark lake. One hand fell on her shoulder. She shook it off. The fingers felt like claws. When she looked all round the grave-site again, she saw red-rimmed eyes, not sorrow-laden, but the eyes of wolves.

Jessica Allan-Ashcroft was worth four million pounds to them. And that didn't even include the family seat of Ashcroft.

 • • • 

Just as the service ended, she noticed a stranger in a light-colored Burberry. The mourners were going through the awful ritual of throwing a handful of earth on her father's grave. The stranger walked through the dark stalks of mourners, knelt down and brushed the blown strands of hair from her face.
“Cry,
” was all he said, but in such a tone that her mind split and the tears gushed out. In his own face, she saw something of her father's and even her own and she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his raincoat.

 • • • 

Solicitors were wandering everywhere, in and out of the house in Eaton Square, like dream figures. There were more
relations to come, too, others whom Jessie didn't know, coming with long faces, bringing her things she didn't want and calling her “love” and “dear” and none of them meaning it, she knew.

The day after the funeral — to her it had seemed like months — she stood before the long window in the house in Eaton Square, wondering if the man in the raincoat would ever come back. The trees dripped rain and Henry looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, a true mourner.

Everyone seemed to be keeping a vigil. The relations had gathered in the library with her father's solicitor, all of them coughing gently behind their hands.

When finally he did come, running across the road in the rain, Jessie ran to the door and listened. She heard voices in the hall, an exchange between the butler and the stranger, and then all was quiet again.

Until the will was read.

 • • • 

The solicitor, a plump man whose jowls reminded her of Henry, took her hands in his plump, perspiring ones and explained “the situation.”

It was boring to Jessie, all of this talk about money and property. The important thing was who her guardian was to be. As if on cue, a large woman and her smaller husband came through the door. The woman was the same one who had laid her hand in such a proprietary way on Jessie's shoulder. Her fingers flashed with rings and the poor fox-fur around her neck flashed its glass eyes. Jessie could tell, with one look, she wasn't an animal-lover. “What about Henry?” she asked.

Mr. Mack, the solicitor, found that very funny. “Now you do understand, Jessie. All of your mother's property was left to you and your father. Now all of it goes to you. You must have someone to look after you.”

The large, ring-studded cousin snorted, saying it should be her and Al to do the looking-after, and Mr. Mack asked her to
leave. Her husband told her there was no use crying over spilt milk, and to come along.

Through the door then came the man from the cemetery.

Mr. Mack told her that this was her Uncle Robert, her father's brother, Robert Ashcroft. Her father had appointed him trustee of the estate and Jessica's guardian.

“Henry's, too,” said Robert Ashcroft, winking.

Thus amongst the raised voices that seemed to be calling for Robert Ashcroft's blood, or at least his bona fides, after his ten-year absence in Australia, Jessie felt as if, on the verge of drowning, she had broken the water's surface, dazzled by sunlight. His hair was dark gold and his eyes were light brown. As the thunder of the others' voices receded, Jessie felt the sun falling in shafts across the room and that all those vaults were really full of gold.

T
HE
“letters” — they were what prevented the relations, some inarticulate, some artful — from breaking the will. Her father had been clever enough to leave tiny bequests to those relations whom he disliked (which meant most of them), acknowledging that they were “family,” but sorry they were his. It was a little like leaving a small tip for poor service.

It was a very large family, but not a close one. “When I left for Australia over ten years ago, I was thirty” her uncle had told her. “In all of those thirty years before, I can't remember seeing any of these relations who've descended like vultures.”

The vultures had flown after months of talking about “undue influence” and “unsound mind,” and Jessie and Uncle Robert were sitting in the drawing room in Eaton Square, its furnishings flooded with April sunlight. “Undue influence.” He laughed. “It would have been hard to have influenced your father in any case. So how was I supposed to have done it all the way from Australia? Ten years of letters.” Robert had stopped and looked at his niece intently. “Jimmy — your
father — in any event, how was I supposed to have done it all the way from Australia? Ten years of letters . . .” He had stopped and then said, “It doesn't make you sad, I hope, talking about your father?”

“No. I want to hear about him. And Mother, too.” Henry was lying between them, being used as an armrest. “Go on.”

“There must have been, over the course of ten years, hundreds of letters. Jimmy was having a hard time of it after your mother died.” He paused, thinking back. “And before that, even. He was depressed  . . . I don't know if it was because he felt some sort of prescience of Barbara's death, or what. I felt guilty leaving. But I had to.”

“Why?”

He was quiet. “I just had to. Anyway, those letters showed we'd kept in touch. You know, when I was at a perfectly awful public school, when I was ten and Jimmy was twenty and my life was hell, he wrote to me three or four times a week. He knew how miserable I was. That's really something for a chap of twenty to do for a boy of ten.”

Jessie had managed to circumvent the baggage of Henry to lean across and put her head on her uncle's shoulder. “You were mates. I bet when you were six he got into fights because the boys teased you and threw things at your dog and made fun of you and called you names. Didn't he?” Her tone was hopeful.

“Absolutely.”

“Tell me about Mother,” she commanded.

“She was beautiful. Dark hair and eyes. You look just like her.”

So that her uncle wouldn't see her blush, she busied herself in trying to tie Henry's ears together. A difficult job, since they were hard to find.

“Talk about getting teased over your name! ‘Barbara Allan' is an old folk song,” said Robert.

“What about?” Henry awoke and shook at his ears.

Robert didn't answer at first, and Jess poked him. She refused to let any important question — meaning any of hers — go unanswered.

“About Sweet William's dying because he loved her.”

It was the way he said it. Jessie didn't like his silence. “I've got a picture!” She bounced up, unsettling the cushions and comfort, much to Henry's displeasure. “I keep it locked up.”

“Locked up? But why?”

Because she had always had a secret fear that if too many eyes saw her mother's picture, her mother would grow less clear, less distinct, the outlines blurring into the background until the beautiful face of Barbara Allan disappeared altogether. The worst was that Jessie was one of them. If she looked too long, the face in the picture would go away, as her mother had done. But she couldn't tell
him
such a stupid, silly thing. Jess went over to the ebony desk and took a key from a vase and turned it in the bottom drawer. It was only a snapshot. The woman there was kneeling in long grass, gathering wildflowers. Peering through the long grass was a funny-looking puppy.

“That's Henry,” she said with feigned disgust. “I wish he hadn't followed her around like that. He made her trip once — I saw it — and she fell down. It could've
killed
her. He was a bad dog.” She looked quickly at Henry to see if he might contradict her. “But Henry's okay, now.” It was with a growing horror that she saw the weight she'd been carrying for years. She was afraid she'd done something to her mother. Killed her by being born, maybe.

And Robert knew. He put his hands on her shoulders and said, harshly, “Listen to me! You didn't do anything to hurt your mother, Jess. She looked healthy and was much younger than your father. But she was still a sick woman.”

Jessie looked down at her mother's picture, the awful weight lifted from her shoulders. She rubbed the glass carefully, delicately, with the hem of her skirt. Then she set the
picture atop the desk. Her mother wouldn't disappear just because Jessie looked at her too long.

But she was still embarrassed that her uncle had figured all of this out about her when she'd only just found it out herself. “I think it's time for Henry's walk,” she said, smoothly.
Henry's walk
would have been only an annual event, had exercising him been left to Jess.

“Mind if I come?”

“Oh, I guess not. But Henry will only listen to
me.
So it's no use you trying to make him catch sticks, or anything. He won't unless I command him.”

It was no use
anyone's
trying to make Henry catch sticks, as Jess perfectly well knew.

Thus here she was, four years later, four years of picnics and open motor cars; and trains to London and Brighton; and Careless Clara and all the rest of the benighted ladies. Here she was musing over the past, while Mrs. Mulchop kept to the present, wrist-deep in dough.

Jessie leaned a cold cheek against her fist and punched the spoon down into the equally cold porridge with which Mrs. Mulchop had replaced the egg. And Jess let it sit there like the egg. It had hardened to such a thickness, the spoon stuck straight up. “He never goes off without leaving me a note or something.” It was the dozenth time she'd imparted the same information in different ways.

“Well, lovey, he just forgot this time —”

Forgot?
Was Mrs. Mulchop crazy?

“— and he has to have his bit of fun, now doesn't he? Do you begrudge the man that, my lady? Think of him, not yourself: a man in his forties always in company of a ten-year-old —” The look in My Lady's eye changed her tune quickly. “— not that you're not fun. But your uncle should have a nice wife to look after —”

“He doesn't
want
one. He already
had
one.” Jess had left the kitchen table and was taking down an overall from a peg by the back door. “It left him a broken man.” She stuffed her legs into the overall.

“ ‘Broken man'?
Your
uncle? He's about as broke as Mulchop here.”

Mulchop looked up from his huge bowl. He was bullnecked and stout-armed and had a spatulate face, flat as the spades he used on the flowers and shrubs. He seldom spoke and appeared to resent it if others engaged in conversation. Words were wasted on Mulchop.