Hetty Dorval (9 page)

Cliff House to me means being on the heather on the high cliffs looking out to sea, with a big wind blowing in from the West and the ocean booming in the caves below. It means Molly with her brown hair streaming back, facing the sky, the wind, the wheeling gulls, the sound of the everlasting breakers and the sparkling sea beyond – all bright sight, sound, scent and the coarse feel of the heather mingled together with us in one bright moment – and saying, “Oh Richard, if we could keep minutes like this for always!” and Richard saying lazily, “You can, if you realize it hard enough now.” And Molly teasing Richard – “Rick, why don’t you marry Frankie and we’ll all live here happy ever after?” and Richard saying, “Perhaps I will if she’ll have me when she’s old enough,” and Molly, “Old enough! She’ll soon be eighteen!”

Sometimes Richard brought friends with him to Cliff House. Uncle David rented a pony for me (it was wonderful to feel something like Maxey under me again, but the saddle was different) and we rode together, Uncle David and all of us. We bicycled, bathed, rowed, fished, sailed, and came home hungry to large teas of fresh Cornish splits piled with strawberry jam and Cornish cream, and in the winter-time to a fire on the hearth. This happened so often – Easter, summer and Christmas too – that it came to seem like a happy perpetuity. And more than two years passed by.

Gradually Richard began to look upon me as an individual and almost a grown-up, not just as Molly’s friend, young Frankie Burnaby from Canada. He began to talk to me about Molly’s education. What shall we do next? What change of school? When? And what then? What did she need? What did I think? – Uncle David would agree. This pleased me, not only because it showed that Richard liked me and felt confidence in me, but because I had come to think of Molly almost as mine, and I was beginning to assume a big sister’s responsibility for her. I did not think of Richard yet as a brother or as a friend or as a lover. He was just Richard.

As I look back, I don’t know when or where my liking for Richard began or ended. I accepted my liking or perhaps my love for him without question. It was all natural and completely young and happy. Nothing spoiled the harmony and confidence of our lives together, whether we were apart, or whether we were all together in Cliff House, by the sea. I had not thought of Hetty for a very long time.

I
now received a heavy blow. One day in December Richard came to the school to see me and brought the news of Father’s death. Father’s truck had gone off the icy road of the Fraser Canyon. He had been taken to the Convent-Hospital, and there they had brought Mother to him. I wanted to go at once to Mother. But telegrams and a letter from her and a long letter from Sister Marie-Cécile reiterated that Mother was well, that she knew what she had to do, and that I was on no account to change the plans that they had made for me. She might even join me in a little while but of that she could not speak with any certainty – not yet.

Sister Marie-Cécile wrote (and I will set part of it down in English): “Your mother told me to tell you everything, my dear Frances, and I will tell you, for there are things which she could not write to you although you should know them. I will tell you, Frances, for I was with her, that just before your father ceased to live he said to her ‘Dear, our happy, happy life together,’ and your mother said without weeping, ‘Nothing can ever part you and me, Frank. We shall always be together wherever we are, my dear love.’ And then I heard the word
‘Frankie.’ Your mother could not tell you these things but you are grown-up now and they are yours to keep. Your mother did not break down, she is very strong and she is good, and I want you to be aware, Frances, that your parents have between them the perfection of human love. They are not of our Faith, but they still have the gift of God. Do as your mother bids you, dear child, and you will make things easier for her. Mr. Baker says that he will run the ranch together with his, with the hired help that your father has had, and some arrangement can be come to later and your mother will go to her friends in Victoria for a while. There she will make up her mind what to do about the ranch, and she may, she says, come then and join you. But things in Europe seem very unsettled, perhaps we shall all know more soon. Your mother is writing to you.”

The letter finished. As I read I saw my mother leaning over my father in the immortal attitude of love. I do not know whether I grieved most for my tall strong slow-moving father who had gone in one false moment of Time, or for my mother whose life-spring was in him. Those two were as much part of me in their unitedness and their beauty and their inevitability as were day and night.

And so it was that after Christmas I went up to London as had been already planned, and prepared to go to Paris for six months with Paula Fairfax, who had just left the school too. Paula had stayed once before with a French family called Lafontaine, and Mme. Lafontaine had room in her house for us both. Before the news came of Father’s death, Paula and I had been excited and happy. She knew Paris, we both knew French, we were friends, we felt emancipated and important. The plan had been that next we should both return to London and share a room together while we each took a secretarial
course. Then I was to say good-bye to Uncle David and Rick and Molly, and go back to Mother and Father, having accomplished at least part of what I had been sent to England to do. And now this was changed. And yet not changed, for Mother insisted that I should do as Father and she had planned. So in January I went up to London and joined Paula. If Richard was to be in town, Molly would come up in a few days, and Molly, Rick and I would have a farewell celebration. We had never felt so close together, we of Cliff House, as now, when I was to leave them.

There was great uneasiness everywhere in the public and private mind, and the word “War” underlay everybody’s thoughts.

O
n Wednesday Paula and I were to leave for Paris. On Monday Molly came up to London and we shopped and had tea and Rick took us to a play at the Haymarket. The next day we were to meet Richard at Scott’s in Piccadilly for lunch, and to say good-bye. Then I was to join Paula, and Rick would take Molly to see friends of Uncle David’s in the afternoon. The next day we were all going away, Rick to his firm’s Branch in Edinburgh, Molly back to Cliff House, and I to Paris.

In spite of the ever-present trouble of Father’s death I was more happy than I would ever have thought possible, and this was what Uncle David, Rick and Molly had hoped the diversion would do for me. Molly and I waited outside Scott’s and then we saw Rick coming through the crowd. Molly was pretty and brown. Her chunky schoolgirl figure was lengthening out into slenderness but her laughing face was still the face of a child. Rick took hold of us and piloted us both into Scott’s and we were taken to a room upstairs. We followed the waiter across the room to a table near the window. Beside the window, at a smaller table, waiting to be served, sat a woman
in mourning, or at least in black. She was not looking in our direction. Her graceful head was turned towards the window. The line of her profile was pure and a little sad. The curve of her softly rounded and rather high cheek-bone and the soft hollow beneath, the tilted “flirt’s nose,” and the rather overfull upper lip – all gave me a faint shock of delight and then of sudden alarm. It was Hetty, in a black hat of simplicity and great smartness, looking down through the window at the crowds in Piccadilly, but looking down in her own special way, not like any other woman who looks out of a window. I felt Rick’s eyes rest upon her, I felt Molly look at her too, and I thought “Now I’m for it, let’s run!” – when Hetty slowly turned her head and looked up at me, and for a full moment gave us her long, careless, gentle look. I stood there, a girl of nearly nineteen – no, a child of twelve. (Mother, you dear little dragon, why aren’t you here!) Something was held suspended. The waiter moved a chair. Hetty’s eyebrows raised in tragic pleasure and recognition and her face was lit by her brilliant look. “Frankie!” she said in a soft tone of delight. She held up her hand, palm upwards, and there was all giving, all welcome in the gesture.

And then she said, “Is your mother in England?” And in answer to my dissenting head, “No?” But the question seemed to establish her as a family friend.

And then she said softly, but clearly enough for Rick and Molly to hear, “You know, Frankie, that Terence died?” How should I know? Why, indeed, should I care? But one thing I knew, that Richard and Molly were thinking “What a marvellous creature! Why did Frankie never tell us! Her husband has died! Frankie and she are old friends! How sad she is! Let us all sit together.”

And then Hetty turned her softened serene gaze on Rick and Molly, and in the almost imperceptible movement of the hand there was deprecation and apology and inclusion. The thing was done.

So interested were Rick and Molly in my beautiful friend that I think they did not notice my gaucherie as I stood there. I soon observed that Hetty had ascertained at once that Mother was not there, and Mother’s absence, if Hetty should have plans, made things easier for her, of course. From the very moment that I saw that pure profile I knew I was in for trouble. But I could not stand there indefinitely. There was only one thing to do and I could not pass by. Hetty’s gentle gesture had already included Rick and Molly, not boldly of course, but definitely. Waiters could not stand still forever. Life in Scott’s Restaurant could not be arrested while Frankie Burnaby cast about in her mind how on earth to cope with Hetty Dorval. So I said rather primly (I thought), “Lady Connot, this is Molly Trethewey and Mr. Richard Trethewey.” Very stiff, I thought. But already the waiter was conveying with all his insinuating skill but without uttering a word that our table was for four, and if my great friend Lady Connot would join us there would be one more table free, and please to make up our minds though of course it didn’t matter to him if he stood there and smiled all day, oh, not at all. And while all this was materializing in the air Richard said, in the kindness of his heart to me, but most particularly I think because my great friend Lady Connot was so pathetic and so utterly beautiful, and because Terence (whoever that was) had died, and because Molly was all dancing eyes and anticipation and would enjoy the party, and because our tables were side by side and it would have been silly not to – because of all these things,
Richard turned to me and said with his charming smile, “Won’t Lady Connot join us?” Lady Connot would, and moving to our table in her simple black elegance, Lady Connot did. “What a delightful party!” everybody seemed to say.

And Lady Connot was telling them, before ever we perused the yards of menu which the waiter gave us, that the first time she ever saw (“ever” had the implication of old friendship and many meetings), the first time she ever saw Frankie, Frankie was loping, western style, along the foot of a sage-brush hill, wearing an Indian buckskin jacket. “And do you remember the wild geese going over-head, Frankie?” said Hetty, turning her beauty on me. Yes, I remembered the wild geese all right, and I wished I was looking at them then, and was not in Scott’s Restaurant, Piccadilly, with the two people I loved next to best in the world, perhaps best in the world in a way at that moment, and watching them succumbing to the flowing slow-spoken charm of Hetty Dorval and me not able to do a thing about it. And
did
I remember Sailor the dog? And then we were away on dogs. Dogs. Dogs. Dogs. By this time we were all one.

I prodded myself, contrariwise, for being suspicious and unfair to Hetty. But my main preoccupation was how should I manage about that ensnaring business of Hetty’s. I had felt very adult ten minutes before, being a young woman in her nicest clothes who had left school and was just going to Paris, lunching at Scott’s in some style with a very prepossessing man and a suitably dressed and pretty young girl. Ten minutes before I had been almost a woman of the world. The encounter with Hetty had put me back in the Lytton schoolroom. “I’ll bet,” I thought, “dollars to doughnuts, Hetty was looking out of the window and saw us coming. Then the play with the profile, then the look, and ‘Frankie!’ with that
delighted welcome; and then, ‘Is your mother in England?’; then (very softly) ‘Did you know that Terence had died?’ ” The pattern fell into its place. How much of Hetty was artful and how much was artless I still could not tell.

I was quite aware too, that, though Richard and Molly were not snobs, Hetty being Lady Anybody gave her a temporary certificate, and that only goes to show. While all these thoughts floated round my head, other thoughts came blowing in from another direction. I knew that I was not behaving in a spontaneous manner and certainly not exhibiting any social grace. Would Rick think that I was a spoil-sport? Would he feel that perhaps he had erred, dear Rick, in making it easy to include my lovely friend, when perhaps I was not in the humour for an association with happier days in Lytton? Or would Rick even think that I was jealous of Lady Connot? Because certainly Hetty by reason of being herself, and not by anything she said, was restfully absorbing the whole party, and I found myself engaged in eating my steak, and listening to the laughter of Molly, and to the voice of Rick and to the rare slow phrases of Hetty, and watching her face.

It was Hetty who, looking at her small be-jewelled watch, said she must go. “But, Frankie,” she exclaimed, “when shall I see you again? I wish I were going with you to Paris tomorrow! What fun we should have!” (“Yes,” I thought, “I wish you were going, too, Hetty. I’d like to have you under my eye!”) “I will give you my address, Frankie.” Now the helpless fingers, and vaguely, “Has someone a pencil?” Of course Rick had a pencil, and he wrote Hetty’s address on a card and gave it to me; and of course he learned it off by heart, and so, you could see, did the charmed Molly.

“And Frankie’s address!” said Hetty. And Rick wrote my address on another card, and gave it to her. There we were.

Richard hailed a taxi and we all got in. “What a lovely party,” my mind echoed gloomily. Many a fond good-bye was said as I was dropped at Thos. Cook’s to meet Paula. Rick and Molly would take Lady Connot wherever she wanted to go, and that seemed to suit her very well. So away went the taxi, with most of my joy and Hetty Dorval, and I went in to meet Paula in a rare state of perturbation.
How foolish, to feel so uneasy. Molly has to meet people like Hetty some time, no doubt. But not now, not now, and not through me. And as for Richard …