Read Lettice & Victoria Online
Authors: Susanna Johnston
Lettice & Victoria (9 page)
E
dgar returned from his ink round feeling unwell. He took to his bed and complained that it was nothing worse than a weakness in the limbs but, within days, he was taken to
hospital
having moaned and turned a yellowish colour in the middle of one night. Victoria sent him away in an ambulance for she was due to give birth at any time. Before arranging her own transport to the hospital, she rang Lettice.
‘You poor pet.’ Her mother-in-law, roused from sleep,
managed
to sound alive. ‘What an added worry at this traumatic time. It must be the catching type of jaundice, since darling Edgar, as you know, has never been tempted by excess.
Grâce à Dieu.
’
At the hospital a nurse said that Edgar was suffering from something called an enlarged heart. Strange, Victoria thought, that he should suffer physically from a complaint never to have affected him in the emotional sense.
As he died, Victoria was lifted onto a truckle bed and
trundled to the delivery room. Edgar drew his last breath as his daughter, Maudie, took her first.
Victoria had never been as happy.
Lettice, distraught, ran along the corridor from the cubicle where she had kissed the corpse, to the Maternity Wing where she kissed, with equal fervour, the corpse’s widow and child.
Edgar’s sister, Alice, peeped in. ‘You poor thing. It’s awful to talk like this but I feel I must explain something. The first day in a baby’s life is by far the most important in its development. They pick up waves of sorrow. It sounds silly to people who haven’t studied my subject but I promise you, and I am in my second year, you must try to forget what is happening down the passage and concentrate like mad on the poor little baby.’
Victoria beamed and Alice spread the news of her courage.
She stayed in hospital for a week – missing Edgar’s funeral.
L
ettice photographed the coffin from every angle squinting into the top of a square Rolex camera. At a cold lunch at The Old Keep following the funeral, she told Archie that she had taken to photography by accident; that a darling old friend had left the beloved Rolex behind after staying with her and had died before she had time to return it to him by post. ‘I began at once and modelled myself on that fascinating woman who photographed our very own Alfred, Lord Tennyson on the Isle of Man.’
‘Wight,’ Archie said. ‘Quite Wight.’
Later she compiled an album, which she gave to Victoria for her birthday. It included one picture of the coffin – close up and smothered in wild flowers and shrivelled ferns. Under it she had written the caption ‘Edgar’s coffin. Our flowers.’
The artistic son and his wife had hastened back from France for the funeral but were too distracted by their free-range child to concentrate on the purpose of their journey, and the
community in France had wired to say that the system was collapsing without the three Bobbies so they departed
immediately
after the church service. Roland, numb and dumb, suffered noticeably. Lettice, snapping and flashing, looked wretchedly unhappy too, particularly when Archie told her that he intended to visit Victoria and Maudie.
‘Archie, you are an angel.’ Thus he felt free to go with a clear conscience.
Roland visited Victoria in hospital. He kissed the baby and left as soon as he dared.
Archie wrote, ‘What can I say? I could write a good deal but would prefer to talk to you. Of course I would sooner you had given birth to a son but I will come and see you, if I may. Maudie is a pretty name and I’m sure you are already a
wonderful
mother. Your news has revived me and I no longer believe myself to be in a department store at closing time. Best love.’
Victoria answered, ‘Dearest Archie. You are very kind. Please come but don’t put yourself out. Don’t come if you think it might bother Lettice. It is terrible for her. I do hope that you will though. Best love.’
Archie went to see her the day after the funeral.
During Archie’s visit he told Victoria, ‘Lettice knew of my coming and approved of my doing so.’
He did not ask to see the baby. She was in another room with a label on her wrist.
Victoria knew that, soon, there was to be no alternative but for her to go, indefinitely, to live at The Old Keep for she was short of money.
Amongst many letters Victoria received concerning her double event, a grizzly one came from Northern Italy.
Mungo had spotted both items in Laurence’s airmail
edition
of the
Times
and wrote to say, ‘Laurence would, most
certainly
, have bidden one to comment on your news both sad and glad. The poor old dear is slipping away fast. One has been efficacious in persuading him to receive the priest. Elena has proved herself to be the most frightful stumbling block and refused to show him up. As one mentioned before, one’s first instincts were consistent with facts, she is a thorn in everyone’s flesh. One can’t think what’s got into her. After all, peasants are surely of the faith.’
Poor Elena. How painful for her to witness the agnostic Laurence being got at. The
buffo
went on to say, ‘It cannot be long now. Have no fear. The old dear is in excellent hands.’
A packet of sea horses came for Maudie. Elena had wrapped them carefully in a padded envelope and for the first time since widowhood, Victoria wept.
At The Old Keep Victoria and Maudie slept in a room at the top of the tower. Victoria had specially requested this. The winding stairs were tricky with a baby to carry up and down but it gave privacy. It was rum up there. At one stage there had been six openings in the brickwork, cutting through and randomly punctuating the thick wall. In these gaps doves had rested; billing and cooing. Lettice, never eager to tamper with the picturesque, had glassed them in – or rather glassed them out. Panes, flat against the inside wall, had been slotted into place. Sprig-muslin curtains cuddled round them like
peek-a-boo bonnets, pinned permanently open, never
destined
to be drawn. Each tiny curtained window, air neither entering nor escaping, framed doves – comfortable each night in time-worn resting places.
Victoria lay awake, alert, as birds landed and left, teased and tumbled as though on six television sets but more enthralling. In one window a plump, ruffled and fluffed pair pecked at each other, beady-eyed.
In another three were squeezed in side by side, bored and sedentary. Archie and Harold in the first perhaps; then the three Bobbies.
Above Maudie’s cot a third pair perched. They preened and praised. Lettice and Roland. Above this there was a small
resting
place where a solitary bird gazed and met her eyes. Antics varied from box to box and at one moment she saw a pale and hazy Edgar drift away without flurry. By morning every bird had flown.
Most of the neighbours knew that Lettice had her
daughter-in
-law and baby granddaughter staying with her.
Belinda was the first to call. Hoping that the tragedy had taken Lettice’s mind off the sale of Roland’s bird sketches, she sidled past the stack of frames propped against the
entrance-hall
wall – as they had been for many months.
Victoria pressed her cigarette into the heart of a rose and opened the parcel that Belinda handed to her. Out slid an exquisitely crocheted pink cardigan for Maudie.
Lettice wafted in and told Belinda that visiting hours were strict and that her time was up.
In the hall she asked Belinda to take the painting with her. ‘Somehow you always seem to forget it. Don’t bother about the cheque today. Any time will do as long as it’s before those horrid statements come at the end of the month.’
Later, Lettice sorted through a pile of old photographs – mostly taken by herself. She told Victoria that the likeness between Maudie and Edgar was uncanny and that through Maudie Edgar lived on.
E
arly one morning Lettice came into Victoria’s bedroom. ‘Darling. I know this may seem old-fashioned to one of your generation but, when we have Maudie christened, I think you will feel a little something. I wonder who the godparents should be? I think Edgar would have liked us to ask Archie Thorne. I know he’s old but he is a famous figure and it might be fun for Maudie to talk about him in years to come.’
Victoria put in a plea for Caroline; the friend who had lent her the mauve dress and persuaded her to buy mauve stockings before Roland’s exhibition, but Lettice gave no sign of having heard her. When Lettice had left her alone with her baby, she wrote to Archie. ‘Lettice thinks you should be Maudie’s
godfather
. I don’t know why. I’d imagined she was bothered by our having made friends in the first place. Please do though. I’d be thrilled.’
Downstairs and using a relief nib, Lettice wrote to Archie. ‘Such a favour to ask! Would you be an angel and take on
another godchild? I know you have dozens (including my Alice), but Victoria hasn’t any idea as to how to go about things and, if we aren’t firm, might neglect to have the mite “done” at all. Bless you.
A bientôt
. Lettice.’
Then she rang Belinda. ‘Darling. A thousand thanks for the cheque. It is miserable that we couldn’t make a special price for you but, with these poor bereft darlings to feed, the pinch is worse than ever. Thank God Victoria has seen sense and has bidden me ask Archie Thorne to be Maudie’s godfather.
Darling
Archie is such a pet. I know he won’t refuse and, being a bachelor… Did I tell you that he went to see them in hospital for me?’
Archie wrote, ‘Dearest Victoria. Of course. Delighted to make vows for Maudie. Will I be able to keep them? Naturally, if she ever misbehaves I shall simply box her ears. Could you ask Harold to be a godfather as well? He needs to be included. Don’t forget. He is a plant that has to be watered every day. Who can do this better than you?’
Then he wrote to Lettice. ‘I am delighted to take on another godchild. All of mine are grown up. Isn’t your daughter-in-law wonderful? In haste.’
M
audie was christened in July. Both godfathers presented her with signed editions of their own published works. Archie’s was on the life of some obscure scholar and Harold’s on pure mathematics.
Lettice enthused, ‘Fascinating for when she’s older. I believe Archie gave the same one to Alice at her christening.’
Belinda and Jack walked back to their car after the tea party following the baptism and Jack said, ‘It depends on what sort of thing little Maudie is going to find fascinating.’
Victoria ran after them and put in a plea.
‘I wish I could come over to see you. Is there a bus?’
Belinda assured her that they were only a ten-minute walk away and promised to arrange something. ‘When the
godfathers
are out of the way.’
Later she telephoned Lettice. ‘You must be longing for a rest. Let me have Victoria and Maudie for a few nights. Jack cooks and hoovers all day and makes me feel redundant. I’d love to be of use.’
Lettice was exhausted from trying to keep up the delicate country house atmosphere for days on end and drove them to Belinda’s as soon as decency allowed.
When she arrived at Jack and Belinda’s cosy-looking
farmhouse
Victoria steeled herself to face several facts. She had become attached to many new people and she had met them all through Lettice. She wouldn’t have had Maudie if it hadn’t been for Edgar and he, of course, had come through Lettice in a manner of speaking.
Jack and Belinda had one son. He had been born,
unexpectedly
, after years of yearning. He was nine years old and coming to the end of his first year at boarding school. Belinda schemed endlessly for excuses to justify going to look at him. Regulated visiting hours set out by the school were worse than inadequate. He received more parcels than ever recorded in the institution’s history – or at any rate in the memory of Miss Dancy, the neurotically fat matron who despised over-
indulgent
mothers and challenged neglectful ones. Belinda used to wait impatiently for Arthur’s demanding letters. Whilst Jack cooked and hoovered she would crouch on the floor
making
up neat packets of new pencils, chocolates and stamps as Lettice, at The Old Keep, repeatedly insisted to Roland, ‘Poor Arthur. It’s a crime to have only one child.’
Victoria adored staying with Belinda. Maudie slept in the garden in a pram once lain in by Arthur, for hours at a time, as Victoria sat by the fire on the stained and splitting leather of a club fender, smoking and knitting as she watched Belinda, another knitter, turn the heel of a sock for Arthur or, with a
mouthful of pins, stitch at a curtain for his bedroom window.
Finding it as hard to remember Edgar as many find it hard to forget a figure whose death has altered the course of life, Victoria was unable to concentrate on the query of her future.
That it was not to be as it might have been was a realisation vast enough.
Belinda said, ‘I’d like to keep you here for ever.’
Victoria pictured the trouble that Lettice would have in accepting or even allowing such a situation to exist at the same time as hailing it. A way might be found.
‘Obviously not for ever. Simply for the period necessary for the finding of a solution.’
Victoria was untroubled by thoughts that she and Maudie could be burdens on Belinda or Jack, who had developed a tenderness towards Maudie. His capacity for tenderness had lain untapped since Arthur had slumbered in the same pram.
Lettice rang Belinda.
‘Darling. Are you alone? I hope it isn’t too exhausting for you. I know what it is to have a treasured mite in the house. Drop a hint and I’ll be over to fetch them back.’
Belinda, in quiet agreement, allowed Lettice to confer favours.
‘If it really is a help, and I know how lonely you are, I will admit that I do need a little longer on my own – with Roland and my beloved books – to recover from shock and sadness.’
It had been arranged and Victoria and Maudie stayed on.
There was no money – or not enough.
Edgar had not taken out an insurance policy on his life.
There was the furniture, some wedding presents and a small sum left to Victoria by her mother. Her father, it seemed to her, had always been dead.
Jack and Belinda drew close.
One of them, it was never known which, thought of the
stables
. It had always been a possibility that one day they would prop them up; improve the value of the property – an increased legacy for Arthur. They made an inspection. There were damp patches and dry rot but structurally the building was sound. It could be done. Jack and local builders set to work and in less than four months the place was inhabitable.
Victoria and Maudie moved in and Lettice breathed freely.
‘Of course Belinda is a saint. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me. To have Victoria and the precious baby nearby and yet not close enough to be a daily reminder of the loss of
darling
Edgar, is all I could have dreamed of. Naturally we would have found a solution but Belinda needs a companion – so few friends – and I’d hate to deprive her.’
