The Children's Hour (30 page)

‘We'll deal with it,' Mina says, smiling comfortingly at Nest. ‘Let's not panic, shall we?'

Afterwards she says, ‘Why did you just come out with it like that, you idiot? Why didn't you warn me first?'

Nest shakes her head, tears threatening, unable to speak. It is Mina who guesses. ‘It's Connor's, isn't it?' she asks.

‘It was only once, honestly.' Nest shivers uncontrollably like a sick dog. ‘It was at Jack's christening. Connor came straight from a conference, remember? Roger was ill and Henrietta couldn't get away.' She cries out in frustration and anguish. ‘It was the only time.'

Now, as she edged herself out of her wheelchair and on to her bed, reaching for her medicine, Nest recalled all the meetings and family gatherings; the humiliations and despair. Only Mina had known the whole truth; watching helplessly but steadily as Nest attempted to stifle her stubborn love for Connor, Mina had suffered with her, made her laugh, given her courage.

‘One more time,' she'd say firmly, regarding a family ordeal involving Connor. ‘If you could do the wedding you can do this.'

The wedding had become the bench-mark; the reference point.

‘But of
course
you must be a bridesmaid,' cries Henrietta. ‘Of
course
you're not too big. I know little ones look sweet but I must have you. Mina's going to be too busy arranging it all with Mama. And Georgie and Josie have the babies to worry about. Anyway, I must have my little sister. If it hadn't been for you, Connor and I might never have met!'

She turns to him with a sparkling look, slipping an arm through his.

‘That's true,' he says lightly.

Nest can hardly look at him, unable to bear those possessive gestures and caresses that bind him to her sister. She listens, though; listens to hear by what terms he addresses Henrietta. She calls him ‘darling' but he never uses endearments in return. Nest finds some bitter consolation in this, treasuring those moments when he called her ‘lady' and bewitched her with his voice. He is careful to raise no expectation in her breast – there are to be no backward glances – but neither does he raise suspicion by
ignoring Nest. He treats her with all the casual affection of an elder brother and she must learn to see him, greet him, sit beside him, with apparently friendly indifference.

The wedding is a different kind of torture. As chief bridesmaid she must be seen to sparkle: to show her delight in her sister's happiness and to listen to Connor's speech, in which he tells the guests how beautiful she looks and jokes about marrying into a family with more than its fair share of beautiful women. She sits looking back at those happy, kindly friends, smiling brightly at this one and that, laughing at his jokes, and only Mina's face shows that
she
understands. Across the room her expression is grave but steady, secretly acknowledging the pain but somehow sending courage to Nest. The groom's present to her is a silver and coral bracelet, delicate and beautiful – ‘Like you, lady,' he says quietly, lifting her wrist with the bracelet encircling it and briefly kissing her hand. Henrietta breaks suddenly upon this breathless moment so that Nest's heart hammers violently in her side, although Connor remains cool.

‘He insisted upon choosing it himself,' she says proudly, admiring the bracelet. ‘Aren't I lucky to have a husband with taste?' – and Nest can only nod and smile again until she feels that her cheekbones must shatter with the ache of it.

‘It's the helplessness,' she says to Mina later. ‘How do you learn to stop loving?'

‘You don't,' answers Mina grimly – and, not knowing about Tony Luttrell, Nest thinks she's talking of Richard and gives her a consoling hug.

Timmie does everything he can to help, inviting her to parties, balls, introducing her to delightful young men who fall gratifyingly in love with her; but none of them is Connor and, after his brand of lovemaking, all of them seem crude and immature.

She trains to be a teacher, has several brief relationships, but it is during those years of her twenties that she becomes closer to Mina than ever before. To begin with, she teaches at a school in Barnstaple, Mina driving her to Parracombe to catch the train each morning, collecting her each afternoon. They take long rambling walks, work in the garden, look after Lydia. Mina is pursued at one point by a much older man, a widower, who refuses to take no for an answer. He lives with his older sister and his two children in Lynton and presses invitations upon Mina to visit them. Nest nicknames him Mr Salteena – ‘Because,' she says, ‘he is an elderly man of forty-two who is fond of asking people to stay with him. And his whiskers are black and twisty.' They subside into fits of laughter, giggling together like children, puzzling Lydia by odd literary references, capping lines of poetry, singing the lyrics from
The Mikado
and
Ruddigore
.

It is Henrietta who tries to encourage Nest to spread her wings, to move away from Ottercombe.

‘It's different for you,' she says privately to Mina. ‘You spent those few years in London and married Richard. You had your own life – not much of one, I admit, but you had it – before you buried yourself down here. Oh, don't think we're not grateful, me and Josie and Georgie, that you're prepared to look after Mama, but to be honest, Mina, I think you're actually quite content. Nest's ten years younger than you are and, apart from her training college, she's never been away. She's twenty-five and soon it will be too late. A friend of ours teaches at a school in Surrey, a really super boarding school for girls, and she told me that they need an English mistress for the juniors. It's a really good post. Persuade her to try for it. She'll live in but at least she'll have the opportunity to meet new people. Do try, Mina. It's not right for her to simply fade away down here. You'll miss her, of course . . .'

It is that last sentence, implying a certain selfishness on Mina's part, that spurs her to talk to Nest. Perhaps she is ready for a change, perhaps she too sees that she might never have a life outside Ottercombe; for whatever reason it is, Nest applies for the job and gets it.

‘If you hate it,' says Mina, as the parting draws near, ‘you can always come home. And we'll have the holidays . . .'

Once she is in Surrey, Nest inevitably sees more of Henrietta and Connor. They invite her during half-term, introduce her to their friends, and Nest has to struggle against a reopening of the painful scars that have healed over the wound of her love. There is still a kind of restraint between them, especially if they are ever alone together, and occasionally, very occasionally, as the years pass, she catches his look: a tender, almost puzzled glance, as if he has begun to question his actions. She is afraid, however, of reading too much into it, of destroying her fragile but slowly increasing peace of mind, and she avoids him as much as possible. She manages to deal with family birthday parties, weddings, Christmases, hiding her tenacious love successfully, until the weekend of Jack's christening.

Ten years of wise self-preservation done away with in a single evening!

Timmie's wife, Anthea, has rejected the garrison church for her son's christening and has decided that he shall be baptized in her family's church in the small Herefordshire village where she grew up. Those members of the family who can attend the afternoon service, and the jollities afterwards, book in at the local hotel, apart from Lydia and Mina who are to stay with Anthea's family. When Nest, rather late in the day, tries to reserve a room at the local hotel, they advise her that all their rooms are fully booked but suggest
a charming pub a mile or two away, just over the Shropshire border.

It is while she is preparing to go down for her lunch at the pub that she sees Connor's car swing into the car park. Hidden by the curtain, she watches him get out and slam the door. He glances briefly up at the half-timbered building and she sees that his face is preoccupied, rather grim. Turning away, she paces the room, her arms folded across her breast, her head lowered in thought, and all the while a tense excitement rises inside her. Presently, she picks up her jacket and goes down to the bar where she discusses the lunch menu with the landlord, orders an omelette and asks for a whisky. When Connor appears she is still sipping it, sitting at a small table by the window.

‘So there you are.' Clearly he expected to see her. ‘What are you drinking? Scotch? Yes, I think I'll have one of those. Do you need a refill?'

She shakes her head and watches him go to the bar. He looks good in his smart suit and the beating, throbbing excitement increases so that she takes another sip to steady her.

‘What a farce it all is!' He is back, putting his glass down, sitting opposite. He still looks faintly irritated, partly amused. ‘Your family!' he exclaims.

‘I thought you and Henrietta were staying at the hotel,' she says calmly.

‘We were,' he answers, ‘except that Roger has developed some childish ailment and she can't come. When I got to the hotel Georgie and Tom were having conniptions because they hadn't booked, didn't think they'd need to at the end of October, and there was no room for them and dear little Helena at the inn. I offered them our room at which point the receptionist – grateful, no doubt, to be rescued from
Georgie in full spate – sent me along here. She said that one of the party was already booked in and obligingly told me which of them it was.'

‘And so here you are.'

It is the whisky, perhaps, that has lifted her into this oddly confident, carefree mood. He looks at her, his smiling eyes narrowed consideringly, so that she feels rather breathless.

‘So here I am,' he agrees.

What was it about that afternoon and evening, she is to wonder afterwards, that worked the magic and flung them back headlong, so that ten years of constraint vanished so completely? Well, obviously the absence of Henrietta was a contributory factor – and, just as crucially, the absence of Mina. When Nest and Connor meet up with the party at the hotel, to walk the short distance to the church, they hear that Lydia has had a bad attack of asthma and she and Mina cannot come.

‘What a shame,' cries Georgie fretfully. ‘And Tom and I are flying to Geneva in a fortnight. I'd counted on seeing them here before we go. Now I shall have to go down to Exmoor, as if I hadn't enough to do . . .'

Nest catches Connor's eye and they laugh secretly, delightfully, together in spirit as they were once before.

‘Filial devotion's such a wonderful thing,' he murmurs, cupping his hand around her elbow as they walk up the church path.

‘You're such a cynic,' she answers, trying not to shiver at his touch.

‘Me, lady?' He looks shocked. ‘The saints forbid!'

As the afternoon lengthens into evening the game between them changes subtly. Anthea's family are generous hosts and there is much laughter and revelry. It seems perfectly natural for Connor and Nest to spend these hours
together as any couple might and, without their usual duennas, they adopt a joky yet privately aware closeness that none of the rest of the family questions. Constraint relaxed by wine and champagne, years of enforced familiarity eased into intimacy, once they are back at the inn the long period of frustration and loneliness resolves itself into one long night of passionate release.

Nest was wakened by Mina bringing her a cup of tea. She struggled up on her pillows, blinking away her dreams, struggling to remember.

‘Lyddie,' she said anxiously, ‘how is she? What did she say?'

Mina stood the tea on the bedside table. ‘Lyddie has gone back to Truro. No!' as Nest exclaimed distressfully, ‘not in a fit of rejection. Nothing like that. She was going anyway. Remember?'

‘Yes, of course I remember. What a fool I've been, Mina. To burst out with all this now when she's got so much on her plate . . . How did she react?'

Mina arranged the pillows more comfortably behind Nest's shoulders and perched on the side of the bed.

‘She was surprisingly balanced about it,' she answered gently. ‘Clearly it's a huge shock but she listened to the whole story, asked sensible questions and said, very reasonably, that it was going to take a while to sink in.'

‘Oh, Mina. Two shocks in less than a week! She must be reeling. Should she be driving, d'you think?'

‘It will give her something to do. To be honest, it would have been difficult for the pair of you to meet over lunch, wouldn't it? This break will be good for both of you. She sent her love to you . . .'

‘Did she?' asked Nest eagerly. ‘Did she say that?'

‘Yes she did.' Mina looked with compassion at Nest's strained, pain-lined face. ‘I wouldn't make up something so important, you know that.'

‘No,' said Nest, after a moment. ‘No, you wouldn't.'

‘You and Lyddie have more than thirty years of loving between you. That can't be discounted. She's not a child. She'll be quite able to see the situation fairly and squarely but she'll need time to adjust.'

‘On top of finding out about Liam I should think it will be a very long time.'

‘I'm not so certain,' said Mina slowly. ‘She thought it was very brave of you to tell her. She said, “Everyone has a right to their own history.” I think, oddly, her own problems will give her an added insight. It's always those who have never suffered nor failed who are the most intolerant. Lyddie will be fair – she won't misjudge you, I'm certain of it – but that doesn't mean that it isn't a shock.'

‘Of
course
it is!' exclaimed Nest. ‘Good grief! Discovering that your mother isn't who you thought she was!' She shook her head. ‘How do you come to terms with it? How often I've asked myself that question when I've wondered if I should ever tell her the truth.'