The Diamond Waterfall (57 page)

Money too entered the picture. The family solicitor was sent for, and there was talk of settlements, a dowry, inheritance, jewelry, and, of course, the Diamond Waterfall. Most of it was over her head, just as it had been when after her father's funeral they had read the will. She knew only that at twenty-five she would be very rich, and that Reggie would not ever have to worry. Although he assured her, protested, that he could never live off her wealth. “I've a sound business head, old thing, oodles of acumen—just need to find the best enterprise, get it off the ground. Bring Angie into it, perhaps.”

The arrangement was that as soon as she inherited The Towers, they would live there. Until then Reggie could find work if he liked. They would have her ample allowance meanwhile.

It was thought better if the birth did not take place in or near Flaxthorpe. In that way it would pass with less remark. The story was given out that Reggie had a post in the South of France, in Mentone, deliberately vague but with diplomatic undertones. Because it must be taken up immediately, they would marry very quietly before he left.

They booked into the Carlton Palace for the first fortnight. Once out there, they would rent a house. Meanwhile she was measured for a wedding
dress of cloth of silver. So far she had lost rather than gained weight. Only her breasts seemed to grow heavier by the day.

All her care now was for the child. She read somewhere that all one saw, heard, thought during the months of waiting could have its effect. Once a day in the last weeks before the wedding she went into the Norman church. Not to pray—she could not, just as she could not think—but to allow the prayers of others over the centuries to reach her and, through her, the child. Often during the day, she would say to her womb, “I love you, Geoffrey's baby.” Sometimes, underneath her resignation and despair, she sensed something not unlike peace.

The night before the wedding she went very early to bed, but she could not sleep, and about half-past eleven saw a light still on in her mother's room. She went in, and for the next hour they talked. Or rather Lily talked, for Sylvia was careful to say little. One word, she thought, and I
shall say it all
She longed that evening to tell the whole story. It would be so easy. Her secret would be kept. Geoffrey already gone away. Nothing truly could be altered now by her mother's knowing.

But she said nothing, the moment passed. Her mother spoke of marriage with Erik at some future date. “I'm sure you understand, darling, and can forgive.” She talked about her own family, the Greenwoods (“and you couldn't call
them
‘top drawer'”), hinted at some of the difficulties in her own marriage. She asked too, as once before, if Sylvia was quite sure she wasn't confusing pity for Reggie's lost arm with real love:

“But then love itself,
that's
not safe either, darling.”

Toward the end of their talk she said, “The only really dreadful thing would have been to
do
anything about the child. That sort of thing can go horribly wrong. Can end—you'll probably know that one can
die
that way.”

But she spoke of something that had never been considered. In the worst of my terror, Sylvia told herself, I never thought of that. She clung though now to her mother as she kissed her good night, and was distressed to see that she was crying again.

When she had left her mother, instead of going back to bed Sylvia went downstairs. There was no one about, the servants were in bed. She wandered into the kitchens and made herself a drink of hot milk, thinking it would be good for the baby. As she came from the kitchens toward the hall, the telephone rang. She jumped at the sound, almost spilling the milk. It rang again and again, shrilly, as she stood there. Death, disaster? Why a call at
this
hour?

She unhooked the receiver.

“Flaxthorpe two-seven—”

“Sylvia Firth, I want to speak to
Sylvia.”
She could not mistake Reggie's voice. Even though he was drunk, perhaps very drunk.

She said, “This
is
Sylvia.”

“Get Miss Sylvia. Can't get any sense out of the servant class. … You there, you—”

“Reggie, it's
Sylvia speaking.”

“You think I've been drinking, don't you? Don't you? I'll tell you something—no, don't hang up, you won't hang up on a chap, eh? I want to tell you, Sylvie. I'm a chap's never had a chance, that's why I'm rotten, you know.
I am a
rotten blighter. Whole bottle tonight. Bottle and a half in the trenches though, bloody needed it, had the wind up otherwise whole bloody time. Got to talk to you tonight, thought the bloody servants never going to answer. … Listen, Sylvie, you're a good woman, white woman, eh? Going to be a good mother. We'll have a son, fine son. … Listen there, Sylvia, not going to be like
my
mother. I'll tell you something, Mother didn't like all alone in bed, and Dad going away—can you hear, Sylvie? … She'd always ask someone in, you know.
In.
Right
in.
Then Reggie's back from school a day early and what's he see, eh? You guess … yes, they're bloody fucking. And
he
says, ‘What's that damned pip-squeak doing here?' And
she
says, wait for the laugh, you laughing, Sylvie? She says, ‘That pip-squeak's
my son.'
But Reggie's going to have fine son all his own—that right, darling? Don't go ‘way, Sylvie, listen to me, I'll tell you something else—my little new wife's done a filthy thing but Reggie doesn't blame her. … You'll see he doesn't, it was this filthy cad. Got to protect her from cads, bloody bounders, prowling about after innocent girls. Sweet, sweet Sylvia. But you know you're filth, don't you? Are you there still, listening?”

“Reggie, why not go up to bed?” Her voice shook. “It's
late.”
She couldn't believe what she'd heard. She held the receiver away from her now, unable to hook it up again. He is drunk, she told herself, it's better he gets it all said now, tonight.

“Bed, got to go to bed now—drank alone, didn't drink with friends. Always drink with chums, best friends chums fighting with, hear guns all together. Listen, Sylvie, tell you something else, though—you did a chap a good turn. Saved me a bit of juice, eh? Getting yourself filled up like that—”

“Reggie, that's
enough!
”

Before he could begin again, she hung up. She stood, trembling for several minutes, afraid the phone would shrill again. Then, picking up her cup, she crossed the hall, her legs unsteady. A thick cold skin lay over the top of the milk. Upstairs again, she was violently sick—hands on her belly, clutching the child.

She was not a bride upon whom the sun shone. It was a gray day, with an icy wind coming up as they left the church. Reggie, apart from a bad color, showed no signs of his binge of the night before. And from the way he spoke, she felt certain he remembered nothing of it.
I must do the same.

In Mentone the sun shone all day. About the fifth day there she felt the
baby move for the first time, and was filled with sudden hope—almost as if it were her doing. She went that same evening into the church of St. Michel in the old town, and sat quietly, saying “Thank you.” Then she lit three candles: for the baby, for Geoffrey, and for Reggie.

Reggie. Here in the sun with money to spend, and on holiday, he seemed happy enough. He drank little, mainly wine, nor did he gamble except on one occasion at the end of the first week, when a visit to Monte proved expensive. He was very repentant.

Because she hadn't been able to think, she had not thought that she must sleep with him. She was surprised to find that by continuing not to think it was possible for it not to matter at all. When he held her with his arm (the sight of the scarred stump that had been the other one aroused in her only pity), and muttered fierce words of love into her shoulder, it had nothing to do with anything that had gone before.

He was gentle. He said they must be careful with the child. He liked too to try and feel it move. That seemed to her odd—another man's seed. Sometimes he would say excitedly, “We've just to get this little blighter landed safely, and all fit and O.K.—then we'll put in for a son of our own, eh?”

It was sometime in the first week in their rented apartment that she came across his revolver. Dark steel, lying in a drawer among his socks and suspenders, shirts. When she exclaimed in horror, he seemed taken aback. It was his Smith & Wesson, he said, his much-loved trusty wartime 455. Double barrel.

“What would I do without it—always kept it, Sylvie. Makes a fellow feel safe.” He showed her his name engraved: RJC Gilmartin. All that day she felt sick with apprehension, and anything but safe.

April turned into May, May into June. Perhaps most of all through the long days of sunshine she missed Ludwig, who would now be growing out of puppyhood without her. Reggie had suggested at first they bring him out with them. “Easy enough to smuggle ‘em back. Chaps in the trenches—we did it all the time.” But she told him “No.” What she could not tell him was why Ludwig meant so much to her.

At the beginning of June, Angie came out to stay with them. Sylvia, feeling much more pregnant now, found her hearty manner, her championing of Reggie, which took the form usually of cheerful insults, and her extravagant praise of her, Sylvia, almost too much. As the days went by and Reggie talked more and more of this and that business venture which, having spoken with X or Y, he
might
put capital into, she became unsettled and longed for home.

She had of course heard nothing from Geoffrey. But it was only when the weeks passed and she did not, that she realized how much she had hoped for some, for any, sign of life. She could not help wondering if he had seen the notice of her wedding, for he would by now be settled in, and surely all exiles
in the colonies read
The Times
foreign edition? (Oh, but then, what will he think when he learns? That I was soon consoled, that it did not take long for my heart to mend?)

The weather grew hotter. By the end of July, she was certain that she should come home. Reggie needed little persuading. Angie had managed to find work near Mentone as a paid companion and secretary, which would take her through the autumn and winter season. At least, Sylvia thought, she will not be living with us for a while.

They took a small house in the West Riding in a village outside Ilkley. As they had no transport they were thrown very much upon each other's company. Reggie began to look for work—he thought that he might be a manager for a nearby estate. “There is no need,” she told him, and then regretted her words. He often spent much of his disability pension now on gifts for her, sometimes even for the child.

She'd sent for Ludwig. She thought at first he had forgotten her, but within an hour he was curled against her skirt, asleep. She was pleased to see Reggie was fond of him. “Game little chap—he'll guard the babe. No bally cats getting in to smother.” She had not thought of anything so terrible.

She'd been told to expect the child about the third week of September. A monthly nurse had already been engaged. Her mother would come over to stay in the nearby hotel. Toward the end of August, Reggie's cousins in Harrogate invited them over for a few days' stay, to coincide with the unveiling of the War Memorial on the first of September. She was reluctant to go at first, but then saw what it meant to Reggie. Two of his cousins were among those to be commemorated. A third, Malcolm, who'd been too young for the fighting, came to stay with them the weekend before. He would drive them to Harrogate.

She liked Malcolm and enjoyed his company, but about his car she was not so sure. The journey to Harrogate was exhausting, as the car shook from side to side, and she with it, and the baby too. The night of their arrival she could not sleep for the excited kicking and pummeling. Next morning found her with a low backache, and unbelievably weary.

It was a day of sheeting rain. The ceremony, to be attended by Princess Mary and her husband, Viscount Lascelles, had drawn enormous crowds. Sylvia, standing beneath Reggie's umbrella, was hemmed in by a sea of other umbrellas. Reggie said, “Trust the bally British climate.” He wondered if he should have brought her? But, “No, no, I'm all right,” she said.

She wondered if she was. Standing, the rain pattering down, beating on the umbrellas. Sodden Union Jack, stones of the square gleaming, wet lawn. A little bit away, near the dripping trees, people climbed on the tops of cars for a better view. The ranks of sailors opposite where she stood seemed to her to be swaying. She hoped only that, suddenly hot and cold as she'd become,
she wouldn't faint. She fixed her gaze on the wall of the Prospect Hotel, with its sign, RESTAURANT. The writing sloped upward.

Or did it?

From early evening, when labor truly started, and then all through the night, she felt shock. Babies could come early or late, so why am I so surprised? Malcolm's family thought it was his car the culprit. As the hastily summoned doctor attempted reassurance, Reggie hovering anxiously (the very picture, she thought later, of the
real
father), and she tried to rise above the waves of ever-increasing pain.
“I wasn't ready,”
she said over and over again.

And indeed she had nothing with her. None of the lovingly made layette, her own belongings packed only for three days. … But it wasn't
that
that she meant. Simply she had expected more time, to be able to talk quietly in her mind to Geoffrey. To tell herself …
be brave.

If Reggie was disappointed that the baby was a girl, he did not show it. Although he'd spoken often of “the little blighter,” she realized that naturally enough, perhaps, it was only his own son he was interested in. Indeed the afternoon after the birth, he said as he peered into the (borrowed) cot, “Feeling proud, old thing, Sylvie? Not long now, and we'll be having one of our own.”