The Fox's Walk (3 page)

Uncle Hubert had six months' home leave every five years. Apart from a visit to Ballydavid and his mother and aunt, he spent this time in London. He used to come to tea; the timing of his visit, I now suspect, planned so he could spend time with his sister while my father was absent and to leave his evenings free for more amusing or livelier social arrangements.

My uncle was of greater interest to me in London than he would have been if I had met—or, more accurately, been shown or presented to—him at Ballydavid. The shape and constrictions of a London childhood made any departure from the dull and repetitive cycle of my days memorable. The rules at Ballydavid fell far short of anarchy, but there was a physical freedom that made me aware of the constraints of life at our house in Palace Gardens Terrace. The house was not small; by London standards it was open, light, and spacious, but the nursery quarters on the top floor were where Edward, Nanny, and I spent the greater part of our day. When we went for our afternoon walk, I was not allowed to stray from my place beside Edward's pram; and, if I had been permitted to do so, I could have wandered only along the paved paths, the grass and flower beds on either side a prohibited area, marked by a low edging of green-painted iron hoops. The clothing I was buttoned into before leaving the house restricted any spontaneous expression of energy or imagination—any possibility of play. Even in summer I wore black stockings and tightly buttoned boots; when the weather was cold, I also wore a stiff high-collared coat, gloves, and buttoned gaiters. I wore a hat throughout the year; it varied with the season, but it usually had an elastic band under the chin.

Uncle Hubert fascinated me. I had been shown in the schoolroom adas where he lived when he was not home on leave, and my mother had traced with her finger the course of the voyage he had taken back to England. He was the eldest of three children and treated my mother with a teasing affection that both startled me and revealed a completely new aspect of her nature. I already knew that my mother loved Sainthill, her younger brother, to an extent that would not allow her feelings for Uncle Hubert to be described as more than a very strong affection. How did I know? I now think that because I was an eldest child, most of my instinct and a good deal of time and energy went into working out how the world—at that stage exemplified by my family and our household—worked. I already understood the realities of the nursery and had made a good start on the kitchen. Childhood is a time when one is presented with the pieces of a large and complicated jigsaw puzzle. I struggled to fit the interlocking parts together without knowing what the eventual completed picture was supposed to look like. And the picture changed with each new observation I made. Soon after Edward was born, I realized it was a puzzle he would never solve on his own, and I made it my business to inform him of some important aspects and to shield him from others.

Uncle Huberts cigarette case was a good example of a piece of the puzzle that I recognized as significant without knowing, or having any way of knowing, its import. I still remember that case and the way his graceful fingers took a cigarette from it, closed its silver lid, and tapped the cigarette lightly before striking a match. It was not until my uncle Sainthill's personal effects were returned to his mother during an irony-filled Christmas visit by a fellow officer that I discovered the significance of these cigarette cases both as a gift and as a charm against the evil forces personified by a German bullet or shrapnel. The slim metal case, slightly curved to follow the outline of the body, was inscribed—usually by a woman—and kept in the breast pocket of the uniform of the man whose heart it was intended to protect. Did it ever save a life? Could it save a life? I don't know. And without knowing this, either, I imagine that the officers—and surely for so many reasons this was a phenomenon only among the younger ones—knew the cases would provide little protection but felt safer having them anyway.

Uncle Hubert: his moustache, his cigarette case (my father was clean shaven, regarding facial hair as an affectation and tobacco as a waste of money), his bantering tone with my mother, her difficulty in knowing what was a tease and what was not, and how he enjoyed testing her gullibility and humor. I remember, in particular, a Russian woman whom Uncle Hubert brought to visit.

Edward and I were with my mother in the drawing room. Edward, sweet and fat, sat on Mother's knee, and I perched on the edge of the sofa, brushed, curled, and uncomfortably dressed for tea. I don't know if my mother was expecting Uncle Hubert in the sense that an engagement had been made, but she was ready for him or any other visitor who might call.

The Irish maid announced Uncle Hubert.

“Mr. Bagnold to see you, ma'am, and Madame—” she hesitated as though she might attempt the name but changed her mind “—and Madam.”

Uncle Hubert stood back at the door to allow a woman to enter. Although not as exotic as Mrs. Coughlan, of whom I still quite often thought, this was a creature who bore an encouraging similarity to her.

“Mary,” my uncle said, “this is Madame Tchnikov.”

My mother, putting Edward down on the hearthrug, rose slowly and approached the visitor. I could see that the time she was taking was designed to allow my uncle to add something—an explanation of who this strange woman was, of why she was accompanying my uncle, above all of why she was being introduced to my mother. But Uncle Hubert merely smiled; he looked as though he had arrived with a treat—something on the order of an ornately decorated tin of sweet biscuits. I, at least, was appreciative.

Tea was poured; small talk followed. The conversation remained general and superficial. Nevertheless, by the time my uncle and Madame Tchnikov left, we had gathered that she had lived in the Balkans, that she was of aristocratic birth, a refugee (someone close to her—not specified but referred to as
he
—had been political), and a widow. And that she had “suffered.” I was curious to see how my mother would describe the visit to my father when he came home. Most events I witnessed gained a valuable dimension when I heard them described to someone else. I remained the epitome of a well-behaved little girl, silent and without fidgeting, in order to hear what my mother would say. I could see that she was confused and upset.

My mother was sweet natured and self-effacing. She was quiet, gentle, soft, and affectionate. Of the few times she had stood up for herself, the most dramatic was when she'd slipped out the side door of her parents' house in Philimore Gardens to meet my waiting father. They had gone to a Registry Office where she had married him. It now seems possible her action may be more an illustration of his will than of hers. My grandmother, who had had dreams and ambitions, was even more upset at the elopement of her beautiful daughter with a brash young New Zealander come to seek his fortune in England than was her husband, the General. My grandfather, though initially angry and disappointed, was at least aware of my father's strength of character and courage; he, himself, had had to make his own way. The elopement was now far enough in the past for the marriage to have become part of the pattern of our family, but my mother lived every day with a consequence for which she was entirely unsuited: a cultural—in this instance not only a euphemism for class—difference between her and my father, the difference more pronounced when witnessed by her friends and members of her family.

So Uncle Hubert was not alone in being more comfortable visiting my mother before my father came home; my mother was also happier spending time with her brother while her husband was absent. Now Uncle Hubert had introduced someone of unknown antecedents into her drawing room; someone who might be a most courageous and deserving refugee but who might also be what my mother called an “adventuress.” And since my mother had given up the right to pronounce on unsuitable alliances when she had eloped with my father, she did not feel she could question Uncle Hubert's choice. What she could ask, or rather attempt to ascertain, was to what extent this unfortunate creature—by this time my mother had noticed dark roots below Madame Tchnikov's huge mound of red hair and color from her lip salve on her cup—had got her claws into Uncle Hubert.

My father, appealed to when he came home, remarked that Hubert had always given the impression of being well able to take care of himself. Even I could tell this offhand remark was intended to put an end to the subject. My father tended to be unsympathetic to problems peculiar to the privileged.

“It's just———” my mother said slowly, as she searched for the right euphemism, “in a few months he will be going back to China—for five years—and he doesn't have a wife. Maybe he's lonely———”

My father laughed.

“Do you think there aren't women in China?” he asked.

My mother drew in her breath, remembered my presence, and I was sent upstairs for my bath. But not before I had gathered, while not understanding the implications, that my father was suggesting for a man on his own, a beautiful, young, and undemanding Chinese woman might be more appealing than a shopworn and desperate Russian refugee. Or, I inferred, possibly even a suitable young Englishwoman of the right background.

Mother did not, to my disappointment, again require my company on the days when Uncle Hubert brought this exotic creature to call. After awhile, my uncle stopped bringing Madame Tchnikov to the house. When he came again on his own, he seemed to suggest, although nobody could ask—actually my father would have had no difficulty with the question but still showed no inclination to become involved—that he had brought Madame Tchnikov rather as a novelty that would interest and amuse my family as much as it did him. My mother breathed a sigh of relief. Rather prematurely as it turned out.

One damp April afternoon, as my mother was sitting in the drawing room, the maid announced Madame Tchnikov—Madame Tchnikov following close on her heels so there could be no question of my mother being not at home. Mother was at a disadvantage; she did not know if Madame Tchnikov was visiting at Uncle Huberts suggestion or if he had perhaps arranged to meet her at Palace Gardens Terrace.

My mother, flustered, rose to greet her guest and glanced at me. I avoided her eye, fairly sure she would not insult Madame Tchnikov by immediately removing her daughter. And I knew, too, that Mother, guiltily, welcomed my presence as an inhibiting influence on the conversation.

“Mara,” my mother said, “how nice. Is Hubert joining us later?”

“I don't know,” Madame Tchnikov said. It was not possible to tell from the way she spoke whether she was unsure of the exact nature of Uncle Hubert's intentions for the rest of the afternoon or if she was declaring complete ignorance of his whereabouts and plans. It was not possible to rephrase the question, and my mother had no way of knowing if her guest was the vanguard of a fraternal visit or if she was acting as a free agent.

I, at least, was pleased to see Madame Tchnikov. She swept me up into a dramatic embrace. She smelled of powder and not quite fresh scent. And of a dark, mysterious femininity that I had never before encountered. My mother smelled of powder, too, but in a way that suggested lavender and fresh white linen. Madame Tchnikov evoked less innocent flowers: dark orchids or overscented lilies.

The grown-ups sat down and my mother poured Madame Tchnikov a cup of tea. I had a feeling that cups of tea were not much in my new heroine's line. There was a moment of silence. My mother searched for some subject for small talk that did not involve Uncle Hubert.

“I visited Paris once. With my mother, before the war. Did you live there long?”

Even I could see that my mother's Parisian experience—her mother, an English-speaking pension, Versailles, tea made with boiling water in a properly warmed teapot—was not that of a refugee from the unhappy Balkans. This knowledge, of course, was clarified and details added when later experience expanded childhood memory; I was a precocious child, but Swinburne and Montmartre were not yet among my terms of reference. Partly because I sensed the emotions and inferences that made this conversational gambit of my mother's almost inflammatory, I listened, remembered, and puzzled over each word and nuance. All the while sitting quietly with an expression that suggested incomprehension, mild stupidity, and dreaminess.

“It was a terrible time,” Mara, as I was beginning to think of her—said, her voice and face tragic.

“I'm so sorry,” my mother's social awkwardness now becoming sympathy. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

“I was so young,” Mara said, dabbing her eyes with a small handkerchief. I was fascinated but, like my mother, who seemed equally curious and embarrassed, I would have preferred to observe Mara from a distance.

My mother made a sympathetic sound. The tragedy of Mara's youthfulness was difficult to comment on, especially since, if she had, as she'd told us, just fled the oppression of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this youthful tragedy would have had to have taken place in the very recent past.

“My———” Mara said, indistinctly, into her handkerchief.

“Your family?” Mother asked, her sympathy fully engaged.

Mara sniffed in a manner that suggested assent.

“Your mother?” my mother asked gently.

Mara said nothing, but shook her head behind the handkerchief.

“Your father?” My mother tried again.

Mara repeated her gesture. I watched, fascinated, prepared to have my mother run through every possible family permutation—I already had the feeling that, in some not yet imaginable way, Mother was on the wrong track—as far as second cousins once removed and the list of unlikely people one was, in the back of the prayer book, forbidden to marry. Fortunately for my mother, Mara preferred to avoid this ritual.

“My husband,” Mara said, lowering her handkerchief a little.

“And he-is he-?” My mother was sympathetic but also curious. I was too fascinated to feel sorry for such a dramatic figure.