The Innocents (12 page)

2

Outside it was raining already (as I had suspected it would be), and Alfred putting me down at the gate congratulated me on having hired him, also advised a nice hot cup of cocoa before turning in. Actually the kind Crockers had given me a brandy, to follow up which with cocoa would have seemed to my dear father a blasphemy—if not a glass of Malvern water, then just plain tap. However I appreciated Alfred's kind thought to the extent of tipping him a shilling, which I do not always do. I was in a pleasantly relaxed mood altogether. Then he drove off through the rain, and I got out my key and walked cheerfully up to my front door.

Where crouched against the step like a little animal—her hands like little paws clutching at the sill—huddled Antoinette.

She must have tried to get in, as well, by the cellar, for her nightgown and bedroom slippers were grimed with coal dust. She had no coat or even dressing-gown; when I gathered her up I felt her damp to the skin. She didn't speak to me, just clung. I doubt whether she was quite conscious.

I took her in, and when I had washed and warmed her, and put her into one of my own flannel nightdresses, followed Alfred's advice and brewed a nice hot cup of cocoa; and then I took her back.

It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. But consider: how might not such a disastrous beginning have affected the entire future? Cecilia was a person so used to success in all her schemes, the blatant, public failure of one so particularly near her heart I believed would arouse not only disappointment and chagrin, but resentment, and even anger. Though I might leave word at Woolmers, so that Cecilia, returning to an empty room, at least shouldn't be thrown into alarm, the fact remained that Antoinette had run away. Somehow Antoinette had got out, and through the dark and the rain run away from her mother back to myself. Undoubtedly Cecilia would be angry—and even after her anger cooled, perhaps find the rebuff as hard to forget as to forgive; so I took Antoinette back.

I felt fairly sure no one had seen her. Our village keeps early hours, and even uphill, even for a child, from the guest-house to mine is no more than ten or fifteen minutes. Obviously no one had seen her, or she would have been stopped. It occurred to me that if I could get her back and into bed before Cecilia returned, Cecilia might be kept in ignorance altogether. So I took Antoinette back.

Again, as earlier in the day, she made no struggle; and fortunately I am stronger than I look: I had to carry her.—It was still before eleven, and Woolmers' front door still unbolted, but I knew my way about well enough to use the back, and the back stairs as well, and the only person I met was Jessie. She had the grace to look thoroughly ashamed of herself, though protesting she'd left the child no more than two shakes and sleeping like a lamb. “And don't all innocents wander a bit by night? 'Tis their nature, and never come to harm,” Jessie defended herself. I could have boxed her ears; but at least I knew she wouldn't talk.

I put Antoinette into one of her own nightgowns, and back into her strange bed—not so strange as long as I sat by it—and half-unconscious as she still was she fell asleep immediately. I stayed watching however more than an hour, and was probably later awake than any other of the Cockers' guests, since when I heard the Admiral and Cecilia come in well after midnight I had still to slip down a back stair, and through a back door, and walk the half-mile home, before going to bed myself.

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As I'd known she wouldn't, Jessie didn't talk. When Cecilia met me in the High Street next morning—

“Tony never stirred!” triumphed Cecilia. “When I came in at twelve, there she was just as tight asleep as I'd left her!”

I could have said it was at least twelve-thirty, but of course did not. I was only too happy that my ploy had succeeded. (I suppose I was just as fond of success as Cecilia!) And as evidently as she hadn't noticed Antoinette's change of nightdress, no more had she noticed the absence of Antoinette's bedroom slippers—actually still drying out in my kitchen, and which I smuggled back via Jessie next day.

12

1

So my ploy succeeded; but only partly. Each night (as though she'd learned her lesson), Antoinette slept at Woolmers; but each morning, as soon as she woke, struggled into a smock (often as not back-to-front), and made her uphill way to my garden.—Cecilia took sleeping pills; Antoinette habitually woke before six, and so could evade quite easily. She didn't even need to wait till the hall door was opened. As she'd discovered the exit through my old coal cellar, so she discovered a run-out by way of Woolmers' scullery.

An early riser myself, I was usually at breakfast when she appeared, so we shared it before I, again, took her back, always attempting to reach Woolmers before any guests were about. However the Admiral also got up early, and once or twice we met in the garden. He cocked a weather eye at the pair of us, but without comment. I do not think it was he who mentioned such encounters to Cecilia. I think it was more likely a new arrival, a Miss Ponsonby with a long nose who too enjoyed a stroll before breakfast. “But isn't that child supposed to be
staying
here?” she exclaimed, at our second meeting. I replied, yes. “And does her mother know she's out?” enquired Miss Ponsonby facetiously. The old music-hall gag, as out of place as at the moment her upper dentures, I must say offended me. I feel sure it was she who spoke to Cecilia, probably making some similarly vulgar joke. Cecilia—which I still felt a great point gained—never knew of her daughter's first desperate flight, but she undoubtedly became aware of these early-morning escapades, and as in the matter of the cot took her own measures. As soon as she herself came up each night, she turned the key in the bedroom door. This I learned (via Mrs. Brewer) from Jessie, who complained bitterly of having to knock and knock before she could get in with the early morning tea. Sometimes she heard the child, she said, just the other side of the door—but Antoinette had never learned to turn a key, also I think it possible that Cecilia took it out.

I still saw Antoinette every day, however, for though Cecilia I have no doubt fully intended to be a wonderful mother, she had no idea how much time it took. In New York there had been first Bridget, then Miss Swanson, in attendance; now Cecilia had sole charge. Well, it was what she'd wanted; but not, I think, full-time. What was she to do with the child, for instance while sitting to Paul Amory? What Cecilia in fact did was to deposit her in my garden …

Another circumstance Cecilia hadn't allowed for was Antoinette's unsuitability to the whole milieu. Very few children are by nature what one might call hotel-children—that is, quiet at table, polite to strangers, creditable to parents by being seen but not heard (unless directly questioned), and avoiding undue intimacy with lift-boys. With such happily rare sophisticates Antoinette had absolutely nothing in common. Her very silence, undiversified by childish prattle, must have appeared less a quality than a lack; Miss Ponsonby for one, I understand (or to be frank, heard via Jessie), openly suspected the child of being dumb absolutely—which in a sense she was, but Cecilia couldn't have been pleased to hear it said. I felt thoroughly sympathetic to Cecilia in her snubbing of Miss Ponsonby—actually to the extent of asking to move tables to avoid the clack of the Ponsonby dentures. (An undeserved irritation indeed, when one recalls how Major Cochran, under Cecilia's influence, went all the way to Ipswich!) Of course it was Miss Ponsonby who was moved, and she soon moved on altogether, but Cecilia must still have been annoyed; and equally so perhaps by the sympathy of a better-natured fellow guest, who remarked that children of Antoinette's age were very often sullen. (Jessie again, alas; overheard whilst waiting at tea.) Even a merely sullen little daughter did Cecilia no credit; and though she was careful to let everyone know how emotionally deprived the poor infant had been for years and years, there must have been at least embarrassment.

So gradually I had Antoinette with me not only most mornings, but every morning and all morning. It should have been quite like old times; alas, Antoinette was already altered. She had been, in her own way, a remarkably independent child; now, instead of stumping off to squat and brood without a by-your-leave, she waited for … permission. Unless I said, “Antoinette, don't you want to go and see the artichokes?” she stayed exactly where Cecilia deposited her—as a rule on the lawn, but sometimes just inside the gate. In the latter event I of course always heard Cecilia's gay signal—“Yoo-hoo, darling!
Nous voila!”
—and fetched Antoinette at least into the garden immediately; but then, as I say, it was only at my direct suggestion that she made off to her usual haunts.

It took me several days to realize that Antoinette also needed permission to come indoors, and more especially to go upstairs. (Then I saw why; no hotel, no guest-house even, encourages residents upstairs before lunch. Their rooms are being done.) Once, at mid-morning, I within and Antoinette in the garden, even under a quite heavy shower she waited for my bidding, before she came in.

“And go wherever you like!” I added—only a couple of weeks before how superfluously!

It is usually when it rains that I sit down at my desk to cast up my accounts and settle my bills, and after such a spell of fine weather as we'd just enjoyed I was more than a little in arrears. I still had an ear alert for Antoinette's footfall overhead, and half expected the heavier sound of the coracle being pushed about; but in a few moments all was silence, and after a few moments more I paused in writing a cheque to the Gas Board and followed up after.

She was standing quite still in the bedroom we had so long shared, staring at her dismantled cot. For it hadn't yet been collected; the Women's Institute was in no hurry, and Kevin, their usual factotum, had apparently other fish to fry. So there it lay, still in its old corner, like a bundle of sticks; and there stood Antoinette, staring at it.

As I came in she turned, and with a sort of politeness, like a guest who fears having seemed overinquisitive, went and looked out of the window. In the embrasure behind my dressing-table was still propped the lid of the big leather trunk on the landing. From being housed there so long it had become like another piece of furniture; I was so used to it, I had forgotten to put it back in its proper place. Antoinette necessarily stood close beside, but neither looked at nor touched it. Perhaps she had done so already?

“Why, there's your boat!” said I. “Don't you want to go for a row in it?”

Permission thus granted, Antoinette immediately began tugging, and I to help her, the leather trunk-lid coracle being heavy enough. But before we got it properly out another gay hail from Cecilia interrupted, as she returned to fetch her daughter back to Woolmers for lunch—if a little late, at least not much later than Paul Amory for the lunch kept hot by Betty.

2

I cannot say it was purely by chance that I witnessed one of these sittings, though chance played a part.—Normally there would have been no need of chance; a mark of all amateur painters is that they do not mind being watched, and Paul Amory rather liked people to stop and talk to him as he filled in the pencil outline of a may tree with pink, or of a chimney-stack with red. (Red was his favourite colour.) But when it came to Cecilia's portrait the change was as great as from water-colour to oils. Paul let it be known all round that he wasn't to be watched, or talked to, or in any way distracted, at work on so important a commission, which as he said might well change his whole life. Thus the garage-studio (everyone liking Paul and wishing him well), was accepted to be out of bounds, and even Betty never intruded.

The chance first operating in my own case was that Bobby Parrish's next bad turn coincided with the birth of Mrs. Brewer's latest grandchild. On however uneasy terms with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Brewer knew when she was needed, and neighbourliness took second place to family claims.—Also, quite rightly, to those of an employer, and it promoted my always good opinion of her that though she couldn't promise to finish polishing me, she'd certainly stay with Antoinette while I was gone. Why I was to be gone was to deliver a message to Jessie—
“Bobby again, better look in.”
When I suggested that Mrs. Brewer might take the message and leave myself at home, her unarguable because inexplicable reply was that she'd sworn her Dad never to cross Woolmers' sill—on the occasion, as I later discovered, of the cook there offering him half-a-crown for a sack of three dozen lettuces. But this, as I say, I learned only later, and at the moment found Mrs. Brewer unreasonable. I delivered the message to Jessie nonetheless, for convenience by the back door; and the back door opens on the old stables, now turned into a set of garages, and one of these now into a studio.

From this point not chance operated, but my own nosiness. Distinguishing, just within the propped-open doors, the silhouette of a wheelchair, I very quietly (to avoid being heard and so causing an interruption) advanced, and through the nearest side window took a look in.

There sat Paul, his easel before him, at his right, on a card table, Betty's marble slab now most professional looking with its squeezes of paint and jar of turps and pot of brushes and bits of rag; and opposite him, on the shallow platform of an old mattress, in a high-backed old chair, sat, in both senses of the word, Cecilia.

I have never forgotten how lovely she looked.

She was wearing the caftan, and drooping over its lavender folds a long, heavy amber necklace that where it twisted made a depression between her breasts. Her head too drooped a little; as I have said, Cecilia usually carried her head high, erect on her slim throat like a flower on its stem; whether it was she or Paul who imagined this new pose who can say, but undoubtedly it was wonderfully seductive. And undoubtedly she was a wonderful sitter; all the time I watched, she never moved. For some reason I had the impression of a sunbather basking in the sun.