A Winter's Child (11 page)

‘And did you?'

She sighed and then straightened her shoulders, her impersonation of a good child about to recite a lesson so exact that he frowned, only slightly, but enough, if she chose to see it, to give her a warning.

‘Oh yes. Your father left everything in trust to be released when you choose, and in the amounts you choose. I understand the legal aspect at any rate.'

‘What other aspect is there to understand?'

He got up, walking a yard away from her into the deep gloom behind the desk where, from a massive silver box, he selected a cigar, lit it and remained that little distance away, looking at her in a manner which made her acutely uncomfortable, the more so because she could not see his face. But the moment had come to explain herself and although her mouth was dry and her head, in this smoky dark, beginning to ache, she would not permit herself to falter.

‘Mr Swanfield, I was your brother's wife for three days. I knew him for a few weeks before that and wrote to him for a few weeks afterwards. I cannot feel – really I cannot – that those three days should entitle me to the financial support of his family for the rest of my life. I did nothing in those three days – or certainly not enough – to have earned that much.'

Was she talking to herself? Had he gone away, leaving her to drag these painful words through her parched throat and waste them in the empty dark?
How
did one reach this man? Perhaps, quite simply, one did not. And if it was his wish to be separate and distant and alone then she, of all people, would not question it. But after a moment his voice came to her, dry, disdainful; still wary, she thought, in case all this high-mindedness should be no more than a manoeuvre to get something extra for herself from the Swanfield will.

‘An odd notion, Claire, if I may say so, and unlikely to prove generally popular. You will find that the law of our land, which is as adequate as any other, does not agree with you.'

‘I can't really bring myself to care about that.'

‘Well then – and perhaps more to the point – you will find that the Swanfield family does not agree with you either. Nor the Lyalls. Nor any other family with a daughter to marry. Do you care about that?'

‘I think – well, I think on the whole not. You are entitled to your opinion – I to mine. And what I need most of all just now is some time alone.'

‘A convenient philosophy. Do I take it, then, that you mean to refuse the allowance which I may – or may not – be proposing to make you?'

She swallowed, rather hard, and then, raising her eyes, looked directly into his, meeting a keen, cool stare of assessment which, for all her resolution, disconcerted her.

‘I had rather assumed, Mr Swanfield, that any allowance you had thought of giving me would be conditional on my coming to High Meadows.'

‘Of course you did.' And then, very abruptly, having made up his mind or, quite simply lost interest, he rapped out, ‘However – it does not. You may have – to begin with – two hundred and fifty pounds a year. Hardly enough to turn your head, I grant you. But sufficient to be alone on, in tolerable comfort. It is the amount Polly fritters away on intangibles, although a great many working men in this town have raised families on less. Do you want it? If not, it goes back into the estate until you find yourself in a more receptive frame of mind. Or until my death. In which case you will have a tribe of lawyers and bankers to deal with. So – and I really
am
obliged to hurry what do you want me to do?'

‘Why?'

He raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘You are being very reasonable, Mr Swanfield. Why?'

‘Do I have the reputation of an unreasonable man? Whoever can have told you that?'

‘And there are no conditions at all? None?'

‘There may be. In fact, yes, of course there are. I require proof of your fitness to handle money. I may require other things from time to time and it is only fair to warn you that I shall probably get them. Conformity to certain family traditions for instance. Because, having grown accustomed to even the small amount of security two hundred and fifty pounds can bring, you will find yourself very reluctant to give it up.'

‘And you would, of course, take it away from me whenever you pleased?'

‘I have that power, yes. I would not use it lightly. I can be reasonable. I am not generous. Not in the matter of allowances and trusts, at any rate, since the money is not mine. But such conditions as it may occasionally suit me to impose will be mine, of course, and for my purposes, not Edward Lyall's. You may see some advantage to that.'

He was offering her freedom. She was
almost
sure of it. Freedom from Edward, at any rate, from the degrading necessity of deferring to his opinions and stifling her own for lack of those few shillings a week which would buy a train ticket, an hotel room, a rented flat. With two hundred and fifty pounds a year she could breathe, she could choose. And following hard on her relief came a swift and unashamedly wicked rush of glee. For what would Edward say when he discovered that she had not only escaped his interference but that Mr Benedict Swanfield had given her the means to do it? Suddenly, through the deepening shadows, she smiled, her whole face alight with the mischievous enjoyment of Edward's discomfiture, although she did not wholly relish the task – hers she assumed – of breaking the news to him.

‘You are going to accept my offer then?'

‘Yes. Thank you.'

‘Good – although I hardly doubted it.'

‘
I
doubted it. Please don't think me naive or unappreciative of the things money buys or the freedom it bestows. But I
do
believe that it should be earned.'

‘Very well. Come here to keep Miriam company and earn it.'

‘You said that was not a condition.'

‘It is not. No doubt Miriam would like it to be, but I could hardly, with any justice, enforce it. I am simply suggesting how you might overcome your scruples.'

‘Please take me seriously, Mr Swanfield.'

Once again she glimpsed his brief smile and then the deliberate withdrawal of his face into the shadows as if he chose to keep his amusement, like everything else, strictly to himself.

‘I can hardly do that until you have learned to see beyond the superficial value of money – its purchasing power in goods and services and what you call independence – to its real meaning.'

‘Which is?'

‘Power, Claire.'

‘Oh yes – so I have often heard.'

‘Then believe it. Ideals, philosophies, religious revivals may have their uses. But what really controls populations, families, you – and me – is money. It is the underlying reason behind everything which is done in the world. It is the only way in which one man, or one nation, can effectively manipulate another. What government would ever commit the extravagant folly of war unless there was a profit to be made somewhere or other? Mine, for instance, since my weaving sheds have been turning out uniform cloth by the mile these past few years. But never mind that. We are agreed, are we not, that until you have achieved your self-sufficiency, you will allow me to pay you?'

‘You don't think I ever will be self-sufficient, do you?'

‘No. I think that by this time next year you will very likely be married again and negotiating with me for the release of your capital.'

She smiled, accepting his assessment of her aims and abilities without being in the least offended.

‘Oh, I am not nearly so tempestuous as that, Mr Swanfield. For the moment a small flat somewhere in Faxby will be quite enough for me to handle. That and some kind of work to do.'

‘Very well.' There seemed nothing more he wished to say. ‘Miriam will be disappointed, of course. But I will explain as tactfully as I can.'

‘Oh – perhaps I should tell her myself. Yes. I suppose I should.'

‘What an active conscience you
do
have, Mrs Swanfield.'

‘Yes. I know. It is a great trouble to me.'

‘Would it trouble you, do you think, to call me Benedict? On the whole – since I am your brother-in-law – it might cause less comment than Mr Swanfield.'

‘Heavens,' she laughed, returning to more familiar ground. ‘Benedict – I do apologize.'

But her impulse of warmth, her sudden awareness of him as a human being, a
man,
was instantly chilled by his sardonic ‘No need to apologize. I notice your mother also has difficulty with my Christian name.'

‘My mother –' she began, and then, sensing the futility of it, turned her defence of Dorothy into a simple exclamation, rounded off by a shrug. Her mother was a timid, well-meaning, awkward woman. Benedict had noticed the awkwardness. He would not, she felt, have any interest in the rest. And how weary she was now, how perilously close to her limits, that sickening moment which assailed her from time to time when, instead of standing firm and continuing to wage her calm, well-mannered battle for personal freedom, she would infinitely prefer to run away, to find herself a quiet, secret corner and leave the explanations, the confrontations – as her mother and Miriam had always done, as Polly would do – to someone else.

But that was not the way she had chosen and if, perhaps, she would not be obliged to endure Miriam's reproaches tonight, she could not avoid Edward. He would be
there
, in the car on the way back to Upper Heaton,
there
once again tomorrow morning at the breakfast table, his nerves and his digestion deteriorating by the minute, as she revealed the full extent of her treachery.

She could endure it. She would have to. That, and Dorothy's recriminations and the pangs of her own troublesome, well-trained conscience. But she knew that even now she would find it hard.

‘Thank you, Benedict.'

‘Quite. I have ten minutes left before I go. Would you be good enough to send Edward Lyall to me?'

‘Oh, yes –' She would send Edward anywhere, willingly, preferably a hundred miles away. ‘May I know why?'

‘Because someone should acquaint him with the details of your new financial status – don't you think?'

A burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Was he aware of it? Glancing at his guarded face she could not tell and, in her overflowing relief, she did not choose to investigate. But, as she crossed the hall, she was aware that her fatigue had lightened, her detachment and resolution had both returned, so that, as she entered the drawing room and beckoned to Edward, it occurred to most of the assembled company to wonder why, having been cloistered for so long with their paymaster, their taskmaster, their inquisitor, Benedict – she should be smiling.

It was Nola, of all people, who found her the flat.

She had been prepared for overtures of friendship from Polly but Nola's husky voice, when it emerged from Edward's telephone, had startled her into the same brusque telephone manner used by Edward himself, who always picked up the instrument gingerly and put it down as soon as he could, in case it might explode.

‘I wonder if you'd care to have tea with me? This afternoon? At three? The Crown Hotel.'

And Edward had been so conscious of the honour done him by Mrs Nola Swanfield in allowing her voice to enter his home that he had agreed, with only a mild degree of hysteria, to lend Claire his car.

The Crown Hotel seemed far from an obvious choice to Claire. The two station hotels, the Midland and the Great Northern, had always been respectable, if not much frequented by Faxby's ladies, existing mainly for the use of commercial travellers and the annual dinners of various commercial or charitable, but predominantly masculine societies. It would have been permissible – if only barely – for ladies to meet in the claret-coloured plush and brown leather interiors of either of these establishments, although Feathers'Teashop with its pretty lace tablecloths, its waitresses looking just like parlourmaids in their white caps and aprons, its discreet toilet facilities – unique in Faxby – which, on their introduction just before the war, had finally enabled Faxby's ladies to stay in tewn longer than the interval between essential visits to the bathroom, would have been far more usual. Even the tea-room, recently opened in Faxby's department store, Taylor & Timms, would have been allowable, although the tables were rather too much exposed to the view of anyone who happened to be passing through haberdashery or millinery, and the ‘powder room.' door so publicly situated that nothing – not even the prospect of a hurried and uncomfortable journey home – could induce such ladies as Dorothy Lyall and Eunice Hartwell to pass through it.

But the Crown Hotel had always been a place of vague ill-repute, situated, perhaps appropriately, in an old, haphazard part of the town, once prosperous, but which had been left far behind when Faxby moved its centre to Town Hall Square and the clearcut dividing lines of Providence and Perseverance Streets.

She had even some slight difficulty in finding her way through so much decaying grandeur, past so many tall grey houses standing, dilapidated yet still pointedly aloof, behind heavy, ancient trees and a curtain of fine spring rain. Yet the Crown, when it did appear, was very much as she remembered it, the still intriguing if considerably worse for wear relic of a past age and it was not until she had parked Edward's car directly outside the main pillared entrance, well away from the tramlines and the hooves of fractious horses as he had instructed her that she realized the hotel appeared to be closed.

She went in, nevertheless, treading carefully through a confusion of planks and step-ladders and paint-pots to be claimed at once by a small boy, posted, to her relief, as a lookout and who, paying far more attention to the processes of re-plastering and decorating than to Claire herself, took her along a passage, indicated a door and bolted.

She knocked and hearing first a movement and then a murmur went in, realizing at once that the man sitting a correct six inches away from Nola had only just moved there, while the tray in front of them, far from containing the teatime apparatus of china pot and silver kettle and wafers of bread and butter, was set with tall, fluted glasses, a box of Turkish cigarettes, an ice-pail sprouting the neck of a slender, dark green bottle.