A Winter's Child (55 page)

‘Old Mrs Timms doesn't like me,' sang Polly whenever the subject of her engagement to Roger was mentioned.

It was a state of affairs Miriam had now set herself to put right, by explaining to a fascinated Mrs Timms in precise, easily assimilated detail not only the full extent of Benedict's control over Polly but the promise he had made his father to retain that control for as long as was needful: for ever, more than likely, in the case of her pretty, extravagant, lovable Polly. And it did not take Mrs Timms long to realize that in matters of finance and disciplined spending, the handling of investments and allowances, the future good management of Taylor & Timms, one could rely absolutely on Benedict.

She went home to discuss the matter with her husband who, in – addition to his partiality for long-legged blondes, had the fate of his family business very much at heart and suddenly the cry ‘Old Mrs Timms doesn't like me'no longer applied. Suddenly, in fact, no day was complete for Mrs Timms unless she had spent part of it pampering and praising her Polly.

‘What a lovely dress. How graceful you are, dear. What natural style. Just come into the Millinery Department and try on the new hats. Oh dear – I thought as much – I think you'd better keep that one. It will never look the same on anyone else.'

To begin with, accustomed to coldly raised eyebrows and a pinched smile whenever Mrs Timms came across her in the store, Polly was startled, puzzled rather than pleased. But Edith Timms knew very well how to indulge the young – after all, she had always indulged her Roger to what some thought a fond but foolish degree – and her wily expertise, assisted by Polly's almost puppyish desire for affection, soon won the girl over.

She was invited to dinner where the entire Timms family, mother, father and son, looked at her, listened to her – a pleasant change from High Meadows – which made her feel witty, sophisticated and smart. And although she was accustomed to feeling clever with Roger, his parents, suave, dapper Mr Timms and Edith Timms with her quiet, sharp-eyed elegance, were another matter. She was invited to stay the night – a considerable step forward in the game of matrimonial noughts and crosses – and positively encouraged to linger as long as she liked in bed, to eat chocolates from large Taylor & Timms'boxes all day if she pleased, to browse at her leisure through catalogues of next season's furs and evening dresses of which, it was discreetly implied, she had only to make her choice.

‘I do believe,' said Edith, ‘that your fingers are as small as mine. Or perhaps not? I know – let's see if they can fit my rings.' And, for a heady afternoon, Polly decked herself in the jewels which had been collected by Edith's mother and mother-in-law, two of Faxby's greatest ladies, and by Edith herself, a treasure chest, a glittering enchantment which entirely dazzled Polly's never particularly clear vision and took her breath away.

Edith, of course, did not give her even the least valuable of the stones, nor the least considerable of the gold chains and bracelets, of which there was a goodly number. But it was, nevertheless understood that as she had inherited them through the family, so too could they be Polly's.

‘They make you look like a queen, dear.' Edith Timms was making her feel like a queen and it was that, far more than the promise of chocolates for breakfast and furs and jewels, which inclined Polly to look again at Roger. Not that he was ever very much in evidence during the afternoons she had begun to spend with his mother.

‘Run along, Roger. There's a good chap.' And when, in his amiable, shambling fashion he had gone away, Edith would murmur, not with Miriam's sugary sweetness, but pointedly, woman to woman, ‘So biddable our Roger. Brought up to do as he's told and positively enjoys it, Polly dear. Pity one can't say the same for his papa.'

No one had ever been so kind to Polly. No one had ever approved of her so warmly, nor shown so marked an inclination to treat her not as a feather-brained child but as a woman. No one had ever asked for her opinion before and then actually listened to it. And it seemed wonderful to her that the person who had finally taken her seriously had turned out to be Roger's mother of whom, until recently, she had been rather afraid. But she was afraid no more. Quite the contrary. She had found – incredible as it still seemed to her – a knowledgeable entertaining friend. How very pleasant life could be here in this cosy, easy-mannered house, with Edith Timms. And she began to forget, or perhaps simply no longer to pay attention, to the part Roger Timms must unavoidably play.

‘Do you think your mother could spare you to me for a few days? After her birthday, needless to say. I have rather a fancy to take you to London. Oh yes – just the two of us. We can manage very well without our menfolk in Harrods and Self-ridges and Fortnum and Mason. Would you like it?'

‘Oh yes please – yes I would.'

How perfect, or at least how perfect it might be, could be, if only she could fall in love with Roger. If only he wouldn't try to kiss her so often. If only he wouldn't tremble so much and look so red and heavy and awkward. If she married him she ‘d have to come to terms with that, every night. No doubt she'd get used to it. Her mother said so and Edith had hinted at it. She'd learn to put up with it as they had done – as women generally did – which was all very well until she remembered the lean, steel-hard beauty of Roy Kington and the sensations it aroused in an as yet entirely unexplored part of her abdomen.

She believed she
had
fallen in love with him.

‘Prove it,' he told her. ‘Words are cheap. I need more than that.'

‘Much
more?' She knew what his answer would be and she was dreading it.

‘A hell of a lot more, darling. Your brother doesn't like me. Your mother treats me like a fool. So give me something to prove you're not making a fool of me as well.'

‘Oh Roy – if we were just engaged?'

‘Oh, Polly – we won't be engaged, not ever, unless you do.'

‘Why!'
She sounded desperate.

‘Because I don't want to risk waking up one morning married to a cold woman, that's why.'

‘I'm not.'

‘Prove it, Polly.'

There had been a supper party at High Meadows, a little treat for Polly, Miriam had called it, to which she might invite all her friends. And although she had scattered invitations like raindrops in the cocktail bar at the Crown it had, nevertheless, surprised Polly how many of those ‘friends' had turned out to be smart, up-to-the-minute, unfamiliar girls who – although this had not surprised her at all – had hung on Roy Kington's every word when, with a glass of what she feared to be Benedict's best brandy in his hand, he had talked rather more than she actually liked about the excitements he had known and clearly missed in wartime France. Where had these girls come from? She couldn't imagine. Nor, since she was neither particularly observant nor particularly deceitful herself – not bright enough to be devious, thought Miriam – had she noticed how often, on Miriam's instructions, Roy's glass had been filled so that now, as they stood face to face in the garden by the dark of the rhododendron hedge he was quite drunk in the manner of trench soldiers – as Euan Ash was often drunk – without showing it, or at least not to a girl with so little real experience as Polly.

‘Well, Polly, what's it to be? Are you going to prove it? Or not? In which case – You know what I mean.'

She knew. Sally Templeton who was so cheerful and good-natured and would do anything to get a husband. Supposing she
did
get him – this way. Supposing this was all it took? What a fool Polly would feel then? And if not Sally, then how many of those smart, modern girls who had suddenly invaded High Meadows could be trusted to turn him away?

‘Well, Polly?'

The teasing glow faded from her abdomen as she hung her head.

‘All right.'

‘You'd better mean it. Don't lead me on.'

‘I do. But where?' He made a sudden lunge at her, taking her like an adversary, seeing no reason, after all these weeks of blowing hot and cold, to waste more time.

‘Good Lord, not here – for Heaven's sake.' Gasping for air between his kisses she was horrified.

‘Come to my car then.'

‘Roy!
It's parked on the drive. They'd see us from the windows.'

‘Where then? Is that a summer-house down there?'

‘Oh –
that.
It's filthy.'

‘Listen,' he was out of breath, pugnacious, ‘are you backing out? You said you would. I won't ask again. I'm a man, Polly – not a kid like brother Rex or a simpleton like Roger.'

‘Oh yes I know. And I will – I want to …'

She had never wanted anything so little in her life.

‘That's my girl – and you'll be my girl, you know, afterwards. You'll like it, Polly.'

She doubted that.

‘I'm sure I shall. But we can't manage it here – can we?'

‘Anywhere, Polly.'

He leaned her back into the rhododendron hedge, the thick, old branches giving way just sufficiently to support her body half reclining, and leaning over her – knowing he had no time to lose – began to uncover her shoulders and slide her skirt up until it was waist high and he had bared her breasts.

‘Isn't this fun, Polly?'

It was terrible, humiliating, something – a twig she supposed – was sticking into her back. She felt intolerably exposed, ridiculous, horribly upset. And what, at the end of it, if she had a baby?

‘Yes. It's lovely,' she said.

‘Then do something about it, Polly. Answer me.'

Whatever could he mean? All she really knew of lovemaking, from the mutterings of Eunice and her mother, was that women lay on their backs in bed in the dark and endured it. Like childbirth! Dear God!

‘Touch me, Polly.'

He had shrugged off his jacket and his shirt and although she would really have preferred to use her hands to cover her eyes she put them hesitantly on his bare skin, palms flat down and then stroking a little.

‘That's nice.'

‘You do love me, Roy, don't you.'

‘Yes – I'm just going to show you, aren't I.'

Suddenly she felt something strange against her leg – oh God, she
knew
what it was and at the same time could not imagine it, was just thankful, unutterably thankful, that she couldn't see it, couldn't be expected to look.

‘Roy –' And she was pleading, imploring him.

‘You'll be all right, old girl. Won't hurt a bit – not much at any rate – so they say –'

‘No – please don't.'

‘They say that too.'

Sliding a hard, cold hand between her knees he began to force them apart. That had happened before, with him, with others, but only her body had been uncovered, never his, never theirs; there had been no raw and crude exposure to this implement of procreation, this – the only name she knew for it had been learned in the nursery. And she had been too young to share that nursery with her brothers.

Now she was sick with terror, trembling from head to foot, caught in a double trap since she could neither go through with this nor bear to lose him.

‘Darling.' She flung her arms around his neck, kissing him wildly and talking very fast. ‘Not here, not here, no, it's too special to waste like this. Let's do it properly the first time …'

He swore at her viciously but she ignored it – she had not understood the words in any case – and rushed on. ‘I know what we can do – yes, yes I know. Tomorrow, at my mother's birthday party, when the house will be full to bursting, we can get into my bedroom – yes we can – easily – and nobody will know. Oh darling – just think of it …'

He swore at her again and still she went on talking, kissing him.

‘But I want to give myself to you properly, Roy, don't you see that – in my cosy bed, absolutely without anything on – the two of us – and the door locked and the bottle of champagne hidden in my wardrobe for afterwards …'

‘Now,' he said.

‘Tomorrow,' she told him, meaning it desperately, sincerely, genuinely believing that tomorrow it would be all right. He could do anything he liked with her tomorrow. Anything. She told him so. He told her graphically – his temper rising partly from natural peevishness, partly from a physical distress she did not understand – exactly what he intended to do with her now. She panicked; pushed him away.

‘That's the end of it,' he told her.

‘No,' she said, ‘tomorrow. I promise. Cross my heart I do.'

‘All right. I'll come to your mother's party for that and if I don't get it you'll never see me again.' She was in a fever the next morning.

‘A great day for it,' said Miriam archly. ‘Who knows what it might bring?'

It brought Claire, coming early, in a garden party dress of black georgette patterned with pink tea roses, bringing her small travelling bag since she was to stay the night.

‘Give me a kiss, dear,' said Miriam. ‘Your dear little blue room is ready. It pleases me so much to think of you making your nest – if only a weekend nest – there, especially now that I have a feeling Polly is about to fly away.'

It brought Eunice in last year's blue silk dress and old cream straw hat and a new blue ribbon, her boys each one in a brand-new bespoke suit, hand-made shoes, spotless linen, carrying their beautifully wrapped ‘presents for Grandmamma'. It brought Edward Lyall, still suffering on this bright May afternoon from his winter cold, and Dorothy suffering with him, his medicines and nasal sprays and handkerchiefs taking so much space in her handbag that she had had to leave her own ‘essentials‘ behind. It brought Benedict for perhaps ten minutes and then, after an hour or so, for a brief appearance often more. It did not – although no one appeared to notice it – bring Nola. It brought Redfearns and Greenwoods, Templetons, that whole bevy of girls from the Crown – ‘My goodness, Polly, you
said
they were your friends!' – the Swanfield doctors and lawyers and bankers, Edith and Roger Timms. It brought Roy Kington and, on his arm, a sultry, willowy brunette Polly had never seen before but whom she recognized instantly as ‘a tart'.