Dorothy Eden (12 page)

Beatrice, weak herself from another difficult birth (it seemed that for all her cosy roundness she was not an ideal shape for child-bearing), tried to establish a peaceful formula for running the house.

Nanny, with a new and delicate baby to care for, required an under-nurse to help with the solemn just toddling Florence, and now the house was really too small. The mirror room, said Beatrice, would have to be turned into a day nursery. It was a pity, but it had always been a charming folly, and quite useless. Now, with a son in the nursery, she had the best excuse for selling the collection of mirrors and having the room redecorated. She had known she had been waiting a long time for the opportunity to do this.

Mrs Overton was outraged and said so. The mirror over the mantelpiece was said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. She had used to look into it and imagine it was the face of a lost queen that she saw. Privately, Beatrice didn’t believe that Blanche Overton had ever seen any face but her own. Sentimental arguments had no effect on her. The mirror room, together with its uncomfortable memory, was going.

If Mrs Overton did not approve of that, she did approve of her grandson. She thought him quite adorable, so much better looking than his sister, a true Overton.

Which might have been the reason for Joshua Bonnington wearily closing his eyes when the baby was shown to him. Or it may have been genuine weakness, for the second stroke had been cruel. It had deprived him of speech, and left severe paralysis down his right side. He could communicate only by an occasional awkwardly scrawled message on a slate. A Harley Street specialist had been called in but this great man held out little hope for him.

At least he had lived to set eyes on his grandson, Beatrice comforted herself. If he saw too much Overton in the baby, and guessed that this child was destined for a military career, Beatrice was very happy about little Edwin herself. She saw all William’s good looks in the tiny face, and fancied that the angry yell, for he was a fretful baby, was an echo of the old General’s.

As well as falling naturally into her old routine of going to Bonnington’s every morning, she found time to spend hours at Papa’s bedside. She was never sure how much he heard, or remembered, but she told him everything about the shop, and her new arrangements at Overton House.

If only he could see how cosy the new nursery was, with the walls stripped of their shabby silk wallpaper and painted a nice fresh green, a red turkey rug in front of the fire, a comfortable rocking chair for Nanny, and smaller chairs and a low table for the children. William’s old rocking horse had been brought down from the attics. There was a dolls’ house for Florence, and a fine collection of toy soldiers for Edwin when he was old enough to play with them.

The room had come alive. There were no more leering ghosts in old mirrors, no chance of glimpsing reflections of stolen kisses or other more daring indiscretions.

Papa indicated that he wanted to write something on his slate. Beatrice put the chalk in his fingers, and he scrawled feebly, “
Two households to support, Bea. Don’t forget your mother is
—” Here he paused for a long time. Then he wrote “
extra
-” and paused again. The word, thought Beatrice, was meant to be ‘extravagant’ but it had proved beyond poor Papa’s spelling ability. Presently he substituted, “
spendthrift like your husband.
”

That was Papa’s last message to her, for he died that night.

Laid out for burial, he had a stern majestic remoteness that appalled and terrified her. She knew that she had lost the two strong men in her life, Papa and the old General. Now she had to be strong herself. There were so many people dependent on her, William and their children, Mamma, all the servants, all of Bonnington’s staff. It was too much. No, it wasn’t. She could manage.

After she had made her sad farewell to Papa, lying in his unwanted majesty, she walked home alone, and went into the churchyard opposite Overton House. The iron gates of the Overton vault were locked. Standing outside them was not like kneeling before a grave. Nevertheless Beatrice talked earnestly to the General, asking him to help her to have courage. “You and Papa, you get together in heaven and help me,” she admonished him sternly.

They were both responsible for what she was. Were she and William to have a similar profound influence over their children? The thought was unnerving. Innocent lives, shaped by the character, behaviour and circumstances of their parents…

It was a grey cold February day. The copper beech and the Judas tree lifted skeleton arms over the brick wall enclosing Overton House. There was no wind, no birds calling. Time seemed to have come to a stop in this empty afternoon.

But it hadn’t, of course. Beatrice suddenly lifted her head with brisk purpose. William, summoned from Venice, to which he had escaped as soon as possible after Edwin’s birth, was arriving tonight. She would go herself to meet him at Victoria station. She must be sure to take the warmest carriage rug, and the stoneware bottle, filled with hot water, for him to hold in his hands. He would be exhausted after the long journey. Returning to such inclement weather, he must not get a fresh chill. Neither did she intend to allow him to attend Papa’s funeral tomorrow. She only wanted him home, in the house, to bring it to life, to comfort her.

F
ORTUNATELY MAMMA WAS KEPT
contented after papa’s death by being provided with a companion, a thin and anxious spinster called Miss Finch whom she could bully, and with enough money to spend. She liked to see her grandchildren occasionally, Nanny Blair or Lizzie wheeling them down Heath Street in their perambulator, and spending an uneasy half hour in Mamma’s dark overcrowded drawing room. If the baby cried or Florence grew restless they were sent off at once.

What Mamma enjoyed most were shopping expeditions, dressing up for dinner in elaborate gowns, and spending the evenings after a too heavy meal playing whist or solitaire, while directing rambling monologues at the silent Miss Finch.

She had solved the problems of widowhood more successfully than Mrs Overton with her frenetic gaiety had. Beatrice prayed with intensity that such problems would never be hers. Whenever William was ill, or when weariness gave him that look of extreme fragility, a shaft of fear struck deep into her heart.

She would always have Bonnington’s, of course. Unlike Mamma and Mrs Overton and most other women, she had a powerful interest outside her home and family.

She would also have her children.

But what would these be without her adorable butterfly husband, her dearest love. Everything in her life was for him, and would be valueless without him.

That spring two fantails came to the garden and spent the sunny mornings flirting and preening in the honeysuckle outside the library window. William begged Beatrice to come and admire them. He stood with his arm round her waist, in his easy affectionate manner, and Beatrice loved the pretty creatures for being indirectly responsible for this embrace.

“They’re like your butterflies,” she said.

“Are all butterflies mine?”

“They always make me think of you.”

“We must have a day on the Heath with our nets. We haven’t done that for a long time.”

“No, we haven’t. I thought you had lost your enthusiasm for catching butterflies.”

“Not a bit. I was only going through my slides the other day. You know, a trip to Madeira might give us some fine new specimens. Why don’t we do that?”

“Oh—there’s nothing I’d like more. But is it possible? The children—”

“Take them with us.”

Her elation was already dying, killed by commonsense.

“William, you are the most impractical person. Think of the luggage. And Nanny Blair would have to go, probably Lizzie, too. Besides, Edwin is too small and delicate for travelling.”

His face, a faint tentative frown between the warm brown eyes, hung over hers.

“If I am the most impractical person, you are surely the most practical. Dear Bea!” He had left her and gone closer to the window to watch the flitting fantails. His profile had a sudden disturbing melancholy.

“Besides, of course, there’s Bonnington’s,” he said.

“Yes,” Beatrice replied evenly. “Though I wasn’t making that an excuse.”

“Be honest, Bea. You were, in your mind.”

She admitted that, reluctantly. So soon after Papa’s death, it was the worst possible time to be away.

“William, you must realise, without Bonnington’s—”

“The children would starve and your idle husband would be a beggar.”

“Darling, don’t exaggerate so. Besides you’re not idle, you’re always occupied with your book. It’s only that it’s too soon after Papa’s death.”
Two households to support…
Those words seemed to have been written on her brain.

“I understand perfectly.” William’s voice was equable. “When I make a great deal of money out of my book we’ll be able to snap our fingers at ladies’ corsets and all that fiddle faddle and go off to China or Timbuctoo.”

“Of course.”

“In the meantime perhaps we can have a day on the Heath. Bonnington’s could spare you for that.”

“Whatever day you suggest,” she said eagerly.

“But I must go back to Italy to finish my studies of Botticelli and Tintoretto. You won’t mind that because you know how the classics bore you. Before the heat of the summer, I thought.”

“If you must.” She refused to suspect him of a subtle form of blackmail, and hoped the desolation did not show in her face. She was afraid he would never again ask her to accompany him abroad.

Now that there were children in the house, Beatrice found that it was not quite so easy to fall into her old routine of leaving for the shop by nine-thirty. It meant rising earlier, taking care not to disturb William who needed his sleep, what with his delicate health and his reluctance to come to bed at nights. He was naturally a night owl, where she was not. She lived in dread of the day when he announced that he would move into the blue room next door, which he occupied when she was in the last stages of pregnancy. He would regard that as an eminently sensible arrangement. After all, he had only to open a door and cross the room if he wanted to join her. She knew that many marriages, especially among the aristocracy, were conducted in this way, but she was unashamedly lower class, and knew of no more ineffable delight than the warmth and comfort of her husband’s body beside her own.

Another of her acute pleasures was to look at his sleeping face, after Hawkins had called her in the morning, and she had crept quietly out of bed. Sometimes the bath that Hawkins had run for her was almost cold by the time she got into it. She had been standing dreaming, she said.

By the time she was bathed and dressed, however, there was no more time for dreaming. Annie had her breakfast on the dining room table sharp at a quarter to eight. There was just time to eat her eggs and bacon and devilled kidneys, and drink her coffee, and to glance at the morning newspaper before visiting the day nursery where the children would now be, Florence in her crisp white pinafore sitting at the table eating her porridge (she was a quiet well-behaved child) and Edwin in his high chair banging his spoon and being extremely vociferous.

“He’s having his tantrums, ma’am,” Nanny Blair usually said, in some despair. Edwin had tantrums all too often, though nobody knew why. It was certainly not because of spoiling. Nanny was far too strict for that. He was highly-strung, she said, and he was also greedy. He wanted everything. Fair screamed for things, she said. Then, when he smiled, he looked like an angel. Miss Florence now, she behaved like an angel, yet, because she was such a quiet little thing, she hardly got noticed.

After her morning visit, Beatrice could leave the children without any qualms and go down to the kitchen to discuss the day’s meals with Cook. She would then hand out the stores, give the instructions about the day’s duties to the housemaids, see that Tom, the gardener, and little white-faced Ted, the knife boy, had arrived punctually, and return upstairs knowing that the house would run smoothly while she was absent at the shop.

She had resisted getting a housekeeper. She wanted to be a real person to the servants, not one of those haughty and frankly lazy women who never descended below stairs but merely sat in the drawing room ringing a bell even for so small a thing as adding a lump of coal to the fire. Besides, she loved her home and would willingly have polished furniture and stair rails herself. She prayed she would never be reduced to filling in time by reading library books and paying tedious calls. That kind of life had been abandoned forever, thank goodness, when she had become absorbed in Bonnington’s.

It was already in her mind that if William took that proposed trip to Italy in the early summer she would spend longer hours at the shop. She could profitably put in a ten-hour day there. There was so much to do, so much to plan. The morning was never long enough.

They had had a tremendously successful window display of redcoats with swords, and dark-skinned warriors brandishing spears after the troubles in Africa. It had been very expensive having the dummies and the uniforms made, but it had brought flocks of people to the shop. They were to ignore that Regent Street shopkeeper, Mr Liberty and his aesthetic movement with William Morris and Burne Jones and all those willowy unhealthy young men and drooping women, Beatrice said. Bonnington’s theme was to be patriotism. Whenever there was an opportunity to display the flag it would be displayed. Their Indian department was a gratifying success, so why not start an African one. With the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand and diamonds in Kimberley they could stock bush outfits for the men, and strong sensible clothes for the intrepid women who set out for a pioneer life in South Africa. Indeed, why not begin by importing some of those Kimberley diamonds?

Beatrice was amused and pleased when it came to her ears that Bonnington’s Emporium was being called Bonnington’s Empire, and she herself its queen. “A certain store in the Edgware Road reigned over by an extraordinary little woman, Queen Bea,” one newspaper wrote. Beatrice sent the clipping to William in Florence, and he answered that he hoped she would descend from her throne when he came home, as he had no intention of being Prince Regent. There, he was taken for an English milord, and was often a guest in wealthy Florentine villas. “They do things in immense style, we couldn’t begin to match them. Wine out of solid gold goblets! I was entertained by a Prince and Princess in their small but unutterably beautiful pink marble palace in the Tuscan hills. But I still refuse to be a Regent myself!”