Give Us This Day (16 page)

Eight

Swanns at Large

S
he thought about them all a great deal. The big old house was quiet as a convent these days and seemed half-empty, too, despite its four indoor and four outdoor staff. Adam and Edward were away at work all day and the only one on hand was Margaret who, notwithstanding the fact that she had put her hair up four years ago, and was now an unusually pretty child of eighteen (it was natural that Henrietta should think of the youngest of nine as a child), was inclined to be solitary and spent so much of her time painting.

Sometimes, indeed, whenever Henrietta pondered it deeply, she resented his decision to return to the yard, having come to believe he was done with all that. It was only after that long gossip with Deborah, when her adopted daughter returned here for a holiday in August, that she adjusted to his abrupt return to the city.

There had been the unlooked-for bonus in the permanent presence of George’s four children, Max, Rudi, Adam, and her namesake, Hetty, the first of her grandchildren she had a chance to spoil, but they were all so like their mother that they did not seem children to her, more like a quartet of little adults, with their impeccable manners and ingrained habits of obedience instilled into them by their Austrian mother. Familiarity with Gisela’s children led her to reflect upon the curious choice of mate made by the most extrovert of her sons. She would have thought George would have sought out a very different girl, pretty possibly but fashionable and as self-willed as himself, whereas Gisela was by far the most complaisant of her daughters-in-law.

Henrietta knew all about that shocking lapse of his by now, although the menfolk had done their best to fob her off with half-truths. Secretly it hadn’t surprised her much. In so many ways he was more like Adam than any of them, and she imagined Gisela’s placidity would have exasperated him in time and set him thinking of more exhilarating romps between sheets. A man of his type, and Adam’s, needed more from a woman than acquiescence, and she even went so far as to discuss this with Deborah when they held a stimulating inquest on the scandal in August.

She had always been able to confide in Deborah, ever since that awful time after the Staplehurst rail crash, when she would have gone out of her mind had it not been for the child’s unwavering faith and ability to communicate it to others. Deborah Avery, a love-child of Adam’s former partner, Josh Avery, had never seemed less than a daughter to her, and marriage to that nice young journalist, Milton Jeffs, had done nothing to weaken their relationship. She had taken it for granted that Deborah, with her quick brain and ready access to Adam, would know more about George’s wobble than she did, and she was right. Somehow, although Deborah lived in far-off Devonshire, where her husband ran a local newspaper, she was in possession of all the facts—George’s shameful neglect of work, wife, and family, his scandalous affair with the wife of Sir James Lockerbie, his misplaced confidence in that scoundrel Wesley Tybalt (who had since disappeared from the face of the earth), and finally that awful fire that had drawn Adam back into the network. What Henrietta wasn’t sure about was Adam’s motive in letting the boy have his head about that obsession of his, and this Deborah had been able to pass on, saying, with a chuckle: “But it’s so characteristic of him, Aunt Hetty! He isn’t really a stick-in-the-mud, you know, he just likes to pretend he is. He knows George is absolutely right about the advantages of getting a flying start with mechanical transport, and I think he did it for Swann-on-Wheels rather than George.”

She had been surprised by that, thinking that Deborah would have had more sense than to assume the time was fast approaching when Swann’s merchandise would be rattled about the country in horseless vehicles, of the kind George had played with for so long in the old stable across the yard.

“You can’t mean to say you agree with him, Debbie? You can’t think we’ll soon be selling off all those Clydesdales and Cleveland Bays?” and Debbie had replied, laughingly, that of course she agreed with him, and that George’s sense of dedication, when one thought about it, was another Swann characteristic.

“Adam looked far ahead when he threw up soldiering to start the network in 1858, didn’t he? Everyone thought he was daft then. Even you, I suspect, when you married him. Come now, be honest, Auntie, you would have much preferred to marry a boneheaded soldier in scarlet and gold, wouldn’t you? Uncle Adam always declares that you would and tried to persuade him to stay in the army.”

“Adam Swann has too long a memory for my liking,” Henrietta grumbled, remembering this was true at the time Adam rescued her from a shepherd’s hut on a rain-soaked moor. “But surely, a haulier’s business with teams and waggons is one thing and that snorting monster George brought home from Vienna is quite another. I mean, it’s really no more than a toy, is it? Oh, I know we have motors on the roads nowadays, and there are even one or two about here, although whenever I see one it’s always being towed home by cart-horses.”

“That’s what I mean. Until now motors have been regarded as expensive toys, even by their inventors, but that won’t last. They’re getting better and faster and more powerful every day, and it’s quite obvious they’ll have to be used for much more than road racing and one-day excursions to the seaside. But I didn’t come in here to talk about motors or George either, Auntie. I’ve got a piece of family gossip that you’ll be the first to learn, but you must promise me you’ll keep it a secret until I give you the word. Even from Uncle Adam.”

Henrietta fidgeted. All her life she had relished secrets, and had been flattered when one was entrusted to her. So rarely, however, had she kept faith with her confidante that fewer and fewer secrets came her way now that she was a grandmother many times over.

“Tell! You know I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

“I doubt it but I’ll take the risk. I’m going to have a baby.”

The shock was so great that it precipitated Henrietta out of her chair. “
A child! You, Debbie? But goodness gracious me, you’re… you’re forty-one by m
y reckoning.”

“You don’t have to shout about it. Yes, I’ll be forty-two in November, and Milton and I had long since given up hope, but it’s true, thank goodness. It will be born in late January, and there’s no more doubt about it. In fact, that’s one reason why I came up without Milt, to see a specialist. I’ve never spent a night away from Milt until now.”

“Eight years!” Henrietta exclaimed. “Eight years and now… now
this
?” and an expression of anxiety crossed her face, so acute that it touched Debbie. “Aren’t you scared half out of your wits?”

“Of course I’m not. It’s unusual, I’m told, but it’s not unique. All the medical men I’ve seen—and Milton has fussed no end in that direction—tell me I’m exceptionally healthy and, given luck and good care, I’ll be all right. It might have to be a Caesarean section but they can’t be sure until nearer the time.”

Henrietta gazed at her with awe. Debbie had always seemed so wise, even when she was the child Adam brought in here out of the snow thirty-odd years ago. She had heard vague and rather frightening talk about Caesarean sections at her croquet-party gossips, but she had never met any woman who had one or even anticipated having one.

“Well, it would scare the living daylights out of me! I’m pleased for you, of course, for I’ve known all the time you longed for one. But after eight years trying…”

“Trying is about right,” Debbie said, merrily. “I’m sure nobody could have tried harder,” and saying that brought Debbie even closer, for Henrietta would have been too inhibited to talk this way with any of her daughters, even Joanna who had been pregnant, stupid girl, when she ran off with that young scamp, Clinton Coles.

“Have I got to keep this a secret?” she wailed, and Deborah said she had, for at least a month, for if anything happened between now and January she would prefer to nurse her disappointment in secret.

“Oh, I’m sure nothing will,” Henrietta declared, slowly adjusting to the stupendous news and finding herself able to share Debbie’s pleasure. “To think you’ll be ahead of Giles and Romayne after all and Romayne only thirty!” and she kissed Debbie on the cheek and begged her to write soon and give her permission to confide in Adam and the girls.

“And now you tell me all your family gossip, aside from George,” Debbie said. “Gisela’s tribe will be in to lunch any minute and we shan’t get another chance. Has Margaret got a beau yet?”

She recounted all the Swann trivia, the kind of detail Adam would never bother to pass on, for she suspected he and Debbie discussed nothing but politics whenever they met. No, Margaret hadn’t got an admirer, and didn’t seem to want one. Instead she spent hours and hours painting about the estate, and never had much to say for herself at a soiree or fete. Alex, the eldest son, was in India now and so was his wife Lydia, of course, for she accompanied him everywhere. Their daughter Rose and son Garnet (named for Sir Garnet Wolseley, Alex’s commander in Egypt) were expected home soon to get their education here, but Alex was on a five-year tour and would be forty before she saw him again. It was very depressing, she admitted, to have to acknowledge a son of nearly forty, but there it was; she didn’t feel fifty-eight, and she didn’t think she looked it when she was well corseted. Giles and Romayne led a strange, bizarre life, bereft of all social occasions and as obsessed with politics as George was with his engines, surely the two dullest preoccupations on earth if one discounted cricket. Stella, eldest of the brood, was apparently content with her peasant’s life over at Dewponds and her tribe of mopheaded peasant children and that lumping husband of hers, Denzil Fawcett.

“The girl really let herself go after she married a second time,” Henrietta said, “and I can never understand why. She turns the scale to twelve stone now and never wears anything but straw bonnets and gingham. It’s odd, for you remember how fashionable she was when she was growing up here, and how she could have taken her pick from the hunting set in this part of the county. But there it is, it’s her life, I suppose, and when I remember that frightful first marriage of hers, I really ought not to grumble. Denzil still treats her as though she was one of those Gainsborough ladies, stepping out of a picture frame.” Then there was Hugo, still a bachelor, and likely to be, poor boy, for he never stood still long enough to fall in love, although his sisters told her girls swooned at the sight of him. As for young Edward, Adam seemed to think he had a rare head for business and a passion for work, and
that
was a comfort, now that George had disappointed everybody.

“And how about Joanna and Helen, Auntie?” Debbie prompted, remarking privately that Henrietta had always been disposed to dismiss girls as afterthoughts.

“Oh, they might just as well be dead for all I see or hear of them. Joanna is stuck in Dublin with Clinton and their family, and Adam seems well satisfied with all he hears of the Irish branch. And poor Helen and that stuffy missionary she married are in China. They moved on there from Africa last Christmas and she’s written saying Rowland is worked off his feet, for they have all the diseases in the medical dictionary out there. I do wish she’d make him throw it all up and buy a nice practice here in Kent. He could well afford it. His father is rich as Croesus and it can’t be doing the girl any good in all those terrible climates. She lost her first baby, you remember, and never had another. I’ve only seen them twice since they married.”

“She’s probably happier with a man absorbed in what he’s doing,” Debbie said, “and from what I remember of Rowland Coles he isn’t a husband to be ‘talked’ into anything.” She glanced at Henrietta shrewdly, adding, “Anyway, who are you to advise a wife to take the initiative? You never did, save that one time when Uncle Adam lost his leg and wasn’t around to keep you in order.”

“Ah,” said Henrietta, unabashed, “but nobody in their senses could compare Clinton or Rowland Coles with Adam, could they? I mean, he’s a very remarkable man, isn’t he, and I’m not alone in thinking so, am I?”

“No, Auntie, you’re certainly not,” Debbie said, laughing, “but even if you were, nobody could persuade you to the contrary.”

Out across the paddock Phoebe Fraser’s lunch-bell jangled and as Henrietta bustled off Margaret came in, wearing a sun-bonnet and a linen dress plentifully bedaubed with paint. She held a sketch under her arm and Deborah said, “Let me see it, Miggs. And don’t tell me it isn’t finished.”

“Finished or not it’s no masterpiece,” Margaret said, and held it up, to reveal what Deborah at once thought a very colourful and exceptionally strong watercolour of a corner of the paddock wood, where the path ran under a stand of beeches towards Adam’s Hermitage. The picture centred on the beech clump but the foreground was a riot of colour, composed of one tall foxglove, some yellow toadflax, and a sprinkling of trefoil. The composition was uncontrived and the painting of the leaves, petals, and seed-pods impressionistic, yet definite enough for individual flowers to be identified. “It’s very good indeed, Miggs. And I believe you think it is.”

“Oh, I’m coming along,” Miggs admitted, “but this is far too free to impress a professional. An Academician would dismiss it as woolly.”

“I think half the pictures they exhibit are woolly,” Debbie said, “and all paintings should be ‘free’ as you say. At least, they should give that impression. Do you ever paint in oils, Miggs?”

“Not landscapes and never outdoors. Foliage and flowers require softer treatment, I think. At least, mine do. I should concentrate on oils if I was a real painter.”

“But you
are
a real painter, Miggs. You’ve got a very individual style. Why, I’ve seen hundreds of amateur flower paintings and landscapes and I’d sooner have this one on my wall than the best of them.”

She noticed the girl’s cheeks flushed, and thought,
Poor Miggs! Growing up here among all these Philistines. It must be very discouraging for her sometime
s, and said, “Have you ever sold a painting, Miggs?”