Privileged Children (9 page)

‘
THE GERMANS ON THE MARNE
,’ Anatole read in the newspaper. He frowned peacefully, read the first few words and turned over the page.

Upstairs, Finola was screaming.

‘Anatole, I can’t bear it’ moaned Jenny. ‘Why don’t you go and shut her up?’

‘Because I have to leave in three minutes and I shall be late in any case.’

Jenny stared. ‘Liza won’t go, you know.’

‘Liza will go once Finola has screamed enough.’

Firmly he opened the paper at the centre pages and looked at the leading article. He must be imagining that Finola’s screams were getting louder. He waited.

Anatole crumpled up the paper and went upstairs. He galloped up the last flight. There was Finola, in her cubbyhole of a nursery next to his bedroom, purple in the face. She was still in her nightdress, sitting on the floor surrounded by bedclothes which she had pulled off the bed. It had been Kate’s turn to wake Finola and give her breakfast today, but Kate had forgotten and Finola could not yet walk downstairs: she could only yell. ‘Hush, hush,
je
te
donnerai
ton
petit-déjeuner
,’ said Anatole, scooping up the child, who was tiny for her eighteen months. ‘I thought Kate had taken you back upstairs, you see, darling. There, hush.’ She let herself relax and be carried downstairs.

Finola could not be left in the kitchen if no one had the time to watch her, for she was at an age when she put everything
small enough into her mouth and clambered over everything large enough. In her own room there was nothing to endanger her, so she was sometimes left there for fairly long periods. In the intervals, two or three people at once would play with her, talk to her and cuddle her. There was not enough money to pay a nanny, although shortly after Finola’s return it had been decided that she needed one.

Anatole put her in her high chair in the kitchen and started smashing eggs for her breakfast.

‘Do you realise that Liza was just upstairs and she didn’t even go to see whether there was anything wrong with the child? That bitch Kate didn’t feed her,’ said Anatole to Jenny.

‘I can get her breakfast,’ said Jenny. ‘You go off. It doesn’t matter if I’m late for school; they don’t even notice me being late any more, I’m late so often.’

‘She’s not going to have to eat your scrambled eggs after she’s had no food since yesterday, my dear Jenny,’ said Anatole, slamming the saucepan down on the stove.

Jenny sighed. ‘Anatole, why don’t you tell Liza that she’s a lazy pig instead of shouting about her to me?’

‘What good did telling Liza ever do? She just looks dreamily through you. You know that perfectly well.’

Finola started to whimper. ‘Pick her up,’ said Anatole. ‘I shouldn’t be shouting, it upsets her.’

‘I suppose she thinks it’s her who’s made you angry,’ said Jenny. ‘God, it must be terrible to be a baby. Can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t read, can’t even feed themselves or control their bodies at all.’

‘Finola is past that stage, thank goodness,’ said Anatole, but he was frowning at Jenny and cooking with less vigour than before.

‘Yes, but she’s still pretty helpless. And she still doesn’t talk at all, though she understands everything. Why is it that everyone thinks it’s
terrible
when someone is paralysed when they’re grown up, and yet we don’t think it’s awful for a baby to be like that.’

‘It is a normal condition which one grows out of, you know,’ said Anatole.

‘Yes, but it doesn’t seem like that to the baby, does it? And that’s one’s first experience,’ mused Jenny, ‘everyone being
so much bigger than you, so powerful, so strange, and you able to do absolutely nothing. I bet we don’t remember being a baby simply because the experience was so ghastly that we’ve cut it out of our minds.’

‘But if you are loved …’ said Anatole, slowly ladling the eggs on to a plate for Finola while Jenny held the child closely and allowed her to pull her hair.

‘That can make things better, obviously. But all the love in the world can’t make you able to do things for yourself if you’re a baby.’

‘So independence is worth more than love?’ said Anatole.

‘I think so,’ said Jenny, ‘certainly in such an extreme case.’

‘An extreme case?’ said Anatole. ‘Jenny, I must go. I shall have to waste money on a bus if I’m to get there within half an hour of the right time. Can you feed her?’

‘Of course,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s quicker to walk nowadays, the buses are so irregular.’

‘Well, I shall just have to try my luck.’

Anatole borrowed Augustus’s overcoat, which was considerably less shabby than his own, and a hat belonging to a cousin of Clementina’s who was currently staying at Bramham Gardens.

He took a very crowded bus from Earl’s Court to Belgravia, and walked several hundred yards to Eaton Place. The Belgravia streets were quiet. There were no wartime posters on the walls. Well-polished motorcars stood outside the wide white portals of some of the houses. Due influence had preserved even some of the iron railings from requisition.

The door of the Fawcetts’ house was opened by an elderly butler.

‘I’m afraid, Monsieur Anatole, that Miss Louisa is with Miss Willsford at the moment. It is half-past ten.’

‘Then the lesson is cancelled?’ said Anatole eagerly.

The butler considered. ‘I will inform Miss Willsford of your arrival. Please wait here.’ He walked slowly upstairs.

When he at last came back — after Anatole had spent some time on the exceedingly uncomfortable hall chair which had been designated to him — the butler announced
that Anatole would be allowed to give Miss Louisa her violin lesson at eleven o’clock. He was meanwhile expected to remain in the hall. Anatole gritted his teeth.

‘Psst!’ It was Lady Caroline.

‘I’ve been waiting for you for ages,’ she whispered. ‘Come in here. Whatever held you up so long?’

‘A traffic jam,’ shrugged Anatole.

‘Oh, so irritating.’ He did not know to what she was referring.

Caroline was tall and handsome in the manner which had gone out of fashion ten years ago: she was a full-bosomed, dark-haired woman with heavy features and rich colouring. Anatole briefly wondered why he always ended up with tall women when he thought that he was looking for someone nearly as small as himself.

‘Tell me,’ began Caroline, ‘how’s your wife getting on in the War Office?’

‘It bores her to tears,’ he replied, ‘but it gives her something to do, which is the important thing.’

‘I did think that everyone under twenty-five became a nurse if their parents allowed them to,’ said Caroline. ‘Your wife is terribly young, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Anatole.

Caroline came to sit beside him and looked down at the floor.

‘Why did you marry her?’ she said.

‘Caroline, I don’t want to talk about it with you, because you can never remember even the commonplace details of my private life, such as my address.’

‘Darling! Why are you cross? But you really aren’t happy with your wife, are you?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t refer to Alice as my wife. I always think that Charlotte has been resurrected from the dead when that expression is used.’

‘Charlotte?’

‘There, you see, you are quite uninterested in my life when it does not affect you directly. I have told you that my first wife was called Charlotte.’

‘Anatole, do tell me why you’re in such a bad mood.’

‘I am not in a bad mood. Could you please tell your damned butler to show me into some room to wait and not leave me in the freezing cold hall.’

‘I know, isn’t it icy? It’s all this economising for the war effort; you see, one feels one must cooperate. Do you know I haven’t ordered one new dinner dress this season. Of course, I’ll tell Higgins,’ she added. ‘I’m sure economising can’t be a good thing, you know. After all, if one doesn’t buy things, trade collapses, and how can that be good for the country?’

‘Caroline, you support British trade and industry not when you order twenty-five new evening dresses but when you pay for them.’

‘Good heavens, you really are in a bad mood, darling. Whatever’s happened? Can’t I help?’ She put her hand on his thigh. He said nothing, so she caressed him. He pushed her hand away.

‘You’re tired of me,’ she said.

‘Caroline,’ sighed Anatole.

‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘I’m being a tiresome, demanding mistress. What do you want me to be like, Anatole? I’ve been cheerful and frivolous, and you don’t like that, and I’ve tried to help you and you don’t want that either.’

‘I’m sorry, Caroline,’ said Anatole. He looked out into the street and did not move as she talked.

‘You’re so lucky, Anatole. Everyone loves and needs you so much. You don’t appreciate how marvellous it is to be wanted like that.’

‘I know what it is like,’ he said.

‘Anatole, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Since Charles was killed I’ve been so alone. My husband never sees me any more, and of course it would be worse if I did have to see him. And as for my friends — well, apart from the relief-committee work, of course, one’s never even serious with them, let alone intimate.’

‘When your sons have been killed, are you serious with one another then?’ said Anatole.

‘One doesn’t say anything except how sorry one is,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s almost as though really showing one’s misery is betraying the war effort. It’s only with you that I can show myself, so to speak.’

‘You must make a new sort of friend, Caroline, and you will have no more need of me,’ he said. ‘It is bad to depend on one person you know,’ he added, for her face, swiftly turned towards him, was trembling, and her eyes were blank with tears. Caroline had always reminded him of someone from his past. Now he remembered that she was a rich, heavy, unhappy, middle-aged woman, very like a lady whom he had known in Paris in 1900. The Parisienne had however not been handsome, but Anatole had then been able to make love to her despite that, as she had been paying him to do. Anatole closed his eyes and wrapped his arms round himself.

‘Anatole, please come here tonight.’

‘I can’t, Caroline, it’s my turn to cook and I cannot ask anyone else to do it; they’re all working so much harder than I. The other men don’t have to cook,’ he muttered.

‘When will you come?’

He looked at her. He opened his mouth, closed it again and then said, ‘I don’t know, Caroline. I must go and give Louisa her lesson now. Goodbye.’ He went upstairs and waited outside the school room for ten minutes.

Louisa Fawcett, who was twelve years old, managed to look very like her mother without being a turn-of-the-century beauty. A belt was tied beneath her plump waist and her legs were encased in thick wrinkled stockings.

‘Monsieur Anatole, the string on my violin’s broken,’ she said.

‘When will it be mended?’

‘I don’t know, it’s so hard to get things done nowadays, Miss Willsford said, with the war and everything.’

‘All right, but as I have come all the way here we can have a piano lesson instead. Louisa, don’t look so cross, please. I know you hate music, but I can’t stop your parents making you learn to play, I’m afraid, and I have to earn my living by teaching you.’

She sat down heavily on the piano stool. ‘When I go to school next year I can give up learning the piano. Anyway that’s what mother said two weeks ago. I suppose she’ll change her mind.’

‘Is there any piece which repels you less than the others
which you can play?’

Louisa chose ‘Goodbye, Dolly Gray’. Anatole controlled his expression as she thumped out the tune. ‘Sing it,’ he said, ‘if that would help you.’ Anatole did not teach her singing and had never heard her voice: she sang far better than she played. He told her so and she blushed.

‘Monsieur Anatole,’ she said, ‘if you don’t like teaching, why don’t you play the violin yourself? In an orchestra or something?’

‘Because I am not good enough,’ he said. ‘Always remember, Louisa, that I teach because I am an inferior musician. Never respect your teachers.’ He said it as though he were angry with her.

Anatole had two hours to wait until he gave his next lesson, which was also in this part of London. He had forgotten to bring any sandwiches with him. Usually, on this empty day of the week, he ate something in the park. In any case it was too early for lunch. Hyde Park would be grey and wet, full of skinny leafless trees. Instead of going there Anatole walked slowly through the red Edwardian streets west of Sloane Street.

To eat in a restaurant near here would cost at least half a crown. He might as well, he thought, spend more than that if he was going to waste his money. He felt hungrier than he had been for a long time.

He found a small restaurant near Basil Street. It was early as yet, but the restaurant was beginning to fill up with people. Anatole reckoned that he must be the oldest person present. The restaurant was filled with small, rickety new tables and chairs. It was not well lit. A very modern gramophone was playing a tango tune in one corner. Sitting at the tables were girls out alone with men who were probably not their brothers; they wore make-up and smoked quite openly and their skirts stopped at mid-calf. If only Caroline’s daughter were old enough, Anatole thought, he would have heard a lot about the corrupting effects of the war. Several of the young men at the restaurant were officers on leave and it was at the tables where they sat that the talk and the laughter were loudest.

Anatole ate a small expensive plate of an over-spiced stew
of some kind, and drank half a bottle of wine. It was very hot in the restaurant and he felt almost tipsy though he had drunk so little. He paid his bill and went out to roam around until a quarter to two, when he went to Cadogan Square. He was to see the only pupil of his who had much talent; she performed particularly well, but he scarcely noticed it. Afterwards he went to another appointment in Kensington, and then he returned to Bramham Gardens.

Everyone was out, except for Clementina’s cousin Edmund. Clementina had left a note saying she had taken Finola with her.