Snow Angels (29 page)

‘I’ve talked to my solicitor recently. I’ve changed my will. I’ve left you everything.’

Gil went cool with shock.

‘You can’t do that.’

‘I have done it.’

‘Henderson—’

‘I know the argument, but let me just say this first. I was mistaken in Robert Surtees. I regret it. He hasn’t made Abby happy and I don’t trust him. I’m not saying you would have made her happy. I think your personal life has been deplorable, but I trust you in other ways. I don’t want him to get his hands on anything that belongs to me. I’ve heard lately that he has gamed away his London house. God knows what more he will do. I wouldn’t care if he was a sensible, honourable businessman but he isn’t and I’d rather he didn’t get his hands on a business which has been my life’s work and belonged to my father. You know what you’re doing and you have a son.’

Gil didn’t say anything immediately. It was such a long, complicated speech. Then he got up from where he had been sitting at the desk working when Henderson walked in.

‘Abby would never forgive me,’ he said.

‘I would never forgive you if that bastard ruined my business. They don’t need anything from me and Abby has no legal comeback. She’s not my dependent; I can leave my assets as I choose. They’re rich. The only thing I ask is that if he were to gamble everything – I’m not saying he will, mind you, but disappointed men do strange things – if she needs help I want you to look after her. Promise me.’

‘What do you mean “a disappointed man”?’

Henderson’s eyes were red and watery but his look was direct.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No.’

‘She loved you. I kept her away from you. He loved her in the beginning but I don’t think she ever loved him. She married him to ease my mind. I think he realises now that Abby didn’t care for him as she cared for you.’

‘It might have been the worse then if we had married.’

‘Possibly, I’m not saying otherwise.’

‘There are other ways. You could give me a share and give her financial control—’

‘No.’

‘Then half.’

‘That would make it worse. I want it all in safe hands.’

‘Robert isn’t a bad man.’

‘No, worse than that, he’s a fool. Abby’s like Bella was. She would rather do without if she couldn’t have everything. Abby would have broken her heart when you were unfaithful to her, but she didn’t love Robert sufficiently to break her heart over him. That’s about all I have to be thankful for. Now, I’ve said my piece, I’m going to my bed.’

When he had gone, Gil let himself remember how he and
Abby had been that night in this little room because it was clear to him now that it would not happen again. She had lied to him that night, told him that she loved him. It was not true. It had been once, but it was not any more. His behaviour had altered that but this would finish everything. When he lost Henderson he would lose her too and this time for good. She would think he had put his own interests before her father’s or hers. She would not forgive him.

Gil and Henderson were invited to Toby’s wedding and they went, not least because the girl he was marrying was a cousin of John Marlowe’s wife, Edwina, and they could not afford to upset John and Edwina. Toby privately told Gil that ‘there’s no need to worry, old boy, it’s a rush job, she’s expecting’.

‘You got her pregnant?’

‘I sincerely hope so. If somebody else did it I’m not going to be very pleased. Don’t give me that naive look, it doesn’t suit you.’

Toby’s parents looked so pleased and would hardly be any less so when they found out that their new daughter-in-law was having a child. It was what they had wanted.

John and Edwina very sportingly, Henderson said later, stuck with Gil and Henderson. Abby came over to say hello. Robert didn’t. It was difficult for Gil because all his family were there. To have to sit across the room from Edward and his parents at the reception was one of the hardest things he could think of. It was miserable. John made him laugh and Edwina squeezed his hand and promised to invite him to dinner. After a while, when the food had been eaten, the toasts had been made and the speeches finished, several people drifted across to talk to John and he introduced them. They could not afford to offend him and so stayed talking. Gil would have given almost anything to
have his brother speak to him. Edward didn’t look at him. Charlotte chatted, seemingly oblivious, to all her friends and William glowered in the corner and said little.

It was a lovely day and the wedding meal was held at Toby’s parents’ home. The guests walked through the gardens and sat about outside on stone walls with champagne glasses in their hands and chatted. Matthew ran round the garden with the other children. Gil did not miss the way that his mother looked hungrily across at his child and he thought of how she must have missed him. He was her only grandchild and she had been so distressed when everything went wrong. She didn’t go to Matthew, so Gil thought she must have been given clear instructions by William, but he could see the longing in her face.

Edward avoided Toby except for what was polite. As the day drew towards evening, when everything had been said and done, Toby came to Gil and said, ‘Spare me some time or I shall go mad.’

They walked some way to the river with glasses of wine and sat there out of the way of other people. There was a tiny stone bridge. Toby sat down, let go of his breath and said, ‘Tell me it’s the right thing to do.’

‘How can I after what happened to us?’

‘It isn’t like that.’

‘Don’t you love Edward now?’

‘I wish it was as simple as that. She is a very nice girl.’

‘She seems so.’

‘We have a great deal in common. She loves gardens and good food and wine. We’ve bought a house and I really did enjoy that since she has taste. I think we shall deal very well together. Your brother and I are in the past. He has nothing to offer and I have too much to lose.’

‘But you love him?’

‘I shall always love him. Other things matter, other kinds of love, I didn’t think that I would want a child, but I find that I do, isn’t that strange?’

‘I don’t see why it’s strange.’

‘You love yours, don’t you?’

‘More than anything on earth.’

‘Anything?’ Toby said, looking up as Abby approached.

‘The dancing has started,’ she announced. Toby excused himself and walked back to the house. ‘You’re meant to ask me.’

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not. You shouldn’t be seen with me.’

‘If my father is, then I can’t very well ignore you and I’m determined that one day you will. There is nothing wrong with now.’

So they went back to the house and waltzed twice. People watched closely. Gil was inclined to think that he would fall over his feet or hers, but he didn’t, though he couldn’t talk to her and dance at the same time and there was little pleasure in it. Gil had thought in years past of what it would be like when they danced together and it was so disappointing, he so potentially clumsy and Abby aware of the watching eyes. Later Gil danced with Edwina and she invited him and Henderson to dinner the following weekend. Gil was astonished at the social success of his day, though when he looked up after that dance his father and mother had left. Edward left soon afterwards and Henderson was looking tired so they went too. Gil put Matthew to bed and, when he came downstairs, they sat in the garden and drank brandy and talked about the wedding and the various people.

‘You should try to make it up with your father,’ Henderson said.

‘No.’

‘He’ll die one day and your guilt will be all you have left.’

‘No, it won’t.’

‘No? There is too much at stake. A parent gives to a child so much that the debt can never be repaid, even a harsh parent.
People only find that out when they are parents. Hating him is not the way.’

Gil took his brandy and went to bed.

*

Edwina did her best to admit them to her social circle but Henderson didn’t want to go places, he was too tired, and though Gil had thought that he longed for company he found that it was not so. If he took Henderson they had to come back early; if he went alone he missed him and he had always found conversation difficult, especially with women. He realised that the only person he wanted to see was Abby and since, if she was in the area she came every weekend to see her father, he had her company, after a fashion, which was to say that she avoided him as much as possible. Gil was not insensitive. He kept out of her road as much as he could and if that was impossible, was as courteous as he could be.

Henderson began to fail visibly. He no longer went into work for any length of time and Gil was so concerned about him that in some ways it was easier if he didn’t; but when he was at work and Henderson was at home, he worried because he was not there for him. The ship was taking shape and Gil was inclined to hurry it because he was determined that Henderson should live to see the launch. All through that long, hot summer and into the cool of autumn Gil worked until he was dizzy. He didn’t sleep much; the problems of the two shipyards made him over-alert because they were too much for him without Henderson. He had lots of very good help, but it was not the same. Each day when he came home, no matter how late, Henderson always wanted an account of how the day had been and since there were almost insuperable problems all the time, Gil was obliged to invent a good deal of pap for Henderson’s ears so that he would feel there was nothing to worry about. His storytelling abilities seemed to have improved a good deal, until one day when Matthew said to him, ‘I want to hear a story like you tell Grandpa Henderson.’

Henderson either didn’t notice that Gil had become a fairly accomplished liar or he didn’t want to know and he would sit with shining eyes and listen to the tales from the shipyards, but Gil became so exhausted that he couldn’t eat or sleep and kept nodding over his desk in the afternoons.

The idea of a social life became a dream. He could not mix freely with people and they did not want him in spite of Edwina’s efforts. So Gil worked and watched Henderson lose weight, watched Mrs Wilkins try to tempt his appetite with delicious food and Kate hover over him on Sunday afternoons while he slept; he watched at the way Matthew would approach him cautiously and move quietly about the house.

By November the hull of the ship was nearly finished and Gil was pleased enough to congratulate himself on having managed that. He took half a day off on the Sunday, went home in time for the big meal in the middle of the day. When Henderson slept that afternoon by a big fire in the sitting-room, he took Matthew to the park to sail boats and for once enjoyed being with his noisy child as they raced their boats across the pond and the cold backendish wind filled the sails of the vessels. Gil thought about the launch; he thought of Henderson’s face as the big ship slid down the slipway, how proud he would be, how pleased. It would be a punch in the face for all those people who did not acknowledge them; perhaps it would even make up for the hardness of their life. It was a bigger ship than the
Northumbria
had been, yet a sleeker more modern ship because this time he had used the full extent of his creative powers. His father was not there to keep a bridle on him in any way. Henderson would stand admiring and only criticise what he knew and that was not design. This ship looked what it was, entirely his creation. Sometimes Gil would stand back and be surprised that he could have done such a thing; it was not possible that men built such huge and terrible things. Mr Philips was a happy man these days, with the kind of pay which enabled him to buy good suits and take his wife to Blackpool for her holidays and Mr McGregor,
though he said little, was ready to build powerful engines for all the work which should have been his at Collingwood’s and was his behind the gates of Reed’s.

Mr McGregor had a guilty conscience about his father, Gil was aware. They had as much work as they could handle and he knew that he was seriously damaging Collingwood’s shipyard because times were hard, orders were lower than they had been and yet his order book was full because his fame had spread abroad. When he went occasionally to Marlowes’ for dinner it was not for gossip and pretty women, it was to meet clever, influential men, often from other countries, men who cared nothing about his former life and knew much about his work. Gil felt as though nothing in the world could stop his success now.

He went home for tea in the gathering dusk that afternoon, Matthew dancing ahead of him carrying the boats. It was cold. There was the promise of rain, he thought, sniffing the air. Matthew ran into the sitting-room to be there first to see Henderson, while from the kitchen came the sound of teacups rattling and the smell of an orange cake which he knew Mrs Wilkins had made earlier, Henderson’s favourite. Matthew, chattering, left the boats in the hall and ran through into the sitting-room and Gil followed him. Henderson was still asleep in his favourite armchair. Matthew ran off to the kitchen to help bring in the sandwiches and cakes. Gil warmed his hands by the fire and waited for Henderson to wake up. He didn’t. When Gil got down beside him, he knew that Henderson was dead. He tried to convince himself that it was not so, but he had seen death too many times not to be sure that it had claimed his friend.

He went to the kitchen and told Mrs Wilkins and she and Kate kept Matthew in the kitchen while Gil went for the doctor. When he confirmed that Henderson was dead, they moved him upstairs into his bedroom. Gil had sent for Abby and when she came he went into the hall to meet her. She was thin and white
and looked terrified. He had said little in the note, not wanting her to travel into town knowing for certain that her father had died, but he knew that it was in his face.

‘Where is he?’ she said in a voice just above a whisper.

‘Upstairs.’

Abby looked at the stairs as though they were a mountain.

‘Shall I come with you?’

‘No.’

‘He’s dead, Abby.’

She nodded and went on up. Gil went back into the sitting-room, where his small son was making quite a good job of crying and eating orange cake. He sat down and took the child onto his knee. Abby was upstairs such a long time that Gil wanted to go to her, but he didn’t. He put Matthew to bed; shock had made him exhausted. He went straight to sleep. Kate had cleared the crumbs and dirty plates and when Abby finally came down she made tea. Abby sat and did not drink the tea and stared into the fire.