The Children's Hour Read online

  ‘No, of course not. I told you, I’m being foolish. We’re both on edge at the prospect of coping with Georgie.’

  ‘I’ve had a thought.’ Nest was smiling. ‘Why don’t we invite Jack down whilst Georgie’s here? He’ll sort us all out.’

  Mina began to chuckle. ‘That’s quite an idea. It’s term-time, of course . . .’

  ‘I know it is, but he and Hannah and the children could probably manage an exeat weekend or a visit during half-term.’

  ‘Dear Jack. So like his father. Oh, poor old Timmie.’ She gave a great sigh. ‘How I still miss him!’

  ‘I never wanted him to be a soldier,’ Nest said almost angrily. ‘I remember pleading with Mama about it. She said, “He would be unhappy doing anything else,” but then she never imagined what would happen in Northern Ireland.’ Her face was bleak. ‘I often imagine—’ She broke off in distress. ‘At least he can’t have known anything about it.’

  ‘He was such a tower of strength,’ said Mina gently, ‘although in a very quiet way. It can’t have been easy being the only boy amongst five girls.’

  ‘Papa must have been delighted,’ said Nest, ‘when Timmie turned up. And Mama too, of course. I must have been a bit of a disappointment coming after him. Another girl . . .’ A tiny silence. ‘Anyway, I’ll go and get myself ready. Can you manage with the breakfast things?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Mina. ‘This won’t take a moment. Away you go. And of course you weren’t a disappointment. Of course you weren’t.’

  She watched Nest wheel across the hall, thinking of the secrets kept for so many years – and Georgie’s singsong chant: ‘I know a secret. Can you guess? We’ve got a little brother. Do you think Papa will love us any more?’

  Piling the plates beside the sink in the scullery, calling to the dogs, Mina found herself thinking of that year before Timmie was born, the year that Timothy Lestrange first arrived at Ottercombe House.

  During that year of 1932, Lydia and the children spend only the school term-time in London. When Ambrose arrives early in August for the summer break he has a tall, fair-haired stranger with him.

  ‘This is Timothy Lestrange, darling. One of my oldest friends. He was halfway up some unpronounceable mountain when we got married and he’s been abroad for most of the time since.’

  Lydia, smiling at Timothy, taking his hand, senses at once that he is an ally. The apprehension she always feels when Ambrose is due at Ottercombe is dissipated by an inexplicable relief.

  ‘Ambrose insisted that I would be welcome,’ he says, holding her hand in his own warm brown one. ‘I apologize for arriving unannounced.’

  ‘He turned up last night,’ says Ambrose, ‘due for a long leave. We haven’t seen each other for years. I couldn’t just give him a drink and say goodbye, could I?’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t,’ agrees Lydia.

  ‘I explained that there’s no telephone here so we weren’t able to warn you.’ Ambrose airs an old grievance. ‘In fact there’s not much here at all.’

  ‘Not much?’ Timothy’s eyebrows are raised. ‘Only glorious countryside, a lovely old house and your wife and children. Oh, no, not much.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you put it like that . . . Where are the bandar-log, Lydia?’

  Ambrose is a great Kipling fan and Lydia and Timothy exchange another smile.

  ‘The children are down at the sea. They’ll be home for tea quite soon. Would you like to bring your luggage in while I make the guest-room ready?’

  She watches them go out into the sunshine, standing for a moment to relish this new strange joyfulness, and then hurries away upstairs.

  The children immediately respond to Timothy’s warmth; their father is less abrasive in his company, less critical, and instinctively they know that it is to Timothy that they owe this respite. He smooths away irritation and draws the sting from the genial brutality of Ambrose’s remarks. It is Timothy who renames the children and so earns Lydia’s gratitude.

  ‘Here they are,’ says Ambrose, as the children straggle up from the beach, ‘here are the bandar-log. This is the eldest, George. Then Will and Henry. And this is the youngest, Jo.’

  Timothy shakes hands gravely with each child. ‘But why such names?’ he asks, puzzled. ‘Such pretty children and so like their mother. Why boys’ names?’

  ‘Next best thing to having sons,’ says Ambrose bluffly – and Lydia turns her head away, biting her lip, shepherding the children into tea.

  Timothy sees how she is hurt and gradually, as he talks to the children and plays with them, he softens George into Georgie, renames Will as Mina, Jo becomes Josie – but Henry . . . ‘is Henrietta’, says Lydia, ‘because nothing else quite works’.

  ‘I like my proper name,’ says five-year-old Henrietta firmly. ‘It’s a nice name.’

  The others, meanwhile, are enchanted with their new names and, made bold by Timothy’s championship, refuse to answer their father if he doesn’t use them. Even Georgie, who craves her father’s love and approval, is affected by Timothy’s quiet charm.

  ‘Mutiny,’ says Ambrose, slapping Timothy on the back. ‘Mutiny in my own home,’ but he too accepts the change although he doesn’t always remember without prompting.

  ‘Timothy is nice, isn’t he, Mama?’ says Mina. ‘He’s like a very kind magician. Like Merlin.’ Lydia is reading T. H. White’s The Once and Future King to them after tea during the children’s hour. ‘He’s put a spell on all of us, hasn’t he?’

  And Lydia, dreamy-eyed, answers, ‘Yes, my love, I think he has.’

  ‘Don’t ask him what he does,’ instructs Ambrose, as they change for dinner that first evening. ‘It’s all a bit hush-hush. He does all this exploring and so on but, in fact, he’s attached to the army. He’ll tell you a few yarns, I expect. Hell of a chap. Crazy, though. Won everything going at school but took it all in his stride.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem that kind of man,’ says Lydia, putting in her ear-rings, staring at herself critically in the glass. Her black hair, piled high, emphasizes the pale oval of her face and long creamy neck. Her eyes glow with a new, disturbing happiness. ‘He’s not at all the overgrown schoolboy, adventurer type.’

  ‘Timothy was always a law unto himself,’ answers Ambrose proudly – as if he has invented Timothy and is personally responsible for his unusual qualities. ‘He was terrifically popular.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Lydia, smiling secretly at her reflection. ‘Yes, I can believe that.’

  As the weeks pass, Timothy becomes part of the family; yarning with Ambrose in his study; walking with Lydia in the woods; playing with the children on the beach. Lydia blossoms into radiant health, Ambrose loses his city pallor, growing bronzed and fit, and the children are happy and at ease.

  ‘He should be called Kim,’ says Mina – they have moved on to Kipling by now – ‘not Tim. Kim, the Little Friend of all the World. Only he’s a big friend.’

  By the time the holidays are over, and Ambrose and Timothy return to London, Lydia is pregnant again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mina wakened to a gripping, formless panic. The bedroom, which faced east and south, was already filled with early sunshine and she lay for some moments, breathing deeply, watching the shift of light and shade on the wall. Slowly, this nameless terror formed and shaped itself into very real problems. As she grew older her natural optimism was becoming prey to the fears of encroaching infirmity: for how much longer would she remain fit and strong enough to look after Nest? Resolutely, and with an enormous effort, she turned her thoughts into happier, more positive channels and presently the anxiety attack passed. She sat up, reaching for her dressing-gown, murmuring to the dogs, who stirred in their baskets, watching with bright eyes.

  ‘Shall we go downstairs, my darlings? Shall we? A cup of tea for me and perhaps a biccy for you? Would you like that? Yes, you shall have one, Boyo. And you too, old lady. Come along, then.’

  She passed along the galleried landing, humming to herse
lf, the dogs at her heels; on down the wide, shallow stairs and into the kitchen. Like the drawing-room, the kitchen was long and narrow: the working half, with the Esse and white-painted shelves and cupboards, had a door to the scullery, but the other half was a cheerful, cosy area. The square pine table was set beneath the window and a wicker chair stood beside the glass-paned door, which opened into the little courtyard. There were bookshelves here, and photographs in assorted frames stood on the windowsill alongside a blue china pot of tiny cyclamen. The whole space had been arranged to accommodate Nest’s wheelchair without sacrificing the comfortable, intimate atmosphere that Mina had created in the latter years of her mother’s life.

  ‘Just right for two, but for three . . .?’ wondered Mina anxiously – and then pulled herself together.

  There was plenty of room for Georgie; it was simply that there hadn’t been more than two people living in the house for more than forty years and, naturally, some adjustments would have to be made.

  ‘And it’s only for a short while,’ she said aloud, opening the door so that the dogs might go outside. ‘A little holiday. It’ll be fun.’

  The dogs disappeared into the wild, exciting garden beyond the courtyard and Mina filled the kettle and put it on the Esse, her remark hanging rather forlornly in the silence. With the tiny, explosive ‘po-po-po’ escaping her lips, after tying her dressing-gown more tightly round her spare frame, she took the scissors from a selection of utensils in an old Kilner jar and cut a few grapes from the bunch in the fruit bowl. She sliced them carefully into halves, collected together some pieces of bread and went outside to feed the birds. She crumbled the bread on to the bird-table and checked that the feeders were full of nuts and seed, but the pieces of grape she scattered carefully amongst the rocks of the alpine garden which, long ago, Lydia had made.

  Captain Cat was the first back, hoping for his biscuit, and Mina took a handful from the box and carried them to the door. Nogood Boyo arrived as if by magic but Mina waited until old Polly Garter came pottering into the courtyard before she rationed the biscuits out: two each and a pat and a murmuring of love for the three of them.

  She took her mug of tea, turned the wicker chair so that it stood in the sun and, sipping gratefully, watched for the blackbird. The dogs scrunched their biscuits, Nogood Boyo finishing first and watching hopefully in case the other two should leave a crumb. Captain Cat warned him off with a throaty rumble but Polly Garter, mother and grandmother, allowed him to edge in close for a neglected morsel.

  Mina smiled as she watched them and murmured: ‘You’d be a good Boyo, if anyone would let you!’

  The blackbird came running amongst the rocks, dark as a shadow, with only his yellow beak to give him away. The dogs, grooming themselves in the sunshine, didn’t see him find his breakfast amongst the parahebe’s last pale blooms, sheltering beneath the branched stems and drooping red flowers of the zauschneria as he pecked the sweet, delicious fruit. It was his mate, hopping over the rocks, scattering sparkling, flashing drops of dew from the feathery blue leaves of the juniper, who chased him away.

  The bird-table was alive with movement and colour: the flick of tiny wings, a rippling of gold and blue, smooth-feathered heads darting and pecking. Mina finished her tea but continued to watch, dreaming and remembering in the sun.

  *

  It is Timothy who encourages the building of the rock-garden. In the days long before tubs and pot-plants, the courtyard is a rather dreary place with its rock wall and mossy flagstones. Lydia likes to cook, to grow herbs beside the kitchen door, and Timothy shows how she could build a miniature garden full of colour to delight her as she works. Ambrose is smilingly tolerant of anything that Timothy suggests and waves them off to search for appropriate plants at nurseries in Ilfracombe and Barnstaple.

  Georgie and Mina struggle through the garden carrying between them shapely rocks, and even Henrietta toils back from the beach with pretty stones in her bucket. The rock-garden becomes the main topic of conversation, the pinnacle of endeavour, whilst seed catalogues and reference books litter the morning-room table, varieties of plants ringed with circles of red ink. After tea, as Lydia sews, and Henrietta and Josie crayon busily and inaccurately in their colouring books, Timothy tells stories of travelling in the Pyrenees and the Alps, describing the flowers he has seen, and throwing in a few bandits for the sake of Mina, who listens round-eyed. Georgie sits ostentatiously on her father’s knee whilst Ambrose continues to smile paternalistically upon the whole group.

  Later, when Lydia and the children are alone again, strange packages arrive: rare and pretty plants from other countries, destined for the rock-garden. As the child grows within her, Lydia sings and plays with her daughters and waits for the spring when the white-bloomed hutchinsia will flower along with the yellow euryops daisy from South Africa. In the winter evenings, with the children tucked in bed, she takes the letters from her sewing-box: sheets of thin, flimsy paper, in blue-lined envelopes bearing exciting foreign stamps, covered with a looping, inky scrawl. A rosy glow from the oil lamp’s glass bowl, the crackling of wood in the grate, some stems of winter jasmine in a green vase, these inform the moment of intimacy as she shares her lover’s adventures, his fears, and the precious outpourings of love.

  In the light early evenings of a cold sweet spring, the lazy broken fluting of the blackbird’s song fills her with a poignant restlessness and, after the children’s hour, to their delight, she wraps them in warm clothes and takes them down to the beach. The sea’s surging song, as it sweeps across the ridged and buckled sand, calms her longing and quietens her need. She watches her children play but her thoughts are far away. Georgie and Mina have races, drawing the finishing line with a sharp stone, choosing a certain rock as an excellent starting post. The wet sand flies up under their hard little feet as they run, heads down, legs pumping.

  ‘I won!’ cries Georgie boastfully. ‘Did you see me, Mama? I was first.’

  Mina doubles up breathlessly, bundling her flying black hair into an elastic band, and Lydia waves to them, laughing, holding her hands high to clap lightly, as she keeps an eye on Josie scrambling beside the rock pool. She knows that Georgie cheats and so it is Mina whom she holds for an extra second or two when they come running across the beach for a hug. Henrietta shows them her basket of shells and stones and, as the moon rises, netted and held in the bare branches of the trees up on the steep cleave, they gather their belongings and set off for home in the gathering twilight. Moths flit beneath the trees as bats dart and swoop above their heads, causing Henrietta to scream.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ says Georgie, copying Papa’s patronizing tone. ‘They won’t hurt you,’ but Henrietta clings to Mama’s hand. She rather enjoys screaming, it excites her, and she usually ignores Georgie’s admonitions, resisting her oldest sister’s self-assumed role as Papa’s deputy, intuitively guessing that Mama doesn’t approve of it. She screams again, just to make her point, and then jumps along cheerfully, still holding to Lydia’s hand.

  ‘Tired,’ says Josie, sitting down suddenly amongst the ferns beside the stream. ‘Carry.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ says Lydia anxiously. ‘Can you manage just a few more steps?’ She is weary too, and Josie is heavy. Lydia is fearful of losing the child within her, which she has managed – so far – to carry so successfully. ‘We’re very nearly home. Do try, darling.’

  ‘Tired,’ whimpers Josie, beginning to grizzle, refusing to budge, and it is Mina who hauls her up into her arms and staggers along with her. Josie, good-humour fully restored, beams down triumphantly upon Henrietta, who puts out her tongue.

  Soon, even the walk to the sea is too much for Lydia and she is confined to the garden and the house. Jenna, the young woman who helps to shop and clean, cycles over to Ottercombe most days to assist with the younger children whilst Georgie and Mina are at the local school. One morning, soon after the Easter holidays have begun, Lydia doesn’t get up at all; messages are sent to London and the doctor call
s in his small, black Ford.

  ‘I know a secret.’ Georgie sidles behind Mina, an eye on Jenna, who is spreading a picnic lunch on the rocks. Henrietta helps her to weight down the cloth with stones whilst Josie peeps hungrily into the large wicker basket. The house has been in confusion for several days: their father is down from London, bringing a woman in nurse’s uniform with him, and Mama remains in her bedroom. Georgie, who comes running down from the house to join the others on the beach, is breathless. Her skinny chest heaves beneath the Fair Isle jersey she has been told she must wear, for the late April weather, though sunny, is cold. She gasps and presses her hand to her side.

  ‘I’ve got stitch,’ she says.

  ‘We were supposed to stay here until we were called,’ says Mina, who has been helping her younger sisters build a sandcastle. It is a splendid edifice with a moat, and its towers are stuck about with small paper flags. ‘Where have you been?’

  Mina knows that Mama is to have a baby but she is frightened. She was too young, when Henrietta and Josie were born, to understand about babies – but now she can see the baby growing inside Mama and she wonders how it will emerge. Mama is so calm and happy that, clearly, the ordeal cannot be too terrible. ‘It is a kind of miracle,’ she tells Mina, ‘but you are too young yet to understand. Later, when you are older, I shall explain it to you.’

  A miracle. Perhaps it’s like curing the man of the palsy or one of the other Gospel stories, and, after all, Mama has already had four babies . . .

  ‘I know how babies come,’ says Georgie importantly, ‘but I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.’ But Mina doesn’t believe her.

  ‘Is it Mama?’ asks Mina now, fearfully, her heart heavy and sinking, her stomach curdling with terror.

  ‘It’s a secret.’ Georgie still has an eye on the group by the rocks. ‘Can you guess? I’ll tell you if you promise to be surprised later on when Papa tells us.’

  ‘I promise,’ says Mina, shivering, her black hair whipping round her cheeks. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. Is Mama dead?’