God Is an Englishman (79 page)

She examined the gifts gravely. She was, he decided, a very solemn and exceptionally well-mannered child, with her mother’s eyes and Avery’s small, aggressive chin, but it was difficult to see her as the fruit of a brief flirtation between a silly, empty-headed woman like Charity Stanhope, and a cynic like Avery, although a little of Avery’s separateness showed in her so that she seemed surprisingly self-con tained for a child of eight. He said, making a conscious effort, “Did you build that crib, Deborah?” and she said, with a careful regard for the truth, that Sister Loretta had made the manger and one of the angels but she had been responsible for the rest. He said, addressing the Mother Superior, “When Mr. Avery visited did he ever take Deborah out?” and the nun said that he did in summertime, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 422

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when they sometimes spent the afternoon on the beach. There was no prospect of taking her out now, with a leaden sky and more snow threat ening, but compassion for the child nagged at him, and he made a sign, indicating that he wanted to speak to the Mother Superior alone. Like a good Frenchwoman she at once took the hint and said, “Let me show you our little chapel, Mr. Swann.

Excuse us a moment, Deborah,” and led the way through what had once been a conser vatory but was now half-full of rubbish.

“What do you make of her, Mr. Swann?” she said, with the same pale smile, and Adam said, briefly, “I’d say right off she needs the company of other children.

Especially now, at Christmas. Perhaps they told you I had a family of my own and plenty of room to spare. Would it be in order for me to take her home for Christmas? My own daughter is rising four, and her governess is a very responsible per son.”

The request took the Mother Superior by surprise, so that he added, quickly,

“I would give you an undertaking not to run contrary to the religious training she receives here. I’m no bigot, like most of my countrymen,” and the woman smiled and said, “We are overcoming it but it will take a little time. At least in this country one is guaranteed against persecution. Isn’t that why we flock here?”

“Some Continentals don’t come here to teach, according to my cabbie,” Adam said, warming towards her. “Would it be in order for me to see the instructions Mr. Avery gave you concerning guardianship?”

“I see no reason why you should not,” she said, “they were very flattering.” Then, but anxiously, “You would return her when we begin school again in late January?” and he said he would, personally.

“Then go and make friends,” she said, “and I’ll instruct Sister Agatha to pack Deborah’s bag. If she wants to go she shall, but you must ask her yourself, Mr. Swann.”

She went back into the hall, leaving him to return to the school room. He stood for a moment on the threshold, looking across at the child now sitting on the window seat cradling the doll. The scene had a certain familiarity and suddenly he thought he recognised its paral lel, the boy Scrooge revealed by the Ghost in the schoolroom scene, in the popular
Christmas Carol,
rescued and taken home on Christ mas Eve. He said, frankly, “You hardly know me yet, Deborah, but the Reverend Mother was right, I’m a very old friend of your father. When he had to go abroad he asked me to be sure to look after you as long as he was away. I have a little girl younger than you, and a boy younger than her. We live in the country not far from here, and I’m sure they would both like you to visit for Christmas.

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The Reve rend Mother says you may go if you wish. Would you like that?” He thought the child looked startled so he went on, “We have a Christ mas tree and there are ponies to ride. After all, I am a sort of uncle and I think you might enjoy staying with us until school starts again, and all the other children come back.

What do you think, Deborah?”

The child looked at him then without surprise but with a steadi ness that he found disconcerting. Her expression indicated that she had already learned to make decisions and that most of them would be based on a sense of detachment inherited from her father. She said, primly, “What must I call you then?

‘Uncle’ something?” and he said, laughing, “Why, surely. Uncle Adam. And at home you’ll find Aunt Henrietta, Miss Phoebe, the governess, Stella, and Alexander. Will you come?”

“Yes,” she said, “if I could bring Angelica.”

“But the Reverend Mother told me you were the only little girl left here. Who is Angelica?”

“The doll,” she told him, “I have christened her Angelica. It suits her, does it not?”

Her gravity had a trick of levelling their ages. In a curious way she seemed older than himself or the Mother Superior, and more resigned, he reflected, than anyone she was likely to find at Tryst. He was suddenly conscious of the terrible complexity and unpredict ability of human affairs, seeing the child before him as the end pro duct of a casual encounter halfway across the world between a hard nut like Josh Avery and a shallow, pretty woman who could have had no clear idea of the kind of scrape she was getting into. And here was Deborah, the product of their joint folly, already more truly adult than either one of them, or that old fool of a colonel who had stood by and watched himself cuckolded.

His sympathy built a bridge between them and they were able to talk, first in English, then in French. He marked her perfect accent, reflect ing that it might benefit his daughter who was already beginning to speak French like a Lowland Scot. He wondered how Henrietta, seven months pregnant, would get along with this solemn little thing, and whether she would be likely to regret her insistence that he paid the visit when he returned with the child in tow, but decided that, in her new role as chatelaine, she was likely to take Deborah in her stride.

Then Sister Agatha appeared carrying a tartan holdall contain ing Deborah’s clothes, and Angelica was carefully re-wrapped whilst Sister Agatha, somehow managing to convey the impression that she was consigning a helpless child to GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 424

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heathen custody, disappeared again, to return with a blue, scarlet-lined cloak that he took to be the uniform of the convent.

They were in the hall when the Mother Superior emerged from her office to hand him a long envelope bearing a foreign postmark and broken seals.

“You may take Mr. Avery’s letter,” she said, “but I would like it returned. It is my sole authorisation, you understand?” Then, to the child, “Be good, Deborah.

We shall look forward to seeing you again in a month,” and as Deborah dropped her little Continental curtsey the nun stooped and embraced her and the gesture comforted Adam who saw it as proof that the Convent of the Holy Family was not as bleak an institution as its fabric and chilliness implied.

They went out into the forecourt where heavy flakes of snow were beginning to fall, and when the cab came out from under the trees he noted the unfriendly stare the cabby gave the nuns standing on the steps. It was, he thought, an indication of the man’s built-in hostility towards Rome and all its works, and had its origin, no doubt, in an Englishman’s ancestral memories of the fires in Smithfield.

Then the cab was jolting towards the town and he glanced at Deborah who was looking out at the whirling snowflakes, for all the world like a prisoner being taken to or from her gaol, he was unable to decide which. The cab reeked of damp horsehair and inside, with both win dows raised, he began to feel a curious affinity with the child, as though both of them had been arbitrarily isolated from everything familiar and left to seek solace in one another’s society. Then, as the child turned her head, he saw tears glisten on the lashes of her serious eyes and before the first of them fell he reached out and en closed her hand, finding, to his relief, that it was more responsive than when he had greeted her beside the crib.

He said, “You mustn’t be scared, Deborah. We shall be good friends once you’ve stopped being shy,” and was gratified to see her force a smile, for somehow the effort she put into producing it at once enlarged him and inte grated her into the pattern of his life, so that he saw her not as a stray he had acquired through force of circumstance, but as a link in a chain he and Avery had been forging over the years and would now, he supposed, secure the partnership whether he liked it or not. The fancy absorbed him all the way to the station so that they completed the journey in silence, her small hand in his, and it was not until they were in the train for Tonbridge that she spoke again, saying, “Where is my father spending his Christmas, Uncle Adam?” Her question reminded him of the letter the Mother Superior had given him, and he took it out, glancing at stamps and postmark.

“Probably in a place called Liege, Deborah,” he said, “but I can’t be sure. He’s a great traveller, is your father.” She responded with one of her solemn nods.

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“Yes, he is,” she said, “for he sends me presents sometimes from Switzerland and France. A brooch once, and one of those weather cocks where the lady comes out when it is fine and the gentleman if it is wet. I have it in my cubicle but Sister Agatha will have packed the brooch in the bag, I hope. I think my father might spend Christmas in Holland this year. Because of the Dutch doll he sent.”

“By God,” he thought, “she’s sharp! I shall have to warn Henrietta and Phoebe, for she’s not likely to take kindly to goo-goo talk and that’s a fact!” and he said she was almost certainly right, and that her father must have moved on to Holland after posting the letter, for Liege was not very far from Holland and his letter was several days old.

Gradually, as the train whirled through the snowstorm, she began to relax, shedding her gravity little by little, but even so it was still very difficult to treat her as a child, and quite impossible to connect her with the giddy woman he remembered as her mother who had never, so far as he recalled, had a serious thought in her life. Instead, he found himself confiding in her and even telling her about his busi ness, and was secretly astonished by her familiarity with counties and districts and the kind of activities carried on within their boundaries. He said, complimenting her, “You seem to know a great deal of geography. Is it your favourite subject at school?” and she even had to think hard about this, replying, after a judicious pause, “No, not really, Uncle Adam. I much prefer history but Sister Albertine, who teaches geography, is very good at explaining, whereas Sister Sophia, who teaches history, is not. That isn’t her fault, of course, for she only joined us a short time ago from Pisa, and her English is not good. Pisa,” she added, as a kind of postscript, “is in Italy.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, infected by her pedantry, “It has a famous lean ing tower, I believe.”

His response seemed to please her for she nodded eagerly, saying, “Yes indeed.

It is one hundred and seventy nine feet in height, and sixteen-and-a-half feet out of the perpendicular. I should very much like to see it when I am grown up.” He only just stopped himself exclaiming aloud, reflecting that Phoebe Fraser and that cabby could say what they liked about Papists but they had the edge on Protestants when it came to the art of educating children. It occurred to him then that although he had heard a good deal about why the tower leaned nobody had ever explained how it came to be there in the first place and this seemed a time to find out.

“Why was it built?” he asked, and she said it was once a bell-tower for the cathedral, and that he was not to worry about it falling down for it had stood just GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 426

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so for hundreds of years and was unlikely to collapse, steps having been taken to ensure that it did not.

By the time they had reached Bromley, collected the gig and driven across the silent countryside to Tryst, he had almost adjusted to her, but as they crested the drive uncertainty concerning their reception returned to him, and he was glad to hand her over to Lucy, the general maid, for a hot drink and a bowl of soup, while he sought out Henrietta, already rehearsing his statement of self-justification.

He found her toasting her toes in front of the drawing-room fire, tired but complacent after helping Phoebe to dress the tree and pack the children off to bed, and it was here, a little haltingly, that he told her precisely what had occurred, watching her closely as he did so for it occurred to him that she might see in his introduction of the child into the house some kind of threat to her own children. He need not have worried. Something of the old, feckless Henrietta showed in the twinkle in her eye as she said, “There’s really no curing you, is there? You scooped me from Seddon Moor in much the same manner!” and she heaved herself up, saying, “Where is the little mite? I’ll go to her.” He said, restraining her, “No, wait, Hetty. It’s important to dis cuss this with Phoebe right away,” and her mouth tightened as she said, “Why? What has a thing like this to do with a governess?”

He understood then that she was jealous of her new authority and that there were still latent tensions about the house for which he had not made allowance.

There was even a gleam in her eye that intro duced a note of wariness into his voice as he said, “Because Phoebe is a strict Presbyterian, and Avery’s daughter has been raised in the Roman Catholic faith. I know Lowland Scots. I wouldn’t put it past Phoebe to set about the child as she would upon a heathen, ripe for conversion.”

“You think that’s likely?”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“Then it’s a matter for me, not you.” She waddled round him, a small, tubby, determined figure, endowed with a bantam-like air of displeasure, so that he said, with a laugh, “Sit down, Henrietta. Phoebe can see to her, and I’ll introduce you to one another when she’s fed,” but as soon as he had said this he realised that he had miscalculated, for she stopped, pushed the half-opened door shut, and stood with her back to it. “I was right!” she said. “You
don’t
understand and it’s really time you did.”