I and My True Love (17 page)

Sylvia turned away from the lonely car and walked through the screen of elms and cypress towards the house. She wondered where the children were—usually Cordelia and Peter would welcome the arrival of her car as if it were a major excitement. But today, the house was as silent as the stable yard.

Whitecraigs had gleamed white from the distance, but its paintwork at this close view was stained by rain and dew, and cracked by the sun. The broad porch, raised by three wide steps from the grass, ran the full length of the building as if it were a stage where four white pillars supported the deep overhang of roof. On the porch, at the far end and towards its outer edge, sat her father in his high-backed chair. Today he had brought out an easel and his tubes of colour, and he was still working by the fading light.

Something had gone wrong, she thought worriedly. He only painted with that intensity when something troubled him. His pictures were crude and primitive: to Thomas Jerold, painting was less than an art—it was a release. Now, he heard the sharp sound of her high heels on the wooden porch. He stopped his work, half-turning his head. He wore a tweed cap on his thick white hair, his cheeks were weathered pink, but his thin face was pinched, and his hands were cold to touch. “I knew it wasn’t Jennifer or Annabel,” he said, unsmiling, calm-voiced as he always was, but there was welcome in his dark eyes.

“How?” She bent and kissed his brow. “Aren’t you frozen out here?”

He put down his brushes carefully on the easel’s work-stained ledge. “Jennifer stumps and Annabel clatters.”

“Well, it might have been Mother.”

“Milly’s taken to wearing sandals. Says that high heels ruin the spine.”

Sylvia exchanged a smile with her father. Millicent Jerold’s feet had walked around, for forty years at least, on three-inch heels to emphasise their smallness. “Shouldn’t we go inside?” she asked. The porch faced east and the wide-spreading roof increased its coolness.

Her father said, “Probably.” But he didn’t move. “It’s sheltered here,” he added; “the wind is from the south-west today.”

“But the light isn’t too good.”

He picked up the brushes again. “Probably not,” he agreed. He added a touch of white to the foreground.

She examined the painting. “Why, that’s Lightfoot and Blackie and Highstep and Sweetheart and Blondie and Whitestar, all in the paddock.” She looked then at the field lying to the side of the house, its fences fallen, empty. But in the painting, the post-and-rail fences were sparkling white, the grass was a brilliant mid-summer green, the horses were grouped as she had so often seen them standing, and the two elms—long since shattered by lightning—spread their soft shade.

“It is 1939,” her father explained, “when they were all there.” He pointed slowly to each horse in turn as if he were counting them.

“Well, we still have Whitestar,” Sylvia said.

He didn’t answer.

“Where’s everyone?”

“Milly’s writing. Annabel went out.” He stopped, held his brush in the air. “I think she went out. She always drives over to Blairton in the afternoons. Jennifer will be fussing in the kitchen. She fusses everywhere nowadays. Pity her husband got killed.” Jennifer, after a short and disastrous first marriage, had made a second, and this time successful, attempt. But it had ended, on Omaha Beach, when Peter was only a month old and Cordelia barely two years.

“And the children?”

He paused and then said, “They’ve gone to the funeral. With Ben and the boys.”

“The funeral?”

He added another careful stroke to the small canvas in front of him. “Whitestar died yesterday. Ben and the children decided to give him a proper funeral. Down by the grove.”

She said nothing at all. She touched his arm briefly.

“And what is worrying you?” he asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “Besides the fact that you think it’s too cold for me here on this porch? I’m wearing a tweed coat and two sweaters. Jennifer knitted me one.”

“Did she? I’m glad someone’s here to look after you. But how did you know I’m worried?”

“I never could tell your thoughts, but sometimes I could make a guess at your feelings.”

Again she was silent. I can’t trouble him any more today, she thought. I was the daughter who was safely married: I was the only one who didn’t have to come back to him and remind him of still more unhappiness to be shared.

“They are starting to clear the land for building, down at Strathmore,” he said suddenly. “Did you notice?”

“Yes.” But that isn’t what worries me today, she was thinking.

“But Strathmore won’t be the pattern for Whitecraigs. Not as long as I’m still alive, Sylvia.”

“There are other patterns,” she said, leaving her own thoughts, choosing her words with care. “Straven is managing to survive.”

“I’m too old to learn practical farming. And so is Ben. Besides, you need money for equipment, money for extra help. Money, money, money.” He spoke half-humorously, but then he had never taken money seriously.

She didn’t reply. He knew her answer, anyway. Years ago, she had tried to persuade him to follow Straven’s example. “Ten years ago, or more,” he said slowly, “was the time to change. But then—” He shrugged his shoulders. It was the first time he had ever admitted he had been wrong about Whitecraigs. He stopped painting, and looked out over the calm fields.

“But then you had three expensive daughters,” she suggested. That was the odd thing about herself, she thought. Even if she criticised someone, the minute he admitted his mistake, she rushed in to give him excuses.

“And no son,” he added quietly. “That made a difference in all my plans, Sylvia.”

And even the plans he had made, she thought, have been altered. Two of the daughters had come back to live with him; two grandchildren had been added to his family.

“I ought to have made the change,” he said. “I talked it over with Ben, several times. But somehow, nothing came of all our talk.”

“Ben liked Whitecraigs as it was. He wouldn’t give you good advice.”

“It suited me,” he admitted wryly. “I liked the place as it was, too.”

“I think you’d have liked the feeling of being a successful farmer. Uncle George has found it a good kind of life.”

“Successful,” he repeated slowly. “Yes... That’s something I would like to have been, just once in my life.”

“Oh, what nonsense,” she said, but it was only an equivocation. “Look, you’ve dropped some paint. Where’s that rag you have for the brushes?”

He looked down at the dried spatters of colour on the porch around his feet. “Another spot won’t hurt,” he said. “It makes a prettier picture than I’ve ever painted.” Then he glanced up at his daughter. “I was wrong,” he said. “I’ve had one success.” He reached out and touched her arm. “Sometimes I wonder if Milly and I were to blame. Perhaps we didn’t bring up the girls in the right way. And then, just as I’m getting depressed, I think about you. There’s one at least, I tell myself, who’s happy and well-balanced. One out of three. Not good, but not bad either, I suppose.”

Then he stared at her, watching the sudden trembling on her lips. She turned away quickly, feeling the tears come to her eyes. “It’s too cold out here,” she said, and shivered.

“Then go inside and talk to Milly.” His voice was sharp, impatient. He had guessed that she brought bad news. “I want to finish this before the light fades altogether.” He began painting again with thin fine strokes, adding exact detail to over-emphasised patterns.

“Father, I’ve
got
to tell you something—I’m sorry, but I’ve got to tell you.”

He waved her away. He didn’t look at her. “Later,” he said, “later.”

She hesitated, and then she left him. Later... That was the way it had always been. Later, later.

The large front door was ajar. She pushed open its heavy bulk and entered the shadowed hall. The wooden floor was no longer slippery with polish, the rugs were thinner to her tread, but everything else was the same—the table lying littered against the wall, the sombre ticking of the grandfather clock which stood under the curving staircase, the carved chest with coats piled on top, the rubbers discarded at the side of the chair, the walking sticks clustered in a corner. It was the same, only more so; as if people had given up putting coats into closets or picking up rubbers or clearing the table of keys, unopened circulars and half-empty match-folders.

From the sitting-room came the sound of her mother’s voice, speaking firmly. “And I want to point out,” Milly was saying, “that although I may have been a member of this organisation, I never attended any of its meetings. Therefore, I refuse to be held responsible for any of its policies and I insist—”

Sylvia entered the room. Millicent Jerold was seated on the edge of her chair in front of her small writing desk. Her thick rust-coloured hair, now heavily streaked with white, was disarranged more than usual. She glanced around at the intruder, her head tilted forward, her blue eyes looking over the top of her reading glasses, her round white face drawn into an anxious frown.

“Oh, it’s you, Sylvia,” she said, waving a greeting with the sheet of paper she held in her hand. “Come in, come in. Sit down. I’m writing a letter. Listen! Do you think I’ve made it strong enough?” She adjusted the desk lamp and began to read the letter again. “Well?” she asked as she ended, pushing the glasses back into position as they slipped down over the short bridge of her nose. “Is that clear enough?”

“The letter is clear enough.”

Mrs. Jerold picked it up once more, and again read aloud the last phrase: “—and I insist that you stop perpetrating this most uncalled-for persecution.” She nodded a decided agreement, and then hastily pushed back a lock of heavy hair. “That ought to settle them,” she said.

“But I don’t know if your position is as clear as the letter,” Sylvia said. “Perhaps it would be easier to admit you belonged to the organisation, but that you were completely unaware of its true aims. Or words to that effect. I suppose it is one of those things you joined without checking up thoroughly? Is it in trouble?”

“Yes, it’s The Association for the International Understanding of Democratic Peoples. Honestly, I don’t understand what we are all coming to. You can’t even join a society in peace, nowadays... No, you’re wrong, Sylvia, I’m going to send the letter just as it is. I really must make a very firm protest.”

“To whom?”

“To the editor who printed this article—” She began searching through the wild confusion of papers on her desk. “I cut it out. It’s some place here. A most denunciatory article.”

“But if you were a member—”

“I never attended a meeting.”

“Well, I think you ought to have, and then you would have known more about everything. Did you pay dues?”

“I didn’t pay dues,” Mrs. Jerold said irritably, and pushed back her glasses into place.

“You most certainly did,” a weary voice said at the door. “Or else your bank is cheating you.” It was Jennifer. She came slowly into the room. “Hallo, Sylvia. Are you staying for dinner?”

“No, I have to leave at six.”

“Too bad,” Jennifer said, but a look of relief passed over her worried face. In these last few years, her figure had grown thicker. Her blonde hair had faded and showed white at the temples. It was badly cut, as if she had hacked it into a short bob with a pair of blunt scissors. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes had lost their brightness, her lips were now held tightly, and a permanent little furrow had formed between her eyebrows. She wore no make-up, and her grey flannel skirt needed pressing.

“I paid no dues,” Millicent Jerold said firmly. “I only donated funds for certain charitable projects connected with the A.I.U.D.P.”

“Such as kid gloves for kangaroos.”

“Well, it’s my own money,” Mrs. Jerold said placidly.

“What’s left of it,” Jennifer added.

“When I took you and Annabel to Paris and Rome you didn’t object to spending it.”

“I didn’t know anything about spending capital then,” Jennifer said sharply. “I was seventeen.”

“My dear, surely I can spend it in the way I like?”

Jennifer said, “You certainly do. When I think of what has gone to Eskimos and Calabrians and Armenians and Central Africans—”

“Well, there are always so many starving children in these places,” Mrs. Jerold said mildly. “Or bad landowners, or earthquakes, or persecutions, or something. Besides, your father didn’t marry me for my money. He would never use a penny of it. Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s sitting out on the porch, and it’s much too cold for him,” Sylvia said.

“He’s upset, today,” Mrs. Jerold said. “All because Whitestar died. Really, it was to be expected. Twenty-four years old. And the strange thing was that your father wouldn’t go to the funeral. I must say I thought it was a pity that Peter and Cordelia wanted to attend. Death isn’t a subject for children to face. They’ll be awake all night with bad dreams.”

“I’ll go and get Father,” Jennifer said and left the room.

“Really, it was very strange,” Millicent Jerold repeated, “he just wouldn’t go.”

“Not so strange,” Sylvia said. “He would only have seen another part of his life buried under the earth.” Twenty-four years of it.

Millicent Jerold finished addressing the envelope, studied it, and then laid it aside with regret. She picked up some other letters and glanced through them.

“Mother,” Sylvia began, “I need your help.”

“Do you, dear?” Millicent Jerold sighed and jammed the letters back into their pigeon-hole. “I suppose these can wait.” She rose and came forward to the fireplace.

A shapeless black spaniel rose from the shadow of the desk and followed her wearily. She took off her glasses and laid them on the mantelpiece, and stood looking down at the unlighted fire. She was a small woman, smaller still in her curious flat-heeled sandals that seemed so incongruous with her tight tweed suit. “How do you like my shoes?” she asked, extending a neat little foot. “The Indians make them. In Arizona, aren’t they clever? Sylvia—”

“I wanted to tell you that—”

“Yes, yes. One thing at a time, Sylvia. First of all, can you do something about Jennifer?” She looked at the black spaniel. “Hannibal, sit down! You know it’s bad for you to stand. All right then, I’ll sit if that’s what you want.” She chose a chair at the corner of the hearth, and Hannibal flopped at her feet.