Privileged Children (11 page)

Clementina had recently bought one of Alice’s paintings. Alice took it round to her herself one evening. Finola, who got on well with all the Woods, came with her.

The Woods now lived in Chelsea. Alice intended to walk there, but Finola soon said that she was tired, and that she wanted to take a taxi.

‘Mother of God, Fin, we can’t spend half a crown on a taxi!’ said Alice.

‘Oh please. I’ve never been in one. Just once.’

The painting was quite heavy, so Alice agreed. Inside the cab, Finola pushed herself into the depths of the leather seat, so that she could hardly see out of the thick windows. The taxi was dark and smoky, and she could hear the motor throbbing through the seat. She crossed her hands on her lap and stretched her feet out in front of her.

A year ago, the first time she had ventured out alone, Finola had nearly been run over. Since then, she had never gone out alone again. This had also happened to Alice when she was five, but she had merely learned to cross the street when it was not full of traffic.

Finola pulled herself up, so that she could see the people who were walking, and on buses, and look them in the eye. No one, she found, took any notice of her being in a taxi at last.

Alice stopped the taxi before it reached Clementina’s house. Finola complained about this while Alice was paying the driver. ‘Don’t spoil it by moaning, Fin. It’ll be your last taxi ride for a long time.’

‘Will you unbutton my smock, please?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I don’t want to go out in it.’

Alice undid the two buttons at the back of the sleeveless, deep-pocketed smock. It was very like her own, a useful article which Alice had worn since she was very small.

Finola studied the sleeves of her jersey, which were tight and threadbare. ‘Can I have a new jersey?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I suppose so. We can buy one next week. Come on, we’ll be late for Clementina.’

Finola trailed behind Alice, who walked very fast. Occasionally Alice stopped to allow Finola to catch up with her. She would frown when she did so, and kick the ground.

Clementina’s housemaid opened the door to them. The Woods employed two maids. Finola wondered why they chose to live with such melancholy and silent people as the black-clad maids seemed to be. Of course, they were very polite and helpful, but so much so that they made Finola feel nervous.

Clementina’s sitting room was painted duck-egg blue and had a large window at either end. It was furnished with cushioned wicker chairs and an old wooden table, which was scattered with books and magazines ranging from the
Boys’
Own
Paper
to an illicit copy of
Ulysses
, smuggled over by Augustus from Paris.

‘Come on, let’s hang it up,’ said Clementina, tearing open the brown paper in which the painting was wrapped. Finola went to play with Michael’s puppy, underneath the window.

The painting was in oil, and it showed a group of suffragettes in Trafalgar Square in 1913. These suffragettes had been one of the first things Alice had seen on her return from Melton Balbridge. She had depicted the scene in grey, brown, dark blue and indigo, all except for the messages on the suffragette banners, which were in bright green.

‘How long ago all that seems!’ said Clementina.

‘It’s rather like a tombstone,’ Alice commented. ‘I wouldn’t really like to have it on my wall.’

‘A monument, at least. A little further up at your end, Alice.’

When they had finished hanging it and Clementina stood
back to look at it, Alice caught sight of a copy of
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams
on the table. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in psychology, Clem.’

‘It’s Augustus’s. I’ve tried it, and I’ve never read such pernicious rubbish in all my life.’

‘What do you mean? I think there’s a lot of truth in the idea that most people’s problems are related to their sexuality.’

‘That’s understating his thesis. Anyway, it’s not his theories about sexual repression that I object to. He’s so against women, Alice. For heaven’s sake, you’re partly lesbian yourself. Can you accept some silly little Viennese crank — and a friend of Leo’s has met him and said he’s never seen such a repressed-looking person — telling you that you have a sexual problem which stems from your having been born without the great mark of maleness? Castration complex, indeed! It’s men who’ve missed out. Wombs ought to mean, and could mean, and perhaps did once mean, power.’

‘I can see that he’s trying to make a scientific justification for the oppression of women, now that the old methods have begun to fail. But still, don’t you think that if his ideas became a sort of public myth, ordinary people would be able to enjoy free love?’

‘Perhaps. But it’ll take a different kind of theory — and economic system — to create true free love for women. Anyway, I’m not sure that complete free love would be altogether a good thing. Don’t attack me, Alice.’

Michael came into the room. ‘Hello, Fin,’ he said, walking straight over to her without greeting Alice. ‘D’you want to come and see my new train?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ said Finola, surprised. They went out together, with the puppy. Michael led her upstairs.

When Michael was five, and Finola three, and the Woods had been living at Bramham Gardens, Michael had said that he was going to marry Finola. Now Michael had gone to school and, if Finola made any reference to this matter, he brushed it aside. He had not even spoken to her very much recently.

In his room, Michael fished the clockwork train out of his
toy box and put it firmly between them as they crouched on the floor. ‘You’re my half-sister,’ he announced, scowling. ‘So you see, even if you do want to marry me when we’re grown up, you can’t.’

Finola stared at him and he said impatiently: ‘Alice is my real mother. Mother told me. So that makes us half-sister and half-brother to each other.’

‘But who’s your father, then? Isn’t it Augustus?’

‘No, silly. My real father’s dead. He died in the war.’

‘But Alice is married to Anatole, so Anatole must be your father.’

‘You can have babies before you’re married. That’s what Alice did. But she didn’t want me, so she gave me to Mother.’

‘Why didn’t she want me — I mean you?’ whispered Finola.

‘Mother says it was because she was “only sixteen” when she had me. But sixteen’s just as grown-up as forty, isn’t it? And I asked Mother if other people have babies when they’re sixteen, and she said some do, especially poor people, and I said, did they all give them away, and she said, not always. So you do see, don’t you? There’s something wrong with Alice. She might be mad, Fin. I might have inherited it!’

‘She’s my mother too,’ said Finola. ‘She was eighteen when she had me.’ She paused. ‘But Michael, Clementina and Augustus love you! It doesn’t matter to you that Alice didn’t want you.’

Michael frowned slightly and wound up the train. The two children watched it go round and round on its track, lying on their stomachs with their heads cupped in their hands.

‘But why did she have us?’ said Michael.

Finola sucked her thumb. ‘I heard Kate say that if only the law would let women stop babies coming, there wouldn’t be nearly so many problems around.’

‘She means babies are problems?’

‘Well yes, I suppose she must.’

Downstairs, Alice was drinking with Augustus, who had just come home. Clementina had gone out for a moment. ‘I
can’t thank you enough for lending me the money, Augustus. I couldn’t possibly have asked Aunt Caitlin, she disapproves desperately of abortion, and she can always tell when you’re lying.’

‘How did it go?’ asked Augustus.

‘It was agony. The place was clean, though, as far as I could tell. But the worst thing is Anatole. I have a morbid fear that he’ll find out somehow and he’d never forgive me. I can’t look him in the eye.’

‘Yes, he told me he thought there was something wrong with you.’

‘It’s a terrible thing to live with. I haven’t got any excuse, because we’ve got enough money to have another child, and Anatole and Kate would do a lot of the looking after. We might even be able to afford a nanny this time around.’

‘It’s your body, Alice. It’s quite permissible for you not to want another baby.’

Clementina came back. ‘Michael and Fin seem to be enjoying themselves. I do hope this means that Michael’s got over this ridiculous girl-hating phase.’

‘Oh, that’ll last on and off until he’s twelve or thirteen,’ said Augustus. ‘It’s the latent sexual phase, you know,’ he added, grinning at Clementina.

‘I never had this latent sexual phase, and neither did Alice. I remember her pursuing Tom Shaffer when she was nine.’

Tom Shaffer, Leo’s son, had been a stretcher bearer in the war, and, having survived, had died of the Spanish influenza in 1918.

Alice lay on her back in the long grass in the orchard at Aunt Caitlin’s. It was early in the month and the depths of the grass were still wet with dew. She shaded her eyes against the sun as it came down through a gap in the leaves made by a sudden gust of wind, and fiddled curiously with a blob of creamy spittle on a stalk of grass. She wrinkled her nose and flicked a worm away.

Finola came running up. She was nearly seven now and was still very small for her age, but she had a thin, serious, delicate face which made her look older than she was.

‘Look, Alice, I found twelve different sorts of flowers behind the greenhouse, and I know all their names. You’ll catch cold, lying on the grass like that,’ she added severely.

Alice laughed. ‘Tell me the names of the flowers, then,’ she said.

‘That’s ragged robin, and that’s cow-parsley, and that’s forget-me-not, and cuckoo-pint, and red campion, and buttercup, and that’s a bluebell but it’s nearly dead now … Alice, why can’t we live in the country?’

‘Well, we have to work in London, you know.’

‘But you could paint and write music anywhere. And Kate could still be a doctor, and Liza could write like she wants to, and, oh, everyone could work in the country,’ she said vaguely, as it occurred to her that Jenny could not easily uproot herself from Queen’s, where she was just finishing her exams.

‘Um,’ said Alice, ‘but you see, it’s not just painting that’s
the problem. You have to find a market — people to buy things. The market in town’s much bigger.’

‘Oh,’ said Finola.

‘But we come here quite often,’ said Alice. ‘We came in April.’

‘Yes,’ said Finola.

‘I wonder why you’re a country child?’ said Alice. ‘I would have thought that being brought up in London would make you feel that London’s the only right place to be, as I feel.’

‘But this is different. It’s new and exciting,’ said Finola.

‘I see,’ said Alice. ‘You don’t know or understand anything about it, so you want to know.’ She fingered Finola’s fine red-blonde hair, which was a more delicate version of Diana’s.

‘You’re an explorer in your way, aren’t you? Why don’t you want to explore London?’ Finola still hated going out alone.

‘You couldn’t explore London,’ said Finola, looking down at Alice in surprise. ‘You have to have something new to explore, or you wouldn’t be exploring it.’

‘That’s logic,’ said Alice, and grinned. ‘Don’t look upset, Fin, I wasn’t being rude to you. I suppose you’re right in a way,’ she said lazily. ‘… Fin, if you could plan a perfect life for yourself, what would it be like?’

‘I’d live in the country,’ began Finola, ‘and I’d have lots of brothers and sisters, and I’d have a pet tortoise. I’d sleep in a nursery like the one I slept in when I went to Clementina’s at Christmas, with a night-light over my bed. I’d never have to do chores, and I’d have a maid to choose my clothes for me and put them out for me at night to wear next day.’

‘Is that how you lived when you were at Clementina’s for Christmas?’

‘Yes,’ said Finola, ‘it was the nicest holiday I ever had.’

‘Did she make you go to bed at a set time, or anything like that?’ said Alice.

‘Oh yes,’ said Finola. ‘She’d tuck me up in bed at half past eight, and then I’d have the light on for a while and read.’

‘Why did you like being treated like that?’

‘It was so unworrying. Why are you looking cross?’

‘I’m not cross. I just think it’s odd.’ She rolled over on to
her stomach. ‘Well, Fin, if you want to live on strawberries, sugar and cream, you’ll have to marry a rich man, that’s all. And I think you’d soon get bored of it.’

‘I wouldn’t’ said Finola.

‘Obstinate,’ said Alice, and tweaked her hair.

Finola got up and ran back to the old greenhouse. She had left her flowers behind.

The greenhouse was very large. The bricks were decaying and the panes were dim, so that Finola could not see much of the inside. The doors at either end were locked, as they had been last summer. Finola fiddled hopefully with the doors once more and then she walked round the greenhouse, trying to find a loose or open pane of glass. She saw one pane which was tilted forward by half an inch. Banging down the surrounding nettles with a stick, Finola went to the pane and tried to ease it open with her fingers. She stood on tiptoe and one of the nettles bounced up and stung her.

‘Here,’ said a voice behind her, and she jumped. ‘That one’s no good. There’s a good way in round the other side. I’ll show you.’

It was a boy of about nine who was speaking. He wore a crumpled shirt, grey shorts which were too large for him, and a striped belt with a snake clasp. He stalked off and Finola. followed him.

‘How old are you?’ he said.

‘Seven,’ she replied.

‘Coo, as much of a kid as that? See, you want a pen-knife to get these open. Girls can’t have a pen-knife, of course; it’s not your fault you haven’t got one.’

‘I’ve got a pen-knife at home,’ said Finola.

‘Tomboy, are you?’ he said. Finola felt proud, though she did not know why. ‘Here, you climb in and push it up from the inside. Want a leg-up? That’s the way.’

He gave Finola a vigorous push and she scrambled up over the ledge, grazing her knee quite badly. She quickly squeezed out the tears which came to her eyes, and then she looked around.

It was hot in the greenhouse, with a wet heat which she had never felt before. She was kneeling in a long stone trough full of damp, black, warm earth and on either side of
her were tomato plants. Two iron pillars, miniature versions of the painted iron columns on South Kensington station, held up the ridgepole of the roof. Twisted round them was a convolvulus which bore brilliant blue flowers. She gazed at the flowers.

‘Here, what’s keeping you? Never been in a greenhouse before? Push the window up.’

Hastily she did so and scrambled down from the trough. The floor was covered with red, broken, diamond-shaped tiles. Some of the tiles still had yellow patterns on them.

‘The old man’s got his peaches through there,’ said the boy. He pointed to a door. ‘The door’ll be locked,’ he said, ‘but I know how to pick it.’

While he fiddled with the lock, Finola walked round the greenhouse. She found a stone sink at the other end, full of black, stinking water. Gingerly Finola ran her fingertips through the slime on top.

‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve got the door open. I might have taught you how to pick locks if you’d been watching, but I shan’t now.’

The second chamber of the greenhouse was even hotter than the first. The peach tree which covered the wall at the end bore a great many leaves and a few small fruits.

‘Not really ripe but better than nothing,’ said the boy. ‘One or two?’ he said graciously.

‘Oh — oh, just one.’ Slowly she fingered the hard, greenish peach.

‘You’re not from hereabouts, are you?’ said the boy. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Finola. I live in London.’

‘Oh, a town kid. No wonder you’re so green.’

The locked door was flung open.

‘
I
’
ll
whale
the
living
daylights
out
of
you,
boy!’
the second gardener roared. He boxed the boy’s ear. Then he turned round. ‘And as for you — why, you’re Mrs MacNamara’s niece, aren’t you?’ he said, staring.

‘Great-great-niece,’ she quavered, holding the peach behind her back.

‘Well, miss, if you wanted to see the greenhouse you only had to ask me. You don’t want to get mixed up with boys like this.’

‘Why didn’t you say you were from the big house?’ said the boy.

Finola looked at him. She thought that he was angry and she said, shaking her head: ‘I didn’t know that you’d need to know.’

‘You get out,’ said the gardener to the boy, ‘and I’ll tell your father on you, make no mistake about it.’

Finola scuttled after the boy and turned sharply round the corner. She went back to the orchard where Alice was still sitting with
Eminent
Victorians
open in front of her. Finola considered going to talk to her and decided against it. She wandered slowly round the garden. She felt cold and decided to go back to the house to fetch her jersey and perhaps to stay indoors.

Finola found Anatole playing the harpsichord in the morning room. She waited at the door. If he noticed her she could speak to him, otherwise he would be angry if she interrupted him. He was frowning as he played but not, she thought, with absorption.

‘Ah, Fin,’ he said. ‘
Que feras
tu
aujourd’hui?’

‘
Je
sais pas,’
she said, and came over to the harpsichord.

‘Are you melancholic?’

‘No,’ laughed Anatole, ‘I am just maddened because Caitlin has had this harpsichord beautifully repainted and has not had it tuned for fifteen years.’

‘Anatole, could you explain something?’ said Finola. ‘Are you busy?’

‘I can certainly try to explain something, darling.’ He touched her arm. She nearly moved away, as Liza had used to do as a child when he touched her, but then she came closer to him. She told him about the incident in the greenhouse.

‘But Anatole, why didn’t the gardener clout me when I’d been stealing peaches like he did the boy?’

‘He told you, didn’t he? Because you were Caitlin’s great — however many greats it is — niece and the greenhouse belongs to her and she would certainly let you eat unripe peaches if you wanted to. Though I hope you didn’t; it would make you sick. And even if she didn’t want you in the
greenhouse, the gardener would not hit you himself, he’d hand you over to Alice, I expect. Or to your nanny, if you had one.’

Finola did not say, ‘I still don’t see why’, because a further explanation would take a long time, and because she was thinking.

She went up to her room. It was a small room, painted dark green, and the furniture was very heavy. It was rarely used. Finola had in previous visits shared a room with Liza or Jenny, but neither of them were here now, and she was seven years old and able to sleep on her own in a strange room, she was told, though Aunt Caitlin promised to have the landing light left on. Finola eased herself into the large, slippery chintz armchair and picked up the book of stories which Clementina had given her at Christmas. Her favourite one was ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’.

Because this cold room smelled both sweet and musty, like a church, the black and silver church-like gloom of the Court of Spain in the tale did not seem so remote and romantic as it usually did. Finola slowly picked her teeth and read the familiar story.

The Infanta could converse only with children of equal rank, except on her birthday. On her twelfth birthday she was not actually associating with the young nobles who were around her, but then she was twelve instead of seven and probably had not the same need for companionship. Finola had occasionally wondered why the exquisite Infanta was so cruel to the dwarf. She had presumed that it was because he was so ugly and she was so beautiful. She wondered now what would have happened if the Infanta had been friendly to the dwarf, since she could not be friendly to the beautiful noble children because they were a little different. Possibly the Infanta would have liked to have a long talk with the strange new dwarf. Anyone would like to have someone so very infatuated with her as the dwarf was with the Infanta. Finola wondered about the Infanta’s name, which was not mentioned. She supposed that to be and to be called Infanta of Spain was enough; her own name would be considered meaningless. Nor did the dwarf have his own name at the Spanish Court.

Altogether the Infanta was a very unpleasant person, but she must have been quite as unhappy as the dwarf if she did exist apart from her clothes, which she surely must do. But perhaps if one had always lived like that one was not unhappy as other people would be. Alice had once said that you cannot want what you have never had.

Finola frowned, and though she had not yet quite finished ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’ she turned back the pages and started to read ‘The Happy Prince’.

*

Shortly after Anatole, Alice and Finola returned from their holiday, Kate told the household that there was a financial crisis. After supper one evening there was a discussion about economies and alterations to be made.

‘We may have to economise,’ said Mr Tuskin with a sniff, after various proposals had been put forward and rejected, ‘but we simply must have an increase in our own shares. One pound ten a week is simply derisory.’

‘Do you realise that most people in this country have to pay for the rent and food and insurance of a whole family on less than that?’ said Charlie, a radical journalist who had come to live at Bramham Gardens some months ago.

‘Yes, yes, Charlie, but we are members of the upper-middle classes in our own very special way,’ said Mr Tuskin.

Charlie breathed in deeply. ‘Considering that you and Harry were evicted from your last place for non-payment of rent …’

‘But my dear Charlie, I thought eviction was one of the greatest capitalist scourges of the working class? Are we to be criticised for our defiant socialist gesture of non-payment?’

‘Be quiet,’ said Kate. ‘I can tell you that our own shares will simply have to be cut, at least until some of us start earning more money. Don’t you understand that the rent’s been nearly doubled?’

‘Some of us,’ said Alice, ‘just cannot earn a regular income like you.’

‘Some of us cannot rely on nice little bonuses from a doting aunt.’

‘Oh, go to the devil.’

‘Why is it that the discussion of money always brings out
the worst in us?’ said Anatole. ‘I think there is a lot to be said for the polite view that it is a vulgar and disruptive topic.’ He looked quite worried and rather innocent.

‘Hear, hear,’ said Mr Tuskin.

‘Stop trying to change the subject,’ said Kate.

‘Yes, Madam Chairman,’ said Jenny.

‘Chair this discussion for five minutes and it’d wipe the smile off your face, Jenny. Liza, will you stop reading that novel and listen? It’s your money that’s concerned, you know. One thing is certain,’ Kate recommenced. ‘We can’t have a daily woman any longer.’