The Black Opal (28 page)

On Saturday we lunched at a quaint old inn he had discovered. We laughed a great deal and I began to feel that I had imagined that melancholy I thought I had detected in him when we met at Easentree.

He was the Lucian I would have expected him to be. He talked about the Grange estate and some of the people who worked on it, and I had

stories of my own to tell of Australia, Elsie and the Formans.

This was catching up with the past.

I had not yet seen his daughter, although I had heard a great deal about Camilla’s son who was not even here. I began to think there was something odd about this reticence, but I did learn something during my stay.

It was late in the afternoon. I had returned to the Grange after a very pleasant time with Lucian. I was looking out of my window when I saw Camilla coming across the lawn. She saw me and waved.

“It’s pleasant out here,” she called.

“Why don’t you come down, if you’re not doing anything special?”

I went down and we sat on one of the seats which had been placed under a tree.

“Did you have a good day?” she asked.

“Very pleasant. We went to the Bluff King Hal. Do you know it?”

“Oh yes. It’s one of Lucian’s favourites. I guessed he’d want to show you that.”

“Camilla,” I said, ‘what about little Bridget? That is her name, isn’t it? “

“Oh, she’s up in the nursery with Jemima Cray.”

“Is that the nurse?”

“Well, yes. She looks after her.”

“I haven’t seen her. I wondered …”

“Do you want to see her?”

“I’d like to.”

“We didn’t think … you see, Jemima Cray … she’s a bit of a martinet.”

“Oh?”

“It’s rather difficult to explain. Lucian’s marriage … it wasn’t very successful. I think it might have been better without Jemima Cray.”

“Who is Jemima Cray?”

“She was a maid … one-time nurse to Laura. Laura was Lucian’s wife.

It was a hasty marriage. I was already

2. 2. married myself at that time, so I wasn’t here much. It was about three years ago. I never got to know Laura very well. And almost immediately she was going to have Bridget. She was often ailing, I think. I always had the impression that Lucian had rushed into it. And then she died.

Jemima seems to blame Lucian for that. Anyway, if you would like to see Bridget, I’ll take you up. I think Jemima often goes out at this time. There’s a nursery maid, a girl from the village. She will be there. “

Camilla’s rather casual treatment of the matter somehow made me feel that it was more mysterious than ever.

We climbed to the top of the house and entered what was a very traditional nursery. There was the usual big cupboard and a rocking-horse in one corner and a board and easel in another. The young nursery maid was seated in a chair and, on the floor, surrounded by bricks which were a sort of jigsaw puzzle, was a little girl.

“Oh, you’re here,” said Camilla.

“I thought you would be. Miss Cray not back yet?”

“No, Miss Camilla, not yet.”

“How is Miss Bridget?”

The child looked up at the sound of her name.

The,” she said, smiling. The, me!”

“Hello, Bridget,” said Camilla.

“I’ve brought someone to see you.”

Camilla picked her up and sat down with the child on her knee.

“Getting a big girl now, aren’t you, Bridget?” said Camilla.

Bridget nodded.

“What time does Miss Cray return?” asked Camilla.

“Oh, I reckon she’ll be another half-hour. Miss. She usually is.”

Camilla relaxed visibly. She glanced down at the floor.

“You haven’t finished your picture yet, Bridget,” she said.

The picture when completed, 1 saw, would be one of a horse. The head and the tail at the moment had yet to be placed in position. Bridget slipped from Camilla’s lap and knelt down by the bricks. She picked up the one with the tail and tried to fix it where the head should be.

I knelt down beside her and took up the brick with the head and put it in.

Bridget crowed with delight when she saw it fitted and she put the tail in the proper place. She then surveyed the finished picture with delight and, turning to me, smiled. She rocked on her heels and clapped her hands. I did the same and she hunched her shoulders, laughing.

Then she stood up and, taking my hand, led me over to the rocking-horse, indicating that she wanted to mount. I lifted her up and settled her there. Then I gave the horse a little push. She laughed with delight as it began to rock.

“More, more!” she cried. So I stood there, pushing the rocking-horse, looking at her fine silky hair and thinking:

This is Lucian’s child. She is delightful. Why does he never speak of her?

And, as I stood there, pushing the horse, I sensed that something had happened, and, turning, I saw that a woman had come into the room.

She was regarding me with intense disapproval. She was tall and thin, with small, closely set eyes. There was something repellent about her which was not only due to the annoyance which was directed against me.

The nursery maid seemed to have shrunk. She looked as though she had been caught in an act of treachery.

Then Bridget called out: “Look, Mima, look. More, more.”

The woman strode to the rocking-horse.

Too high, pet,” she said.

“You must only go high when Jemima is here.”

“It was all right,” I said, rather piqued.

“I was watching her.”

Camilla said to me: “This is Jemima Cray. She looks after Bridget.”

“How do you do?” I said coolly.

“Jemima,” said Camilla, “Miss Sinclair wanted to meet Bridget. They seemed to get on very well together.”

“It’s just that I don’t like her excited before bedtime. There’ll be nightmares.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any trouble,” I could not help saying.

“I

think she enjoyed the ride. “

“And I think we should be going,” said Camilla.

When we were downstairs, I said to Camilla: “What an extraordinary woman! She was very unpleasant.”

“That’s Jemima Cray. She is like that where Bridget is concerned.”

“She seemed to take a lot on herself. What sort of position does she have here?”

“She’s a sort of nanny, I suppose.”

“She behaves as though she is mistress of the house.”

“She would reckon she is of the nursery quarters.”

“But surely Lady Crompton doesn’t allow that?”

“My mother doesn’t have anything to do with the nursery.”

“But Bridget is her grandchild!”

Camilla was silent for a moment or two. Then she said:

“It is all rather unusual… the whole set-up. It was a great pity. I cannot understand Lucian. It was so unlike him. || He’s usually so well … in command of everything.”

“It certainly seems strange,” I said.

“Bridget is a lovely little girl, and yet it seems as though she is shut away … with that rather disagreeable woman.”

“She is not disagreeable to Bridget. She dotes on her and the child loves Jemima.” She hesitated again.

“The fact is, it was not a very satisfactory marriage. No one was more aware of that than Lucian it changed him. You know how full of life

he used to be when he was young. And then … this happened. It was so sudden. He married her and she was going to have a child. She didn’t want it. Actually, 1 think she was badly scared. She brought Jemima Cray with her when she came. She was one of those nannies who, when they are too old to nanny, become a sort of confidante maid They make themselves into guardian angels. They’re jealous and they hate anyone who comes near their little darling. When Laura died, she transferred her fixation to Bridget. She hates us all, particularly Lucian. She behaves as though she thinks we murdered the girl.”

“Why on earth do you keep her?”

“That’s what I’ve said to my mother a hundred times. She said that Laura promised Jemima that she should look after the child and be to her what she had been to her mother. Deathbed scene, that sort of dramatic stuff. She was a rather hysterical person, Laura. One of those weak, clinging people who have to be obeyed because if they are not they faint or die and come back to haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“But surely Lucian … ?”

“There’s nothing Lucian wants so much as to forget what a fool he was to marry the woman. I suppose Bridget reminds him of that. So Jemima is up there, and we don’t see very much of them.”

“How very odd!”

“Lots of people are odd, you know. Sometimes it seems to me that it is natural to be so. But this works. Jemima is very efficient and no one could look after Bridget more carefully. She’s a dragon breathing fire if anyone tries to harm her little one. I expect it will all sort itself out in due course.”

1 lay sleepless in my four-poster that night, wondering about the marriage of Lucian and Laura. Camilla had implied that she had been a poor creature in the hands of the fire-breathing Jemima. Then why had he married her? One could not imagine Lucian’s being a weakling, drawn into a situation against his will.

^3i

That woman Jemima had given me an uneasy feeling. What had Camilla said?

“She acts as though she thinks we murdered the girl.” Who?

Lucian?

There was something mysterious about the whole affair. I may have been right when, on our first meeting at the roadside, I had sensed that there was something which disturbed him. He had changed. Well, a marriage like that was enough to change anyone. I longed to know his true feelings about his marriage, about the child. This engendered a certain tenderness in me. In the past, he had seemed so strong and, in my childish mind, invincible. Now he was vulnerable and I had been right when I thought something had happened to change him.

I longed to know his true feelings.

Perhaps that was why I kept him constantly in my thoughts.

The weeks were passing and I was still with the Hysons. I could not help feeling guilty for staying so long, but when I suggested leaving, there were protests from Gertie in which Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Harold joined.

“It wouldn’t be the same without you, dear,” said Aunt Beatrice, and Gertie added: “I need you. There is the house to think of and then there’ll be all the preparations for the wedding. Of course you can’t go into some hateful little |1 hotel.”

I had no wish to go. I found I was feeling much better than I had ever thought possible. However great one’s grief, it must fade with time, and what was happening in the present must impress itself over the past. And a great deal was happening. Life was becoming interesting.

Even Gertie, absorbed as she was in her exciting prospects, had time to consider mine. She was very amused and talked about two strings to my bow-no, three, when you considered poor old James digging for opals in the Outback.

She had wanted to hear all about the visit to the Grange.

I told her something, omitting the existence of Bridget and the strange Jemima Cray. That would have titillated her imagination too far, and I could imagine the wild melodrama she would have indulged in.

She was particularly interested in Lucian who, to her, represented the romantic hero. The noble doctor Lawrence Emmerson, though, was not forgotten. He would make a good though unexciting husband, she decided, and I should be well looked after by Miss Dorothy; everything would be done for my own good whether I liked it or not, but it would be the ‘right thing’ for me.

There was another alternative. I could go back to Australia and marry James, with the choice of being an opal millionairess or spending the rest of my life in a tent in the opal fields, which Gertie feared might be the more likely.

“Look what could be yours!” she cried.

“Take your pick.”

I laughed at her.

“The only one which could be open to me is the opal fields. And it would not surprise me if James had found himself a wife by now.”

She sighed and put on one of her worldly-wise expressions the experienced woman advising the innocent.

Whatever happened, I should hate to lose Gertie. We had been friends for so long.

I paid several visits to the Emmerson cottage. I was becoming more and more friendly with Dorothy. She was a lively companion, interested in most subjects and especially in art and music. Now and then she had tickets for some concert or art exhibition and, if Lawrence was working, she and I would go together.

Then there were visits to the Grange, and I was finding my time fully occupied.

Gertie and Aunt Beatrice had found the house, and furnishings and wedding plans had to be discussed. Gertie

2. had written to her parents, telling them that she and Her nard would try to get out to Australia in two years’ time.

“Perhaps you would come with us,” she said to me.

With so much innuendo in the Kensington house, it would be impossible for me not to wonder what were the intentions of my two men friends towards me.

Dorothy’s conversation rather led me to believe that she thought it was time Lawrence married and, if that were so, I was sure that she considered me as likely tp be worthy of him as anyone she could find.

And if she thought it was right, Lawrence would be made to think so, too.

Perhaps that was not fair to Lawrence. Lawrence was absorbed in his work and he naturally left certain decisions to Dorothy. But marriage would be too important for that and he himself would be the one to decide. His sister might choose his food and the material for a suit, but his wife was a different matter.

He was always rather tender to me. I think he still saw me as the little girl lost in an alien city. He did enjoy my company and he liked to talk to me about his work and his aspirations. He was entirely dedicated. Life with him would be predictable, although, of course, one could never be sure what would happen to anyone. Marriage to Lawrence Emmerson and a menage a trois including my very good friend his sister, could be as comfortable a life as one could hope for.

Perhaps I should have been ready to accept it if it were not for Lucian.