The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (38 page)

She was nearly certain this never happened. In those days, Pauline never read anything. Her father died the following spring, her wedding was postponed, and when a date for it was finally fixed, she wrote asking Gerald if he would give her away. Sarah, aged sixteen, said it was disgusting, a woman being given away like a cow or a bushel of wheat, but Gerald only laughed and said he would.

“Why not? I may as well. I'll never get the chance with you two liberated souls. You're more likely to give
me
away.”

Which only led, of course, to hugs and passionate denials. But Sarah and Hope were happy enough to be bridesmaids, in pink-and-purple tulle, while Ian's little girl wore pale lilac. Helen called them sweet pea colors. A picture of the wedding got into a Sunday paper because of Gerald, whose
Hamadryad
, adapted by himself, had just been shown on television under
the title
A Young Girl
, and Pauline was enraptured. At the wedding reception, after quite a lot of champagne, she threw her arms around his neck and told him he was the best uncle in the world. All, apparently, was forgotten, or at least forgiven.

Ursula worked hard at her art history. She went on a trip to Florence to see the Uffizi and another to Madrid to visit the Prado. Since her honeymoon, she had rarely been abroad, been anywhere really. Gerald didn't like holidays, unfamiliar places, upheavals. If you lived by the sea, he said, you didn't need holidays. Besides, around that time, he was doing author tours, one in the United States and one in Canada, and a four-day promotion in what was then West Germany. She went to Berlin with him, chiefly because she wanted to look at the Wall, but when Robert Postle suggested she accompany Gerald to New York, Washington, and Chicago, and then to Canada, she said no. Gerald just turned his head and glanced at her.

“Don't you like flying, Ursula?” Robert Postle asked.

“That depends on whom you're flying with,” she said.

He thought she meant the airline. Gerald knew. She could see it in his eyes and see something else, too, something that brought her a chill. He liked it when she spoke like that; he enjoyed her dislike, a bit of spirit. It relieved the boredom. She turned her back on him and told Robert she couldn't leave the children. Sarah wasn't old enough to be left in charge of her younger sister.

No one argued with her about her European trips. No one cared. Daphne Batty, recently engaged by Gerald on account of her name, would look after them. Ursula didn't know, wouldn't have guessed, though she knew him so well, what mental notes (and actual notes, probably) he was making for future use of the things she said about the hotels she would be staying in, the pictures she would look at, the sight-seeing she would do. It was to the girls that she said these things, but he listened.

And he listened when she came back and told them what she had seen and where she had been. One day, she found an essay she had written on Vasari and left beside her typewriter now slightly out of alignment, crooked, instead of lined up against the desk edge. But then she had no idea why he should be interested in what she studied or wrote. He concerned himself with her minimally, so why this?

But before she typed the next chapter of
Purple of Cassius
, she put her essay away in a drawer and locked it.

She told Sam none of these details, only that she had been to Florence.

“Let's go there,” he said.

“You and I?”

“I love the way you say ‘you and I,' whereas everyone else says ‘you and me.' I bet when someone rings up and says, ‘Ursula,' you say, ‘This is she.' ”

“Gerald made me,” she said. “That was one good thing he did for me, taught me grammar. Did you really mean we could go to Florence?”

“We could go anywhere,” he said. “Within reason.”

He was staying with her at Lundy View House. When told he was coming, Daphne Batty had asked if she should make up a bed in “Mr. Candless's room,” and Ursula, who doubted if she would have been as bold if the girls had asked, said, “No, thanks. He'll be sleeping with me.”

Daphne said, “Why not,” then started singing something about two sleepy people in dawn's early light and too much in love to say good night. She had simpered at Sam and winked when she thought Ursula wasn't looking.

“I'd like to go to Rome,” Ursula said. “But I don't suppose we could.”

“We'll go tomorrow,” he said. “I'll fix it. I'll go into Barnstaple and fix it.”

“Can you do that?”

“Of course I can. Anyone can. We'll go for a long weekend.”

Fleetingly, she thought of the girls. It wasn't Sarah's weekend. Hope hardly ever came. “I feel happy,” she said, “the way a child does. Simple, innocent happiness.”

Hope and Fabian were coming over for a drink, and when the doorbell rang, Sarah thought that was who it was. She didn't know why they were going to the Odeon at Swiss Cottage, since one of them lived in Crouch End and the other, when they weren't under the same roof, in Docklands. But they had said they would drop in after the film, and she had told herself that her reclusiveness shouldn't apply to her sister.

The doorbell rang at 9:30, which was a bit early for the last showing to be over, but Sarah thought only that perhaps they hadn't liked the film. But when she picked up the intercom, the voice of the speaker on the doorstep was Jason Thague's.

She felt a surge of impatience, of almost-wild protest. Didn't he appreciate the sanctity of one's home? Just because he hadn't one of his own … She wanted very much to tell him to go away and not bother her, but he was her researcher, her detective; she had to be pleasant. Still, when he appeared, she did tell him that she was expecting her sister and she didn't say it in an inviting way.

“It'll be nice to meet her,” he said, his eye on the bottles and glasses Sarah had set out on the table.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Not just yet,” he said. “Maybe just some water for now.”

That alarmed her. How long did he mean to stay? Spots had erupted around the cleft in his chin. It occurred to her, for no reason that she could think of, that Americans called them “zits.” The idea of it made her shudder. Zits. As she poured gin into her glass, she was aware that he smelled better; he smelled quite nice and he had washed his hair.

“I wish you'd phoned first,” she said.

“It's not easy phoning, you know. I expect it's another thing if you've got a mobile phone. I have to find a call box and then find change. I'd probably have to wait in a queue. It just seemed better to come here.”

Not for me, she thought. “Have you got something to tell me?”

“Yep. And it's quite exciting.”

She settled down, resigned herself to it. If it really was exciting, it would be better to get it over before Hope came.

“You found an O'Drida?”

“Better than that,” he said. “I've found your uncle.”

“My uncle?”

“That's what I said. Your father's youngest brother, and he's very much alive.”

For a moment, a frightening instant, she didn't want to know. She wanted to stop. There was something dreadful waiting, a dark, shapeless thing that hovered behind a door, and now the door was opening; she had her hand on it, pushing it outward. Children dream of such things living in cupboards; she had dreamed of them, and screamed for her father. He had always come and always comforted her, but now he wouldn't come. She reached for her
drink and had it to her lips when the bell rang again. Hope and Fabian. Jason watched her go to answer it, conscious, it seemed, only of his own triumph.

Hope was wearing a large chocolate-colored velvet hat. She and Fabian were still laughing indignantly about the hat and the trouble it had caused in the cinema. The woman behind Hope had said she couldn't see and had asked her to take it off, and Hope had pointed out that the cinema was three-quarters empty and the woman could go and sit somewhere else. She kept her hat on because it was cold. The woman said she had a right to sit where she liked and a right to an uninterrupted view of the screen, while Hope had no business to keep an enormous hat on under those circumstances.

At this point, Sarah introduced Jason. Hope acknowledged him vaguely in passing. She obviously hadn't realized who he was. His name wasn't enough to recall to her his function in Sarah's memoir.

“Oh, how do you do?” She barely looked at him. “So Fab started telling her the law on rights to sit where one likes and that sort of thing. It was hilarious. And then a guy in the row in front turned around and told us that if we wanted to talk, we should stay at home and watch the telly, and a great swearing match started, and in the middle of it I quietly took off my hat, and it was amazing—everyone just shut up and went back to looking at the movie, which was the great bore of the year, anyway, wasn't it, Fab?”

“Jason is doing research for me for my book,” Sarah said.

Perhaps it was that which did it. Sarah remembered too late that Hope had said she didn't care for the idea of strangers rooting about in their father's past. And now she looked at Jason like one who rather dislikes animals might look at the dog curled up on a friend's sofa.

“May I have an enormous glass of that red?” she said, and then, smiling, opening her eyes wide, added, “Are you a professional researcher?”

“I don't know,” Jason said. “I don't know what that is.”

Hope raised her eyebrows, looked down, put on her Mrs. Justice Candless look. She said to Sarah and Fabian, “Let's get him to play the Game.”

“What, now?”

“Why not?”

Sometimes Hope could be very clever. It never did to underrate her. Sarah poured the wine and went to look for scissors. The kitchen pair had
disappeared, so they settled for the silver-handled nail scissors that had been part of a manicure set inherited by Sarah when Betty Wick died.

“What is this game?” Jason said.

“You'll see. Give him a drink. He's going to need it.”

“Will you?”

“You could put some gin in this water. Just a little.”

“You have to pass the scissors crossed or uncrossed,” said Fabian. “There's a way of doing it right, just one way. We'll tell you when you get it right, but you have to show us you know why. Okay?”

“Yep. I guess.”

“I pass the scissors uncrossed.”

“I receive the scissors crossed and pass them uncrossed,” said Sarah to Fabian.

“I receive them uncrossed and pass them uncrossed.”

Hope took the scissors. “I receive them uncrossed and pass them uncrossed.”

“I receive the scissors uncrossed,” said Jason, turning them over and opening them, “and pass them crossed.”

“No, you don't,” said Sarah. “I've just seen something. It's easier for women, isn't it?”

“Daddy noticed that when he was only a little boy. He told me. But he had a brilliant mind. I bet he got it at once. He never said, but I bet he did. I receive the scissors crossed and pass them uncrossed.”

Jason, who had been leaning forward with his legs apart, crossed them, said, “I receive the scissors crossed and pass them crossed.”

Hope said, “You do, but do you know why?”

“Sure I know why. It's your legs. When your legs are crossed, you pass the scissors crossed, and when they're not, you pass them uncrossed. Simple, my dear Watson.”

Hope turned pale. “I don't believe it.”

“Why not? It's obvious. It's a game meant for kids, isn't it? Surely everyone soon gets it.”

“No, they don't. It takes them years. How long did it take you, Fab?”

“I don't know, weeks. But I'm not very bright. Typical lawyer, I am, good memory but no brain.”

“I can't believe what I've just seen,” said Hope.

It occurred to Sarah while Hope was putting her hat back on that she might get them to take Jason with them; Fabian might even be induced to drop him off at Liverpool Street, but then she wouldn't hear about the O'Dridas. And suddenly, she wanted to know. Her fear had passed, the monstrous thing behind the door had retreated, and a new respect for Jason had replaced it. No one, after all, had ever gotten the point of the Game so fast.

“I'll never believe you weren't shown it as a child,” Hope was saying. Ungenerously, Sarah thought. “You've probably got repressed-memory syndrome.”

Jason shrugged and smiled. Fabian said, “Can we drop you somewhere?”

“No, he mustn't go. He's got something to tell me.” Hope's lifted eyebrows angered Sarah. She said defiantly, “I'm going to give him another drink and hear our family's secrets. Off you go. I'll phone.”

Jason waited until the front door had closed. “Your sister shouldn't have made such a song and dance about that hat. It's antisocial, that kind of behavior.”

“Maybe. Tell me about—did you call him my
uncle
?”

The notebook was brought out. Jason looked at it, glanced up, said, “You got upset last time. It's all a bit emotional, this, isn't it? Will you be okay?”

“Of course I will.”

“All right, then. Here goes. There's just one O'Drida in the Dublin phone book. He's eighty-five years old and Anne Ryan was his half sister. She and her sister were born in Hackney, if you remember, but when the mother died—Mrs. O'Drida, that is—the father went back to Ireland, leaving his daughters with their maternal grandmother, who lived in Ipswich. She brought them up. O'Drida settled in Dublin, remarried, and had several children, and the last remaining of them is this Liam O'Drida, whom I talked to. He told me all that. He's quite compos mentis.”

“But he isn't my uncle; he's my … well, my great-uncle maybe.”

“I'm coming to your uncle. Bear with me. Liam O'Drida never knew his half sisters. He was much younger, for one thing. But he did know or know of James Ryan. Liam's daughter came to London as a student nurse in the
sixties, and while she was there, she looked up her aunt's son or her half aunt's son. He was the only person in London she had any connection with. She visited him and his family a few times.”