The Juniper Tree (20 page)

It was a pity that we had so much difficulty discussing our problems, particularly Bernard, who was a very private man and hated to admit that anything was wrong. But once we had faced our difficulties and adjusted to them, life together was much easier and sometimes almost happy. We enjoyed our children, entertained a little and were entertained in return, and I was fairly interested in the gallery although my work consisted of writing business letters in French. Miss Rose coached me in this or sat at a desk in the main room near the entrance, handing out catalogues and that sort of thing. Bernard’s elegant young assistant did most of the talking. He became quite animated when he discussed paintings, otherwise he was a little unhuman.

The gallery was pretty quiet just then, only mixed exhibitions; but Miss Rose said that when the summer was over there would be one-man exhibitions with private views that were like cocktail parties, attended by critics and famous people. She did her best to arouse my interest and I
was
interested in the paintings, but the gallery seemed a little dull after my cheerful little shop. For one thing, the actual buying and selling was so discreet. Besides this, although it was summer I had to wear stuffy tights and formal shoes; no jeans, of course, nothing comfortable, so I wore a silver-grey dress with a narrow skirt that was difficult to sit down in. Still, I only went to the gallery two or three times a week and I was pleased that Bernard wanted me there, particularly when he introduced me to his business friends as his wife. I was so proud to have such a husband. The days I stayed at home seemed to pass very quickly. Although Greta looked after the children most of the time, she had days off and I helped her, particularly now Marline was home with her school closed for the holidays. I sometimes took them out for the day in my small car, once to the sea, where Johnny’s white skin suffered from the sun. Bernard was very angry about this and said that I was only used to looking after piccaninnies and wasn’t to be trusted with fine-skinned white children. It was very unlike him to say such a thing and the next day, when the redness had faded, he was very contrite and, of course, I forgave him. All the same, this thing he had said in his anger stayed in my mind like a thorn although I tried to forget it.

The car made such a difference to my life. I didn’t use it to go to the gallery because I went in Bernard’s and I wasn’t up to driving in the centre of London yet; but it was so useful for shopping, visiting my few friends and taking Marline to school in term time. Best of all, it gave me a new confidence. I suppose I felt rather as my mother did in her red Rover.

I didn’t see much of my mother at this time because Mr Crimony was ill, really ill, poor man, and waiting to go into hospital for an operation; but she had come to our simple registry office wedding – nothing would have kept her away from that – and I heard her say to Mr Crimony in her usual abrupt way: ‘You silly old man, you would choose a time like this to be ill.’ All dressed in black, he sat outside in the car and neither of them came to the wedding lunch, which we had in a local French restaurant. So beside ourselves, there were just the two witnesses, business friends of Bernard’s, Mary and Peter. Peter was particularly quiet that day. Mary was very gay at first, but by the end of the meal tears were pouring down her small pointed face. She said champagne always made her weep, and when we left for our plane, she was laughing again.

Poor Mr Crimony. Mother did bring him to see the house once before he returned to the hospital for his second operation. Marline was delighted to see her Mr Chimney again and showed him round the garden and allowed him to watch her feeding the magpies, which she had been taming all the summer. When the cock bird settled on her shoulder and took food from between her lips, the old man thought it dangerous, and I must admit, I did at first. But the birds appeared to be absolutely trustworthy except that they were thieves. When the last young magpie left the nest – there had only been two – I intended to have a good search for Bernard’s golden cuff-link. I was sure it was somewhere in that domed nest.

My mother showed Mr Crimony all over the house and, although it took some time and he appeared to be very tired, I think he enjoyed it and liked to think of such a fine place ‘being in the family’, as he called it. He saw little Johnny in his nursery and thought him a nice little chap ‘but not a patch on our Tommy’.

When we were sitting at the dining-room table, mother picked up a heavy silver tablespoon and weighed it in her hand as if to tell its worth and said, ‘I must say, you’ve done very well for yourself, Bella. I never would have thought it possible.’

But Mr Crimony said: ‘It’s no surprise to me. Bella always knew what she wanted. If she’d stayed in my coal office, where would she be now?’

I laughed and said, ‘In the coal office, I should imagine.’

Just a week later Mr Crimony died during his second operation.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

O
n the first day of the new term I took Marline to school. Then I returned to do something I could only do when she was not at home – search for Bernard’s cuff-link in the magpies’ nest. I carried a small ladder and a child’s spade down to the juniper tree clearing. I was relieved to see there wasn’t a single magpie in sight, and I put the ladder against the cherry tree and climbed up. I found the spade, small as it was, useless; something flexible was needed, a hand for instance, so I dropped the spade and put my hand in through the opening of the dome-shaped nest and scooped up all kinds of filth – bird mess, dirty feathers and a few small bones, a child’s bead necklace, sweet papers, but then the golden cuff-link. I had not damaged the nest at all, just given it a good clean, but suddenly an angry bird appeared and began to attack me, making frightful noises at the same time. I managed to beat it off my face but got my hand scratched by its strong dark beak and by the time I’d reached the bottom of the ladder there were two of them attacking me. I could still hear their harsh, aggressive cries as I ran towards the house.

Later in the day, when I went to retrieve the ladder, the cock bird appeared threateningly and from that time Gertrude’s
elsters
never trustedv me again. Bernard was pleased to have his cuff-link back, though.

Johnny was nearly three and rather spoilt by Bernard and Marline; I suppose we all spoilt him in a way because Bernard insisted that he must always have his own way. If he wanted to eat from the back of his plate he must be allowed to do so. When he cried at bedtime, he could stay up as long as he wanted, often falling asleep on the carpet. It could have been much worse except that by nature he was an obedient boy, particularly when his father was not around. I suggested to Bernard that he went to playschool in the mornings, as there was one for under fives quite near. Reluctantly he agreed and for the first few days Johnny enjoyed himself. He was very affectionate towards the other children and not at all shy as I feared he would be. Then one morning he was tired from staying up too late the previous evening and, when he saw Bernard, he broke into tears and said he didn’t want to go to school. Bernard held him in his arms and said, ‘Poor little fellow, of course you needn’t go to school if you don’t like it. We’ll try again when you are older.’ And that was the end of school for the time being.

We had done nothing about the replacement of Greta, who was due to leave in late October. I offered her a rise in salary if she would stay a little longer, until Christmas, perhaps, but she was determined to go home. It was Miss May I wanted to get rid of, not Greta, who had become quite a friend. We hardly needed her as well as old Mrs Hicks. She was over-inquisitive and too interested in our sleeping arrangements and because of this I used to change the sheets so that it appeared that Bernard slept in the bed beside me and not in the dressing-room. I only did this on Mondays, when she put clean linen on the beds after I left the house. One Monday, just as I was leaving and Bernard was sitting in the car waiting for me, Miss May caught my arm familiarly and said, ‘I hope you haven’t been juggling about with the sheets, Mrs Forbes. It’s quite unnecessary. I know your husband sleeps in his dressing-room.’

I jerked my arm free but didn’t say a thing, just walked away with what must have been a stricken face. I could hear Bernard saying, ‘Hurry, dear, we’re late,’ then seeing my face as he opened the car door for me, he asked, ‘What’s happened? You are upset about something,’ and he put his arm round me in the kindest way.

I told him what Miss May had said and asked if he’d mind if I got rid of her, she was so very unpleasant at times. He agreed that it was time she went and offered to dismiss her that evening, but I said I’d prefer to do it myself. I did it so well that she left the following morning and nothing was said about a month’s notice on either side.

It was the dismissal of Miss May that caused me to give up my career in the gallery. It was intended as a temporary break until we got someone suitable to help at home; but it gradually became permanent. I did go to some of the private views and helped out occasionally when Miss Rose was short-handed, but that was all.

At the end of October, just before Greta returned to Holland, we picked apples in the spinney. There was a small tree of indeterminate cookers and a large one of Blenheim orange, apples as beautiful as their name in appearance and taste. To my surprise Peter left his magnifying glass and paints and joined us. He climbed the trees with a basket on his arm, but Greta and I used a ladder. Marline had been given a holiday that day and was climbing about like a monkey. Johnny, who was only just three, had to be carefully carried up and down every now and then to pick a few apples, but otherwise he sat on the grass or collected windfalls from the ground. It was a perfect autumn day and we made an occasion of the apple gathering or rather picking, by having a picnic under the tree.

In all the time I’d been connected with the Forbeses and since becoming a Forbes myself, I’d seldom seen Peter outside the rooms where he worked, a largish studio upstairs where he did his painting and restoring and a room in the basement he used for picture framing and other things. He often worked with a small magnifying-glass fixed in one eye like a monocle and I almost thought of it as part of his pale calm face. When the apple picking was over he helped me store the apples in the room where my things were kept. I took off the shroud-like sheets and showed him my treasures and from that moment we were close friends.

He cared for antiques almost as much as I did. In his spare time he decorated the room for me, all white except for a sea-green ceiling, which rather gave the feeling of being in an aquarium. We covered the rough wood floor with a light terracotta fitted carpet, my only extravagance at that time. Then Peter discovered a beautiful fireplace that had been boarded in and the room completely lost its basement look. When the furniture was arranged it was transformed into a magical place. Bernard knew nothing about it and he sometimes wondered why Johnny, who liked to play there and called it ‘Bella’s house’ tried to lead him down the basement steps. If he had looked through the basement windows, he would have seen Bella’s house in all its glory and his special chair waiting for him; but Bernard wasn’t the kind of man who looked down into basements and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to or not. I’d have loved to have seen him in his chair and to be sitting at his feet as I used to, perhaps with him stroking my hair; but we never sat like that now. Would it be different in Bella’s house? I felt I’d rather not know.

Soon after Greta left I engaged a daily nurse, a policeman’s wife who had been a nanny before she married, Jenny she was called. Her hours were flexible and she was willing to stay late when we went out in the evening, which was once a week at the most. On other evenings we sometimes had people to dinner, otherwise we listened to music, read or looked at television. We didn’t talk as much as we used to, and I think it was about this time that Bernard lost interest in educating me. All the same, he was a kind and generous husband and he did want me to be happy. It put him out if I wasn’t, so quite often I appeared to be happier than I was. Sometimes I had hopes that Gertrude was fading from the house because he had ceased to talk about her as if she were still alive.

One autumn morning I drove to the Green and the leaves were falling from the chestnut trees and I remembered how I watched them from the shop window and used to think of them as golden gloves falling down. Now I was the other side of the window looking in and instead of antiques there were tubes of paint and drawing blocks and stark white canvases, brushes too and art books. Mary had told me that it was now an art shop, but I hadn’t really taken it in and now, seeing the changes, I felt slightly shocked and resentful. I could see the owner of the shop, a man with a pink drooping face and pig-like nose, wrapping up a neat square parcel, then putting money in the till. I’d never had a till, only a black tin cashbox. Suddenly my resentment faded and I hoped little Droopy-cheeks would make a great success of his shop, far better to sell art materials. The shop was now completely impersonal and nothing to do with me. That part of my life was finished. But I still had my collection in Bella’s house and was adding to it from time to time.

After Christmas Marline went to a new school, rather an expensive one where the children wore a very pretty casual uniform. She stayed there all day and seemed to like it, making friends and bringing them home to tea. There were birthday parties and I always seemed to be buying birthday presents for children I’d never even seen; but I had my small income from the building society and there was nothing much to spend it on except Marline and my collection downstairs. Mr Crimony had left Marline and me a thousand pounds each, which I immediately put in our accounts. The rest of his money went to my mother, so she was quite a well off woman now and gave up her travel agency work. This was a mistake because she found life without Mr Crimony to boss around very lonely and I think she bossed people in the agency and must have missed that too. She took to visiting me at least once a week, usually for tea, when Marline was home from school. She got on extraordinarily well with Marline, and now she had overcome her original shock at her colour, I don’t think she would have changed her for a white grand-daughter. She was fond of Johnny too and used to tell people that she was his grandmother if she got the chance.