The Ka of Gifford Hillary (20 page)

I recalled the battles I had had with her in my endeavours to restrain her from making a nightmare of our first home. Although I had had to give way to her about a walnut bedroom suite, on which she had set her heart, I had managed to save face with my own friends in the furnishing of our downstairs rooms. But here she had been free to do her worst.

Turning to face Johnny, Christobel asked in a flippant tone designed to show her youthful cynicism: ‘Now, give us the works!’

No longer inclined to mince matters, he replied: ‘Your father is dead. He died quite unexpectedly last night.’

‘So that’s it.’ She did not turn a hair of her ‘urchin crop’ which I was old-fashioned enough to dislike.

‘I’m afraid there will be a lot of unpleasant publicity connected with his death,’ Johnny went on. ‘You see, he took his own life; and the reason for his doing so was because he had just killed another man who was living in the house.’

At that my hard-boiled young daughter’s eyelashes did flutter, but not on account of the imminence of tears. She simply gasped: ‘Well I’m damned. I’d never have thought it of him.’

‘Neither would I,’ replied Johnny tartly. ‘But there appears to be no disputing the fact that that is what he did. Please tell
your mother and brother, and convey my sympathy to them. The inquest is on Monday and the funeral on Tuesday morning. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be on my way.’

Apparently still too overcome by surprise to ask him any questions, she accompanied him to the front door. There she flashed him a sudden smile and said: ‘Thanks for letting us know. Do come and pay us a proper visit some time.’ Then she closed the door after him and stood for a moment irresolute in the narrow hall.

Now much intrigued to learn what the reactions of my ex-wife and son would be, instead of following Johnny I remained beside Christobel. After blowing the rather pudgy nose which was the worst feature of her otherwise attractively youthful face, she opened a door at the side of the hall which gave on to a small dining-room. Edith and Harold were sitting at an oval table eating cutlets and mashed potatoes.

The years had not been very kind to Edith. In her youth she had been a voluptuous blonde, but rinses had failed to keep the colour in her hair and her face had become distinctly fleshy. Really beautiful women owe their looks to bone formation and that alone gives lasting charm to the outline of their features. Ankaret, for example, if she had lived to be ninety, could not fail to mature to the end as a most handsome old lady. But such bone structures are not often met with. The great majority of pretty girls are, alas, doomed as their age advances to fight a losing battle against the contours of their faces becoming ever more disenchanting. Edith had proved no exception, and I noted, too, that she was now wearing a hearing aid. Even in her youth she had been a little deaf, and I was sorry to see that this trouble of hers had evidently become worse.

In Harold, at eighteen, I could take little pride. He was very tall but narrow-shouldered, sallow-complexioned, and, his sight being poor, he wore heavy tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. His appearance was not improved by the untidiness of his clothes and his unbrushed hair, a big lock of which he always let hang down over his forehead. That he was my son I had no doubt whatever. He even had a slight resemblance to me physically; but mentally, we were poles apart. His two gifts, a flair for figures—which, at his own wish, had caused me earlier that year to arrange for him to be apprenticed
to a good firm of chartered accountants—and an appreciation of classical music, were both interests which I lacked the ability to share; and I had long since given up as hopeless all attempts to win his affection. He had erected a barrier that I could not penetrate, based, I suppose, on resentment of the fact that I had left his mother.

But, that apart, he lacked all sense of the joy of life. At his age, without being vicious, I had been quite a scamp, whereas he had a slightly sneering attitude towards any form of riotous living. At times, when I had been with him, I had not been able to prevent filtering through my mind the old story of the Colonel asking a Subaltern who was both a teetotaller and a notorious prude about women: ‘Do you eat hay?’ Much surprised the Subaltern had replied: ‘No, Sir.’ Upon which the Colonel had retorted: ‘Then you are not a fit companion for man or beast.’ To my shame, that was the way I felt about Harold.

As Christobel entered the room her mother looked up and asked: ‘What was it, dear?’

The girl made no move to resume her place at table, and replied by another question: ‘Mummy, you’ve always told us that Pa was the one man in your life. Did you really love him very deeply?’

Edith’s slightly-sagging face took on the expression of the righteous and forgiving martyr. ‘Of course, dear. But what a funny thing to ask in the middle of dinner.’

‘Does he still mean very much to you,’ Christobel persisted.

‘Yes, child! Naturally! He was your father.’ Edith’s voice now held a faintly testy note. ‘Come and sit down and finish your cutlet.’

For the first time Christobel showed traces of emotion; then she blurted out: ‘Well, I’m sorry, darling, but Pa’s had it. That was Wing Commander Norton. He’s a sort of cousin, isn’t he? Pa’s solicitor asked him to call and tell us that there has been a frightful bust-up at Langshot. Apparently Pa killed another man last night then committed suicide.’

Edith dropped her fork with a clatter. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, her face twisting into a grimace. ‘No; no! It can’t be true!’

Harold jumped to his feet and snapped at his sister: ‘Couldn’t you have broken it a bit more gently.’ Then he ran round to his mother, who had closed her eyes, pressed one
hand to her ample bosom, and looked as though she were about to faint.

The brother and sister began to speculate on the cause of the tragedy at Longshot, but were cut short by Edith’s standing up, leaning on Harold’s shoulder and murmuring: ‘Take me to my room, dear; take me to my room.’

Between them they got her upstairs, where she lay down on her bed, now weeping copiously. After providing her with aspirins, lavender water, and a supply of handkerchiefs, they made a few awkward efforts to comfort her, then drew the window curtains and went downstairs to finish their interrupted meal.

Christobel pushed aside the remains of the now cold cutlet, cut herself a large slice of treacle tart and, as she began hurriedly to eat it, remarked: ‘I must buck up, or I’ll be late meeting Archie, and he hates having to wait to go in until after the last programme’s started.’

‘I’d have thought you might have stayed in tonight.’ Harold gave a disapproving sniff. ‘After all, even if he had no time for us, he was our father.’

‘Don’t be stuffy,’ she chided him. ‘You know jolly well you’d be going out somewhere yourself if you weren’t stony-broke. Having just learnt that Pa is dead wouldn’t stop you.’

He gave a sour smile. ‘I suppose you’re right. This last month of the quarter always gets me down. I wonder how he would have liked to have to stay at home night after night for want of a few bob to go to a concert or a political meeting.’

‘You can listen to the wireless, and you’ve got your records. If you didn’t spend so much on them and drinking beer with your Left-wing friends you wouldn’t be so hard up towards the end of every quarter.’

‘Hang it all, why shouldn’t I?’ he protested, brushing the dangling lock away from over his right eye. ‘And no one could accuse me of extravagance. It’s just that in these days a hundred a year goes nowhere.’

‘You’re telling me!’ Christobel took a quick drink of water.

‘Oh you! For a girl it’s very different. There are always plenty of chaps ready to take you places and pay for your fun.’

‘Perhaps; but I have to watch every penny all the same.
You’ve no idea what clothes cost, and hair-do’s and make-up stuff. I’m just as hard put to it on my hundred a year as you are on yours.’

‘Ah, but you have a hundred plus.’

‘Plus what?’

‘Plus the asset of your sex. Having spent your hundred on dolling yourself up you are all set. The plus is letting your boy-friends maul you about a bit in exchange for giving you a darned good time.’

‘Harold!’ Her voice was sharp. ‘Don’t be disgusting! How dare you speak of me as though I were a tart.’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t intend to imply that you would go the whole hog for money. But I’ll bet all your kisses aren’t given for love. Don’t think I’m blaming you, either. I’d do the same if I were in your place. What is more, if you had met some really rich playboy and gone to bed with him for what you could get out of it, to my mind that would have been Pa’s fault. There he was, always beefing about his super tax and allowing his daughter less than half the wages earned by a shop girl. Still, now the mean old so-and-so is dead, things should be a lot better for us.’

‘I wouldn’t count on that,’ Christobel shook her head. ‘You know how crazy he was about the bitch. I’ll bet that she and her noble relatives have got their claws on everything, including the kitchen sink.’

Harold’s mouth drew into a snarl. ‘By God, if he has left the bitch everything I’ll fight her in the courts.’

‘Will you?’ His sister gave him an amused look. ‘And where is the money to pay the lawyers to come from, eh? Besides, you are only eighteen, so still a minor. Mummy is the only person who could start an action on our behalf; and you know how spineless she is. We’d never be able to persuade her to, even if there’s a case; and I don’t suppose there is one. It’s hardly likely that Pa would have failed to make provision for her allowance, and ours, to be continued; and I shouldn’t think we’d be legally entitled to demand more.’

‘But hang it all!’ Dismay mingled with the anger on Harold’s sallow face. ‘Even if you are right about yourself and Mother, I must come into something. I’m the new Baronet. Surely I’ll get some cash with the title.’

At that Christobel began to laugh. ‘Of course,’ she giggled
‘You are Sir Harold now. Somehow that part of it hadn’t struck me, and it will take quite a bit of getting used to.’

‘I don’t see what’s so funny about it,’ he said sullenly.

‘You wouldn’t; and apart from being able to swank, I doubt if it will do you much good.’ Standing up she added: ‘I must beat it. And while I am on my way to sell myself to my rich admirer, Sir Harold Hillary, Bart., can do the washing up.’

For that crack, I must say, I liked my daughter quite a bit better; but it was followed by a sordid little incident.

‘Hi!’ he called as she made to leave the room. ‘I did it last Saturday. It’s your turn; and you haven’t paid me yet for doing it the Saturday before that.’

After fumbling in her bag she fished out a half-crown and threw it on the table. ‘Here you are, then. At a bob a night that puts me sixpence in credit.’

As he picked it up, she turned in the doorway. ‘I may be pretty late. Archie said he might take me somewhere to dance for a bit after the flick. If he does I’ll probably bring him in for a cup of coffee when I get home; so if you hear us don’t come blundering downstairs thinking it’s burglars. Night-night.’

When she had gone, he walked round the table to the fire-place and gave his reflection in the mirror of the overmantel a long, appraising look; then, his tone expressing evident self-satisfaction, he said several times: ‘Sir Harold Hillary. Sir Harold Hillary.’

Leaving him to it, I moved upstairs to Edith’s room. She was no longer lying down, but kneeling beside her bed praying; or rather murmuring a sort of soliloquy addressed to God the words of which were quite loud enough to hear. I suppose I ought not to have listened, but her half-hysterical spate of pleas, excuses and lamentations was such an indictment of myself that I remained there for quite a long time, almost as a form of penance. There were frequent repetitions in what she said, but the gist of it ran something like this:

‘Oh Lord, do let everything be all right. Don’t let Giff have forgotten us, or have killed himself owing to financial troubles. I did my best to be a good wife to him. I know I haven’t brought up the children very well; but I did the best I could
for them on the money. Oh Lord please let there be a will and us be in it. I know Giff would have meant to provide for us. He wasn’t a bad man, only selfish; and he couldn’t help being a snob. That was his father’s fault. Perhaps I ought not to have married him. I know he was above my class, but I loved him and I thought he loved me. Oh Lord, don’t let our allowances be cut off. Even as things are it’s a constant struggle. Ever since Giff left us I’ve had to scrape and save. If the allowances are cut off I don’t know what we’ll do. My own little bit won’t be nearly enough to keep this house going. If it were only myself it wouldn’t matter so much. I could just manage in a tiny flat. But there are the children. Please help me to look after them and continue to give them a home. Harold is too young to go out into the world, and I couldn’t help it that he and his father never got on together. He is a good boy really, and it was only his not being able to understand that Giff had so many important things to see to that he couldn’t give much time to us. Giff would have been different if it hadn’t been for Lady A. But I bear her no malice. Please believe that. He had left me before he met her, so I really have no cause to complain. It’s all my fault for not having been clever enough to hold him. If I had, Harold would soon be going up to Cambridge, and Christobel would have been presented at Court two years ago. But I’m not complaining about that. I only ask that we will be able to go on as we are. Oh please Lord let things be all right, so that we get the allowances just the same.’

On and on she went, poor woman, showing no particular sorrow about my death but generously seeking to excuse me having left her, and my lack of interest in the children, and desperately concerned about their future. That her worst fears were groundless, as she would soon learn from my will, did not make her present distress any the less harrowing. At length, feeling that I could bear the sound of it no longer, I drifted from the room.

Outside on the landing faint strains of classical music came down to me by a steep little stairway leading to the upper floor of the house; so it was evident that under the gables there ‘Sir Harold’ had his quarters, and was consoling himself for being confined to his home through lack of funds by playing his gramophone. That hardship did not seem to me
a very great one, but all the same, having moved down to the lounge I settled myself for a really serious think.