The Pride of the Peacock (12 page)

“He’s going after the Green Flash,” she said.

“I saw him before he went, but our friendship had changed. Desmond was between us. Ben was so sure he was guilty. I was so certain that he was not.

“I cannot describe the desolation which had come into my life. Ben had gone and I had lost Desmond. I could not imagine greater tragedy. I still went to Oakland to see Mrs. Bucket and the rest, and they used to entertain me in the kitchen and talk about when Mr. Henniker would come back, for he would come back, they were sure. He had to keep coming back to Oakland; he had such a fancy for the place. They didn’t mention Desmond to me, but I knew they talked about him when I was not there.

“Miriam knew what had happened because it hadn’t been possible to keep her in the dark about my nocturnal ad ventures. In the past she had lain awake awaiting my return and then she would want to know all about it. Now she was aware that everything had gone wrong and was beginning to veer round to the side of law and order.

“It was towards the end of November when my suspicions became confirmed. When the fear first came to me I tried not to consider it.

It couldn’t possibly be, I told myself. Yet there had been those meetings in the park when we had talked and dreamed and loved so passionately. Desmond had said: “We are married really. I shall never look at anyone else and at the earliest possible moment you are going to be my wife.” I thought of myself as his wife. I pictured our arriving in Australia and what a help I should be to him, and when I looked into the future I saw the children we would have. Before Christmas I knew I was going to have a child. I did not know what to do. I told Hannah because I could trust her. We talked and talked but could find no solution. If Mr. Henniker had been there I was sure he would have helped me, but he was far away and there was no one.

“I had to tell Miriam. It was on Christmas night, I remember. It had

scarcely been a happy time. We went to the nudnight service on Christmas Eve and in the morning of Christmas Day we went again to church. Such times as this brought back to my mother more vividly the old ways at Oakland Hall. During dinner-which took place at midday-she talked continuously of other Christmases, how they had brought in the yule log, and decorated the gallery with holly and mistletoe and how the house had been full of guests. I cried out suddenly: ” You should give Papa a Christmas present-silence about the glorious past. ” I had been unable to restrain myself because I thought all this was so trivial set against what had happened to me, and the fact that Desmond had disappeared and was suspected of stealing the Green Flash.

“Everyone was horrified. No one-simply no one-ever spoke to Mama like that. Papa said rather sadly: ” You should show more respect to your mother, Jessica. ” And I cried out:

“It’s time she showed more consideration to us. We’ve lost Oakland.

All right. This is a comfortable home. There are worse troubles in the world than having to live with your family in a Dower House. ” Then I burst into tears and ran from the room. As I went I heard Mama say:

“Jessica is getting impossible.”

“I said I had a headache and spent the afternoon in the room I shared with Miriam, but I had to go down in the evening. It was a wretched day and that night I told Miriam because I had to tell someone. She was horrified. She didn’t understand much, but she did know that one of the servants had once ” got into trouble” as it was called and she had been dismissed and sent back to her family, disgraced forever.

“Disgraced forever,” she kept repeating until I wanted to scream. But what was I going to do? That was the question. I had no answer to that and, naturally, nor had Miriam. When I tried to explain to her she seemed to understand, but I knew that she would have to listen to my mother and all her sympathy would vanish.

“I knew too that they would have to be told one day and I wanted to tell them before they discovered. I told Xaxier first, for although he always seemed so remote I felt he would understand more than the others. I went to his room on a bleak January day when there were snow clouds in the sky and when I told him he looked at me for some moments as though he thought I bad gone mad. He was kind though. Xavier would always be kind. I told him everything-how I had become friendly with Ben Henniker and met Desmond, how we had intended to many and how

Desmond had disappeared.

“Are you sure you are to have a child?” he asked. I told him I was.

“We must make certain,” he said.

“You must see Dr. Clinton.”

“Not Dr. Clinton,” I cried out in horror. He had attended us for years and I knew he would be deeply shocked. Xavier understood and said he would take me to a doctor who did not know us, and he did. When it was confirmed that I was to have a child, there was nothing to do, said Xavier, but tell my parents. It could not be kept from them for long and we really should make plans as to what must be done without delay.

“It’s strange but when a woman is going to have a child she seems to acquire some special strength. That was how it was with me. I was heartbroken because I had lost Desmond but there was some new kind of hope in me. It was due to the baby. Even the scene with my parents did not distress me as much as might have been imagined. Xavier was calm and strong; he was a very good brother to me. He told Mama and Papa that there was something they must know and the four of us went into the drawing-room. Xavier shut the door and said very quietly:

“Jessica is going to have a baby.” There was a moment’s silence. I thought that that was how it must have been before the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. My father looked blank; my mother just stared at us.

“Yes,” said Xavier, “I fear it is so. We have to decide what we must do.”

“My mother cried out: ” A baby! Jessica! I don’t believe it. “

“It’s true,” I said.

“I am. I was going to be married, but there’s been a terrible accident.”

“Accident!” cried my mother, having overcome her first surprise and taking charge.

“What do you mean? This is quite impossible.”

“It has happened Mama,” said Xavier, “so let us consider what action we can best take.”

“I want to know more about this,” said my mother.

“I can’t believe that a daughter of mine …”

“It’s true. Mama,” I said.

“A doctor has confirmed it.”

“Dr. Clin ton!”

cried my mother, aghast.

“No,” Xavier reassured her, “a doctor who doesn’t know us.”

“My mother turned on me like an enraged tigress. She said the most bitter things to me. I don’t remember them; I deliberately shut my ears to them. I kept thinking of the baby. I wanted that baby, and I thought then, even in the thick of my trouble, that having it would make up for a great deal. My mother turned on my father. It was his fault, she said. If he had not been so feckless we should still have

been at Oakland and no wicked miner would have come there bringing his evil friends to seduce silly wicked girls. That was what came from having those sort of people living near one. Now I was going to produce a bastard. There had never been such a disgrace in the Clavering family.

“Oh yes. Mama,” I said, “there was. There was Richard Clavering, who shared a mistress with Charles II …”

“As if this were the same sort thing!” she said indignantly.

“That was Charles II and most of the aristocracy shared their mistresses with him.”

“But there was his bastard whose son married his legitimate cousin and came back into the family.”

“Be silent, you slut. The family has never been so disgraced and it is all due to the fact that your father …” She raved for some time and I knew she would go on doing so as long as she lived. I told myself then: Desmond will come back. Something went wrong and we shall discover what and then it will all come right. So I shut my ears to her raving.

“It was Xavier who decided what should happen. It was unthinkable that anyone should know that I had produced an illegitimate child. The fact that I was pregnant could be disguised for a few months. Perhaps as long as six. Skirts were voluminous and mine could be discreetly let out. The baby was due in June. In April my parents and I would go to Italy. My mother’s health could be said to be giving my father some concern. We should have to sell the silver salver and punch bowl which had been given by George IV to one of our ancestors, because being very valuable they would provide the money for a two months’ trip for the three of us and the expenses of the birth. My child should be born there, and when we returned we would say that my mother’s ill health had been due to a pregnancy, which she had not suspected, and because of her time of life there had not been the usual symptoms. This would mean that we could return with a child and give no cause for scandal.

“How unhappy those months were! We took a villa in Florence for a while-Florence with its Medici Palace and its golden light! How I should have loved it in other circumstances. I used to escape from my misery by imagining myself strolling along the Amo with Desmond. When I saw opals in a shop window on the famous bridge I turned shuddering away and could not bear to look at them.

“A few weeks before my confinement we went to Rome and there my baby was born. That was June 1880 and I called her

Opal. Mama said it was a foolish name and that she should be given another. So the baby had my name too; she was Opal Jessica.

“We came home, and such was my mother’s indefatigable energy that although there might have been those who put a certain construction on our departure and return with a newly born baby, no one dared mention it. You, my dear Opal, as you have guessed, were that child. Never be ashamed of your birth. You were conceived in love. Always remember that, and no matter what people may tell you of your father do not believe them. I knew him well, and it could not be so. He was not capable of stealing that miserable opal. How I wish it had never been found. But he knew nothing of it. Someone else stole the Green Flash at Sunset. It was not your father. One day the truth will be known.

I’m sure of it.

‘now, my dearest child, I come to the end of my story. After you were born I was beset by such despair that I did not know where to turn for comfort. We had never been happy in the Dower House; now Mama made our lives a misery-not only mine, but Papa’s as well. I watched him as he grew more and more miserable every day. I would look up suddenly and see her eyes fixed on me with utter distaste. Constantly she blamed him. It was his weakness which had come out in me, she said. He was to blame for everything. Miriam took an interest in you, and I think she loved you in her way, though she was afraid to show it too much when Mama was around. You liked her too. You would always go to Miriam; and Xavier was fond of you, so was Papa.

“I was so unhappy. I used to go down to the stream which divides the Dower House from Oakland and I’d stare at the cool shallow water. I thought a lot about my life then, and the belief came to me that I should never see Desmond again, for since he would never have desertd me, he must be dead. The convicition was so strong that as I sat there by the stream it was as though the waters beckoned to me. It was as though Desmond himself was asking me to come and join him. The only solution could be that he was dead, for if he was not, why had he disappeared? Of one thing I was , certain: he would never have gone away and left me. There ;

was one answer only, someone had stolen the opal and laid i the blame on him. They had killed him perhaps that he might ^ appear to be the thief. I knew no one else would believe this, I but my conviction was strong. He would never come back. | That was why he called me to the stream because he wanted ;

“Si me to be with him.

“My presence in the Dower House was bringing more and more unhappiness there. My mother was blaming my father more than she ever had before.

I tried to think of what my life would be like because I was never going to see Desmond again on this Earth. The servants all loved the baby . everybody loved her . except Mama, and I don’t think she ever loved anybody. So I used to sit by the stream and think of all the trouble I had brought the family and how much better they would be without me. Even the baby would be better off, because as she grew up the reproaches would go on. It would be better for her not to know that her mother had brought disgrace on the family, and while I was there Mama would always continue to regard me with contempt “I dreamed then of lying face downwards in that cool water, and when I did I experienced a perfect peace. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone but Hannah. She knew the whole story, but she was very discreet. She told me that they talked about it in the servants’ hall at Oakland and although they had considered the possibility of the baby’s being mine and not my mother’s, they weren’t sure about it. Even Mrs. Bucket was of the opinion that Mama would never have lent herself to such a thing and that it was a well-known fact that women getting on in years often ” got caught” when they least expected it, and her Aunt Polly had been just like that … feeling not up to the mark and the doctors not being sure what was wrong … and then all of a sudden she’s pregnant and the baby almost ready to be born.

“I didn’t tell them different,” said good, kind Hannah, “A few weeks passed and I was still going to sit by the stream. When I talked to Hannah about what I felt she cried out: ” It’s wrong. You mustn’t think like that. ” I said: ” It might be for the best. The baby would be all right. They’ll care for her. It’s better for me not to be there. “

“Perhaps you could go away for a while,” suggested Hannah.

“Time’s not important,” I said.

“It’s now that counts. Perhaps in twenty years I could look back at all this and find it tolerable, but it’s not twenty years from now. It’s now, and I’ve got to live through a lot before twenty years passes.” Hannah said: “If you were to do away with yourself they couldn’t bury you in consecrated ground.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I tell you they won’t if you were to … do that. It’s a law, I think, a law of the Church. They bury people at the cross-roads or some other place … never in consecrated ground in the churchyard.”