Heart's Ease Read online

  ‘Ditto,’ Wendy agreed. ‘Beacon duly lit, fizz duly drunk, and it’s not that warm for June, is it? Here’s Hugh, evening!’

  Hugh took his wife’s arm. ‘Charity’s fetching Honor and they’ll be hard on our heels – hi there, Wendy – so let’s get going.’

  ‘Are you quite sure they’re—?’

  ‘Charity’s on the case. Trust me, they’ll be on their way. Bye.’

  Seconds later, the two daughters appeared.

  ‘Hello girls, your parents have just—’

  The younger one, Honor, blurted out a ‘Hello’ but the teenager simply stalked on without a glance and Wendy went to find someone else with whom to share the potential news.

  Felicity stayed another half an hour, but it wasn’t quite the same. Family matters had taken over as they so often did. She’d been through this particular one twice before and it was always a bloody upheaval, she might as well go home. Pete Spurling was all too keen to walk back with her but following her father’s advice would mean dealing with Pete’s enthusiasm en route, so she fudged it by saying she had another offer and would be fine. Only the first was a lie. The path home held no terrors for her, the beacon was still burning and there was the planned barbecue to look forward to in a few days’ time.

  A friend of her mother’s lent her a torch, and the quiet walk home did her good. As she passed between the enclosing gorse bushes, over the soft, tranquil space of the fairway and down the avenue of twisty trees towards Heart’s Ease, she reminded herself that the arrival of another sibling was supposed to be a happy event. Ma was healthy and strong, Pa was with her, and for a while following the birth, normal service would be suspended while they ate shop-bought food and takeaways, and the routine of domestic life was disrupted by feeds, and people taking naps, dropping off at funny times and stumbling about at night while the baby yelled.

  Felicity herself definitely wanted to be in possession of three children of her own ten years from now, but when she pictured this it was usually in idealized form: herself presiding over the unwrapping of presents before the fire at Christmas; frolicking on a deserted beach in summer; or serving food at Sunday lunch at which her parents (the most benign of grandparents), but not her sisters, would be present. A little further down the road the picture was of herself at some school event – shiny-eyed at a play, modestly proud at prize-giving, breasting the tape with skirt flying in the mothers’ race …

  As she went through the back gate she saw there were several lights on in the house, and the door of the conservatory (for some reason always called the loggia) must have been open because the labrador Mavis came trundling out, tail wagging, carrying her soft toy in tribute.

  They greeted one another and went in, Mavis leading the way. There was that unmistakable sense of something going on – the television in the family room at the end of the house, voices from behind a door upstairs, the sound of what might have been a chair being moved about. The door of the dining room was open and Felicity could see Charity with a newspaper spread out on the table in front of her.

  She went in. ‘What’s going on? Are they still here? I thought they’d be gone.’

  ‘No, they’re here,’ murmured Charity offhandedly without looking up.

  ‘But why? Shouldn’t Ma be in hospital?’

  Charity turned a page. ‘Probably.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I mean it looks as though she’ll be having it right here.’

  ‘What? Now?’

  ‘Well, not next week.’

  ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.’ If Felicity hoped to get a rise out of her sister, it didn’t work. ‘Where’s Honor, then?’

  ‘She was watching telly, but you know what she is. Probably up there’ – Charity jerked her head upwards – ‘getting involved.’

  ‘Is anyone else coming?’ Felicity was worried now. If their mother was actually going to have the baby under this roof, what might be required of the rest of them? Whatever it was, she didn’t fancy it. ‘They did call the hospital, I assume?’

  ‘They did, but everything was moving a bit quickly.’ Charity, quite gratified to be the one in the know, warmed to her theme and became more animated. ‘I think some district nurse or other is due to show up.’

  ‘I bloody well hope so!’

  Charity smirked theatrically. ‘Otherwise it’ll be all hands to the pumps, or whatever’s required.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘Come on,’ said Charity, ‘where’s your spirit of adventure?’

  Just then a door opened upstairs. There was a keening sound, and their father’s voice making encouraging noises, and Honor leaned over the banister. ‘Hey, you two!’

  Charity grimaced at Felicity. ‘Told you … What?’

  ‘The baby’s arriving!’

  ‘Glad to hear it!’

  The keening rose in pitch, Honor flapped her arms. ‘Do you want to come? Come on!’

  ‘No thanks, keep us posted.’

  Just then the doorbell rang, and Felicity took the opportunity to answer it. Mavis’s friendly woofing almost drowning out Hugh’s bellow of, ‘It’s a boy!’

  So it was that Iris the community midwife stepped over the threshold of Heart’s Ease, to find herself at the end of a chain of Blyths: Mavis round her legs; Felicity in the hall; Charity at the foot of the stairs; Honor halfway down; Hugh on the landing; and, somewhere in the upper reaches, mother and baby, the latter in good fettle if the screeching was anything to go by.

  ‘Sounds as if I’m too late,’ she said, hurrying in the direction of the noise, adding cheerfully, ‘but all well.’

  Felicity didn’t reply. Charity turned a page. Honor led Iris in the direction of the main event.

  Two

  A boy! At speed, at home, in the early hours of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee! The story of Bruno’s precipitate arrival became part of Blyth family lore and Bruno lapped it up with his mother’s milk.

  No one gave him explicitly to understand that he was a golden child – as parents Marguerite and Hugh were far too wise for that – but they didn’t have to. It was implicit in the circumstances of his birth. And then, of course, he was an enchanting boy, a real heartbreaker with dark hair, round grey eyes fringed with sooty lashes, and a winning manner. He wasn’t always sweet and good, there was an impish streak in Bruno and he could be a little devil, but that was true of any boy worth his salt.

  Honor loved him the most. She’d been there, after all, when he’d appeared, when her father, a surprised expression on his face, had caught him as he slithered out all sticky and new. She knew right away there could never, ever, be a moment in her life as exciting as this one. A whole person, with a loud, scratchy quavering voice and waving fists, who had been until a moment ago inside Ma! And Ma was fine, moaning and puffing (and swearing a bit) while it was going on, and then laughing with delight, and Pa the same, somehow astonished but tremendously pleased with themselves at having beaten the nurse to it. By the time her sisters arrived on the scene she, Honor, had been holding the baby, proud as punch. He didn’t have a name then, or for a couple of weeks afterwards, he was just referred to as ‘Boy’ and that stuck for quite a while.

  In spite of her carefully-assumed cool, Charity was interested in the events of that summer night. A purely scientific interest, she told herself. By her calculation the baby had arrived exactly one hour after their mother’s waters had broken, which was rapid by any standard, and Marguerite had obviously delivered with something of a flourish – if not painlessly, then certainly not in agony. She deserved some respect for that. Honor, as Charity recalled, had been born in hospital with no complications that anyone knew of (Marguerite had been home in a couple of days) but this had taken place right there in what Felicity referred to rather prissily as ‘peasant-style’. Charity was amused by both peasanty-ness and the prissiness, and the baby looked fine to her, especially compared with some you saw being wheeled around who were just plain plug-ug
ly, like mewling gargoyles. That it was a boy was neither here nor there, why should that be a big deal? She believed her parents when they said they didn’t care as long as it was healthy. But all in all, in the back of Charity’s mind the notion was forming that she herself would never want children.

  Felicity, whose fantasy it was to be the graceful mother of a Bruno, found herself rather resentful of this single intruder. She recognized the reaction as undignified, but couldn’t help herself. The baby’s arrival had even upstaged the queen, for heaven’s sake. She supposed he was sweet – prettier than the girls had been anyway – and she joined in the general cooing and passing round, but her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted no part of this boy-centred household. The sooner she got back up to London the better. She had a job in the MG showroom in Piccadilly which suited her down to the ground, and though she quite liked the country stuff down here in Salting, she missed (even more now) the footloose hedonism of her London gang. The pungent domesticity of the perinatal period really got on her nerves. She swore she could actually smell the birth, a warm, sweetish aroma that hung about for hours, days, along with all that washing in the utility room like something from the Crimean War. It wasn’t nice.

  In London she had what her father called ‘a swain’. The swain’s name was Gerry. The boys down here, Pete among them, were referred to by Hugh as ‘followers’. Old-fashioned terms, but expressing a crucial difference which she was pleased he recognized. Gerry’s entire attention was devoted to her; Pete and co were, as the term implied, sheep wanting to bask in the reflected glow of her beauty and popularity. Felicity was not so much vain as a realist, who recognized her own social value, and it was worth more than either Gerry or the sheep. Before her dream of glammy motherhood could be realized, she’d have to meet someone worthy of her steel. She wanted to be challenged, before (naturally) carrying the day.

  Anyway, here was Bruno, and she had another two days of the whole thing to endure before she was due to return to the Smoke – her father’s word, he would never understand that to her London was the sunny uplands.

  Bruno saved his first full assault on the Blyths’ combined nerves for three a.m. Marguerite hauled herself out of bed, Hugh sat up with a snort and lay down again, but three hours later he was intoning, ‘Macbeth hath murdered sleep …’, as he paced and jiggled with the dawn breaking outside the window and his wife lying torpid and open-mouthed on top of the covers.

  Charity woke only briefly before returning to the calm sleep of the supremely uninterested and uninvolved. Felicity lay awake throughout, vainly trying to drown out the racket with her transistor and vowing to exchange her return train ticket for an earlier one if humanly possible and at whatever cost.

  Honor on the other hand was there in seconds.

  ‘Is he alright?’

  ‘Of course he is, he’s just hungry,’ said Marguerite. ‘Now go back to bed.’

  ‘But I can’t sleep. Are you sure he’s OK? He’s crying so hard.’

  ‘It’s what little babies do, you’ll soon get used to it.’

  ‘Really …?’ mumbled Hugh. ‘Just like the rest of us? Get a tit out woman, do.’

  ‘Hugh, pas devant—’

  ‘OK, yes – come along my girl, to bed.’

  ‘Please? Till he goes back to sleep?’

  ‘That could be a long time.’

  ‘Please …?’

  Honor’s eyes drifted towards her mother who was attempting a docking manoeuvre between her nipple and the baby’s vibrating maw. Hugh pulled a helpless, shrugging sort of face.

  ‘Any objections, Daisy?’

  ‘Alright, come on.’ Marguerite tweaked the duvet. ‘Hop in.’ She glanced up at Hugh as Honor leapt aboard. ‘I could murder a cup of tea.’

  ‘Good idea, I’ll make that two—’

  ‘Can I have one?’ asked Honor.

  ‘Or even three.’

  For years thereafter Honor considered the next half an hour or so the happiest in her life. Sitting in her parents’ big soft bed, with the baby’s silky head next to her, her mother quietly, passively occupied, her father pottering about downstairs and then coming in with sweet tea – it was a memory of perfect contentment, a personal heaven.

  Even when things became a lot less restful, she still loved every moment. Now that she’d been reassured that there was nothing seriously wrong, she didn’t mind holding her screeching baby brother, and it was thrilling to realize as the day outside turned grey, and the birds began a first desultory cheeping, that they had been up all night!

  That of course was Bruno’s cue to fall asleep. Hugh lowered him into the bassinet as though handling a live bomb, and they all three collapsed on the bed and passed out.

  Charity had switched on the television to watch the jubilee procession. She quirked an eyebrow as Felicity came in.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Out of it, all of them.’ Felicity flopped down on the sofa. ‘Think we should wake them – you know – for this?’

  ‘Good God no.’

  They sat side by side gazing dispassionately at the gold coach, the sea of people, the queen in pastel pink, the duke in uniform.

  ‘That must be several pounds of gold braid he’s got on there,’ remarked Charity.

  ‘She looks nice. So much better when she smiles.’

  After another minute or so Felicity, her eyes still on the screen, remarked, ‘I’m going back to London tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t blame you.’

  ‘I’ll have to buy another pricey single, but frankly … You know?’

  ‘Quite. Wish I had the option.’ Charity and Honor were both at the local private girls’ school and for Charity this royal day off came right in the middle of O Levels. She was expected by others, not to mention herself, to do well, but even so the timing wasn’t brilliant.

  Felicity asked cautiously, ‘Everyone seems fine, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. And anyway’ – Charity jabbed a finger at the ceiling – ‘Honor is on the case.’

  ‘God, I know! She puts us to shame.’

  ‘I don’t feel shamed, she loves it. Not just the baby – the whole thing.’

  ‘Actually she does, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Also, we’ve been through it before, especially you,’ observed Charity carelessly. ‘The novelty’s worn off.’

  There followed another silence during which the camera picked out faces in the crowd, before cutting to other members of the royal family waiting in St Paul’s.

  ‘Princess Margaret’s wearing pink too!’ observed Felicity. ‘Isn’t that a bit strange?’

  Charity said drily, ‘I’m sure they’ve discussed it.’

  ‘I still think it’s odd. We’ve all read Margaret can be a bit tricky.’

  ‘The question is more – why pink?’

  ‘That too …’

  They relapsed into silence.

  Marguerite was the first to wake. She extricated herself from the heap on the bed, took a peep at Bruno, and padded downstairs and along the passage to the family room.

  ‘Oh my goodness, it’s that – of course – maybe I’ll watch a bit of the queen.’

  Felicity shunted up. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Tea would be bliss, darling, two sugars.’

  As her sister went to the kitchen, Charity asked, ‘How are things?’

  Marguerite sighed, with a smile. ‘The night was a bit lively as you probably gathered. But he’s sleeping it off now, and so are the others – good lord they’re both wearing pink.’

  ‘Felicity said that.’

  ‘Queenie looks better in hers today, which is as it should be.’

  Felicity came back with the tea. ‘Actually I agree.’

  Charity got up and went back into the hall and out through the loggia into the garden. In the dining room they had a framed photograph of the house as it used to be – it was an enlargement of the estate agent’s shot – which showed what was now the conservatory as a sort of large open-fronted
porch, with a low wall and wooden uprights bordering the garden. She’d always liked the look of that and half-wished it was still the same.

  To the right of the lawn was the Fort (the origin of the name lost to memory), a miniature hill covered in tussocky grass and fringed by scots pines in which the wood pigeons crooned languidly in the early morning. Just now she could hear the distant seagulls – those and the pigeons were the background music of home. The sky was heavy with clouds, she felt the first large, soft drops as she crossed the lawn. Three energetic strides took Charity to the top of the Fort, where a broad flat stump provided a vantage point. She stood on this, and looked out over the top of the massed rhododendrons – now in all their pink, white and crimson glory – to the broad bay of Salting, two miles away at the foot of the hill. They all loved this place in their different ways even when they wanted to get away from it. She was a realist, she suspected she would never again live in a house like this – in such a beautiful location, with such pleasing proportions and so benign an atmosphere. She’d heard more than one person call it ‘the nicest house in Salting’ and she believed them. There were plenty of bigger, smarter, better appointed houses, but surely none with the magic of Heart’s Ease.

  The rain was pattering down now, blurring her view of the bay and making the fat, glorious rhododendron blooms shimmer and tremble. Looking towards the house Charity saw Honor looking out of their parents’ bedroom window. She was holding the baby, gazing rapt into his face and Hugh was standing just behind her. When he saw Charity looking he gave her a wave over Honor’s shoulder.

  She had been going to go back in but now, rain notwithstanding, she went down the back of the mound, through the bracken, and out of the front gate for a walk. Her uncharacteristically sentimental mood turned more practical. Tomorrow was RE. Charity was no believer, but this was one of her strongest subjects and she fully expected to sail through and emerge with flying colours.

  Hugh, with Honor carrying Bruno, trooped into the family room as the congregation was raising the roof with ‘All creatures that on earth do dwell’.