“Oh…” Mrs. Tolliver obviously did mind, but it was a good indication of her immediate distress that this single word was as far as her objection went. “No. No, of course not.”
I didn’t want to go in in the very least. In the course of the last two days I’d had enough of the Tollivers, but Phoebe obviously wanted me with her, so trying to appear both disinterested and colourless, I too got out of the car and followed the two women up the stone steps and into the house.
The hall was flagged in stone, scattered with Persian rugs of great antiquity. A graceful staircase with a wrought-iron bannister curved to the upper floors. I closed the front door behind me, and Mrs. Tolliver led us across the hall and into her drawing room. She waited as we passed through the door and then closed it firmly, as though wary of possible eavesdroppers.
It was a large and formally furnished room, with long sash windows facing out onto the garden. The morning sun had not yet penetrated these windows, and the atmosphere was chilly. Mrs. Tolliver gave a shiver.
“It’s cold. I hope you’re not cold … so early…” Her instincts as a hostess rose to the surface. “Perhaps … light a fire…?”
“I’m not in the least cold,” said Phoebe. She chose a chair and sat firmly down in it, still bundled in her garish poncho and with her solid legs crossed at the ankle, like royalty. “Now, my dear. What is this about?”
Mrs. Tolliver crossed to the empty fireplace and stood there, supporting herself with a hand laid along the edge of the mantelpiece.
“I … I really don’t know where to begin…”
“Try the beginning.”
“Well.” She took a deep breath. “You know the reason Charlotte is with me?”
“Yes. The boiler at her school blew up.”
“That, of course. But the real reason is that her mother—Annabelle—is in Majorca. That was why there was nobody to take care of her at home. Well … I had a telephone call last night, at about half past nine…”
She took her hand from the mantelpiece and felt up her cuff and produced a tiny, lace-edged handkerchief. As she went on talking, she played with this, looking to me as though she were trying to tear it to pieces.
“It was my son-in-law, Leslie Collis. Annabelle has left him. She’s not coming back. She’s with this man. He’s a riding instructor. South African. She’s going back to South Africa with him.”
The enormity of her statement silenced the lot of us. I was thankful that I was expected to say nothing, but I looked at Phoebe. She sat unmoving, and I could not see the expression on her face, because it was obliterated by the brim of her hat.
At last, “I am so sorry,” she said, and there was a whole world of sympathy in her voice.
“But you see, that isn’t the end of it. I … I really don’t know how I’m going to tell you.”
“I imagine,” said Phoebe, “that it’s got something to do with Charlotte.”
“He says that Charlotte is not his child. Apparently he always knew this, but he accepted her for Michael’s sake, because he wanted to keep his home together. But he’s never liked the child. I always knew that he never had any time for her, though of course I had no idea exactly why. It used to distress me when I stayed with them. He was so impatient with her, sometimes it seemed as though she could do nothing right.”
“Did you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to make trouble.”
“She’s always seemed to me to be rather a lonely little girl.”
“Yes. Lonely. She never fit in. And she was never pretty and engaging, the way Annabelle used to be. I don’t want you to think that Leslie was unkind to her. It was just that all his time and affection seemed to be centred on Michael … and there wasn’t enough left over for Charlotte.”
“What about her mother?”
Mrs. Tolliver gave an indulgent little laugh. “I’m afraid that Annabelle was never very maternal. Like me. I was never very maternal, either. But when Annabelle was a child, things were easier. My husband was alive then, and we were able to afford a nanny for Annabelle. I had help in the house as well. Things were easier.”
“Did your son-in-law know that Annabelle was having an affair with this man … the riding instructor?”
Mrs. Tolliver looked embarrassed, as though Phoebe had deliberately offended her. She looked away, toying with a china shepherdess that stood upon the mantelpiece. “I … I didn’t ask him that. But … you know Annabelle, Phoebe. She was always…”
She hesitated, and I waited with interest. How does a mother describe her only daughter who is, by all accounts, a nymphomaniac?
“… attractive. Full of life. Leslie was in London all the time. They didn’t see a great deal of each other.”
“So he didn’t know,” said Phoebe bluntly. “Or perhaps he just suspected.”
“Yes. Perhaps he just suspected.”
“Well,” said Phoebe, coming to the point. “So what is now going to happen to Charlotte?”
Mrs. Tolliver set the china figure down neatly, exactly, in its customary position. She looked back at Phoebe and her mouth was trembling, but whether with incipient tears or indignation, I could not tell.
“He doesn’t want Charlotte back. He said that she’s not his child and she’s never been his child, and now that Annabelle has left him, he intends washing his hands of Charlotte.”
“But he can’t do that,” said Phoebe, her hackles rising at the very suggestion of such behaviour.
“I don’t know whether he can or not. I don’t know what to do.”
“Then she must be with her mother. Annabelle must take her to South Africa.”
“I … I don’t think that Annabelle will want her.”
The enormity of this silenced both Phoebe and myself. We stared, unbelieving, at Mrs. Tolliver, and a flush crept up her neck.
At last Phoebe said bluntly, “You mean that Charlotte would get in Annabelle’s way.”
“I don’t know. Annabelle…” I waited for her to tell us next that Annabelle had no more fondness for Charlotte than Leslie Collis had. But Mrs. Tolliver could not bring herself to come out with this. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I feel torn in all directions. I’m sorry for the child—but, Phoebe, I cannot have her here. I’m too old. This isn’t a house for a child. I haven’t got a nursery, I haven’t even got any toys. Annabelle’s dollhouse went years ago, and I gave all her children’s books to the hospital.”
I thought, No wonder Charlotte loved the carousel.
“And I have a life of my own. My own commitments, my friends. It isn’t as though she seems particularly happy here. She mopes around most of the time, without saying or doing anything. I admit, I find her difficult. And Betty Curnow only comes in in the mornings. It isn’t as though I have good help. I … I don’t know which way to turn. I’m at my wit’s end.”
Tears had never been far away. Now, at the end of her tether, she lost control. The tears of older women are ugly. Perhaps ashamed of them or wishing to spare us embarrassment, she turned from the fireplace and took herself over to the long window, where she stood, her back to us, as though admiring her own garden. There came the sound of painful sobs.
I knew that I was very much in the way and longed for escape. I looked beseechingly in Phoebe’s direction and caught her eye.
Phoebe said instantly, “You know, I think a nice hot cup of coffee would do us all good.”
Mrs. Tolliver did not turn, but presently in a choked voice she said pathetically, “There’s no one to get it. I sent Betty Curnow and Charlotte up to the village. Charlotte wanted to buy some Coca-Cola. We’ve … we’ve run out. And it seemed a good excuse to get her out of the house. I didn’t want her here while I spoke to you…”
I said, “I can get coffee.”
Mrs. Tolliver blew her nose. This seemed to help a bit. Slightly recovered, she looked at me over her shoulder. Her face was blurred and swollen. “You won’t know where to find anything.”
“I
can look. If you don’t mind me going into your kitchen.”
“No. Not at all. How kind…”
I left them. Let myself quietly out of the drawing room and shut the door and leaned against it, like people do in films. I couldn’t like Mrs. Tolliver, but it was impossible not to feel dreadfully sorry for her. Her well-organised existence seemed to be collapsing about her head. Annabelle was, after all, her only child. Now Annabelle’s marriage had come to pieces and she was off with her new love to the other end of the world, abandoning both her children and all her responsibilities.
And yet I knew that the bitterest blow of all to the pride of a woman like Mrs. Tolliver was the shaming revelation that Charlotte was not Leslie Collis’s child but the unfortunate result of one of Annabelle’s many love affairs.
I wondered if she had any idea which love affair it was. For all our sakes, I hoped not.
And Charlotte. That little face. I couldn’t think about Charlotte. I pulled myself away from the door and went in search of Mrs. Tolliver’s kitchen.
By a process of trial and error, opening cupboard doors and pulling out random drawers, I finally assimilated a tray, cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, some spoons. I filled the electric kettle and found a jar of instant coffee. I decided that we could do without biscuits. When the kettle had boiled, I filled the three cups and carried the tray back to the drawing room.
They were still at it, but Mrs. Tolliver, in my absence, seemed to have stopped crying and pulled herself together. Now she sat in a wide-lapped Victorian chair, facing Phoebe.
“… Perhaps,” Phoebe was saying, “your son-in-law will have second thoughts about Charlotte. After all, she has a brother, and it’s always been considered very wrong to split up families.”
“But Michael is so much older than Charlotte. So much more mature. I don’t believe they’ve ever had very much in common…”
She looked up as I appeared through the door, and at once a polite smile turned up the corners of her mouth. She was a lady to whom social graces came automatically, even in times of stress.
“How kind, Prue. So clever.” I set down the tray on a low stool. “Oh,” a small frown creased her brow. “You’ve used the best teacups.”
“I’m sorry. They were the first I found.”
“Oh. Well, never mind. It won’t matter for once.”
I handed Phoebe her coffee. She took it and stirred it thoughtfully. I sat down, too, and for a moment there was silence, broken only by the tinkling of stirring teaspoons, as though we were gathered together for an enjoyable occasion.
Phoebe broke this silence. “In my opinion,” she said, “I think there can be no question of Charlotte returning home. At least until things have simmered down and your son-in-law has had time to sort himself out.”
“But her school.”
“Don’t send her back to that school. I don’t like the sound of it, with the boiler blowing that way. It must be very inefficiently administrated. She’s far too young for boarding school, anyway, and there can be no point in her returning there if her home life is in pieces. Enough to give any child a nervous breakdown.” She sat with her cup and saucer in her lap and looked long and hard at Mrs. Tolliver. “You have to be very careful. You don’t want the responsibility of Charlotte, and I can understand that, but for the moment, as far as I can see, you’ve got it. A life in your hands. A young, sensitive life. She is going to be hurt enough when she knows about her mother. Let us all see that she is not hurt any more than she has to be.”
Mrs. Tolliver started to say something, but Phoebe, with unusual bluntness, overrode her.
“I said, I understand your situation. Things are going to be very difficult. For that reason I think it would be much better if you were here on your own, without Charlotte around the place, listening to talk and possibly overhearing telephone calls which she should not. She’s an intelligent child, and she’ll know instinctively that something is wrong. So I suggest that you simply tell her she’s coming to live with me for a little while.”
Oh, darling Phoebe. Oh, blessed Phoebe.
“I know I’m a bit of a crock just now, but Prue’s with me for another ten days and Lily Tonkins is always a tower of strength in times of emergency.”
“But, Phoebe, that’s too much.”
“I’m very fond of Charlotte. We shall get along very well.”
“I know that. And I know that she is devoted to you. But … oh, don’t think I’m not grateful … it will seem so strange to everybody. Leaving me, her grandmother, and coming to stay with you. What will people think? What will they say? This is a small village, and you know both Lily Tonkins and Betty Curnow will talk.”
“Yes, they will talk. People always talk. But all the talk in the world is better than having that child hurt any more. Besides,” Phoebe said as she set down her empty coffee cup, “we’ve both got broad shoulders, and,” she gave a little chuckle, “let’s face it, surely we’re getting a bit long in the tooth for a scrap of gossip to bother us. So what do you say?”
Mrs. Tolliver, with obvious relief, finally succumbed.
“I don’t mind admitting it would make things very, very much easier for me.”
“Will you be in touch with your son-in-law again?”
“Yes. I said I would ring him up tonight. Yesterday evening we were both of us getting a little too emotional. I think he’d probably had far too much to drink. Not that I blame him for that, but neither of us was making much sense.”
“In that case you can tell him that Charlotte’s coming to stay at Holly Cottage for a little. And you can tell him as well that she’s not going back to that boarding school. Perhaps we could get her into the local school here. You could talk it over with him.”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll do that.”
“That’s settled, then.” Phoebe stood up. “Now Charlotte has already arranged to come to Holly Cottage this morning. Prue is taking her on a picnic. Pack a bag and let her bring that with her. But don’t say anything to the child about her mother.”
“But she’ll have to be told.”
“You are family, far too close, too involved. I shall tell her.”
For a moment I thought that Mrs. Tolliver was going to object to this. She took a breath to say something but then met Phoebe’s eye and didn’t say it after all.
“Very well, Phoebe.”
“It will be easier if I tell her. For all of us.”
* * *
At the same snail’s pace we trundled homewards. Down the drive of White Lodge, through the gates, past the oak copse. We turned the corner by the church, and the road to home sloped down and away from us, and we could see the whole long blue lake that was the estuary, the floodwaters dazzling with sun pennies.
“Prue, stop the car for a moment.”
I did as she said, drawing the car in to the side of the road and switching off the engine. For a little we sat like two aimless tourists, gazing at the familiar view as though we had never seen it before. On the far shore, the gentle hills, patchworked in small fields, drowsed in the morning’s warmth. A red tractor, minimised by distance to toy size, was out ploughing, drawing in its wake a flock of screaming white gulls.
At the end of the road, in the lee of the shore, Holly Cottage waited for us, hidden beyond the crest of the hill, slumbering in the sheltered sunshine. But here on the brow of the slope, the sea breezes were never still. Now the thin wind flattened the pale grasses in the roadside ditches and blew the first of the leaves from the topmost branches of the trees that bordered the ancient churchyard.
“So peaceful,” said Phoebe, sounding as though she were thinking aloud. “You’d think that here, the end of the world, you’d be safe. I thought so, when I first came to live here with Chips. I thought I’d escaped. But there is no way you can escape reality. Cruelty, indifference, selfishness.”
“All those things are part of people, and people are everywhere.”
“Destroying.” Phoebe thought this over fo
r a bit, and then said in a changed voice, “Poor woman.”
“Mrs. Tolliver. Yes, I’m sorry for her, too. But still, I wonder why she chose to confide in you.”
“Oh, my dear, it’s obvious. She knows I’m an old sinner. She’ll never forget that Chips and I lived in happy sin for years. She could talk to me, where she could never have confided in her other friends. Colonel Danby’s wife, or the bank manager’s widow from Porthkerris—they’d have been appalled. And, of course, what’s hurting most of all is her pride.”
“I thought that, too. But you were marvellous. You always are marvellous, but this morning you were more marvellous than usual.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I just hope you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew. Supposing Leslie Collis really does refuse to have anything more to do with Charlotte; you’ll be landed with her indefinitely.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“But Phoebe…” I stopped, because you can’t say to a person you love, You’re too old, even if you think that she is.
“You think I’m too old?”
“Other things, too. You’ve as much a life of your own as Mrs. Tolliver. Why should you be the one who gives it all up? And let’s face it, we’re all getting older. Even I’m getting older…”
“I’m sixty-three. If I manage to stay alive and kicking for another ten years, I shall still be only seventy-three. That’s a young woman when you think of Picasso or Arthur Rubenstein.”
“What have they got to do with it?”
“And by then Charlotte will be twenty and well able to take care of herself. I really don’t see that that’s much of a problem.”
The windscreen of the Volkswagen was dirty. I found in some pocket a grubby rag and began to try in a desultory sort of way to clean the glass.
I said, “When I was in the kitchen getting the coffee, did she make any reference to Daniel?”
“None.”
“You didn’t say anything?”
“Heaven forbid.”
I was making the smears on the windscreen, if anything, worse. I stuffed the rag back into its hiding place.