The Pride of the Peacock

  My father was at the head of the table saying scarcely anything; my mother at the other end kept a sharp eye on Maddy, who had to serve at mealtimes in addition to her duties—a fact which Mama found more distressing than Maddy ever did—and on my mother’s right hand was Xavier and on one side of my father Miriam and the other myself.

  Xavier was saying that the summer’s drought had not been good for the crops and he was sure that when we did need the rain it wouldn’t come.

  This was said every year, and somehow the harvest was safely gathered in and there were great marrows and sheaves of wheat decorating the church to show that the miracle had happened again.

  “When I think of the land we used to own…” sighed Mama.

  It was the sign for my father to clear his throat and talk brightly about how much less rain there had been this year compared with last.

  “I remember what disaster there was last year,” he said. “Most of Yarrowland crops were under water.” This was a mistake because Yarrowland was a farm on the Donningham estate, and it had reminded Mama of Lady Clara. I looked at Xavier to watch his reactions. He gave no sign that he was wounded, but then Xavier never would because he was the sort of man who considered it ill bred to show his feelings. I wondered whether that was why he found it so difficult to show Lady Clara that he really did want to marry her.

  “The Donninghams can take disaster in their stride,” said Mama. “They retained their fortune throughout the generations.”

  “That’s true enough,” my father agreed in the resigned way which implied he wished he hadn’t spoken. I was sorry for him, and to change the subject I blurted out: “Who was Jessica Clavering?”

  There was immediate silence. I was aware of Maddy, standing by the sideboard, a dish of curly kale in her hands. Everyone at the table was looking at me and I saw the faint color begin to show under Mama’s skin.

  “What do you mean, Jessica?” she said impatiently, but I knew her well enough to realize that this time the impatience was meant to hide embarrassment.

  “Is it some joke?” said Miriam, her lips which seemed to grow thinner with the passing of the years, twitching slightly. “You know very well who you are.”

  “I’m Opal Jessica. And I often wonder why my first name is never used.”

  Mama looked relieved. “It is not very suitable,” she said.

  “Why did you give it to me then?” I demanded.

  Xavier, who was the sort who always came to the rescue when he could, said: “Most of us have names we’d rather not own to, but I suppose when we were born they seemed suitable enough. In any case, people get used to names. I think Jessica is very nice, and as Mama says, it’s suitable.”

  I was not going to be sidetracked. “But who is this Jessica who is buried in the Waste Land?” I insisted.

  “Buried in the Waste Land?” said Mama tetchily. “What’s that? Maddy, the kale will be getting cold. Do serve.” Maddy served, and I felt frustrated as I had so many times before.

  Miriam was saying: “I hope Mrs. Cobb has given it an extra boiling. Did you think it was a little tough last time, Mama?”

  “It was and I did speak to Mrs. Cobb about it.”

  “You must know,” I said. “You couldn’t have someone buried so near the house and not know. I found a stake with her name on it.”

  “And what were you doing in this—as you call it—Waste Land?” demanded Mama. I knew her tactics. If she was ever in a difficult situation she retaliated by going into the attack.

  “I often go there,” I told her.

  “You should be better employed. There is a whole stock of dusters to be hemmed. Isn’t that so, Miriam?”

  “Indeed it is, Mama. There is much waiting to be done.”

  “It always seemed to me a wasted effort,” I grumbled. “Hemming dusters? They collect the dust just as well without the stitching.” I could never resist stating an obvious fact no matter how irrelevant.

  This gave my mother the excuse she needed to go off on one of her sermons on industry and the need to give the poor as good as we took ourselves, for the dusters—made from old garments which had passed their usefulness and were cut up for the purpose—were distributed to the poor. If we could no longer afford to give them shirts and blankets we could at least cling to some of the privileges of the upper classes.

  Xavier listened gravely—so did Miriam, and my father, as usual, was silent while the cheese was brought in and eaten. Then my mother rose from the table before I had time to pursue the matter of the grave and the plaque.

  After the meal I made my way straight to my bedroom, and as I was mounting the stairs I heard my parents talking in the hall.

  My father was saying: “She’ll have to know. She’ll have to be told sooner or later.”

  “Nonsense!” retorted Mama.

  “I don’t see how…”

  “If it hadn’t been for you it would never have happened.”

  I listened, shamelessly straining my ears, for I knew they were talking about Jessica’s grave.

  They went into the drawing room and I was as bewildered as ever. It seemed that everything came back to the fact that my father had gambled away the family fortune.

  ***

  As Wednesday approached I forgot my curiosity about the grave in the Waste Land in my excitement at the prospect of visiting Ben Henniker at Oakland Hall. In the early afternoon I set out and as I turned into the drive it struck me as strange that I should be a visitor to what so easily might have been my own home. Oh dear, I thought, I sound like Mama!

  Oaks—solid, proud and beautiful—grew on either side of the drive which wound around—a fact which had caused me some irritation in the past because I had been unable to see the house from the road, but now I was glad of it. It added a sort of mystery, and as soon as I had rounded the bend I was out of sight, which was useful just in case anyone might be passing and see me.

  When I saw the house I caught my breath in wonder. It was magnificent. It had always looked interesting seen through the trees from the stream, but to come face to face with it and have nothing impeding the view was thrilling. I could even understand and forgive my mother’s years’-old rancor, for having once lived in such a place it would be hard to lose it. It was Tudor in essence, although it had been renovated since those days and added to so that there were hints of the eighteenth century here and there. But that lovely mellow brickwork was essentially Tudor, and it could not have been much different in those days when Henry VIII had visited Oakland Hall, as I had heard my mother say he did on one occasion. The tall dormer windows, the projecting bays and the oriels might have been added later, but how graciously they merged, defying criticism by their very elegance. The gate tower had been untouched. I stood awestruck looking up at the two flanking towers with the slightly lower one in the center. Over the gateway was a coat of arms. Ours, I supposed.

  I went through the gateway and was in a courtyard, where I was facing a massive oak door. The ancient bell was fixed on the door. I pulled it and listened delightedly to the loud ringing.

  It could only have been a second or so before the door was opened, and I had the feeling that someone had watched my approach and was ready and waiting. He was a very dignified gentleman and I placed him at once as the Wilmot of whom I had heard.

  “You are Miss Clavering,” he said before I could speak and somehow he made the name sound very grand. “Mr. Henniker is expecting you.”

  I seemed to grow in stature. I had caught a glimpse of the engraving by the carved fireplace, and as your own name will appear to leap at you from a number of others, I was aware of Clavering there, and I was thrilled by the implication that I was a member of that family which had once belonged to this house.

  “If you will follow me, Miss Clavering…”

  I smiled. “Certainly.”

  As he led
me across the hall I was aware of the big refectory table and the pewter dishes on it, the two suits of armor, one at each end of the hall, the weapons that hung there, the dais at the end towards which he was leading me and where there was also a staircase.

  Did I imagine it or did I hear a faint murmur of voices, the slight hiss of whispering and the scuffle of feet? I saw Wilmot look up sharply and I guessed we were being observed.

  Wilmot, realizing that I had been aware of something, no doubt thought it would be foolish to ignore it. A faint smile touched his lips. “You will understand, Miss Clavering, that this is the first time we have received a member of the Family, since…”

  “Since we were obliged to sell,” I said bluntly.

  Wilmot winced a little and bowed his head. I realized later that in anyone outside the Family this coming to the point and calling a spade a spade would have been considered bad taste. I wondered then how Ben Henniker and Wilmot got on together. There was little time for such thought for I was anxious to take in everything. I was led along a corridor and up another staircase.

  “Mr. Henniker will receive you in the withdrawing room, Miss Clavering.”

  He opened a heavy oak door paneled with linen fold.

  “Miss Clavering,” he announced, and I followed him in.

  Ben Henniker was seated in his chair, which he wheeled towards me. He was laughing. “Ha!” he cried. “So you’re here! Well, welcome to the old ancestral home.”

  I heard the door shut discreetly behind me as I went forward to greet Ben.

  He continued to laugh and I joined in. “Well, it is funny, don’t you think?” he said at length. “You, the visitor. Miss Clavering—Miss Opal Jessica Clavering.”

  “It’s certainly extraordinary that I should be named Opal and it was opals that brought you all this.”

  “A little gold thrown in,” he reminded me. “Don’t forget I did very well with that. Come and sit down. I’ll show you the place later.” His shoulders shook with secret merriment.

  “I shall begin to think you asked me just for the pleasure of showing a Clavering the family mansion.”

  “Not only that. I enjoyed our meetings and I thought it was time we had another. We’ll have some tea…but later. Now did you tell your family you’d made my acquaintance?”

  “No.”

  He nodded. “Wise girl. Do you know what they’d have said? You’re not to darken his doors nor is he to darken ours. Better for ’em not to know, eh?”

  “Far better.”

  “It saves a lot of arguments.”

  “It also saves a lot of forbidding and disobeying.”

  “I can see you’re a rebel. Well, I like that, and you’ve found out I’m a wicked old man…or if you haven’t you soon will. So I may as well tell you in the early stages of our friendship.”

  I was laughing with that laughter born of pleasure. So this was the first stage of our relationship, and I was going to enjoy more and more of his stimulating company.

  “So you would encourage me to come here even if my family forbade it?”

  “I certainly would. It’s good for you to learn something of the ways of the world, and you’ll never learn much if you’re going to cut out this one and that because they’re not nice to know. You want to know those that are nice and those that are not so nice. That’s why it’s good for you to know me. I’m the wicked man who made his pile and bought the house that wasn’t meant for his kind. Never mind. I won this with the sweat of my brow and the toil of my hands…with my driving pick and my sinking pick, with my shovel and my spider…I won this house and I reckon I’ve a right to it. This house represents to me the goal. It’s like the finest opal ever gouged out of rock. It’s the green flash of an opal.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. “You mentioned it before.”

  He paused for a moment and his eyes were dreamy. “I said that did I? The Green Flash. Never mind. I won all this just as I meant to when I was a young shaver dressed up in livery at the back of a carriage…a flunkey you might say who’s getting his first peep at the kind of life he’s going to have one day. Now you…what are you? You’re one of them, see? We’re on different sides of the fence. But you’re not one of them, are you…deep down inside? You’re not just shut in with your cramped ideas that won’t let you look outside your blinkers. You’re free, Miss Jessie. You sent your blinkers flying long ago.” He winked at me. “That’s why we get along together…like a bush fire we get along. I’m going to take you into my own special hideaway. I can tell you I don’t let many see inside there since…Well, I’m going to show you something so beautiful you’ll be glad you’re named after it.”

  “You’re going to show me your opals?”

  “That’s one thing I wanted you to come for. Now you follow me.”

  He wheeled his chair across the room in the corner of which was a crutch; he reached for this and hoisted himself out of the chair. He opened a door and I saw that there were two steps leading down into a smaller room, which was beautiful with paneled walls and leaded windows. There was a cupboard, which he unlocked, and inside this was a steel safe. Twirling knobs, he opened the safe and took out several flat boxes.

  “Come and sit down at the table,” he said, “and I’ll show you some of the finest opals that have ever been gouged out of rock.”

  He sat down at a round table and I drew a chair to sit beside him. He opened one of the boxes inside which, lying in little velvet hollows, were the opals. I had never seen such beautiful gems. The top row was of great, pale stones which flashed with blue and green fire; those on the next row, also of remarkable size, were darker—blue, almost purple—and in the last row the stones had a background which was almost black and the more startling because they flashed fire with red and green lights.

  “There,” he said, “your namesakes. What do you think of them? I see. Speechless. That’s what I thought. That’s what I hoped. Keep your diamonds. Keep your sapphires. There’s nothing anywhere in the world to beat these gems. You agree with me, don’t you?”

  “I have never seen a great many diamonds or sapphires,” I said, “so it wouldn’t be fair for me to be so sure, but I can’t imagine anything more lovely than these.”

  “Look at her!” he commanded as, with a gnarled finger, he gently touched one of the stones. It was deep blue and there was a touch of gold in it. “She’s known as the Star of the East. They’ve got names, these opals. The Star of the East! Couldn’t you see her, there in the sky just before the sun rises and shuts off her light. It must have been something like her that the wise men saw on that Christmas night years and years ago. I tell you this: she’s unique. They’re all unique, these opals. You’ll find others that you think are just like them, then you’ll see your mistake. They’re like people, no two alike. That’s one of the marvels of the universe…all those people…all those opals…and not two exactly alike. And sometimes you find something like the Star of the East and you think of all you’ve suffered…for believe me a gouger’s life is no picnic…and you say it was all worthwhile. Now, for him who owns the Star of the East, it tells him the best is yet to come, for the Star is rising, you see, and wasn’t it there to announce the birth of the Christ child?”

  “So your best is yet to come, Mr. Henniker?”

  “You’re to call me Ben. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Yes, but it’s hard to get used to when you’ve been brought up not to call grown-up people by their Christian names.”

  “In here we don’t care what was done because someone said it should be without rhyme or reason. Oh no. We do what’s right for us, and I’m Ben to you as I am to all my friends and I trust you’re one of them.”

  “I want to be…Ben.”

  “That’s the ticket, and that’s the idea. The best is yet to come for me while I’ve got the Star of the East.”

  I put out a finger a
nd touched it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Touch it. Look at the light on the stone. And that’s not the only one. Here’s Pride of the Camp. A fine piece of opal there. Not quite up to the Star of the East, but a fine gem. She came from White Cliffs in New South Wales. A roaring camp, that was. Some prospector had been there and moved on; then some fossickers came by and started to tap round as fossickers do. And what happened? He finds opal…not potch…oh dear me no. Real, precious opal. What a find for a fossicker. Before the month’s out there’s a camp there and everyone’s gouging like mad. I was caught up in it. It was my luck to hit on Pride of the Camp.”

  “Do you sell them?” I asked.

  He was thoughtful for a moment. “Well, that would seem to be the object, but there sometimes comes a stone that no matter what it can bring you, you just can’t sell. You get a sort of feeling for it. It belongs to you and you only. You’d rather have it than all the money in the world and that’s plain straight.”

  “So all these you are showing me are stones which you felt like that about?”

  “That’s it. Some are there for their beauty and some for other reasons. Look at this one here…See the green fire in it? That cost me my leg.” He shook his fist at it. “You cost me dear, my beauty,” he went on, “and for that reason I keep you. She’s got fire, that one. Just look at her sitting there. She cares nothing for me. She says, ‘Oh, if you want me, take me, but don’t start counting the cost.’ I call her Green Lady, for that was the name of a cat I once had. I’m rather fond of cats. They’ve got a sort of disdainful pride that I like. Have you ever noticed the grace of a cat? How it walks alone? It’s proud. It never cringes. I like that. This cat I had was called Lady. It suited her, that name. She was a lady, and her eyes were as green as the green you see in her namesake there. So that’s why I won’t let her go, though she cost me my leg and you might think I wouldn’t like to be reminded. There she was glinting at me in the candlelight…and I had to have her though the roof fell in and crippled me.”