On the other hand, I was not too sure about these dogs, which spent most of the time, when not eating, asleep, and wouldn’t listen to the special commands Uncle Freddie had been given by their Irish trainer. Uncle Freddie’s enthusiasms had—as he would sadly put it—a way of “fizzling out.” Better not to mention the dogs, perhaps, or South America, which Uncle Freddie had left in clouded circumstances. Uncle Steenie, then?
Uncle Steenie was definitely glamorous. He was an exquisite dresser and an exquisite speaker. He had the blondest hair I had ever seen, and the most beautiful pink-and-white complexion. Uncle Steenie knew everyone-but-everyone, and he called everyone-but-everyone “Darling” in a very warm tone of voice. He also said “too” a great deal: The journey was too impossible; the wine was too squalid; the last hotel was too quaint. Uncle Steenie had a great many friends all over the world, and, since he did not work, he was always visiting them. He was very good about sending postcards, and I usually received one every week. Their messages were brief:
Salut, Vicky! Here I am on Capri,
he might write, and then he would draw one of his little lightning pictures underneath, of himself or a tree or a shell. Uncle Steenie drew very cleverly and wrote in violet ink. I had a great collection of these postcards: That year alone he had been in Capri, Tangier, Marseilles, Berlin, and a villa in Fiesole which was too marvelous, and which was owned by his best friend, Conrad Vickers, the famous photographer. Uncle Steenie had a great many famous friends: He knew film stars and painters and singers and writers. My godfather Wexton, who used to be his best friend, had dedicated a whole book of poems to my uncle Steenie, poems he had written in the Great War which were called
Shells.
Should I mention my uncle Steenie? He did not come to Winterscombe very often, it was true, and when he did, there were arguments about money: Uncle Steenie wanted to be the Best-Kept Boy in the World, and he used to remind people of this in a loud voice when he had finished all the wine at luncheon. I found this very odd, because although Uncle Steenie was undeniably well kept and had that beautiful complexion, he was not a boy and hadn’t been a boy for quite a long time. When he talked about being one, he made my father furiously angry.
“For God’s sake, Steenie,” I heard my father say once, when I passed them in the library and the door was open. “For God’s sake, you’re almost forty years old. This can’t go on. What happened to the last check I sent you?” Perhaps, on the whole, it was better not to mention my uncle Steenie, either. Charlotte would be sure to ask what he did—she always asked that; she even asked it about my father.
“But what does he
do
?” she said, after I had explained about the estate and my mother’s orphanages and the lake, which needed dredging, and the boiler and its inexhaustible appetite for pound notes.
“I suppose he has a private income?” She made it sound like a dreadful disease. “Daddy said he thought he must. He said you couldn’t possibly manage otherwise, not in this great barn of a place. Of course, there is the title….” She wrinkled her nose. “But Daddy says titles don’t count these days. Not unless they’re very old—and yours isn’t very old, is it? Daddy says they can be useful, of course. He wouldn’t mind a title on his board, because there’s still some people they impress. It’s a pity he isn’t in the City, like Daddy, don’t you think? It must be horrid to be so poor.”
“I don’t think we’re poor. Not exactly poor.” I was red in the face. “Mummy says we’re very lucky.”
“Nonsense. You haven’t two halfpennies to rub together—Daddy said so. He made a big killing last week and he told Mummy then. He made more money on that one deal than your father makes in five years. It’s true! You ask him.”
No, better not to mention my uncle Steenie, who did not work, or my uncle Freddie and his reluctant greyhounds; better not to mention my aunt Maud, who had been famous as a hostess once but who was now vague and old and wrong about my possibilities. Better, in fact, to stay off the subject of my family altogether.
I sneaked a look at the clock, hoping it would soon be time for Charlotte to go, and began to stack up my cards: black queen on red king; red knave on black queen: this patience (I could already tell) was not going to come out.
Charlotte sat opposite me, watching the pack as if she expected me to cheat. She tapped her fingers on the green baize cloth. Queen of spades on king of hearts. Suddenly it came to me: the perfect candidate, the trump card.
“Oh, by the way,” I began—there was no time to be subtle—“I may go to America next year. Did I tell you?”
“America?”
“Yes. To stay in New York. My godmother lives there, and she wants me to stay with her.”
“Your godmother? You never mentioned an American godmother.”
“Well, I call her ‘aunt.’ Aunt Constance. But she isn’t really my aunt.”
This was now more than a boast; it was a lie, since I called her no such thing, but I was launched, and scented victory. Charlotte’s eyes had grown small and concentrated.
“Constance?”
“Constance Shawcross,” I said.
I brought out the name with a flourish. I hoped, I suppose, that it would impress, for I knew, in a vague way, that my godmother was celebrated. She must, however, have been far more celebrated than I had ever imagined, for Charlotte’s reaction exceeded my greatest hopes. She drew in her breath; her eyes rounded; her expression was of envy tinged with disbelief.
“No!
The
Constance Shawcross?”
“Of course,” I said firmly, although I was at once afraid there might be two and my godmother the wrong one.
“Heavens!” Charlotte looked at me with new respect. “Wait till I tell Mummy.”
Such triumph! I was a little afraid it would be difficult to sustain, because I could tell that Charlotte was about to press me with questions, to which my answers were sure to be wrong. But I was saved. There was a scrunch of tires on gravel, the blaring of a horn. Charlotte looked up. I took the opportunity to switch the order of my cards.
“Your father’s here,” I said. “Oh—and look—this patience is coming out, after all.”
That was how the lie began; it was a lie that would have the most terrible consequences.
When I mentioned Constance’s name that afternoon at the card table, all I really knew was that it was a name likely to impress. I knew my godmother was famous, though for what I had no idea. I knew that my uncle Steenie adored her and pronounced her incomparable; I knew that, when he came to Winterscombe, he would sometimes produce magazines that charted my godmother’s social activities in breathless detail. I also knew that when he mentioned her name he was met with silence and the subject was quickly changed. The magazines, which Uncle Steenie would leave open upon tables, would be removed the instant he left the room. I knew, in short, that there was a mystery.
When I was born (Jenna had told me this) Constance had attended my christening and, like a godmother in a fairy story, had bent over my cradle to bestow a kiss. She had held me in her arms outside the Winterscombe church and had given me as a christening present a most extraordinary bracelet, in the shape of a coiling snake. This bracelet, described by Jenna as unsuitable, I had never seen; it lay lodged with my mother’s diamonds in the bank.
After the christening Constance must have fallen from favor, for she disappeared. More precisely, she was erased. There were numerous photographs of my christening, and Constance appeared in none of them. She was never invited to stay at the house, although I knew she came to England, for Uncle Steenie would say so. The only reason I knew she was my godmother was that she told me so herself; each year at Christmas, and each year on my birthday, she would send a card, and inside them she would write:
From your godmother, Constance.
The handwriting was small, the strokes of the letters bold, and the ink black.
These cards of hers were arranged, with the others I received, on the nursery mantelpiece. When the birthday was over I was allowed to keep my cards, cutting them out and pasting them in scrapbooks—all the cards, that is, except those from my godmother. Her cards were always removed.
This tactic was designed, I expect, to make me forget my godmother. Since I was a child, it had the opposite effect. The less I was told, the more I wanted to know, but to discover more was extremely difficult. My parents were obdurate: Nothing could persuade either of them to mention Constance by name, and a direct question was met with visible displeasure. They confirmed that she was my godmother—that was all.
Jenna had been provoked, once or twice, into discussion of my christening and the exotic bracelet, but after that I think she was warned off, for she too refused to discuss Constance again. Aunt Maud clearly hated her; on the one occasion when I risked an inquiry there, Aunt Maud drew herself up, gazed down her imperious nose, and sniffed.
“Your godmother is quite beyond the pale, Victoria. I prefer you do not mention her to me. I cannot imagine that she would interest you.”
“I just wondered … if she had … tempestuous eyes,” I persevered.
“Her eyes are like two small pieces of coal,” Aunt Maud replied, and that was the end of the subject.
William the butler claimed not to remember her. Uncle Freddie shifted his eyes about whenever I mentioned her name; trapped, alone on a walk in the woods, he once went so far as to admit that he and his brothers had known Constance as a child. She had, he said, frowning at the trees, been jolly good fun—in her way.
“Did Daddy like her then, Uncle Freddie? I don’t think he likes her now.”
“Maybe, maybe.” Uncle Freddie whistled. “I don’t remember. Now, where are those wretched dogs? You shout, Victoria. Oh, well
done.
Here they come. That’s the ticket.”
That left Uncle Steenie. I had high hopes of Uncle Steenie, particularly if I could waylay him after luncheon, or when he was in his own room, where he kept a silver hip flask for restorative nips on cold afternoons. Uncle Steenie might not come to Winterscombe very often but when he did, he became expansive after a few nips. “Sit down, Victoria,” he would say. “Sit down and let’s have a
huge
gossip.”
And so, on one of his visits, I evaded Jenna and the regulation afternoon walk and crept along to Uncle Steenie’s room.
Uncle Steenie gave me a chocolate truffle from his secret bedroom supply, sat me by the fire, and told me all about Capri. When he paused for breath I asked my question. Uncle Steenie gave me one of his roguish looks.
“Constance? Your godmother?” He clicked his tongue. “Vicky darling, she is an absolute
demon
.”
“A demon? You mean she’s bad? Is that why no one will talk about her?”
“Bad?” Uncle Steenie seemed to find that idea interesting. He had another nip and considered it. “Well,” he said at last, in his most drawling voice, “I can never quite make up my mind. You know the little girl in the nursery rhyme, the one with the curl down the middle of her forehead? ‘When she was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid.’ Constance is like that, perhaps. Except, personally, I liked her best when she
was
bad. The great thing about your godmother, Vicky, is that she is never dull.”
“Is she … pretty?”
“Darling,
no.
Nothing so bland. She’s … startling.” He took another nip. “She bowls people over. Men especially. Down they go, like skittles.”
“Did she bowl you over, Uncle Steenie?”
“Well, not exactly, Vicky.” He paused. “She was probably too busy to try. I expect she had other fish to fry. She and I are almost the same age, you know, so we were always friends. We met for the first time when we were—let me see—about six years old. Younger than you are now, anyway. We’re both the same age as the century, more or less, so that must have been 1906. Lord, I’m ancient! 1906! It feels like eons ago.”
“So she’s thirty-seven now?” I was disappointed, I think, for thirty-seven seemed very old. Uncle Steenie waved his hands in the air.
“Thirty-seven? Vicky darling, in Constance’s case, the years are immaterial. Age cannot wither her—though it does the rest of us, unfortunately. Do you know what I saw in the mirror this morning? A most terrible thing. A crow’s footprint, Vicky. In the corner of my eyes.”
“It’s not a very big footprint.”
“Darling, you reassure me.” Uncle Steenie sighed. “And the reason it’s small is my new cream. Have I shown you my new cream? It smells of violets, and it’s too heavenly—”
“Would it get rid of freckles, do you think, Uncle Steenie?”
“Darling, in a flash. There’s nothing it can’t do. It’s a perfect miracle, this cream, which is just as well because it costs a queen’s ransom.” He smiled mischievously. “Look, I’ll give you some if you like. Pat it in, Vicky, every evening….”
So my uncle Steenie changed the subject—more dexterously than the rest of my family, but he changed it nonetheless. That night there were storms and slammed doors downstairs, and Uncle Steenie became so upset he had to be helped up to bed by my father and William. The next morning he departed, early, so I never received my jar of violet cream, and I discovered no more on the subject of Constance.
For several months nothing happened: Charlotte contracted measles; her party was canceled; her mother took her to Switzerland for a period of convalescence. Christmas came and went, and it was not until January of the new year, 1938, that I saw Charlotte again.
I was invited to her house for tea, alone—an honor never accorded me before. To my surprise I was invited again the following week; the week after that there was a most pressing invitation to join Charlotte and her friends on an expedition to see a London pantomime.
My stock had risen, it seemed, not just with Charlotte but with her parents also. I was no longer just a dull child from an impoverished background; I was Constance Shawcross’s godchild. I was about to visit her in New York. Quite suddenly I had acquired possibilities.
At first, I am afraid, I enjoyed this very much. I was given wings by Constance’s surrogate glamour; I took those wings and I flew. Since I knew virtually nothing about my godmother, I was free to invent. I discovered the addictions of fiction.