Dorothy Eden (54 page)

‘Because I’ve found it’s what I wanted after all.’ Prissie gave her eager smile. ‘Silly of me, isn’t it? Probably I’m crazy about children because I was such a lonely child myself.’

‘I was, too,’ Brigit said involuntarily.

The two stood regarding one another. Then Prissie said softly, almost significantly, ‘Well, there we are.’

In their bedroom that night Fergus said:

‘Well, how do you like Prissie now you’re better acquainted?’

Brigit said enthusiastically. ‘She’s the most extraordinary person. I believe, if she wanted to, she could twist anyone round her little finger. Even Uncle Saunders was impressed. She looks such a child, but she isn’t really. She must be almost as old as I am. It seems strange that someone so attractive hasn’t married. But I think she’s been very mixed up and she feels as if she’s had to fight the whole world. She’ll be wonderful company for me and the children. Sarah, of course, adores her already. Sarah takes everyone on trust, just like you do. Nicky is more like me.’

‘Don’t you take my birthday present to you on trust? Don’t you think it was one of my happier inspirations? Or would you rather have had the diamond ear-rings?’

Brigit found herself hesitating. She was going to say something incoherent about the peculiar effect Prissie had on her. Then she saw Fergus’s happy confident look and could not bear to spoil his pleasure in his unique gift.

‘She’s sweet,’ she said warmly. But she didn’t want to talk any more about Prissie. The day, since five o’clock, had become Prissie’s, and it was hers, because it was her birthday. She was not a thin orphan child compelled to fight her way through the world, as Prissie had seemed to will her to believe, but Brigit Gaye, with two handsome children and a very handsome husband. It was silly to have to remind herself of that.

But she was remembering, all at once, how Nicky had fought back embarrassed tears as Prissie had bathed him. Nicky was shy and sensitive. Fergus had said he would have to be broken of it. Fergus was right, of course.

But Brigit was chilly, all at once. Inexplicably she was shivering. She laughed. ‘Someone walking over my grave. It’s cold. Let’s go to bed.’

She knew the familiar enchantment would come back on her as soon as she lay in Fergus’s arms. So it did, for a little while. His arms were so warm and loving, and he began talking nonsense into her ear, in a whisper, as he did only when he was completely happy.

But when the light was out the enchantment, as frail as a ghost, dependent on a mood, an atmosphere, left her. The moonlight was the colour of daggers, a shadow hung menacingly.

‘What’s the matter, darling?’

Fergus, much too perceptive about her moods, was instantly aware of her distress.

But was it distress, this cool thing that invaded her?

‘Nothing,’ she said, burying her face in his shoulder. ‘Nothing at all.’

For how could she tell him that it seemed, for a moment, as if Prissie had stood at the foot of the bed watching them, Prissie whose gallant lonely life had been a struggle for the things she had not yet attained, a husband, children, deep and adoring love… There was no reason at all that Prissie should give Brigit a guilt complex, but how could she flaunt this last of her many precious possessions in the face of this wistful hungry-eyed girl?

Yet was Prissie so wistful or so hungry for love? Brigit, walking into the nursery in the morning, heard the end of a story.

‘So that’s how I have royal blood. The evidence is all in here.’ Prissie was touching the heavy gold locket that lay between her small breasts. Her large eyes were shining with pride and excitement. It seemed impossible that Nicky should not be drawn into her fantasy. Yet he remained stubbornly sceptical and logical.

‘If your grandfather was a prince why aren’t you a princess?’

‘Well, you see—’ Prissie hadn’t noticed Brigit. She sat back on the low stool, her skirt spread about her, her hands clasped, and the pink of excitement colouring her cheeks prettily. ‘You had a grandfather who was a pirate but that doesn’t make you one. And I think you had one who was a millionaire. Let’s hope that does make you one.’ She grinned infectiously.

‘Then where are all your jewels?’ Nicky demanded.

Prissie looked crestfallen.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t any. Only this locket that holds a secret. Although my grandfather was a prince my grandmother was only a poor dancer—like this.’ She stood up and spun round, slender arms spread wide, like a figure on a musical box. ‘And she was very proud. She didn’t tell anyone she had a prince for a lover, so her children were just dancers instead of princesses.’

‘Was your mother a dancer?’ Nicky inquired, with his precocious intelligence.

Prissie hesitated. She said, ‘Yes,’ then ‘No,’ with curious defiance. After that again she said, ‘Well, yes, I expect so. No one told me,’ and before Nicky could cross-examine her further Sarah began to revolve slowly, imitating Prissie, her plump little body suddenly all unexpected grace. ‘Me dance,’ she said in her high eager voice.

Brigit decided it was time to indicate her presence.

‘I think we must have Sarah given lessons in ballet when she’s a little older,’ she said briskly. ‘She’s got a surprising aptitude. Prissie, what is this extraordinary story you’ve been telling the children?’

‘Prissie’s a princess,’ Nicky said. ‘She’s got it in her locket.’

Prissie’s fingers closed over her locket. Her eyes were innocent and sparkling, but her fingers seemed to be guarding a secret.

‘Oh, I was romancing a little. Not—not altogether. But there isn’t any proof, you see, and anyway where would proof get one?’

‘That depends what the proof is about,’ Brigit said practically.

‘It isn’t anything, really. Just a family legend. I always thought it was fun to believe it.’

Brigit could understand that. The lonely imaginative child whose aunt wanted her to sell haberdashery must, of course, have taken refuge in dreams. To imagine oneself the granddaughter of a prince and a ballet dancer was perhaps satisfying enough. Prissie was not ordinary. It could even have been true. Anyway, it fascinated Nicky, who was almost, but still not quite, capitulating to Prissie’s charm.

And it amused and interested Fergus when Brigit recounted the tale to him.

‘You’re all having your legs pulled,’ he said. ‘I told you the girl was a charmer. I wonder what she has got in that locket? A picture of a boy friend, I expect.’

Nicky’s apparent capitulation took place the second night of Prissie’s stay. He had one of the nightmares to which he was frequently subject. Brigit heard his sudden cry and knew in the silence that followed that he was hiding his head beneath the blankets, rigid, trying to overcome his fears. She always went to him, though lately Fergus had begun to protest, saying that Nicky was getting too big to be babied. He wasn’t meaning to be unkind, Brigit knew, but because she suspected he disliked Nicky’s nervousness more than he admitted (did he think Nicky took after Guy, with his neurotic tendencies?) she usually tried to go to the child without waking Fergus.

Her elaborate caution not to make a noise on this occasion caused her to be a little slow, and when she reached Nicky’s room the light was on and he was not alone. Prissie was in the bed with him, and had her arms folded tightly round him. His tousled fair head was on her breast, but somehow she did not look maternal. Rather she looked like another child herself, in her white nightdress with a blue ribbon drawn primly round the neck, and her dark hair hanging long and straight on either side of her face. They looked like a couple of babes in the wood, Brigit thought, with curious wryness. There were even tears on Prissie’s cheeks to keep company with Nicky’s.

‘He had a nightmare,’ she explained huskily to Brigit.

‘Yes, I heard him. He often has one.’

Nicky, hearing his mother’s voice, struggled eagerly away from Prissie.

‘Mummy,’ he cried, holding out his arms in a baby fashion that Fergus would have deplored. After all, he was not quite six years old, still young enough to be a little of a baby in the dark. But Brigit, in fairness to Fergus’s injunctions, refrained from putting her arms round him.

She patted him on the head.

‘It’s all right now, isn’t it, old man?’

‘Yes. They went when Prissie came.’

‘What went, dearest?’

‘The things. Like black paper. Fluttering.’ Suddenly, because his mother was not responding to his demand for reassurance, he hid his head in Prissie’s breast again, holding her tightly.

So he was capitulating to Prissie at last, Brigit reflected. That was a very good thing. Nicky was impossible to manage unless he trusted one. All the same, Prissie must be told not to pamper him. And really she looked so much a child herself, it was absurd.

‘I cried, too,’ she said simply. ‘It just seemed so awful, the dark night and being all alone and afraid.’

‘We’re not afraid now,’ said Nicky in drowsy content.

‘Thank you for going to him,’ Brigit said. She was angry with herself for her voice being a little stiff. Yet she couldn’t help going on. ‘My husband says Nicky must get over these things.’

Nicky stirred, with returning apprehension.

‘He’s only a baby,’ Prissie murmured, and Brigit saw Nicky relax again.

‘Well, make him lie down and get back to your own bed,’ she said crisply. ‘If he cries again I’ll go to him.’

Nicky didn’t cry again. If he had she was fairly certain that Prissie would have disobeyed her and gone to him. If she could shed tears in sympathy with a child she would not be able to lie in her own bed and listen to him cry. It was wonderful that she was so tender-hearted. It meant that one could leave the children with her any time and know that they would be most carefully looked after. The funny little thing really was a treasure.

She did not see Prissie early the next morning completing the letter begun two days ago.

Sorry I haven’t finished this before, but I wanted to be sure about what I was doing before I wrote. I’ve definitely decided to stay. She and the kids like me, the boy wasn’t so sure at first, but he’s all right now and everything’s fine. The kids are cute. Don’t be cross with me about this. It’s something I have to do just the way I had to get an education when I was a kid. Something I couldn’t see driving me, although now of course we know why. You might say it’s fate.

I’ll be up as often as I can and I’ll send things. You’ll manage, I know. It might not be for long. Or it might be something I’ve started and can’t stop. No, I don’t mean that, or if I do you’re in it with me.

You should see the children’s clothes and things. She says they’ve only got his salary, but there’s plenty comes from the Family. I’ve got to stay, see?

B
UT THAT WAS ALL
a month ago, another age, another world. Where had those lovely days of early autumn, those happy hopeful days, gone? Had they ever really existed, Brigit wondered. Sometimes she thought now that the beginning of reality had been that morning when she had had the accident. The interval of six years with Fergus before that had been a happy dream. She was a Templar with a heritage of bloodshed and cruelty. What right had she to be happy? The accident had been a reminder that she could not escape her inheritance. She had had a six-year reprieve, that was all.

It had all happened in the most unnecessary way. Aunt Annabel had been staying for the week-end, and Uncle Saunders had driven down with Guy to take her back to London. Unexpectedly they had decided to stay to lunch, and Brigit had got fussed because there was not enough food in the house. Prissie had offered to take the children for a walk into the village to shop, and while they were gone Uncle Saunders had begun one of his loud and inquisitive questionnaires as to how she and Fergus spent their time and money. He was in one of his pin-pricking moods, and Brigit, who was having one of her rare mornings when the baby was making her feel sick, had little patience with him. Also Fergus was due home shortly, after a week’s absence, and she had been planning to have him alone, not with the Templar family, which he hated anyway, round his neck. When Uncle Saunders transferred his cross-examination to Aunt Annabel, and when Aunt Annabel, who had been nervous and jumpy lately, suddenly burst into tears, Brigit found herself turning on him indignantly.

‘You’re nothing but a bully,’ she said. ‘Surely it doesn’t matter how much Aunt Annabel’s new club is costing her. You can afford it. She doesn’t spend much these days, goodness knows.’

She gave a significant glance towards Aunt Annabel’s shabby appearance, and Uncle Saunders said in his booming voice, ‘I won’t have my house filled with all the lame and diseased cats in the neighbourhood, that’s all. So long as she’s this friend to the friendless thing she’ll have the place overrun with animals.’

‘It doesn’t cost me anything,’ Aunt Annabel snuffled. ‘Actually I get money. I collect subscriptions.’

Uncle Saunders gave his loud derisive laugh. ‘Keep it then, why don’t you? What a golden opportunity. None of your loony friends will expect to know what’s happened to their money. Or better still,’ he leaned forward eagerly, his pale blue eyes protruding, ‘give it to me to invest. I’ll show you a handsome profit.’

‘Saunders!’ Aunt Annabel protested.

‘Dammit, where does being honest get you? If old Phillip had been honest where would the Templar family have been today? You wouldn’t have been living in a West End house, you can stake your life on that. Of course one has to dispense with bloodshed nowadays. Only a little mild foolery like embezzlement or misappropriation of funds,’ he finished waggishly.

‘Saunders, you’re joking.’

‘My dear, I never joke.’

‘No, all Uncle Saunders’s games are serious,’ said Guy in his drawling disillusioned voice. ‘After all, Aunt Annabel, if you don’t find the housekeeping money that’s so much more to buy shares with. So it’s not really a game, is it?’

Uncle Saunders roared with laughter.

‘That’s it, boy. You have the right approach. The Templar approach, eh? And there’s that girl of Fergus’s coming. She’s too small for my taste. What about you Guy?’