Running to Paradise (6 page)

And passion, initially anyway, it was. Unfortunately, passion proved not to be enough, for despite the fact it not infrequently overpowered them both, it was unable, paradoxically, to overcome their mutual inhibitions about each other: namely, they continued to see in one another traits of which, in the ordinary course of events, they would strongly disapprove.

However, they settled down conventionally enough in a large, comfortable house in Bedfordshire, where two years later I was born. The birth was long and painful and the arrival of a daughter instead of the hoped-for son a disappointment shattering to them both.

‘
Never, never, never, will I go through that again,’ Ma vowed and meant it, but Pa had other ideas: he wanted a son. He needed one, after all, to carry on the family business.

‘
Treat her gently,’ chaps at his club advised. ‘She’ll get over it, they all do. Don’t force the filly, it could lead to trouble in the long run.’ But somehow or other as the months went by, Ma didn’t seem to be getting over it. She still insisted on locking Pa’s dressing-room door each night, whence he had been banished since before my birth, and filled the house at weekends with arty young men, female battle-axes and damned revolutionaries who couldn’t even speak the King’s English. So, after a year of enforced abstinence, with little regret, perhaps even a sense of relief, Pa returned to his old stamping grounds: in particular, a charmer by the name of Stella, who had a topping little hideaway in Pimlico and provided with considerable panache — she was very expensive — all the delights of the flesh he had for so long been deprived.

And so their life continued, a rough compromise, as are so many marriages. They even became reconciled to the fact of my not being a boy. Ma, I think, saw me as a sort of human guinea pig sent from heaven in order that she might put into practice her
‘advanced’ ideas on the bringing-up of children. And I made Pa laugh, albeit from the very beginning he always considered me ‘too sharp by half’. In other words, he would have preferred a more amenable and fluffy-headed daughter of the ‘Cuddles’ variety so popular then. I think he feared too that I might grow up to be like Ma — God save the mark!

It was the Eton and Harrow match in the summer of 1908 that brought my parents together again in the bed department. Pa
, as was his custom, took a large party. Harrow was his old school and despite the fact a good deal of his time there had been spent in more or less total misery, he nevertheless, from the safe platform of adulthood, viewed it through a haze of nostalgic sentimentality, and would have died rather than miss the famous, annual cricket match at Lords.

They
dined afterwards at the Savoy. Ma, for once, had sparkled and refrained from lecturing, and whether it was the heat, the champagne, or the fact Harrow had won, they never afterwards knew, but Ma left the door unlocked between their adjoining rooms at Brown’s Hotel, and Pa at long last had his way.

For
a few short weeks passion returned; the heady days of their honeymoon were lived all over again. Until, that is, just as cubbing was about to begin, the apples in the orchard were ripening and the cottage gardens ablaze with Michaelmas daisies, Ma discovered, to her considerable annoyance, she was once again pregnant. She took to lying about on sofas (a habit she continued to the end of her life), gave up hunting, and a governess was engaged for me. I was a precocious child anyway, and Ma was very hot on education for girls as well as boys.

The
task of telling me of an addition to the family and of my own impending incarceration in the school room was given to my Nanny. Ma was feeling too unwell to cope with such trivialities as her daughter’s possibly tiresome reaction to the news and Pa, naturally, would be useless at such a task.

So
it was that one evening early in the year 1909 Nanny, seated in her special chair by the nursery fire, took me on her knee and cuddled me in the way she used to do, but had not done for a long time. I was feeling comfortable and sleepy after my bath, my skin tingling from the brisk towelling, with the delicious taste of toothpaste in my mouth. The high nursery fender shone with polishing and through its mesh I could see the fire castles flickering in the blackleaded grate. Outside, the wind blew and rain pattered on the roof of the verandah, but inside all was peace. Old Nanny, as she always did, smelt of camphor, a not unpleasant smell, and I burrowed my head into the cleft between her enormous bosoms and listened to the fast tick of the tiny gold watch that hung on a black ribbon round her neck. It had once belonged to Nanny’s mother, hard though it was to imagine Nanny having a mother, and was very old and fragile, so she said.

‘
Tell me a story, Nan, come on.’ I knew all Nanny’s stories by heart, but that wasn’t important, it was the telling of the story that was important. Silence. ‘Come on, Nan. Tell me the one about Queen Victoria bathing her dear little dog when the men came to fetch her for her coronation.’

‘
Not tonight, dear, I’ve things to say that must be said.’ Nan’s voice sounded a bit queer. I began to have that familiar feeling in my tummy. Nanny cleared her throat: ‘Now then, dear, how would you like to have a lovely little baby brother?’ (The entire Osborn household had by this time already made up their collective mind the baby would be a boy.)

I
thought for a bit; this was unexpected news. Then I remembered Jane and Amelia had a baby brother. Jane and Amelia were the vicarage children and sometimes came to tea. They had recently acquired their baby brother, a small, wizened creature, enveloped in white shawls, who managed to produce a noise far out of proportion to his size, and what’s more, smelt of pooh. ‘They’re noisy and smelly things,’ I announced, ‘and I don’t want one.’

‘
Now, that’s no way to talk and well you know it. God sends little girls baby brothers and they should be happy and grateful.’

‘
Jane and Amelia don’t like Geoffrey at all. They say he spoils simply everything, they—’

‘
Now, that’s enough, Miss Char. It’s wrong to think such things; what ever would your Ma say?’

‘
She doesn’t like babies, she said so. She said there were far too many born into the world and the working class must be taught to exercise restraint.’ I hadn’t the slightest idea what all this meant, but could ‘do’ Ma to a T — it was one of my ways of getting round Pa. It always had him in convulsions. I could see by the look on Nan’s face my random shot had found its mark.

‘
I said that’s enough and when Nanny says that’s enough, Nanny means it. Now, listen quietly to what I have to say. Whether you like it or not,’ Nanny sounded quite cross, for the life of me I couldn’t see why, ‘you’re going to have a dear little baby brother.’ I sucked my thumb in silence. ‘And, when the spring comes,’ Nanny continued, using her storytelling voice, ‘and the birds are building their nests, one fine day you will go upstairs to see your Ma in her bedroom and there, in a cradle by her bed, just like you were when you were little, you will find a lovely little baby, and you will kiss him and love him ever so much and...and when he gets bigger, you will be able to play with him and have such fun together.’

‘
I don’t want to play with babies, and how could he get into Ma’s bedroom, he—’

‘
God will send him, dear, you know that.’

‘
Well, I don’t want God to send him. Why can’t he be given to somebody else?’ But at this point Nanny, without further ado, plunged into her second piece of news.

‘
Another nice thing is going to happen. My, aren’t you a lucky little girl?’ But I seized one of the grey whiskers that sprouted from Nanny’s chin and gave it a sharp tug. It was one of those things I never could resist doing.

‘
Don’t do that, dear, or Nanny will get cross—’

‘
Why do you have a beard, Nan, why?’

‘
You’re going to have lessons every day with a very nice lady who is coming to live here. Your Ma will be too busy now to give them you herself. The lady is ever so clever and pretty and will be able to answer all your questions. Smith is going to turn out the big attic upstairs and paint it and make it into such a nice schoolroom, and you will have your own little desk and pen and pencils. And Bobby Prescott from the Grange will be coming in every morning to do his lessons with you — now, won’t that be nice?’

‘
No, it won’t, and I don’t want a baby brother either,’ I said.

Miss
Babs Bellingham, wearing a smartly tailored tweed coat and skirt and a straw boater perched on a mass of red-gold hair, arrived a fortnight later, bringing with her a bicycle and a Gladstone bag full of Fabian Society tracts. Miss Bellingham was the ‘clever’ but impecunious niece of one of Ma’s fellow committee members: pretty, but the possessor of a rather strident voice. I took an instant dislike to her. Ma, enclosed now in her hypochondriac world of impending motherhood, paid little attention to the new governess, apart from briskly interviewing her on the day of her arrival. Summoned to a freezing morning room, she found Ma reclining on a mauve velvet chaise longue, placed strategically under an open window, through which blew a chill north-easter.

‘
My daughter needs a strong hand, Miss Bellingham,’ she informed the shivering governess, herself warmly enwrapped in an assortment of woollen shawls. ‘But above all, she must have stimulation for her over-active mind. I am, as I told your aunt,
hors
de
combat
for the time being and must therefore rely on you to provide that stimulation, within, naturally, a solid framework of discipline. The means by which you choose to enforce that discipline are your own affair, but let me make it clear, no child of mine will ever be the recipient of corporal punishment. Now, my dear...if you will excuse me...’

Miss
Bellingham was a good teacher, no doubt of that, but I hated the routine of the schoolroom and Bobby Prescott was such a little ass. He used to cry when I kicked him under the table and when I borrowed his pen one day (the nib to mine had gone funny and spluttered ink all over my writing book) he went straight home and told his mother I was a thief.

‘
Mama says God punishes little girls who steal,’ he informed me smugly the following morning. ‘He’ll send a thunderbolt to kill you.’

‘
No, he won’t, he doesn’t do things like that, and you’re a nasty little tell-tale-tit.’

‘
Children,’ shouted Miss Bellingham, getting rather red in the face. Doubtless her fingers itched to bang our heads together. She refrained, wisely, perhaps remembering Ma’s embargo on corporal punishment. ‘Get on with your lessons. Charlotte, you’re the eldest and must learn to set a good example. Any more nonsense and you will stand in the corner.’

‘
I don’t mind standing in the corner in the least, it’s better than stupid old arithmetic...’

Pa,
on a walking tour in France at the time of Miss Bellingham’s arrival, returned a few days later. He encountered her on her way back from the village. A tendril of hair had escaped from under her hat, her cheeks were rosy from the wind and her tight-waisted jacket accentuated the slimness of her figure. Pa, his blue eyes alight, looked her up and down in that special way he had, then held out his hand smiling. ‘I’m Charlotte’s father; you must be Miss Bellingham. And how are you managing with that little monkey of mine?’

‘
She’s a lovely child, Mr Osborn, just a bit mischievous at times, but a ripping little learner.’ At that precise moment a sudden gust of wind blew Miss Bellingham’s hat off.

Pa
laughingly retrieved it. ‘Always remember to hang on to your hat, Miss Bellingham,’ he said and looked straight into her eyes. And how do I know all this? Because I saw and heard it, from my secret look-out post at the nursery window. How ridiculous grown-ups were, especially Pa and Ma.

To
be fair, however, despite the hours spent standing in the corner — imagination was not one of Miss Bellingham’s many attributes — there was no doubt I did benefit greatly from her tuition. Anyway, one can get used to almost anything if one tries hard enough.

Week
followed week and spring slowly turned to summer. The grass in the paddock grew green and lush, the first cuckoo was heard, Ma grew steadily bigger and everyone in the household, apart that is from Ma, became aware of a change in Miss Bellingham. She was softer, more lax in discipline and frequently inattentive. She even giggled at one of my rude drawings (I was a great one for rude drawings) and never even noticed when I stuffed the unfortunate Bobby’s inkwell full of little bits of blotting paper. The schoolroom party took to having nature rambles instead of lessons. Miss Bellingham, her long skirts trailing over the dewy grass, her eyes dreaming, would lead us shouting and laughing over the fields and along the leafy lanes of early summer. Once we saw a pair of kingfishers darting through the willows that overhung the stream at the bottom of the paddock where the horses had already been put out to grass for their summer rest. And once I found a robin’s nest in the high, stony bank bordering the lane that led to the village.

Sometimes,
on a Saturday morning, Pa would join us, helping Miss Bellingham over stiles and pointing out the different species of butterflies. He had collected butterflies as a boy and indeed possessed quite an impressive collection, carefully preserved in a mahogany specimen chest in his dressing room.