The Diamond Waterfall (19 page)

“No one—”

“Autogenesis? My God.” He was walking to and fro.

“No one—especially. A casual encounter, an accident—”

“Who?”

“A Romanian.”

“Naturally, why not? His
name
—if you dare—”

She hesitated, her mouth dry with invention. “Alexandru Crisan.”

“A friend of—our friends?
Eh?”

“It was … he's a happily married man. Middle-aged. I said—an accident. These things … I can only—would have asked forgiveness. These things happen—”

“So ill, so
weak,
that you have to leave home. But well enough to
whore.
Aren't you?” Leaning forward, he struck the side of her head so that she fell against the chair back.

“Don't! Robert—how …”

“Don't, don't…. You don't care for what you deserve.”

She said, sobbing now, “These things happen—”

“They do not—to me. In the world you came from, perhaps. Or the fast set maybe. The usual disgusting ways of Society. Lionel may live that life if he pleases. These things, they don't happen to me, in
my
home—”

She cowered in the chair as he came near again. But he stood over her only, head thrust at her.

“You meant to pass it off as
mine,
eh? That's the filthy truth—is it not?”

She avoided his eyes, the angry color of his face.

“You've heard me before—on the ways of Society. Chipping at the very foundations of the family. And the older families, they are the worst. Not the
parvenus,
so-called…. You know what I think about that sort of conduct? Eh? Yes, say yes.”

“Yes.”

He leaned nearer.

“I have my son at least. You've given me an heir. But if this bastard's a boy, don't think he stands second in line. Offspring of some gypsy, and a shopkeeper's daughter—for that's what you are. … Do you think I want the Waterfall coming into such hands? Do you?”

He hit out suddenly with the back of his hand, this time her face. A whiplash. A second later he hit her again, about the shoulders. Right, left. And again. The blows rained down. A fist in her face …

She was too shocked to fight back. Afraid, too. Between blows he shouted, railing against her, against Val. This Romanian gypsy …

“You are never to go back there. Nothing to do with any of them, understand?”

In her terror, as he belabored her, his voice not so much loud as threatening—and righteous, she thought, Dad. (In the hall. Leeds. My wicker basket beside me. Discovered. Wicked. In the wrong. Hopeless. Imprisoned.) I have married my father.

“Was he a Jew? Tell me that.”

“I don't answer you. You've knocked me about, like a drunken husband on Saturday night. Now leave me. Go on, get out—if you haven't killed the child. … Get out.”

He threw her nightgown at her. For a moment it covered her face. She wrapped it over her belly, her knees. Her head she kept down so that she didn't have to see him. She heard the door close behind him.

The next morning, after an almost sleepless night, she saw in the mirror that she was marked: her face worst of all, livid bruises on cheek and temple. Her throat and upper shoulders too were stained.

After breakfast she sent for Robert.

He looked the other way as he spoke.
“Well?”

“Well?” she said. “I am not well at all, thanks to you.”

“Why should it concern me if you lose your bastard? Tell me that.”

She said coldly, “If I lose it, or am made ill by your brutality, I shall not hesitate—”

He interrupted angrily, “Don't threaten me. I exercised only my rights as a deceived husband. You
know
you are in the wrong, and deserve—”

“Now you threaten me! Would you like me to announce to the world not only that you have been cuckolded, but also how you have treated me? I am not afraid to do so.”

She saw that for a moment
he
was afraid.

“That would help no one,” he said. “I would not allow it.”

“Then some arrangements must be made about the future, if we are to remain a couple.
Shall
we remain a couple?”

“Our son, my family, our name. Of course. How can you ask? And as the wronged one, I make the conditions.” He grew more confident again. “It is I who decide how it will be in the future.”

“Is not a person who has been
struck
also wronged?”

He went on as if she hadn't spoken. “The conditions are that in private, I ignore you, or talk as little as possible. That in public, we behave as before. I give the child a name and nothing else. Do not expect me to love it. And above all, do not expect him or her to inherit
anything
of mine. The jewelry, my mother, our own blood, Lionel …” His voice caught, the words trailed off.

“Well?” Then when he didn't answer: “Very good,” she said. “That is perfectly satisfactory. Meanwhile, some story must be invented to account for these.” She pointed to her bruises.

All that day and the next, she spent in bed. She wrapped silk scarves around her neck, pleading a sore throat after the journey, a fever too, so that she had been dizzy and had fallen heavily in the bedroom, hitting her face against the fireguard. It was their story for the domestic staff, for Alice, and a few others. She was surprised at how easily it succeeded.

She would have told Sadie, but there was not really the occasion, for Sadie, after a horrified concern at Lily's appearance and a (surprising again) credence in her tale, poured out her own anxieties:

“Charlie, two days ago, darling Lily. He wants to fight for your Empire, as if it wouldn't be just dandy without any contribution from
him.
And not telling me till too late—isn't that just like a man? Someone or other's Horse
they call the Regiment and oh, it's
crazy!
Only eight weeks to the new baby. Why I'm so mad at him I just haven't been able to stop crying.”

What else but crazy? But now there was Sadie to comfort. Her own troubles could be put aside for the moment.

She heard that Harry had landed safely and was at Pietermaritzburg. The first of Val's letters arrived through Paris. She sent one off herself. Charlie left straightaway after Christmas. Sadie's world seemed all saddlery, revolvers, Zeiss' glasses. A little after his departure she had her baby—a girl whom she called Amy, after her grandmother. Lily told Sadie she too was expecting. In September, she said.

Her greatest consolation now was Hal. She spent so much time in the nursery that Nan-Nan, rather than being pleased, showed signs of resentment. For the new baby, Lily felt a mixture of longing and fear. Strong it must be, since it had survived the journey back, the beating, her emotional upset. But unlike those far-off days when it had been the precious secret of hers and Val's, now it was—a burden.

Winter still, always winter. She watched one darkening afternoon the steady fall of snow drifting across the garden, watched the last leaves on the spectral beeches and thought only, How time stretches out. It will always be a winter afternoon.

The next day, the baby quickened. She could hardly contain her excitement. The good news. When she saw Dr. Sowerby, he remarked that she seemed perhaps more advanced than had been thought. Her absence abroad was tactfully not mentioned. Feeling for a while physically better, she hugged her treasure to herself, hands sensing every movement. Val, who would be so proud. She wrote to Paris.

With Robert there continued the veneer of politeness they'd agreed to show in public. In private, they scarcely spoke to each other.

It was a warm summer. She sat outside, increasingly large now, eight months that should have been only six. She was in the summer house or, on truly fine days, on a garden bed. She was lying there the afternoon she was brought the news about Harry. That he had been killed on the sixth of June, at a place called Diamond Hill.

On the whole, Alice thought, she preferred this new baby, although Papa plainly did not. Nan-Nan did not seem enchanted either.

“We've had girls before, haven't we? Nothing like
my
girl, who's
my
girl?” (But Mama had been her girl, too.)

The baby had been christened in October, and this time Alice's photographs had been very successful. The baby had been named Theodora, which meant Gift of God. She had cried throughout the ceremony. She was also very large:
nine and a half pounds.
Theodora was after the Romanian count who had stayed at The Towers the summer before last. Papa had not said that he disliked Theodora. It was just that she, Alice, was sharp. At the ceremony he had not been at all jovial. Once or twice she saw him drum his fingers on the table when a guest praised the child. Later when she interrupted, and should not have, he was short with her:

“Seen but not heard, please. Go and look to your brother. You're a big girl now and should be a help.”

Big girl—of course, yes. That meant growing up and becoming more responsible. But there didn't seem any more of her than a year or even two years ago. Perhaps it was being sharp that kept her so small. And what of it? Except that Nan-Nan kept dropping hints.

“When it happens, you will tell Nan-Nan, won't you?”

“When what?”

“When you get your poorly time …” She looked knowing.

“Ill?”

“Well, not quite ill,” Nan-Nan said. “Poorly for a few days. Your mother went to bed often then.”

When her throat swelled up at the beginning of November she asked, “Is this it, am I … poorly? That way?”

“No, no,” Nan-Nan said hurriedly, “that's not it.” She added fiercely, “You're to tell Nan-Nan at
once.”

But on the whole, really she was much happier now. She did not have too much to do with Belle Maman, who gave so much attention to Hal these days, and now had Theodora to fuss over.

While she—had Gib. She would tell herself often, I have a
friend.
The
only sadness, that he would go away to school next September. What if he became someone different then, someone not interested in photography? For that was their greatest bond (aside from what had first brought them together. And they didn't, now, need to speak of that again). She was his teacher, although he was already almost her equal. Indeed at the beginning she'd felt humble, after the disaster of Hal's christening photographs. It was Gib who had watched, and then helped her develop the second, horribly artificial set.

All through the summer of 1899 they had been out and about with her camera, then, later, his too. Pictures: the moors, grouse butts, Flaxthorpe church, a waterfall swollen with autumn rains. The spray was like a million diamonds, Gib said. She had not liked that.
A diamond waterfall,
she had thought, remembering her mother.

Gib usually came over to The Towers. Sometimes though she went instead to the Vicarage. She liked it there, with its vague feeling of holiness. A sense of God's presence—and safety, although as religion it wasn't as attractive as Aunt Violet's Catholicism. All those colored robes, and beautiful sounds
(Mother
Church, it was called. How happy that name sounded! How warm!). And then the incense: she had never smelled it but she could imagine how exotic, how secret the scent of it would be.

Gib was looked after now by his Aunt Ettie, who was small, fluffy, and delightfully vague. She referred to him always in her slow dreamy voice as
“little
Gib,” even though he towered above her already, and indeed topped Alice by at least three inches.

She and Gib, a team, were they not? They had begun to think—Gib's idea this—that they might set themselves up as roving photographers, working on commission. Arabia, India, or even wild Romania that Belle Maman had written of so excitedly. The idea was enormous. It glowed.

“But first,” Gib had explained, “I have to go to school, and then to university, because that is what my father did. Although, I suppose”—pause —“I could always
run away
when the time comes.”

The daring, the courageous, the intrepid Gib! Three years younger than she, yet it was he who had the ideas.

But meanwhile, here and now, there was Christmas to enjoy. No Fräulein. Lots of Gib. The only cloud in the sky, Uncle Lionel.

He was to spend Christmas with them, and made it worse by arriving a week early. At once, he made a great fuss of her.

“Well, mistress Alice, where are you roaming, come and tell your true love.” His hateful kiss and embrace lingered. “Let's see what our little budding Lumière has been up to.”

She pushed him away a little.

“Let me see the darkroom,” he said. “Please, Alice.”

“You know it. It was Papa's.”

“Let me see it now that it's yours.” He pleaded with her. But she didn't want him to. In there was private.

“I want to see how you have made it different. The impress of your personality.”

“No.” But in the end, he just simply walked in, without knocking, too. Because Gib had only just left, she hadn't locked the outer door.

“Hallo. Hallo.”

“The light,” she screamed, “shut the door!” She had meant to say
“Get out.
” Now instead she had invited him in.

“The Nicolson lad was on the stair. He told me you were here.”

“But I'm at work. You may not disturb me.”

“Alice?”

“Yes?” She was taken unawares.

“Alice, you know how quite too too sweet you look in that light, that
red
light.”

“I don't know what you mean. And anyway this will spoil if I don't take care.” She had almost finished, would have done so before Gib left except that she had thought of one last thing. “Why are you here?”

“To see your little house.”