The Diamond Waterfall (59 page)

Lily and Erik returned three weeks later. Teddy traveled down to London to meet the boat train, wondering only if she should have left Michael even the day and night it took her to meet the honeymooners. Would he feel abandoned all over again?

That evening at their hotel, she told them, and she saw that, just as she had been, her mother was completely overwhelmed, yet shocked by happiness. But wary—more wary than Teddy had been. Erik too:

“The marriage certificate. The birth certificate. These are genuine?”

Her mother, calmer now: “You're
quite
certain?”

“That he's Hal's child? Yes, absolutely. And you will be also.”

There had never been any doubt in her mind. Mrs. Slader, odd, brusque, flustered woman, would never have lied.

“I talked to her, Mrs. Slader, a long time before she left. Everything she said … it would be hard to see Olive as anything but a good person. A
proud
person.”

Her mother, hurt all over again. She remembered now Lily's pain, confusion, when after Hal's death his clothes, his few personal effects, had been forwarded to the “Miss Ibbotson” listed as next of kin—back in the days when he had run away to be a soldier. … They had spoken then of following it up, but in their grief they had done nothing. Of what use to distress a much-loved giri friend, also mourning?

Teddy had been to see the family lawyer, she told them now. “I felt he should be informed at once.” He had checked on all the documents. Robert's will, made before Hal's death (and with only the codicil that cut her, Teddy, out after she received her Romanian money), was quite clear. After the bequest to Hal, the straight inheritance, the words
“or any legitimate issue.”
Sylvia, no longer the heiress, would have to be told. She would now have some capital of her own, the sum that would have been her dowry. But great wealth, the Waterfall, no.

Getting out of the motor car at The Towers, Lily saw Michael. He was standing on the front step with the servants, his nurse beside him. Teddy thought, I need not have worried. Michael stared at her a few seconds, then ran toward her. She gathered him up in her arms. Teddy, hiding tears, looked the other way.

Erik, standing beside her, said, “This is the best news since our marriage. And the best wedding present possible.”

“I think that too,” she said.

Back in Paris, she was greeted by Saint. He said, “You behold me, fangs drawn, trussed for slaughter—”

“What's all this?”

“I'm to be married. Believe it or not.”

Her shock, and then, his explanation. The girl whose father was over on business for a year. A vague family connection. An invitation to dinner, months ago. Seeing more of her while Teddy was away. Being asked to paint her portrait and doing it very badly.

“I met her in the sort of dull circles you and I have always been so rude about. Just lately I've got to know her—fairly closely. It's come to marriage. Daddy wants it that way. So does she. And, we all come to it, don't we? I'm thirty-five, Teddy—forty's in sight.”

She asked dully, what sort of life was he going to lead? A semi-bohemian one still?

“I'm going into their family business. From today I shall cease to
épater les bourgeois.
Henceforward, I shall
be
bourgeois.”

“It can't go wrong,” Reggie was saying. “A cert, absolute dead cert. Soundest scheme ever.” As he spoke he sipped a neat whiskey. The two other men nodded in agreement—Claude Mulcaster, Sidney Johnson. New business acquaintances.

Sylvia looked with disgust at her own glass of weak orangeade. Perhaps she should have something stronger to be in this company—but she was two months pregnant, almost everything made her nauseous, more so than ever before. She had told herself that if this new one was not the longed-for son, she would have something fitted. Go to London and make some arrangement privately. Tell Reggie nothing.
I cannot go on forever.

Willow, Lucy, Jessica, Margaret. Four little girls sleeping upstairs. Earlier, of course, the two miscarriages. And then the stillbirth—a boy. Reggie, saying it was not
her
fault and yet twice, after an evening spent with the whiskey bottle, shaking her awake, hissing at her, “You carry only sows— what about a
boar,
eh? How about a boar next time you're in pig … eh?”

The vulgar, the drunken side of Reggie—not seen so often but more often than once (never, never, please God, so alarming as that prewedding telephone call). Who would believe that he was like that, looking about the pleasant drawing room of their Surrey house, this autumn evening of 1932.

He turned toward her. “What about a spot of music? I'll set the gram up. Jolly good gadget this.” Moving about, skillful with one arm. “Does six at once, you know. Drops ‘em down.”

Perhaps the business discussion was over? She had not really been listening. Later tonight, if he hadn't drunk too much, he might elaborate it for her. Yet another doomed scheme.

“Don't be blue at all it won't do at all”

He liked a steady diet of dance music, although he never seemed able to recognize a tune. Tonight the selection would be years out of date and never the numbers she heard from the wireless dance bands. Henry Hall, Carroll Gibbons, Jack Payne: when Reggie, and Angie if there, went out drinking,
she would sit quietly, mending, and listening to them. She did not dance now. As for the piano—there wasn't one in the house. The person who had played at The Towers, who had offered refuge in the storm to Geoffrey, had been someone else.

Reggie, filling up glasses now:

“Feeling seedy, Sylvie? Angie'll be here soon, help on Nanny's day off.”

Oh but, she thought, I don't want help from Angie. I don't want Angie here at all.

Angie, spending at least six months of every year with them since 1924— and the first miscarriage. Coming to help then, sent for by a scared Reggie: “to hold your hand, old thing, keep you calm.” So as not to lose
their
son.

But she never knew if it would have been a boy, for even lying quite still, not moving from the bed in the darkened room, she had lost it. Less than three months old—messy, whisked away.

That 1924 miscarriage—
it was not necessary.
Because it had been his fault and his alone, Reggie had been scared, repentant.

She looked at him now, mellow with whiskey, optimistic beyond reckoning over this wonderful new idea that was to make them all rich.

That had been the trouble, of course. There should not have been any need to worry. He'd thought, had he not, that he'd married money? At twenty-five she was to inherit. Everything held in trust for her—not least the Diamond Waterfall. (Limitless security through that alone.) A rich woman in her own right.

And then the happy (how could she ever see it as anything else?) arrival of Michael. Who could be unhappy that all of them, and especially Mother, had now something left of Hal?
People
are the real riches, she thought. When an excited Teddy telephoned it had seemed to her good news from another world, beyond the grave. My big brother Hal
lives still.

Perhaps that was it. Her great happiness, the expression on her face, tone of voice, rushing to tell Reggie that evening. (She had already told Willow. Willow, standing up in her cot, pulling at the strings of her jacket. “Willow, Willow, Hal didn't die after all. You've a
surprise
cousin, my darling.”)

To Reggie it had not been wonderful at all. She thought she would never forget: voice, face,
words.

“What's all the smiling about, old thing?”

“I'm happy. I—Reggie, what—”

He'd turned away in exasperation. Then his so strong right arm shaking her—and again.

“You haven't
thought?
You really haven't … My God, good God, let me get a drink. A chap needs …”

Two double whiskies in quick succession. She had stood there trembling, feeling the happiness seeping from her, the nausea ignored all day rushing over her.

“Money,
that's the matter. Ever thought about your father's will? Where's that damn bottle? Fill her up, steady now. Listen, Sylvie, little fool, in pig
and
a fool—
listen.
The money, all of it, the Diamond Waterfall, yes, the bloody
Waterfall
they were all your brother's.
Or his legitimate issue.
Understand, eh? No hope the wretched little bastard
is
a bastard, I suppose? The truth is you are not going to be bally rich—
we shall be bloody poor.”

She could not believe her ears. She felt herself sway. “I don't mind. I mean—it'll alter things, of course. But it's not—” (What was it not?) She reached for a chair.

“What rot's that you're saying? We're done for, you know. Every bloody hope and plan.” He paused. “Are you
smiling,
Sylvie?”

She would not have dared; a frightened smirk only. But he'd been angry, she didn't want to remember now how angry—first with her, then with himself.

It was that evening he'd brought out the revolver, the one she had seen first in the South of France, in Mentone.

“Reggie—whatever?
Put that away!”

He held it to his head, against the temple.

“Reggie!”

“Just fooling. Next time …” He tossed it onto the carpet.

Shaking and sobbing: “How could you, how could you?” she had cried.

He only laughed, but when she couldn't stop crying he became angry again. He had been drinking before coming home. Now, four whiskies later, he was impossible.

Shaking her by the shoulder, jerking her neck. It wasn't that, she was sure it was not. Her body—a baby—could take more than that. Rather: the shock of happiness, followed so soon by a dreadful thought.

He didn't, couldn't have married me for my money.
Alone in bed later— for he had stayed downstairs to drink—she had tried not to think that his kindness, the way he'd
rescued
her, had been only about that. It wasn't true.

But her body must have thought otherwise. Two days later she lost the child. Reggie, who seemed to have forgotten most of what he'd said, asked shamefacedly:

“I can't remember, old thing. In bed … was I rough?”

She couldn't bring herself to answer him at all. Nor was the evening referred to again. But she knew that something had altered. For the first time, she began to wonder if there was a way out.

“… When fate designed my lucky star—there must have been a holiday

Above the singer's voice, Reggie was talking about the new scheme, telling Claude and Sidney, “Sylvie's not listening. Listen, Sylvie, as I was
saying, we've an accountant all but signed on the dotted line.
And
the director of another hotel—he ought to know what he's doing.

“The old Smuggler's Inn on the London Road. We'll be developing a completely new hotel. Listen to this, Sylvie, our draft prospectus—listen. ‘A hotel enterprise represents without doubt a fruitful source of
secure
and
profitable
investment.' That's the sort of lingo, eh? We'll be a public company with capital of over two hundred thousand, but raised through Belgium. That's the stroke of genius. A trust in London but the banking in Brussels. Stockbroker there—a financial wizard, gets advance commission of course. We want to get contracts signed, plans approved. Get on with it. Mustn't miss the opportunity.
Really
hit it this time.”

“Why can't I be, like others are, whose life is like the month of May?”

My life, she thought to herself, as the jaunty chorus went on: if it were not for the children, I would walk out tomorrow. Somehow I would find the courage. Ten years, and for at least seven of those I have known that it is all hopeless. Reggie
may
succeed in business (nothing is impossible), but I can feel for him now only distrust, scorn, anger. I too would like a son, but the price has become too great. He has dragged me down. Childbirth—children born, and children lost, have weakened me. The sort of spirit I had as a girl (and if I had had to surmount the difficulties in marrying Geoffrey I would have been able to), that has gone. I am too proud to run back to The Towers, to weep on Mother's shoulder, to disturb her happiness with Erik. And to go out into the world by myself, even with my own money behind me, of what use am I? Brought up as a lady and trained for nothing. I do not have a business head. And the children, except for my darling Willow, are Reggie's. To them, he is the much loved Daddy. I cannot rob them of that just because, for me, it is all fast becoming impossible.

I meant, oh how I meant to make this marriage work! How grateful I was to Reggie for rescuing me, believing he did it for love alone. Now pregnant and nauseated, I want to blame the Diamond Waterfall (forgetting, oh let me forget that I was wearing it, it was because I was wearing it when Geoffrey saw me), that it should have stirred such greed, that it should have been more important to him than love or true feelings. I never wanted the Waterfall. It never brought Mother happiness, although she confessed once that
before marriage
she had been excited, attracted by the splendor of owning and wearing it. Alice told me that
her
mother hated and dreaded it. Hal's Olive, I cannot imagine that she would have wanted anything to do with it. One day, perhaps, Michael's wife will be painted wearing it. May she be happy for possessing it. Perhaps it will be a changed world and all that magnificence will not seem like fetters, chains of bondage? Perhaps. I thank God that Willow is never likely to possess it.

Willow, who must continue to think Reggie her father. She was grateful still for Reggie's lack of curiosity. Once he spoke of “bad blood”: “Of course
you can't tell. Early days. But first sign of anything odd, we must stamp on it quick.” He often spoke of being a firm father, even a stern one; but when it came to it she did not think he could truly play the part. He would indulge them suddenly: a cluster of celluloid windmills, a Mickey Mouse in spongy rubber, a huge box of sweets. “Dollhouse, that's what the girls need, get them a dollhouse. Remind me, Sylvie.” (It had been Lily who had in the end provided one.)