The Diamond Waterfall (7 page)

“Did you not press him? You must press him, Vicky. He must acknowledge-”

“But I am ruined, whatever.”

“He must pay you. Then you may have the child—and return.” My mind whirled with ideas and anger. I asked how long she had? She thought until about July. “Well then,” I told her, “you will be back on the boards for the autumn, when the season begins. And none the worse—”

“You know I am finished, do you not?”

“He must be made to pay, and if he will not, you must speak to our manager. He cannot wish for a scandal.”

But she saw little hope in that notion. I saw by her face next day that she had not succeeded. She had learned only that she must leave the company soon. As we might have guessed, the importance of Laurence's wife's money overrode any other consideration.

I said, “You could tell his wife.”

“She
has done no wrong.”

“Vicky, Vicky. If you cannot help yourself, tell them all, all of them, that you will noise it abroad.”

“And be believed?” she asked bitterly. “Something like that happened to a girl in my first company. It cannot be proved, you know. He will deny it. It is I, after all, who am to have the child.” And then:

“Oh but I love him,” she said. “The sad truth is—I love him still.”

Stupid Frank, drinking too much in those last weeks before the Christmas season, being scolded by Constance—and enjoying it. I found I had always to be looking at her feet. I was fascinated to think of how they might be, bare. Frank, abased before them, worshiping them. Then I would feel faintly sick.

But not as sick as Vicky, who every morning now staggered up to retch helplessly into the slop bucket. I counted the days until we should leave for Manchester. When we had been there only a week, a week of arduous rehearsals, she could keep little food down and, frantic with worry for her, I urged her to go home
now.
I knew she was homesick. I had heard her cry for her family in the night. Without making too much difficulty, she agreed.

Laurence had given her some money, which fortunately she hadn't been too proud to accept. A replacement was found for her and she arranged to travel two days before Christmas.

“You'll tell them at home?” I asked anxiously. “And you will write to me at once. We shall meet.”

“Oh but yes,” she said, that chill December evening, a damp cold trying to sleet. Manchester was still a strange place to me, like and yet unlike Leeds. I saw Jews going about and thought of Daisy and Joszef this fourth Christmas of their marriage.

“I'll take a cab to the station,” Vicky said. Then: “No, you dear thing, you may not come too.” But just as she was stepping into the cab, she clutched me. “I have loved you so much, darling Lily.”

I hugged her back. “And I too, dearest. Take care, take care—and you will tell them—at once?”

They loved her too. She would be all right.

The pantomime was a success. It sparkled like a Christmas tree. I was happy onstage. And on Christmas Day itself, although I was lonely, I thought of Vicky surrounded by her family—and was happy for her.

The next day was icy cold. In the evening, after the show, a note was
brought to me. “Please come. Soon. Please. Vicky.” A boy waited outside. I went with him immediately. As we hurried now beneath the gas lamps, in and out of the dark patches where the light did not reach, I wanted to cry, “But I thought her safe in Scotland!”

We had come now to a poor area. Mean streets. We stopped at an alleyway. He pushed at a door in the courtyard. The hallway was dimly lit. I stumbled tiredly up the stairs in the damp chill. Almost at once a head came around: a woman's.

“Is that her—t'friend?” She opened the door wide. “Well come in,” she said to me. “Come in.” Then to herself: “This is a fine kettle of fish—I don't know.” And turning back to me: “You'll do something, eh? arrange something?”

Inside the low-ceilinged room a light showed a bed in the corner. There was a curious smell. In a saucer something burned. I hurried over.

“There's to pay. I'd to get t'doctor. She asked then for
you,
miss. And my boy, t'lad, he went …”

Kindness, fear, and a little on the make. I saw them all war in her face.

Vicky. Vicky. I would not have known her. All that wild hair spread thin, strawlike, on the crushed pillows. Her eyes burned, enormous, dark.

“It's Lily,” I said. “I'm here, darling. I came at once.”

I wanted to ask questions, but I knew I must be careful, careful. The woman brought me a chair as I bent over her, both my hands enclosing the weak one that lay on the bedcovers.

“My God,” she cried out suddenly, “my God, God help me!” Then head from side to side, muttering, moaning.

“Vicky, what happened? Tell me, dearest.”

“T'doctor,” said the woman, “he'll be back the morrow. He'll maybe— t'hospital. Happen it's too late, though.” She stood behind me at Vicky's bedside. She added righteously, “And she'll not tell us who did it. They'll never tell, will they?”

Who did it? Why, Laurence, of course, I would have betrayed him at once. Innocent as I was, ignorant rather, I did not realize it was something else she spoke of. I said to her, “Would you leave us, please?”

When we were alone: “Darling,
tell me,”
I said. I could not bear it that she suffered so.

Her lips were dry, cracked. “The pain,” she said. “It cannot be all right. The pain—all wrong, all has gone wrong.”

There were sounds in the street outside, drinkers returning home. The light by the bedside flickered. I noticed the bedclothes.

“But, darling, you were going home. What
happened?”

“Lily, I
couldn't.”
Her eyes were enormous, but sunken. “/
could not do that to them.
You understand?”

“Yes, yes. Of course, darling. But the pain—”

“I thought, you see, Mrs. Swarbrick, in the show, she knew a woman. I was going to be here just a week. Less. Tell no one. It was all arranged. I had the money. They think I am married, you know. You won't say?
You won't say?”

At first I could not understand—but then when she had, whispering, explained properly, I was filled with a desolate, despairing horror. Why, why, why?

“But Vicky—oh, darling,
why?
I would have helped. Something, anything—but not, no, never
this.”

The pain had gathered again. The doctor had left some opium. She said then, between cramps, “I don't understand why this pain is so much.
She
said it would be all over soon and that when it was, I would be—all right. But it,
it
has left me, you know. And yet still—oh Lily, everything is worse,
worse.
Lily, dearest,
what will become of me?”

I could think only that we must get, at once, the very best of help. “The best, Vicky, you shall have the best man. At once. I shall see to it.” I was Dad's daughter. Lily Greenwood now, never Lily Greene. But as the pain came again, she twisted my hand.

“No—I cannot.”

“Hospital, Vicky. They will care for you. I'm going to send now.”

“I
cannot.
Lily, don't leave me, darling!” She clung to me as I bent over the bed. The place was terrible, it was all terrible. I did not know the full story—would never know it. (Some woman botching it up? Filthy money for filthy instruments? Or just—an accident?)

“I'm afraid. So afraid, Lily. The pain. I'm afraid of the pain. Because I did wrong, it was because I did wrong.”

“No. You are not to say that.” Laurence, I thought. Laurence shall pay.

The bleeding began very suddenly. In only a few moments the sheets, the bedding, all drenched. I shouted for the landlady.

The boy was sent for the doctor. We tried, with growing despair, everything. A jug of icy water brought up from the yard was splashed onto her, from as great a height as we could manage. Brandy was sent for and forced between her colorless lips. Opium. More opium.

But in that next hour, before even the doctor had arrived (what, I think now, could he have done so late?), she bled to death.

My dear dear friend. The smell of that room. The sad confusion. The dawn breaking behind closed shutters.

“Sweet wine, for the ladies,” Lionel said. The waiter poured Barsac into their glasses. “Sweets to the sweet, of course. I only say what is expected of me.”

“James eleven,” said Sir Robert. “ ‘Doth a fountain send forth at the same place, Sweet water and bitter?' “

“The Bible, at the Savoy? Really, he is impossible.” Lionel, looking around him, shrugging his shoulders helplessly.

“Yes,” said Sir Robert affably to Lionel, but looking at Lily. She felt again his gaze on her. “We are not
all
savages up in Yorkshire. I remember that I was put—and you too, I think, Lionel—to learning the Collect for the day. I say it again to show there is no ill will—‘Doth a fountain send forth at the same place, Sweet water and bitter?' “

It is meant for me, Lily thought, hardly able to drag herself from the journey she had just made (bitter enough surely?) into the past. It is meant for me.

I am sharp, Alice thought, coming down the stairs in the afternoon. The great wide wooden staircase into the empty hall with its patterned marble floor.

So empty. No servants about. Papa was in London. He had been there for almost two weeks now, visiting Uncle Lionel. I prefer it like that, she thought. It's better than when Uncle Lionel comes here.
I don't like him.
He's sharp too, but in a different way. I like much better Papa's fine soldier brother, Uncle Thomas, who's away serving in India now.

An afternoon that was all hers. Her governess, half an hour ago: “Alice Firth, surely you can amuse yourself? A lovely home like The Towers … the garden, the orchard, the fountain, the copse. And in this beautiful September weather …” Perhaps to Miss Fairgrieves, who was rather elderly, just to be young might seem amusing?

Down the great wide wooden staircase and into the hall. I am sharp, she thought. She saw herself, all of her, as sharp. Pointed. Spiky elbows, heels, toes, fingers. Sharp as a fox, always watching and waiting. I have something to watch and wait for, she thought. I must always be on my guard. Anything at all, probably bad at that, might happen at any time…. Sharp, watching …

But only for myself, she thought. Sadly. It's not as if I have a sister or brother to worry about. I am an alone child.

She had said just that to Miss Fairgrieves on her first day as governess. “I am an alone child.” And Miss Fairgrieves had said, “You mean, Alice, an
only
child. It is called an only child, my dear.”

But she had persisted. “I am an alone child. It is not the same thing,” she had said, “they are not the same thing.”

She often persisted. They didn't like that. Just as they did not like her being sharp. They call me that, she thought, when they are talking about me, for they talk about me a great deal even when I am there. Almost as if I were
not
there: “And how is the child doing—she is quite over the loss? That little upset after. She eats well? No more of that refusing to eat, eh?”

It was then, of course, I became sharp. I felt sharp all over, like a needle. I did not want to eat. I did not want to put anything in my mouth because if I didn't, if I
ate nothing,
then I would soon go to join Mama. (They said at the time, “If she doesn't take something, she will join her mother soon.”) It was for Papa's sake only that I ate again. So that he might not be sad twice.

Gazing at her in the hall was the stuffed body of Grandpa's black Clumber Spaniel, Pickwick. He looked very fierce always, even though his eyes were glass. She thought, What shall I do with the afternoon? Perhaps she could go and find Fräulein Schultz, the German governess. They were, in a way, friends. …

Fräulein had been two years already at The Towers. Very fat, stouter even than when she'd first arrived, with a great soft moon face and little spectacles that looked lost. She'd just come back from a visit home to Germany and was still sad. She wept easily and often anyway, frequently dissolving in front of Alice, who would then coax or bully her into all sorts of concessions. German conversation would become English. … Although the subject of course was, as always, Fräulein's brother Augustin.

It must be better to be an alone child than to have a brother like Augustin. Younger than Fräulein, he had just finished his first year at university, but was already in trouble. He spent money that he hadn't got and twice he'd been in a duel. One of his opponents had almost died, and he himself had a huge disfiguring scar.

“This alone—we don't worry, although before he made the fight he is so beautiful. But he does
nothing
for his studies.
Und
the money, Alice—I should not say to you this—it
walks away
from him. …”

She thought now, she might be better to go and sit with Nan-Nan, who had been Mama's nurse but who in spite of that was not so very old. Only moody. She complained of too little to do now that she lived in the village as companion to an elderly lady.

“All I ask for, Miss Alice, is another baby in the cradle.”

Alice knew she was talking of Papa's marrying again. Now that it was three years since Mama had died, people did. At first it'd been “If he marries again.” Then, more lately,
“When
he marries again.” But there were some things one did not think about because they were unimaginable. And Papa, so sad at her going,
could
not mean ever to replace her. Mama could not be replaced.

Mama's going. Before and after. Like the Red Sea of the Bible, divided exactly in two. Before, although everything wasn't always perfect, at least it was not cold and unkind. After, even if people tried to be nice, it was cold everywhere, and dark.