The Diamond Waterfall (72 page)

“Ah yes, the Bugatti,” Teddy said. “Of course.”

The next day they left for Bucharest.

Michael lay on the swing seat, near the lily garden at The Towers, and thought about his father. Through half-shut eyes he saw the September sun dapple the leaves of an oak. The moors in the distance, a hazy purple.

By the time he'd arrived back from Romania, Willow, fit again, had been just about to leave for two weeks on the Yorkshire coast. They were taking her to Runswick Bay.

“No, thank you, I don't want to come.” What would he do all day in the company of an (almost) fourteen-year-old who might herself be bored? How would he manage, trying to hide his shame, his secret knowledge, his shattered world? And, yes, yes, they had agreed, he probably wasn't well enough yet. Left arm still in plaster, cracked ribs still giving pain. The neck brace uncomfortable. And those ugly facial bruises.

He and Willow. Her mishap had been honorable, a fall from a pony,
an accident
While his … He thought,
I meant something to happen
to Corina. The first words he'd said in the hospital (he had heard his own voice as if another person spoke), “Is Corina—Corina's not hurt?” And that, he thought, must have meant that really deep down I didn't want her harmed. It was only my anger—
then.

She had been loyal, with her story of “getting out for a walk.” But I didn't want to see her.

Lying in hospital in Brasov he'd felt, still stirring amid the shock, the memory of his anger. He did not want to look too close.
What I said to Corina, what she said to me.
And—afterward. The Bugatti, unleashed. I can see the speedometer. I pushed her beyond.
Something happened.
She spun and spun—once? A thousand times?

And afterward, all those
ifs.
If I had been on the right side of the road as I went into the trees. If, driving on the left as I did,
she
had been in the passenger seat.

Telling Teddy. He didn't want to relive such shame. Guilt festered in him all that September. Cambridge, and Clare College, would not begin till October. He could not imagine his new life.
How shall I manage?
A student, an undergraduate.

His father was meant to have gone to Cambridge. Perhaps because he
himself had been so near to death, he kept thinking of his father and death— and
war.

That word spelled for him his father's lonely death (he had always known it was lonely). His mother—that was different. She had been so strong. Even when he had spoken to her for the last time, and not
known
it to be the last time, she had been strong. She is all right, she is in heaven, he had always said to himself. And others had told him. Never raging against the waste. Auntie Nellie particularly (dear Auntie Nellie, he thought now—Christmas cards, little notes, and never back to see her),
she
should have raged that both of them had gone, leaving her with the problem that was me.

What sort of a person was she, my mother? Who could so easily have laid claim after the war to comfort and care and money—and recognition. She called herself Ibbotson. I thought Ibbotson was my name. “Michael Isbitton,” I used to say. “Ibbotson,” Auntie Nellie would say patiently, correcting me for the
nth
time. Then suddenly I had to become Firth. I was proud of it. That explosive
F
irth.

I must have been sturdy, emotionally. Except for sudden bouts of homesickness, I managed the changeover quite easily. Forgot, too soon perhaps, my early life in Devon. Aunt Teddy, immediately mother to me—I could
see
she was family. Showing me photographs of my father, my father at
my age.
A whole new world opened, bewildering. A child in wonderland, I couldn't believe it when they said to me, “Here is your pocket money,” and there was a whole sixpence to spend. Soon after came all those other delights: the giant pedal car, the tricycle, the car that had a sort of engine. All the way up to driving the Prince Henry Vauxhall.

Prep school three years later might have been difficult, but it was easy, I liked it, I made friends, I was popular except when I lost my temper suddenly, ferociously. Even then I had people on my side. And how little curiosity, when there's nothing to arouse it, boys of nine show. By Winchester I
was
Michael Firth, might never have been Michael Isbitton. I could hardly remember him myself. And the family, intentionally or not, never bothered to keep fresh the memories I did have.

All through those weeks of convalescence, he tried to make sense of everything. I love my family, he thought, of course I love them. But it was as if they had chopped off a limb to make him grow stronger, and he had later become used to its absence.
I need to know,
he thought suddenly.

“Tell me,”
he said to his grandmother. Question after question, about his father, his mother … About his mother's home, the farm …

It wasn't that her answers were evasive, just that she did not seem to know very much. She had never been to the Ibbotsons', had spoken only a few times to Stephen (my
Uncle
Stephen), barely knew Olive.

Teddy had been the most willing to talk. She told him all she could
remember. “It isn't much. As children, Hal and I fought. And then as soon as possible went our own ways. Sadly, I think now. He was often with Stephen —your uncle. And then, there was Jack.”

Ah yes, Jack. But that was another story. And now there was Christopher Hawksworth. A nice enough chap, but we've never been friends, he thought. Too big an age difference. Straight into the Army from school, and now posted to India. We shan't see him for a while. He's, anyway, too handsome. Surprising he's so nice with it.

Willow went back to her convent. He asked questions again, and again. His manner must have been irritating, since it caused Erik to say:

“Be a good chap now and don't keep worrying your grandmother. She's had a big concern already that you have this accident. You mustn't be pressing her more.”

Why didn't I ask years ago? he thought.
Why didn't I bother, why didn't I care?

For a while, as a small boy, he had let them read to him from the Andrew Lang Fairy Books—Blue, Yellow, Red, Violet. They had all belonged to his father, to Hal Firth. Together with
John Bargreaves Gold
and
The Red Cockade,
they stood on the shelves in his bedroom. They had never really been to his taste. Now, in his present questing mood, he took another look. It was no better. These kings, queens, princesses in distress, princes who were tested and won the hand of fair lady, wicked uncles turned into frogs …
So what?
A world, his father's, that he could not enter.

And then the Diamond Waterfall (I don't want to think about what I said. What I
did. All that madness.),
the priceless Diamond Waterfall lived now in a vault in a bank in York. Grandma did not want to wear it. It waited for him now. But the precious gems in the Stones Room—the very ones that Fräulein had helped herself to and his uncle had been falsely accused of stealing—he had looked at them only a few times in his life. Now he asked suddenly to see them.

Emeralds, rubies, black opals, fire opals, coral, pearl, amber, lapis lazuli, topaz, peridots, citrines, moonstones, sapphires. Such beauty … It left him cold, reminded him only of scented bejeweled courtesans (I know where I get
that
idea). Yet one more of his father's worlds he could not enter.

The Ibbotson farm had been called Lane Top. It was on the map, of course, and it would be easy also to ask locally. Perhaps in the Fox and Grapes. The Ibbotsons had left it sometime during the Great War, he knew. His mother had been already living in Devon when she married his father. He remembered a few times when she'd spoken of her childhood:

“We had this dog Tess. Your Uncle Stephen—he'd take her rabbiting along the walls. How
vexed
our dad was …”

He saw on the map that he could reach it by road the longer way, or from the thicket behind the orchard at The Towers, going uphill and then
down again into another valley. He had to decide. A bicycle. The motor. Or on foot—the way his father had usually gone. (“Hal, always wandering off.” They had at least told him that.) He decided he was fit enough to do the walk. It was the pain in his ribs he feared most, when he tired. His arm was in a sling now but his neck had still to be in a brace. He felt that it made him literally stiff-necked.

And indeed when he'd been walking nearly an hour, following the stone wall up the hillside, wanting to look back, he had to move the whole of the upper part of his body. From where he had reached he could see
(just as my father must have done)
the river winding below, the square church tower, the bridge, the dry-stone walls crisscrossing the hill.

It was a fine day, just breeze enough to send the small clouds racing. He was going along by the stone wall that separated the grazing land from the moor. Up and up. For a while he followed a small stream. Pebbles gleamed in its clear water. Up on the high moor—blobs of gray-white—sheep were being rounded up.

And into the next valley. Down a grassy lane. Up again. A cow barn in a walled field—the upland meadow where hay was gathered. A mile, half a mile away?

Smoke came from the farmhouse chimney. A dog barked and barked. Just outside the cobbled yard a rowan tree, heavy with red berries. The dog, a collie, could be seen now, angrily barking still.

His feet seemed to ring on the cobbles. He wondered about stroking the dog, or trying to calm it, when a voice called:

“Down—hush, give over, Glen,
hush!”

In the doorway a bald, middle-aged man with a friendly face. He said to Michael, “Don't mind t'dog. He's a soft bugger.” Then:

“Who'll you be, eh?”

“I'm Olive Isbitton—I mean
Ibbotson's
son.” He felt confused, unhappy.

“And I'm Thwaites, Tom Thwaites. If you'd not told me, I'd have said you were the Firth grandson. From The Towers, aren't you?” And when Michael hesitated:

“You'll come in, then? We're all at our tea. The wife, she's over Richmond way. There's our lads here, though. And him by the fire—the wife's father.”

The two sons had brown hair—much more of it than their father. They sat in shirt sleeves, putting away huge slices of bread, smiling, acknowledging Michael with their mouths full. The old man by the fire had one tooth only, which he bared at Michael in a pleased grin.

Tom said, “Been in t' wars, have you?”

“A car accident—abroad.”

“Well, that should larn you to stay home. Them as went off to fight in
Spain, they'll agree. When I seen you, knocked about like that—I thought, Maybe he's one of them.”

He said to his sons then, “This likely lad—his mam used to live here. Twenty year since.” Sitting at the table, sleeves rolled up, he told Michael:

“I'd not have minded wedding her missen—your mother. She were the best cook …”

They had just finished their tea. (No, he didn't want any, thank you. Although it looked good, so good.) Earlier in the afternoon Tom and his sons had been on the moor gathering up the wethers to take to Settstone market tomorrow.

He was shown around the farmhouse. The dairies, whitewashed, smelling of fresh milk. A bedroom: “When I were first here,” Tom said, “this were mine. Afore, it were your Uncle James's, that he'd to share with Stephen and Will, I think they called him.” The bigger room upstairs had been Michael's grandparents'. There was also a little cupboard bed Tom showed him.

“Your mam were there when she were a small un. Arthur that was with us in wartime, he slept there awhile. Went to New Zealand, did Arthur, '20, '21 …”

He liked to think of his mother—Olive—running from room to room. Carrying great jugs from the dairy, baking in the kitchen, cooking for all those menfolk … Yes, they told him, much of the furniture was the same. The dresser, some of the china, the fire tools, the flagstones.

He was thinking he should leave, when Tom said:

“I've a few things put away I'd not the heart to throw out. Your mam's. You'd best have them.”

He wasn't sure what he'd expected. Something secret, hidden in this cardboard box, which would alter his whole life?

They were schoolbooks. Little problems about yards of lace and pounds of sugar. Handwriting exercises (“Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace …”). A composition:
A Summer's Day

“Tim and Pat O Rork come from Kery in Irland to help our dad with the hay, they like a feest and to drink a lot of beir when it is al over. Olive Ibbotson, aged ten years and 4 months, 15th September 1907.”

Thirty years. The space of thirty years. And it's not just the world that has changed.

“You'll tak a sup with us? There's ale at the back—” But he didn't want to stay. He thanked them, and excused himself.

He made his way home, almost at peace. Twice he found himself smiling, in spite of his extreme fatigue.

“I'm very tired,” he said when he got back. He went to bed without any supper.

“That's not like you,” Erik said.

“I'll be fine in the morning.”

He was. No sooner upstairs, no sooner between the sheets, than deep, deep sleep. Dreamless too. The best sleep he'd had since the accident.

I know, he thought in the morning, I know who Michael Ibbotson Firth is. It might even be possible to live with him.

“Any umbrellas, any umbrellas, to mend today …”

That song follows me, Willow thought, hearing it come from the open door of a small house near Flaxthorpe church. The wireless was turned up loud. A man in his shirt sleeves was playing with a kitten.

“He'll mend your umbrellas and go on his way, singing toodle looma looma, toodle ay
…
“
A sunny September day. A war that might break out any moment. There was a crisis: Mr. Chamberlain had been twice already to Germany to meet Herr Hitler.