The Fountain Overflows (52 page)

We stood in a circle and looked up at the lapageria, and Mamma sighed. “I would like to stay and look at it for a long time.”

“Well, so you can, Mamma,” I said.

“But you must have your sandwiches,” she insisted, “you must not miss your meals, you are still building up your strength, and all of you must go to bed earlier, we will start tonight, it is a disgrace, now we will go and eat.”

“Why should we not picnic in here?” asked Mary.

“That would never do,” said Mamma timidly. “We would be put out.”

“There is a gardener just round the corner, watering the Japanese rhododendrons,” said Richard Quin. “I will go and ask him if we can.”

“And if we can,” said Mamma, while he was away, “remember not a crumb must fall, not a scrap of paper.” She looked round on the neat sanded paths, the trimly towering ferns and shrubs, the bright immaculate domes and walls that contained us. “This is as neat as anybody’s home, neater than ours, must we always have so much lying about? But we are all working so hard. There is no time. How hard you children all work!” She looked round us with an assessing stare. “At least you will be able to wear more sensible clothes than I had to at your age. This hothouse makes me think of it. When I was young and went to garden-parties in Edinburgh, the gentlemen always used to take the ladies round the hothouses, and it was difficult for us to prevent our leg-of-mutton sleeves catching on plants, I knocked over a pot of primulas once, I have never forgotten it. But that sort of thing happens to everyone when they first go out. It will happen to you, you must try not to get too much upset. But anyway you will not be so cumbered. You will not have to wear big sleeves or bustles or high collars.”

Rosamund said, “But you must have been able to wear heavy clothes. You move quickly, with a sweep.”

Mamma cast her mind back. “Yes. I enjoyed wearing some of my dresses. I can remember them to this day. Oh, children, I am foolish to say that I am glad you will have sensible clothes, I hope you will have lots of clothes that are not just sensible.”

“Mamma has a photograph of you wearing a dress with a long train,” said Rosamund.

“Yes,” said Mamma. “Slipper satin from Lyons. White, but it was a sort of pinkish grey in the shadows. Many, many yards of it.”

“Mamma says you managed the train so beautifully,” said Rosamund. “It was always just where you wanted it to be.”

“Constance is a good friend to remember that,” said Mamma. “Yes, I used to take such a pride in that train, in going across the platform in a straight line with it out behind me. Then when I got to the piano there it was, running in a neat fishtail down towards the audience, and my feet clear for the pedals.” She glowed, and then gave us a defensive glance. “There is no harm in looking nice on the platform,” she said mildly, “though, of course, the music must come first.”

We were all surprised at the idea that Mamma had ever cared about dress. We thought of her as an eagle, for this minute we saw a hummingbird.

With sudden bitterness she looked up at the lapageria. “It is so unspoiled! To look at it you cannot believe the way things get spoiled in this world. But how stupid and ungrateful,” she cried, “to forget that there was once something that had to be spoiled before it was worthless. When I married your father I was considered quite attractive.” She held her head high, and with a confidence that showed how utterly dazed and bludgeoned she was, beyond the point where she could have any exact perception of material objects, she stroked the shiny pelt of her old sealskin jacket, as if it were a garment worthy of what she had been.

Richard Quin came running back, saying happily, “The gardener says it is strictly forbidden to picnic in here, and that of course we can. And he says that we can move the potting-bench from over there for you to sit on, that is strictly forbidden too.”

He spread his coat for her on the bench, and we gathered round her and urged her to have a sandwich. “Eat, eat,” we begged her, “it cannot be good for you to live on so little, you had nothing for breakfast but tea.” Food was all we had at hand for an instrument of our tenderness. She took a sandwich to please us, and nibbled at it, her eyes on the lapageria, saying, “Not even the best pictures in the old books give any idea of its trimness, the moderation of its prettiness.” But presently she sighed, “If only I knew what was in the cupboard.”

We wished she would not speak of that. We could all see the open cupboard door sticking out over the mantelpiece, and it was hideous as the lapageria was beautiful. When Mamma had opened the door of the house in Caroline Lodge, that first day, we had thought a burglar was at work. Well, we had made no mistake.

“He must have had some reason for opening it,” she said, her eyes going from face to face among her children. “There must have been some old story he remembered. Perhaps some of Mrs. Willoughby’s jewels could not be found when she died, and perhaps he guessed that they were there, and left them untouched for a last reserve. If I could be sure that they were really valuable.”

We could not find anything to say.

It crossed my mind that perhaps my mother would have been a difficult wife for any husband, she was too brave about putting things into words.

“Do not look like that, my dears,” she begged us. “I told you, I can only bear your Papa going away if he did not go empty-handed. You see, I have been very wicked, very wicked indeed.”

We pressed round her, telling her that she had never done anything wrong in her life, each holding a sandwich in one hand and caressing her with the other.

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” she protested in a little, cracked voice. “I have done something very wicked. I have kept something back from him, and I should have let him have it.”

“Mamma, what nonsense,” said Cordelia, “what have we got that could be of any value to him or anybody else?”

“The portraits,” said Mamma. “The portraits in your rooms. They are not copies.”

We looked to see which of our handkerchiefs was the cleanest, and gave it to her.

“That is a real Lawrence?” asked Mary. “And a real Gainsborough?”

“But Mamma, they cannot be, you must be mistaken,” said Cordelia. “If they were originals they would be very valuable, and we have nothing that is worth having.”

“No, dear,” said Mamma. “They are very valuable. I told you that you need not worry. I do not know what they are worth, but it will be enough to keep us all for a few years while you are all educated. I will write to Mr. Morpurgo, he has some lovely pictures, and I will ask him what dealer I should take them to. I think he will still help us though Papa has caused him so much trouble. He evidently admires your Papa very much. And what is so wicked is that I have always known that they were very valuable, and I did not tell your Papa. It was the first dealer who told us they were copies, and I did not trust him, he spoke with that dreadful accent Edinburgh people use when they try to speak like the English, a West End accent, they call it, the vowels are all clipped. I think he was trying to buy the pictures from us for nothing, because he had heard how badly the people at the newspaper were treating Papa. So I let another dealer come and see them, a nicer man, and he got another dealer from Glasgow, a Mr. Reid, and both offered me money for them, a great deal of money. But I did not tell your father. I let him go on thinking that they were copies and not worth selling. I felt I had to do it, or they would have gone like everything else. Richard Quin, one of the lapageria flowers has just fallen on the ground, just see if you can reach it for me without stepping anywhere you should not.”

She laid the pink bell on the palm of her hand and studied it, while we stood silent, astonished by the news, and by the terrible quietness of her remorse which lay so deep that we would never be able to get at it and destroy it.

Mary said, “But, Mamma, it was not wicked. We all know that Papa cannot keep money, and that if he has it it becomes nothing, it goes away like snow.”

Mamma said, “No, what I did must have been wicked, for it has put everything wrong. Try to be sensible and see that of course I would have felt all right now, if I had kept nothing from your father, if I could say to myself that I had handed over to him all I had.”

“Mamma, Mamma,” I said, “do not talk like that sickening beast Patient Griselda.”

“Rose, you must not use such disgusting language. Please try to understand that I have done wrong. Can you not see that perhaps I should have given your father one last chance by telling him about the pictures and letting him have this money too? It might have been that since they were portraits of his own people he would have felt differently about the money he got from them, and would have kept it all for you children, and then there could have been respect all round. And maybe he has turned against me because he knew I was not being frank with him. Lately, when things have been getting worse and worse, I have often thought of the portraits, and how you were safe because I had them, and it may have been that he felt my lack of straightforwardness, and grieved because he had nobody truly with him. It might have been that that made him pass me in the street without speaking to me. Oh, I have failed your father.”

I tugged at Rosamund’s arm, and we turned away from the group and walked down the sanded path till we were out of earshot and were sheltered by a projection of fretted palm leaves. “Rosamund,” I said, “I know something about Papa that would make Mamma understand that really she could not trust Papa ever to think of her or of us. To get Mrs. Phillips reprieved he was willing to publish a pamphlet about the judge which would have been contempt of court, and he knew that it would have meant he had to go to prison, and he never thought for a minute of what would happen to us. Do you think I ought to tell her?”

She stammered, “Oh, b-but I do not think you could tell her anything about Cousin Piers that she does not already know.”

I hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Mammas know much more about Papas than we do,” she said, with what was for her unusual definiteness.

I rather wondered why she thought so. It often seemed as if they did not. When we went back Mamma was saying, “You see, your Papa is driven by something that he cannot help, that wants him to go down and down. That is why he does such strange things, his great gifts and his power to please hold him up in the world, he has to make efforts to fall from the high place that belongs to him. That is why he has gone away. He has not left you because he does not care for you, but because this thing that wants him to fall is driving him on to do something which will bring ruin on him, and he does not want you to be ruined too, he has gone away alone, with nobody to look after him, simply so that you shall be safe. He cannot give you what other fathers give their children, it is not permitted to him, but what he can give you he has given you, and it is your safety. You must remember that all your lives. Since he is what he is, it is impossible not to love him. But look what I have had to do. Oh, children, if you love somebody, give them every chance. But no, I am not warning you of the real danger that is in front of you. I love your father and I have not been able to give him every chance. I would have found it so easy to do, it would have been no sacrifice for me to strip myself till I had nothing, for I could get on with very little, I would not mind not getting on at all. But I could not do it because of you children. I had to keep some money safe for you, money which he could not touch. You do not know what he has got through. Gambling is worse than moth and rust, it does not even leave behind it rags and rusted metal, it eats up everything without remainder. If one of you got ill, and needed to have an operation or go to a sanatorium, what could I do if I had not kept those portraits? What would I have done tomorrow? I do not think there is five pounds in the house or in the bank. I had to keep the portraits for your sakes, but it has spoiled everything between your father and myself. This is not fair. Why should I have had to choose between treating you properly and treating your father properly? I know that all things will be right at the end of the time, provided we do not stop working now and afterwards, but I cannot see how.”

“Mamma,” said Richard Quin, “Mamma.”

But she did not listen to him. She said, “As it is, it looks as if I would have been better off with either Papa or you, as if I should not have had both, and that is ridiculous, for I could not bear to be without you, and you are you because he was your father, he is in all of you, I had to have both. What is the answer to this riddle? But you see, it is only if I can think that he found something valuable in the cupboard that I will ever have an easy mind again.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Mamma,” said Richard Quin, “Mamma.” But still she did not listen to him. It was extraordinary that she should not listen when Richard Quin spoke to her. We were right, her grief was so deep we could not touch it.

Rosamund stammered, “W-well, anyway, Rose, you need not be frightened any more.”

Mamma’s hands came down from her face. She asked, “Rose, were you frightened?”

Before I could say that Rosamund was wrong, she blurted out, stupidly, “Yes, she was frightened. They all were, but they did not say so, for fear of upsetting you. But all the girls have been worried for a long time, they have always been quite envious when I said I was going to be a nurse, because it was so easy to arrange, and of course none of them know how they can be musicians if they cannot get a proper training, and Richard Quin has been wondering what he could do if he had to leave school so long before the proper time. And, of course, this morning it all seemed to have happened, what they feared.”

We could not have believed she would be so foolish. But she returned our angry stares blankly and said, “Why should I not tell the truth?”

Under our eyes our mother was restored. “Oh, my poor children,” she sighed, opening her arms to all of us. She let the lapageria flower fall to the ground, she did not even notice it.

“Of course one is afraid when one thinks that one is going to have absolutely no money,” said Richard Quin, who had in fact been afraid of nothing except that Papa might be dead. We all drew closer to her still, and breathed confessions of how abandoned and helpless we had felt, how we had feared that Cousin Ralph would not let us stay in the house if we could pay no rent, how impossible it had seemed that we should ever become musicians, how we too had dreaded the thought that one of us might become ill, how it had sometimes seemed to us that we might starve; and of how all that was over, because of what she had done about the portraits. The light that poured down from the high glass vaults through the green confusion of boughs and vines made her look paler even than she was by habit; yet it could be seen that now she was well again, she was strong. “You might have known,” she murmured, “that I would manage for you somehow. But to think I did not know of all this you were feeling. Oh, children, you must always tell me when you are frightened.”