Three Sons (Timeless Classics Collection) Read online

  ‘Oh Luke, why not before?’

  ‘It wasn’t possible. Make the most of me whilst you have got me. It’s good to be with you again.’

  Her unresponsive hand lay in his. He might have guessed that there was something odd about her passiveness. ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she said.

  Luke hadn’t thought of that! For a moment everything became indistinct; sea, moon and mast-head merged into the unpleasant drumming that his heart made. ‘Nonsense,’ he said at last, but with little conviction.

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘You couldn’t be!’ He thought that he knew most things, surely in his own cleverness he hadn’t bungled this affair? Or was she crossing him?

  ‘But you know I could. It was you what got me into this trouble, and you’ll have to get me out of it again.’

  He gave her hand an impatient shake. ‘Loveday, we have got to be plain-spoken; if you are in trouble, it isn’t my child, because it can’t be.’

  ‘Oh, how cruel you are!’

  ‘I’m not! You are trying to drag me into something that I haven’t done, and you know it.’

  She stared at him limply, with the moonlight on her face in big uneasy shadows about her eyes. The elasticity seemed to have left her body, the vitality was sapped. He was sure that what she said was true, and that she was going to have a baby, but he was equally certain that it was not his. He knew that he must be tactful, none of this must come to Carolyn’s ears, or to Arthur’s, he wasn’t going to add to anybody’s burden, but the thing was, what could he do next? ‘When is it to be?’

  ‘Spring. Earlyish, I suppose. Oh what shall I do? My father’ll kill me.’

  ‘Who was the man, Loveday?’

  ‘And you sit there asking me silly questions like that! You know it was you! It was your fault, every bit of it, calling yourself a gentleman and coming down here and making love to me, and me believing that you meant to marry me …’

  ‘I never said I’d marry you.’

  ‘Oh yes, you did. Lots of times, else I would never have made myself so cheap. Now I’ll drown myself, really I will.’

  ‘Who else have you been with?’

  ‘Oh, you beast!’ She snapped back at him, then broke into violent weeping, terrifying him that she would wake the village up.

  ‘I’ll go straight indoors if you make that noise.’

  After a little while she pulled herself together, sobbing more quietly into a corner of her apron. When he had slipped down the tendrils of the clematis for a romantic evening, this was hardly the scene that he had anticipated. He imagined that she had waited here several nights hoping to pounce on him. Now what? She said that she would tell her father, and he would break every window in the house, and thrash Luke within an inch of his life, and serve him right.

  ‘Very well, tell your father!’ said Luke, and went home. In his own room he tried to think the thing out, deciding to take a risk on it. Loveday was afraid of her father, and would probably hold her tongue, anyhow for the time being.

  Two nights later when he was lying on the balcony unable to sleep, he heard a stir below the window, and went to the corner where the virgin figurehead leaned out across the street. He saw a girl’s frock flutter in the wind. Loveday was sitting again on the boat, but her arms were locked round another man’s neck. Ah! thought Luke. He went downstairs and out of the house by the back way, crossing the quay and coming on them from behind. It was Loveday and Richard Thuke.

  Luke called, ‘Hi, there!’

  Turning, they looked at him, and Loveday was so surprised that she could say nothing for the moment.

  ‘So that’s it, is it?’ asked Luke, ‘trying to make out that I got you into trouble when half the village is involved in it. This, my girl, is the end.’

  He turned for home. After a moment he heard her muttering abuse but he put space between them, and went in quietly. This thing must be kept from Carolyn at all costs; everything must be kept from Carolyn at all costs; everything must be kept from Carolyn. He tiptoed cautiously up the stairs. This time he could sleep.

  XI

  GROWING UP

  Luke spent the rest of his visit sketching. The balcony commanded a good view of the charm shop, the quay, the cliff, and the harbour with the masts before the houses, and the boats rising with the tide. Polprinth was colourful, Arthur had found that too. He liked the large gulls, and the vividly green weed which clung to the quay side, and dripped in irregular tassels on lazy oars. He liked the dark cliff behind, where the fresh wind always blew, and the flowers clustered, wild thyme, milkwort, tattered clovers, and here and there the poppies. Painting comforted him.

  He heard from Mrs. Clare that Loveday was going to marry Richard Thuke after all; had to, the village said, the girl wasn’t any good, and young Richard would rue the day, she’d be bound.

  Just before they left, Arthur came down again, and one night he and Luke went for a walk along the beach. It was a dangerous beach, sheltered by cliff, and with tempting sands and betraying tides. Arthur was a quiet and gentle creature who had travelled far since the day when he had won the prize in the London newspaper. His plans for the great cathedral had brought him fame, the years and fresh associations had set a veneer upon him; he was removed now from the little shop in River Street with the devastating smell from the tanning yard, and the disrupting sound of printing presses and children playing noisily in the road.

  Arthur had changed very much for the better, he had climbed, and had done well, so that to-day nobody would have known of the flattish-faced old lady peering from behind her steel-rimmed glasses, and of the root from which he had originally sprung.

  James, influenced by the man’s importance, encouraged the friendship, and had been glad for his family to avail themselves of the house in Cornwall. Luke was more attracted to Arthur than Adam (who did not like him) or Marty (who merely accepted him), but then Luke had seen far more of him. As they walked along the beach in the primrose of evening at slack water, they talked of Loveday.

  ‘I had an affair with her,’ admitted Luke.

  ‘I expected you would.’

  ‘Did you? Of course it couldn’t last; she was very pretty and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, quite beautiful, but in an affair a man needs something more than beauty. There is a mental side to it.’

  ‘Loveday left my mental side pretty hungry if you ask me. We had the most staggering row in the end, she’s going to have a baby and tried to put it on to me.’

  ‘It wasn’t yours?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t.’

  ‘Luke, you shouldn’t have gone as far as that! You’re far too old for your years, and it will get you into quite serious trouble later on. I never had affairs at your age.’

  ‘Well, what did you do with yourself?’

  ‘I worked in an office.’

  ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ said Luke flippantly.

  ‘I think I probably was very dull, but I’d rather be dull than dangerous. In those days young men were a duller lot perhaps; life has speeded up with the century.’

  ‘Well, that suits me.’

  ‘I don’t think it will suit you, Luke. I doubt if it will suit any of us. The world is speeding up till it goes giddy and gets out of control, then it is only too obvious what will happen.’

  ‘You don’t mean another war? Surely the world could not be so foolish?’

  ‘It could, of course.’

  They walked back quietly without saying much. Luke felt suddenly as though his ardour was quenched. Finally as they came back to the wooden steps leading up the cliffside, Arthur said, ‘I’d give girls up. They’re no good to you in the plural. Wait for the girl!’

  Luke looked at him, so tall, so thin, with that funny little close-clipped ginger beard, whilst behind him the first stars were like sequin trimmings on the pale dress of the evening sky.

  ‘You mean well,’ said Luke, ‘but a fellow has got to have some fun.’


  Luke was always having some fun.

  He and Carolyn returned to Dedbury and for a while his studies held him down. Then there was Marty’s wedding, a rather dull lunch at the Ritz, with Hilda’s mother produced for it. Hilda’s mother was a queer old lady in a funny hat. Hilda had struck both Carolyn and Luke as being dull, but serviceable like her name; neither of them could imagine what Marty had seen in her, but Marty had the oddest ideas.

  When they had departed for their honeymoon, the two took a lovely leisurely drive home in the two-seater. They came along the Great North Road and into Stevenage with its big humps of green mounds, and long straggle of a street.

  ‘Oh, they’ll be happy,’ said Carolyn, ‘if only Marty does not become completely submerged in his career. He’s got that kink, and I have the feeling that Hilda wouldn’t be able to take that. But she’ll never run off with anybody else, of course.’

  ‘I should say she’d never get the chance.’

  ‘Well, when you come to look at her, you wouldn’t have supposed that Hilda would get the chance to marry at all. She wouldn’t have done if Marty hadn’t had one eye on his career all the time, I imagine.’

  ‘She’ll have a bit of a job to find another Marty, I’m thinking. When you come to think of it, it’s a joke that the matinee idol type, whom girls tear their hair out for, who could have married anybody in the world, has to go down to the Isle of Wight and pick up Hilda!’

  ‘I imagine that’s life!’ said Carolyn.

  They stayed for tea at the Cromwell and had it in the very charming garden there. Carolyn had always loved the Cromwell garden, in which every inch had been so beautifully developed; it was the very antithesis of their own garden at Dedbury; theirs was wild and sprawling, James prided himself on letting it run this way, the Cromwell was true to detail. They sat under the big elm at the far end of the lawn, facing the road and watching people coming and going. The place was very full with summertime visitors. Carolyn went off to look at the sweet peas, which were magnificent this year, four huge blooms on every tall spike. She thought that Luke would have come, but he lingered, and when she looked back saw that he had got into conversation with a girl who was sitting at the next table to them.

  She was a tall, stately-looking girl in a stone-coloured frock. She knew how to dress in that colour against her dead black hair, with the bunch of stephanotis at the belt, and the single brooch of garnets. Carolyn felt that Luke would go too far with his women one of these days, she wished that she did not love him so much. When she returned from the sweet peas, and across the two pools starry with water daisies and big waxy lilies, she found that Luke and the girl were still talking, and Luke introduced her. She was a widow, Mrs. Mirabel Whittingham. Her husband had been killed racing at Brooklands and she was interested in art. As they were so near Dedbury, Luke suggested taking her home to peep at his sketches. Although Carolyn pretended that this was a good idea, in her heart she was ruffled. She thought it highly probable that Mrs. Mirabel Whittingham would be staying to supper.

  Mirabel had sophistication, and at twenty-five was quite obviously next on Luke’s list of charmers. She had none of the jarring qualities that had disturbed him in Loveday; he liked her burnish.

  ‘But, Luke, she’s much too old for you,’ said Carolyn later that evening.

  ‘Now don’t be catty, Mummy darling. I’ll grow up.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t catch up with her. She’s got a start on you. Perhaps when she meets your tutor she may realise that.’

  ‘Mummy, you wouldn’t be such a cad as to introduce him to her? Let’s hide him.’

  ‘Certainly not, Luke. You’re seventeen and too young to be having all these affairs.’

  ‘All these affairs? I like that!’

  ‘Well, what about that fisherman’s daughter, Loveday, whatever it was?’

  ‘Arthur must have told you …’

  ‘Arthur did nothing of the kind. I didn’t need telling, of course I knew. You looked utterly ridiculous slithering down the balcony, sillier still coming back with your boots tied together, and held in your teeth. I always hoped the clematis would break and send you flying.’

  ‘You were watching?’

  ‘Yes, dear, I was.’

  After a pause when he did not know whether to be angry or amused, ‘Can’t I keep anything from you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think you can. I care for you deeply, and when one cares this way, one knows instinctively about emotional crises.’ She put an arm round him, and he seemed to be so big and strong and recovered that she was thankful. He leant against her.

  ‘You’re a darling! Thank God I’ve got you. I always feel that Daddy is a bit of a blight, no offence of course, but you know what he is. I can’t stick Adam. Marty is all right but so busy with acting that he has no real time for me. Hilda’ll find that out too, I’m thinking. You’re the one.’

  The Mirabel Whittingham affair pursued its white-hot feverish course for six weeks, whilst Carolyn worked hard to keep it from James, who would have strongly disapproved, and from the village, who did not understand such burnished sophistication.

  Adam, newly ordained, came in and scented it. ‘What’s this Mrs. Whittingham doing hanging about Luke?’

  ‘They’ve got a lot in common. Both of them sketch.’

  ‘But he’s only a child.’

  Carolyn, having to say something to cover the situation, said, ‘Well, children grow up. Kittens become cats, more’s the pity.’

  ‘I think it is a mistake.’ Then after a pause, ‘Is Arthur Hardy still in that sanatorium?’

  ‘No, he left it some time ago. They collapsed the lung. He was down at Polprinth with us for a little time.’

  ‘Cured?’

  ‘I hope so. It’s a more insidious complaint, that’s why I don’t grudge Luke a little fun.’

  Adam said no more. The look on his face scared her about Luke, and she knew it. He nursed the opinion that a patient couldn’t be cured, but then Adam was one of those unpleasant personalities who always nursed odd opinions. She did so wish that he would not come here.

  Still the Mirabel affair went on late into the autumn. Surely, thought Carolyn, there must be another man in her life? Why has she got to centre on Luke, and it will almost kill him when she gets tired of him and goes away.

  However, it did not kill Luke, because he was the one who cooled first. The thing that Carolyn could not have believed would happen, took place. A gipsy encampment, passing through Dedbury on their way to winter quarters took up a three-days’ passage on the piece of wild land which rose above the village towards the Great North Road. Luke happened to be painting in the lane at the time, and, seeing one of the girls, started to paint her. She inflamed him by her wildness, her clear, vivid eyes, and the proud carriage of a dark head with a shawl about it.

  When Mirabel Whittingham came to tea Luke was out, and although she waited for a time talking without much interest to Carolyn, she finally got annoyed and left. She rang Luke up after dinner; James went to the telephone to answer the ring and was hailed with, ‘Well, darling, where have you been?’

  The outraged James replied, ‘You have the advantage of me, madam,’ emphasizing that icy calm which he always found to be so effective in the cross-examination of witnesses.

  ‘That’s torn it!’ said Luke, who had overheard it, and he laughed.

  ‘Luke, I do think you are thoroughly heartless.’

  Carolyn might have guessed that it was another girl, but somehow she never thought of it being that little scrap who slept rough, and poached in ditches for a living; she was more animal than woman, with her small fine bones, her satin-smooth skin, and dynamic vitality. The affair rushed itself through in three days’ hectic fever, whilst the entire village was profoundly shocked by it. Then the gipsy vans moved on, leaving only the rut of their wheel-marks on Luke’s life, and those probably not for long.

  But he did not go back to Mirabel Whittingham. One of the strangest things about lo
ve is that it cannot revive; he had now learnt this. Once dead, the emotion has died for ever.

  Adam was married in 1935.

  When Adam became engaged with studied pomp, he brought Penelope to see them one unpleasant afternoon when James was at home and when Carolyn was undecided as to what to wear to impress the new daughter-in-law. Was it to be tweeds and countrified clothes, or dove-grey and pearls?

  Luke, now twenty-one, was getting on with the career of an artist. He had had some good lessons and was very successful with problem pictures.

  ‘I want to paint you, Mummy.’

  ‘This is surely a change, ’Ukef’ancis? The problem child wants to make a problem mummy.’

  ‘I daresay, but once I get the right idea for it, I’ll make a fine picture of you.’

  He had had a small relapse, being threatened with a recurrence of the trouble early last year, and this had terrified Carolyn. Now Luke had to take life easily, sleeping on the balcony, and devoting much of his time to his work; in spite of James’s comments, which were of an acid nature, about such a career hardly being a man’s job, Luke had received very favourable criticism. To Carolyn it seemed to be an excellent thing that a boy haunted by this wretched complaint could have a profitable hobby at his finger tips, and one which did at least command his interest.

  Adam brought Penelope over, and during lunch prior to the arrival, Luke got up a sweepstake as to her appearance. James was annoyed because Luke made the butler buy a ticket.