Three Sons (Timeless Classics Collection) Page 8

  ‘Garmeisch? Really, Adam, I should have thought that England was large enough for you to choose from.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, Mummy, because it is never easy for me to tell you things, as you know. This girl sings in a restaurant in London. I know that she’s never had a chance in life, and I want to give her that chance.’

  ‘It’s very quixotic of you, dear, and, of course, I’m sure that you’ve made a wise choice, but … well, tell me more about her. She’s pretty naturally?’

  ‘She’s beautiful, but unnaturally.’ He thought that was rather clever of him. ‘I’m being quite frank about it, because I don’t want to deceive you. She came to England and found it difficult to earn her living here at first, so she …’

  After a pause Carolyn said rather chillily, ‘You’re not trying to tell me that she’s one of those?’

  ‘You’d call it that! You would think badly of her. Circumstances and hunger can drive hard, you know; in that mink coat you’re not likely to feel either. She was terribly hungry when I met her.’

  There was a long pause, then Carolyn got up, her face had changed and she looked considerably older. ‘I had no idea, my dear boy, that it was serious. I am quite prepared to try to talk Daddy round to your taking Orders, but what do you expect me to do about this other? You can’t marry. You’ve got no money. Besides, this girl couldn’t be a clergyman’s wife.’

  ‘Christ saved the Magdalene,’ he said pompously, but she rounded on him.

  ‘He didn’t try to marry her. And anyway I don’t doubt that there was a lot of talk about it, the world hasn’t changed that much.’ If she was going to be blasphemous as well as laugh at him, he would see red. ‘Most men go through this sort of affair, only you’re letting it go to your head. Be sensible, Adam, you can’t marry a girl like this.’

  ‘Then do you suggest I go on with an intrigue, and never sanctify it with marriage?’

  ‘Oh heavens, Adam, don’t be so dreadfully smug. You sound like Methuselah with an attack of calf-love. You haven’t the income to contemplate marriage, and you are just caught up in a silly, rather worthless affair. Now, of course, you’ll nurse one of your fierce resentments that we shan’t let you marry the girl.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  She drew on her gloves very slowly. He thought that at this particular moment there was something about her arrogance that he loathed. She was proudly unhurried as she buttoned them, and at that moment, in burst Marty. Marty seeing them said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t know Mummy was here,’ and then, apparently noticing something, ‘I say, have you two had a row?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  Adam turned. ‘You may as well know the truth. I’m getting married and the family hate it.’

  ‘You’re getting married? Ye Gods, what are we coming to? Do you have to do it, or what?’

  ‘I don’t think that this is a very suitable conversation before your brother,’ said Carolyn rigidly.

  ‘He may as well know the truth. Heidwig sings in a restaurant.’

  ‘What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Heidwig. She was born in Garmeisch.’

  ‘Gosh! Did you have to go that far?’

  ‘She sings, she isn’t like that, she needs somebody to give her a name, and a home, and honour. She needs it dreadfully.’

  Marty waited a moment, then he asked, ‘Have you got a good stiff drink by you? If you ask me I need it. Think we all do.’

  Adam did not flinch. ‘I intend giving the girl the chance that no one else will give her, and I shall do it whatever you say. You can’t stop me. That’s the truth!’

  It was Carolyn who put her arm through Marty’s. ‘Come along, dear, we’ll go down into the courtyard together. Adam isn’t quite himself.’

  They went out of the door. Adam standing there, one half of him triumphant at the shock he had given them, the other half indignant, heard Marty say as he went out, ‘Of course, Mummy, he must be quite potty! Fancy thinking of marrying one of those! And what on earth will Daddy say?’

  VI

  MAN’S ESTATE

  He wouldn’t give her up.

  He didn’t care what happened! The awkward part was, of course, that he was entirely dependent on his parents, and if they chose to do so, they could throw him out. But he wouldn’t care, he said. He would hold fast to Heidwig. Whatever happened he would hold fast to Heidwig.

  Adam had no finesse. He told Heidwig who he was, and Heidwig, who had gone into the matter personally, knew that when she married she would eventually become Lady Croft, which was highly satisfactory. Heidwig was a snob. Her real name was not Heidwig at all, it was Lily Welch, although naturally she did not admit it. She had got the idea of Garmeisch and of Heidwig from the Sugar Daddy old gentleman whose heart was in Bavaria. Lily had been in Finsbury Park and had started life there in a ‘pen’ at the Palais de Danse. Being in a ‘pen’ at Finsbury Park Palais de Danse had been unambiguous for Heidwig, and she determined to use it merely as a lever to better things. She cultivated an old gentleman (her Sugar Daddy, she called him, for at that time she was swept up in a Californian cult) and she launched herself into an act, because she felt that Lily Welch was common. She used the Sugar Daddy as her second lever, and as soon as ever she had a little money behind her, produced herself as Heidwig.

  She had hated life at Finsbury Park with a postman father and a hard-working, virtuous mother, for ever nattering at her. Her mother liked good but plain clothes, taking exception to anything likely to give people ‘ideas’, and being very narrow. Heidwig was their only child, because Mrs. Welch, though prepared to shoulder the domestic drudgery of marriage, felt that all the love stuff was ‘ever so rude’. Having had one baby, she took care not to repeat the adventure.

  The moment that she could manage it, Heidwig slipped off into the blue, with her great friend Mabel Dutton, who according to Mrs. Welch was no better than she ought to be, and later on proved the truth of this statement. The Sugar Daddy episode permanently separated the daughter of the house from home, so she came and took up residence in Shaftesbury Avenue where she was officially known as ‘Mr. Watkins’s little bit of nonsense’. Then Mr. Watkins faded away, having left a couple of ten pound notes on the mantelpiece, and Heidwig started on restaurant work. She had always had a good if raw voice, and she could put over a song. Her salary being insufficient for her needs, she supplemented it as was easiest. Neither she nor the restaurant cared. The Maître d’Hotel would shrug his shoulders and agree. ‘Why yes, but then they all do,’ and go his way never giving it another thought.

  Heidwig did not care.

  But walking down the streets in the autumn night, she thought in terms of marriage with Adam Hinde. It would fairly shake Finsbury Park if she became a real live ‘lady’, one whom even the postman could not dispute. Adam was particularly callow and pliable in her hands, and she felt that she ought to have little difficulty.

  They went up the frowsty stairs to her room (rather dusty because Heidwig didn’t bother with housework), laid with one of those indifferent carpets that come off on everything. She sat down on the sofa, her skirt riding up above her pleasant knees, her low-cut bodice appearing to sag down in an attractive manner. Adam could see the curve of her breasts and found them disquieting.

  ‘My mother came to see me to-day,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure she’s ever so nice.’

  ‘She knew about us, because I told her the truth.’

  ‘About us? There wasn’t anything to tell her about us.’

  ‘Yes, there was. I want to marry you.’ He said it very youthfully, almost like a big schoolboy, and all the time his eyes were on the evening dress that was cut too low.

  ‘Adam, you don’t really?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ very ardently.

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as I can get hold of some money.’ He disliked having to be crude, he was young enough and old-fashioned enough to feel that money ought not to be mentioned
between them. ‘You see, I am still at Cambridge and have no money.’

  ‘But you’ll be Lord Croft.’ She saw his surprise, and adeptly covered it. ‘Mario told me; he knows everything. It’s his job, and you mustn’t mind him.’

  He swallowed that one! ‘My parents are not taking it too well, Heidwig, they are being cruel, and unkind, but then they’ve always been like that to me. It’s no good not facing the facts, is it? I … I thought I’d better tell you.’

  ‘What did you tell them about us?’

  ‘The truth, of course.’

  She stood up. ‘Well, I must say, that’s a nice thing. Want to marry me in one breath and blacken my good name in the next.’

  ‘Heidwig, my darling, that isn’t true. My poor sweet, you’re overwrought.’

  She pulled herself together. It wasn’t every day of the week that little Lily Welch had a lord-to-be offering her marriage, and it was no good being a fool about it. She relapsed into tears. ‘Oh, Adam, I do love you so much,’ she sobbed.

  He stroked her hair sympathetically.

  Adam spent one uncomfortable afternoon at home, when his father was away, and he had time to argue with his mother. He arrived unexpectedly, she was coming down the garden carrying a parcel.

  ‘I shall have to trot along to the post, Adam, these are flowers for someone who is ill, and they’ll have to catch this post or be too long on the journey. You should have told me you were coming, dear.’

  He took the parcel mechanically; a long box, neatly done up, and addressed to Arthur Hardy Esqre., Queen Alexandra Sanatorium, Berkshire. ‘Isn’t that the architect fellow who designed Carminster cathedral?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid he’s ill.’

  ‘T.B.?’

  ‘Yes.’ He knew by her tone that she did not wish to discuss it. They went over to the post office where old Mrs. Bird weighed parcels on the scales she used for her sweets and could not see why anybody should think it odd. Then they walked back. It was a most unsuccessful interview. Carolyn was firm on the one point, it would be disastrous if he married this girl, and neither she nor James would sanction it. How about a cruise to Honolulu?

  ‘Mother, don’t be silly. That is what the old-fashioned family did with the erring son.’

  ‘Sometimes, Adam, I think old-fashioned methods are good. A slipper to the bare behind worked wonders! Still does, in many cases.’

  He said, ‘Thanks very much, but I prefer to take Orders and work out my own salvation.’

  ‘I wish you’d stop being so silly.’

  ‘I’m not aware of being silly.’

  They were coming back into the garden, past the barn that was now the garage, under the arch that in July was a fragrant wilderness of honeysuckle, up the path with the neatly levelled box edges, and the flower beds in which colour drifted in such exquisite masses. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, and there was something almost tragic in her tone, ‘isn’t life hard when you can’t touch people’s hearts, when you can’t reach them? Adam, you surely are the most difficult boy of them all.’

  He remembered that and nursed it. The most difficult boy! She should have had some sons, he told himself …

  James was indignant when Carolyn broke it to him laboriously. It was very difficult to tell him anything; he either greeted it with indifference or flew into a fury. He went down to Cambridge, had a violent scene with Adam which did no good at all, and then visited the Austrian Restaurant in Frith Street.

  There he dined, prepared to dislike everything, and he eyed Heidwig from afar. But he had the wit to make a friend of Mario. Mario was a good businessman; although he talked glibly enough about behaving loyally to the restaurant and the patron, he ultimately owned up to a great deal about Heidwig. He had quarrelled with her, never liking Bavarians was his first story, and finally in confidence ‘naturally she is not really Bavarian, she was Lily Welch of Finsbury Park.’ He had discovered this through her insurance cards.

  ‘You comprends?’ he said, in execrable English-French.

  James did comprends! He suggested that Heidwig should talk to him, and soon he had her sitting opposite to him with a bottle of wine between them, and that ravishing evening dress which left so little to the imagination. He supposed that in a brazen way the girl was good-looking. Just the way that would catch a young greenhorn like Adam.

  She began the usual rather clumsy technique; she was so hungry, and ordered an expensive meal, on which she undoubtedly got commission.

  He looked at her. ‘Ever heard of Lily Welch?’ he asked her quietly. She changed colour at once, swallowed hard, and then took the usual line.

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘I shouldn’t try that. You are Lily Welch, you know, and you were born in Finsbury Park.’

  ‘What’s any of it got to do with you?’

  ‘Only that I enquired because I understood you intended marrying my son.’

  She stopped quickly, recalling the deference of her postman father who had held great reverence for gentry, and her early training arrested the tart remark that she would have given. She had the good sense to realise that she was at a critical moment in her life. ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘That is what I came here to ask you.’

  He was too well versed in adroit turning of the conversation for her. James had overcome the shyness of his youth, and its place had been taken by a profound reserve; in court his austerity was one of his best attributes.

  She said, ‘I care for Adam and he cares for me. You think I’m not good enough, because my father was a postman; it’s a respectable job.’

  ‘I have made no complaint about your father being a postman. As you say, it is a respectable job. Can you say the same of your own?’

  She wanted to snap back, but he had a paralysing effect upon her. He was not like Adam in any way, not even to look at, darker, stronger, much firmer.

  ‘Adam,’ said his father, ‘is dependent upon me. He is at Cambridge and intends taking Holy Orders.’

  ‘Oh, but he never will,’ said Heidwig, because although she could put up with a lot, being a parson’s wife was a bit too much.

  ‘Adam will never be a rich man; he will not even earn enough to support you unless I help him.’

  She had not thought that a man in Adam’s position would have nothing but an earned income, and knew that Adam was not the sort to earn a big salary. The noise of the restaurant surged round them, suddenly she felt depressed. The maestro launched himself into La Bohème, people came and went.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said James, ‘I have been to some trouble to find out things about you. I don’t intend to tolerate Adam’s marriage. Now what are you prepared to do about it?’

  She wished she did not feel such a fool; it was his manner. Just a pig! she told herself. She looked at her smart, cheaply cut frock, and the ring that Adam had given her which had been such a bitter disappointment, because it was a gold signet ring, the one his mother had given him on his twentieth birthday. ‘If you think you can buy me off …’ she began in a common, thickish little voice.

  ‘I’m not offering to buy you off. I’m merely telling you that there is nothing to buy you off with. Nothing to keep you with either. I cannot see you being very happy, Miss Welch.’

  ‘Nobody calls me that here.’

  ‘So I understand. All the same, it happens to be your name.’

  ‘If you mean to be nasty, two can play at that game.’

  ‘I can assure you, Miss Welch, I have no intention of being discourteous.’

  He got up, collected his bill and tipped the waiter over-adequately, then he went out without saying another word to her. She did not know what to do next.

  Adam told himself that they’d break the romance for him, and he despaired. At the moment he could not marry Heidwig even though he was of age. He had won his point over taking Holy Orders, and that ought to stand for something, but meanwhile the position with Heidwig was extremely difficult. He went up to see her often, took her home, and
she always begged him to stay. Of course he couldn’t!

  ‘You’re cold,’ she challenged him.

  ‘No, it is that I love you too much for that.’

  Then he met her after his father’s visit to the restaurant, found that James had pumped Mario (who had behaved like a beast!) and there was a row. It was from that very day that the affair started slipping, and Adam knew it. He wanted Heidwig to give up working in the restaurant because it wasn’t right for her to be there, but as Heidwig had to live on something and he couldn’t keep her, they seemed to be at an impasse. He was alarmed at the period of time that must of necessity elapse between now and their ultimate marriage. He planned to go to St. Moritz that Christmas, because he could not bring himself to spend it at Dedbury with a host of recriminations. He pretended that a Cambridge friend had asked him out there for winter sports.

  ‘That’s the Garmeisch girl, I bet,’ said Marty, who happened to be at home when the letter arrived. ‘He’s never shown any fondness for sport before.’

  From the head of the table, James said, ‘She’s never seen Garmeisch. Her name is Lily Welch and she is the daughter of a postman at Finsbury Park.’

  Carolyn put down the coffee pot aghast. She could not believe that this could have happened.

  Adam had coached a couple of dunces that term, saved up the money and intended to spend it on a first-class Christmas after Heidwig’s own heart. The curious thing was that the plans all fell flat.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly leave the restaurant,’ she said, ‘Christmas is our big time.’

  ‘But, Heidwig, I planned it to please you, skating, skiing, tobogganing, laughing at the people on the nursery slope …’

  She looked at him. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘But you’d be in your element.’

  ‘Would I hell!’ she thought, and aloud, ‘It’s no good. They’d never let me off. It can’t be done.’

  Adam nursed a bitter resentment that all his plans had gone astray, and they parted coldly. He kept up the St. Moritz pretence at home, went to a cheap London hotel alone for the festive season, and felt more miserable than he would ever have believed possible.