The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary
he had some spark of humanity in him – something I think you’ve forgotten!’
She had hurt him, she could see that, but he wasn’t a weak man: he did not retreat behind a whine of reproach for her betrayal. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. The company has always been fair with its workers – it isn’t inhumane to object to their greediness. They get a fair share in wages of the profits – ’
‘It’s nothing to the money we have!’
‘Don’t be naïve. You don’t run a business that way. The Cattle Company has to pay its own way – whatever else we have doesn’t enter into it. You’re talking like some woolly-minded socialist. If you got that from your husband – ’
‘I didn’t get it from my husband – he has a name or have you put it out of your mind? He’s never attempted any propaganda with me – I think he’d laugh his head off if you called him a socialist. I worked it out for myself – I think the men are entitled to what they’re asking for.’
‘They get a living wage – ’
‘A living wage isn’t enough! God, Daddy, you’re still in the last century – I don’t think I’ve ever looked at you properly. Grandfather must have put blinkers on you when you were born – ’
Her voice had risen; she was almost shouting. The study door opened and Edith came in quickly, closing it behind her. ‘I told myself I was not going to interfere. But this has gone on long enough and loudly enough – too loud, all the servants can hear you. I think you had better apologize to your father, Nina, then go home and cool down. You’d better cool down, too, Lucas – your voice has been just as loud as hers.’
‘I’m not going to apologize! Tell your husband to come into the twentieth century – he just doesn’t know what’s going on in the world!’
‘My husband?’ said Edith.
But Nina had already rushed out of the room, past George Biff standing in the hall, his face grey with pain and emotion; then she was running across the lawns, through the afternoon heat, like someone fleeing a catastrophe she couldn’t face. Margaret and Sally, coming up from the tennis court, called to her, but she didn’t hear them. She ran towards her own house, tears streaming down her face, but even in her distress she knew the house was no real haven, that it had never really belonged to her and Tim. It had been a gift from her parents and she ran now through the strings that bound it to the big house that dominated the park.
Tim lay flat on his back in the bed, a low pillow under his head. He tried to sit up when she came into the room, but winced in pain and lay back at once. ‘What’s the matter? For Christ’s sake – Nina! What happened?’
She had flopped on the foot of the bed, hand over her face, her head shaking from side to side. She struggled to control herself, the sobs coming up as great gobs of pain in her chest. He reached for her, but she got up and moved away, waving a dumb hand for him to remain lying down and not hurt himself. She should have stayed downstairs till she had composed herself, but she had come headlong up the stairs to the one true haven that was all her own, him.
He waited impatiently for her to tell him what had happened. At last she was in control of herself, had cooled down, as her mother had advised; she was tearless now, dried-out and cold, more than just cool. She told herself she owed no more allegiance to her mother and father.
‘I got nowhere with Daddy.’ She told Tim all that had been said and argued in her father’s study; as she talked, she felt the distance increasing between her parents’ house and her own. ‘He’s hopeless – he’ll never see things our way.’
He misunderstood her, thinking she was talking only about the strike. ‘Bumper phoned me – the men are going back to work. They haven’t announced it yet, but Bumper says they’ve all recognized now that they can’t win.’
She had to concentrate to think about the events of the morning: she had been preoccupied with the wide empty horizon of the future. ‘Oh – you mean they’re giving up? So easily?’
‘Don’t criticize them. It’s too easy for us – ’
‘But you were hurt – for them! Daddy will laugh at us – ’
‘I don’t think he’s that heartless or undiplomatic.’
She moved up closer to him on the bed, took one of his bandaged hands in hers. ‘Darling, let’s go away.’
He stared at her closely, his eyes wary in his bruised and grazed face. ‘You don’t mean just for a holiday, do you?’
‘No, I mean move away from here, go somewhere else to live. Anywhere – I don’t care – ’
‘I think you’d better sleep on it – ’
‘I don’t want to sleep on it! For God’s sake, stop being so damn careful of me – I’m not doing this just for you! I’m thinking of me – of us, both of us. And Michael – ’ She was infested with pessimism, was building fears on fears without any real foundation. She had been too well protected, even from the knowledge that her father had another set of loyalties, ones outside that to her and her sisters. ‘Let’s go to England! You’d like that – ’
He searched her face as if it were strange territory: he had never known her to look and sound like this. He sensed the seriousness in her: what she had just suggested may have come off the top of her head, but she felt it deeply. The decision she had made was bigger than her decision to marry him. But he wasn’t hurt by it.
‘All right, we’ll go back to England. But you have to promise me – we tell your parents together and you have to make them understand it was a joint decision on our part.’
‘But it isn’t – ’
‘Yes, it is. You may have suggested it, but you’re not to tell them you did. You’ll hurt them enough just by going – you don’t have to rub it in by letting them know you had to talk me into it.’
It was her turn to look searchingly. ‘Why are you being so careful of their feelings? They’ve never been that way about yours.’
‘I’m being careful for your sake, darling heart. You may want to come back here some day – ’
‘Never – ’
He shook his head on the pillow. ‘You’ll want to come back. Perhaps not to live, but you’ll want to come back for visits, long ones. There’s not just your parents – there are your sisters. You’re too attached to them to want to turn your back on them.’
10
Lucas and Edith took the news as Nina had expected: as if she had turned a gun on them. Lucas did not speak to her for two days, going out of his way to avoid her. But Edith, after her initial shock, did not surrender her daughter without a fight.
‘If we’ve made mistakes, Nina, then all I can ask is that you forgive us. It won’t happen again.’
‘It will, Mother. Daddy will never change. He thinks he owns us. Not just all of us, but Tim, too.’
‘You’re mistaking love for ownership. Maybe he shows it the wrong way, but it is love. I know him better than you.’
‘That’s why you can make excuses for him. But I can’t, Mother – not any longer.’
Then she tried to explain her departure to her sisters. She got them together in what had been the old nursery and was now a games and television room. But all the artefacts of their childhood were still there: dolls, toys, finger-paintings. It was a museum now for the older girls, but it was Prue’s retreat and domain. She was delighted to have her sisters as her guests. She sat playing with her dolls, only occasionally cocking an ear to the conversation. But Margaret and Sally were in tears.
‘Oh