Page 70 of The Christmas Invitation
She shuddered again. ‘He changed in a flash when he knew! I thought he loved me, but he didn’t, it was just the money he loved.’ She sat up straighter, a hint of backbone returning. ‘But after the way he’d taken advantage of me, I wouldn’t have married him if he was the last man in the world!’
Then she dissolved into tears again and wailed, ‘I don’t know what to do!’
‘Does George know?’
She looked at me aghast. ‘No! I never want to see or hear from him again!’
‘Perhaps not, but under the circumstances—’ I began, then stopped dead, as a complication presented itself to me. ‘Nessa, I need to tell you something. Henry’s gone home this weekend, because George is getting married. In fact, by now he will be.’
I kept our suspicions about the hastiness of the wedding to myself.
Nessa stared at me and then began laughing in a way that was working up to hysteria, until I dashed a glass of cold water in her face. Then she just huddled there, looking white and more than a little damp.
I’d been counting months. ‘The baby must be due in the summer vacation, so if there was a way of keeping it secret till then …’ I mused aloud. ‘But I don’t suppose there is.’
Nessa gathered herself. ‘I can see now that the only person who can help me is Godmama. She’ll know what I should do.’
She seemed very certain that Lady Leamington would be shocked, but worldly-wise enough to advise her, and on reflection I thought she was probably right.
She made me swear secrecy, which I did, apart from Henry: we were too close to keep things from each other and anyway, since it was to do with his family, he ought to know.
Henry was as shocked, angry and disgusted by George’s behaviour as I was, but there was nothing to be done, for his brother and his new bride were by then on honeymoon and, besides, we were bound by my promise of secrecy.
At the end of the Hilary term Nessa went straight to London to confess all to Lady Leamington, who came up with a novel solution to the problem.
‘She said I should be able to hide the pregnancy to the end of the Trinity term if I pad out my top half as my stomach gets bigger. People will simply think I’ve got very fat – and I have been putting weight on.’
‘Will that really work? I asked sceptically.
‘It did for one of her friends, so I don’t see why not. That way, I can complete my first year and then I’ll go into a private maternity clinic to have the baby.’ She shuddered. ‘It will be adopted immediately, of course.’
‘You might feel differently when you see it,’ I suggested.
‘I don’t want to see it, just get rid of it. And as soon as I’ve recovered, I’m going back to America to finish my degree there.’
I didn’t say any more, because she seemed to have it all planned: cut and dried. There was a new, harder edge to Nessa, and she was still adamant that George should never know.
‘I’ll make a fresh start in America and all this will be like a bad dream,’ she said, then added, fiercely, ‘But I’m finished with men and motherhood!’
Really, for someone usually resembling sugar-dusted pink and white Turkish delight, she’d looked amazingly resolute when she said that!
22
The Image
I had another good painting session with Henry next morning, exciting and intense. The dabs and scrapes and blobs of paint placed themselves by some alchemy of the mind, and I knew that when I finally stepped back from the canvas they would all come together into a whole.
The sum was definitely more than the parts, for Henry’s pared-down, handsome face began to take shape: the Grecian nose and high cheekbones, so like Mark’s, his bony forehead and fine silver hair … the bright blue of his eyes in their nest of laughter and sun lines and those straight lips, with curved, humorous corners.
He’d brought his novel, but today his mind seemed firmly set on his work, the epic novel-length poem cycle about the drowning of the valley. While I painted, he told me a little about it.
‘The strong sense of place still remained long after the village vanished under the water. In fact, it still does,’ he said. ‘My golden childhood with Clara wasn’t washed away. It still exists and always drew me back over the ensuing years. Clara felt the same way.’
‘I can understand that, because the moment I saw the valley, evenIfelt a connection with it. River would say that it was old magic and the ley lines drawing me in.’
Henry looked at me curiously. ‘You felt that too? Interesting,’ he murmured, then added, ‘I wanted to show the effect of the drowning of the valley, not only on the human inhabitants, but from the viewpoint of the creatures displaced or drowned. The trees, the plants, the fish and insects – even the birds. The thrush that nested every year in an old watering can hung on the barn wall at the inn, the fox that used to hide in the vicarage greenhouse when the hunt came by, and the badgers in the copse over the humpbacked bridge, who led their own lives at dusk when we slept.’
His voice, low but wonderfully resonant, swept on. ‘The silenced bells, removed to the big, ugly church at Thorstane, and the ancient inscribed pre-Christian stone that stood in the churchyard, which inspired Clara to take up epigraphy, now relocated to the Underhill estate. Much was moved, but you can’t take the dead, or the weight of time that holds down a place, with you.’
