Beatrice found herself looking at Angie in a new light. The man had been right about her looks. Her figure was distinctly curvy, and when, almost unconsciously, she played with her hair, pushing it back off her face, it seemed an adult gesture. Beatrice’s was still the body of a child, but lately she’d noticed a tenderness about her nipples, one of several symptons of a sea change. Her mother had made embarrassed murmurings about something unpleasant being likely to happen and when it did she was to come at once and tell her. But it was Angie, pink-faced and self-important, who first whispered to her about ‘the curse’ and how much it made one’s belly ache.
October 1936
It was soon after Beatrice’s fourteenth birthday, and The Times was full of General Franco’s victories in Spain, when Hugh Marlow suffered a heart attack. The doctor, sent for in the middle of the night, arranged for his transferral to hospital in Truro where he remained for a week. Mrs Wincanton insisted that Beatrice come to stay at Carlyon. She also lent Mrs Marlow her driver every day so that she might visit the invalid.
Whilst troubled about her father, Beatrice enjoyed actually living at Carlyon. Everyone was particularly kind. Brown would call, ‘Chin up, miss,’ whenever she saw her, and the cook-housekeeper, Mrs Pargeter, pronounced her a ‘poor little lamb’ and turned out chocolate cake and toffee apples at regular intervals to ‘keep the spirits up’.
Above all she loved the ritual of breakfast, helping herself to porridge or boiled eggs or fresh toast from the array of silverware on the sideboard and sitting where she wanted at the big table with its fresh white cloth. Oenone Wincanton would come in late from riding, drop her gloves on a chair and eat her breakfast standing up, pacing the room. Then she’d be off for the morning or the day, often as not, on mysterious missions in her husband’s constituency that might involve taking enormous quantities of ribbon or something else for which she’d practise reading a typewritten speech as she drank her coffee. On one occasion they returned home after a nature walk on the cliffs with Miss Simpkins to find the house filled with ladies gossiping and drinking tea, some clustered about a leathery man in wire-framed spectacles, tweeds and facial whiskers. ‘This is Professor Stanley, girls,’ Oenone said, bringing Angie and Beatrice into the circle. ‘He’s given us a most affecting talk about the pagan temples of Ephesus, haven’t you, Professor?’ The girls took the first opportunity to escape upstairs in fits of giggles, Angie declaring, ‘It was like shaking hands with a bat.’
When she’d previously stayed overnight at Carlyon, Beatrice had been given a spare room, but this time she was glad to share Angie’s big bed. She’d never shared a bed before – and found that in the darkness, the confidences came easily.
‘Do you love your father?’ Angie asked.
‘Of course,’ was Beatrice’s automatic response. She’d never thought about it before, but now Angie had made her, she realized she didn’t know. What did love mean? She didn’t want him to die, of course, and she was used to his physical weakness, his demands for attention. Her mother was often explaining to her that her father had given the best of his strength for his country during the war. He had done his duty at great personal cost. The war must have been bad, she knew, because sometimes her father shouted out in the night and once her mother appeared in her room to reassure her that it was only a bad dream. But the result was that Hugh Marlow had little attention to spare for his daughter. He relied heavily on his wife, and the endlessly patient Delphine tried to meet his every need. Beatrice had never thought about her relationship with her father before. She only knew one thing for certain: she loved her mother.
‘Why don’t you?’ Beatrice whispered back. ‘Love your father, I mean, not mine.’
‘Course,’ Angie said, and her voice was husky. ‘It’s just that I never see him. Well, hardly ever. We always used to live in London. We have a big white house with a view over a lovely park where Nanny used to take us. But then it all went wrong. Ed says that they quarrelled, and they agreed we should all live here more. It’s not fair. I mean I like it here, especially now I’ve met you, but I did like London. There are always things happening there, and lots of other children and wonderful parties, much better than here, and the shops, you should see the shops, full of all the things you could ever think of. Beautiful clothes and toys, and Mummy would take us to tea at lovely hotels like Brown’s and Claridge’s. She must miss it all. But I miss my father so much, that sometimes I feel like . . . like running away and taking the train up to London and finding him.’