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A Gathering Storm(25)

By:Rachel Hore


‘Why don’t you?’ Beatrice replied, excited by this idea.

‘As if I had the money!’ Angie said. Anyway, he’d have to send me back. I couldn’t live with him all alone. Though Ed says he stayed there once when he had an exeat from school and Daddy wasn’t alone for dinner. There was a woman there called Grace. I wonder if Mummy knows about Grace. Ed says I’m not to tell her.’

Angie sighed in the darkness. Beatrice tried to think what to say. The grown-up world floated just beyond their vision, full of secrets and puzzles. After a while she realized Angie was crying.

‘Oh, don’t,’ she whispered, touching the other girl’s shoulder and was thrilled when Angie rolled over and lay in her arms, sobbing softly. ‘I’m sure everything’s all right. It must be that he’s very busy and can’t come here very much, like you said.’

‘I miss him so much,’ Angie gulped. ‘If you could meet him then you’d know.’

Beatrice thought of her own father, but could only remember the sour look he had given her last week, before his illness, when he’d arrived home unexpectedly and slipped on the ball she and Jinx had been playing with in the hall. She hadn’t seen him since his heart attack. The hospital had been judged by her mother ‘no place for a child’. She tried to squeeze out a tear, just one tear, for him, as she pictured him pale and sort of dead-looking in a narrow bed with crisp white sheets, but it was only when she remembered her mother’s anxious face that tears came.

It was during this stay that she met Angie’s father for the first time. He arrived one afternoon and immediately departed again to a meeting, his wife told the children, with local tin miners about a proposed mine closure. He returned shortly before dinner, and when Beatrice was introduced to him she suffered such a fit of shyness she could do little more than shake his hand and answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to his questions, blushing all the while.

She’d never met anyone before who exuded such a strong physical presence, a sense of authority, and she found it rather thrilling. She finally plucked up the courage to meet his gaze and saw humour in his hazel eyes, and warmth.

He left for London again the next morning. Late that afternoon, Mrs Wincanton called Beatrice into the drawing room.

‘Sit down a minute,’ she said. ‘I’d like to talk to you. Have you enjoyed staying with us?’

‘Oh yes,’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s been lovely.’

‘Well, we’ve enjoyed having you,’ Mrs Wincanton murmured. She smiled. ‘But you’ll be pleased to hear that you’re going home. Your mother telephoned from the hospital a few minutes ago to say that your father has been discharged. So you must run up and pack, and Pengelly will drive you back after tea.’

Beatrice’s face must have betrayed her sadness because Mrs Wincanton looked at her tenderly and said, ‘Don’t you want to go? You are a dear little thing. I’m so glad we found you, you’ve been so good for Angie. She needs somebody steady and sensible. You know, she’s sometimes . . . a little nervy.’

Beatrice nodded. She was proud that Angie’s mother was pleased with her. She waited uncertainly, wondering if the woman wanted her to go now, but when Mrs Wincanton stood up, it wasn’t to signal that the interview was over. Instead she went to take a cigarette out of a box on the mantelpiece and lit it, then draped herself elegantly against the fireplace, contemplating Beatrice. She smoked, Beatrice saw, as though she wasn’t used to it, holding the cigarette clumsily in her slim fingers and pursing her lips to exhale. ‘Beatrice,’ she said, ‘Bea, do you mind being called Bea?’

‘I rather like it.’ She couldn’t help glancing at the carving. Mrs Wincanton followed the line of her gaze.

‘Oh yes, our own little bee, I had been going to tell you about him. This house belongs to my husband’s family, Beatrice. The bee is the Wincanton family symbol. There was some Wincanton in Tudor or Stuart times who did something particularly plucky in one of the Cornish rebellions, I’m not sure which, the Cornish always seemed to be rebelling against something. And the chief rebel, Lord Somebody-or-other, was telling him what a brick he was when a bee landed on the Wincanton ancestor’s sleeve and someone cried, “It’s a sign!” Something like that, believe it if you will. Anyway, here is the little creature, and here’s the family motto.’ She traced a Latin tag carved along the rim of the mantelpiece with her finger. ‘Michael assures me it means brave and faithful, and we’ll have to take his word for that.’