“I want Life to write on my hands.”
“It will,” said Leah with a smile. “I think it may have a great deal to write.”
That pleased Tamarisk, but she was bored with fortunes if she was not to have one yet.
“There are four puppies. I like the big one. He squeals a lot and he is very greedy.”
“Who took you down to show you the puppies?”
“Jenny.”
“Where is she now?”
Tamarisk lifted her shoulders. “Do gypsies have puppies?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” Leah told her. “We have our dogs and some of them have puppies.”
“Where does Life write on them? They haven’t got hands.”
“It would find somewhere no doubt,” said Amaryllis.
Tamarisk was quite taken with Leah. She put her hands on her knees and looked up at her searchingly.
“You’ve got gold rings in your ears.”
“Yes,” said Leah.
“I want gold rings in my ears.”
“Tamarisk always wants everything everyone else may have,” I said.
“I want gold in my ears,” she repeated.
“Perhaps one day …” began Amaryllis.
“I want it now. They are always saying one day,” she told Leah. “Do you live in a caravan?”
“Yes.”
“Do you sleep there?”
“Yes. Sometimes if it is a very hot night we sleep out of doors … under the sky and when we wake in the night we can see the stars twinkling overhead. And sometimes there’s a moon.”
“I want to sleep under the stars.”
“Perhaps you will… one day.”
“You say it now. One day! I never want one day. I always want now.”
I heard an agitated voice: “Miss Tamarisk. Miss Tamarisk. Where are you?”
Tamarisk buried her head in Leah’s lap. I noticed how gently Leah’s long brown fingers touched the dark straight hair.
I went to the door of the summer house and said: “She’s here, Jenny. Did you think you had lost her?”
“She ran off and when I turned round she had gone, Miss Frenshaw.”
“Well, she’s here now. She ought to be put on a chain like a little dog.”
Tamarisk lifted her head and put out her tongue at me.
“Oh, certainly she should be,” I went on. “And taught how to behave.”
“I know how to behave.”
“Well, why not practise what you know?”
“Come along, Miss Tamarisk,” said Jenny. “Jeanne is waiting to go.”
She took Tamarisk firmly by the hand and led her away.
“She is a beautiful child,” said Leah as the door of the summer house closed.
“And a very unmanageable one. They spoil her.”
“She has a look of…”
“Romany Jake?” I said. “He is her father.”
Leah nodded; her face was full of secrets and I did not know what she was thinking.
“Poor Tamarisk,” said Amaryllis, “her mother is dead.”
“She has her father …” began Leah.
“A father who does not know of her existence!” went on Amaryllis.
“She is his child,” said Leah. “There could be no doubt of it.”
She was quiet for a moment, then she said: “I am sorry I could not tell you more. That is how it is. I do not want to talk nonsense … as some of our people do … just while they are waiting for what is to come. Inspiration … truth … it flashes upon you… and you wait for it. But sometimes it does not come and then there is no fortune. But what can be done? Can one say, ‘There is nothing. You do not inspire me. The powers are silent…’ Or ‘I do not wish to tell…’ How could we say that? We can only wait… and sometimes it comes and sometimes not.”
“I understand perfectly, don’t you, Amaryllis?”
“Perfectly,” she replied. “And you have given me such a lovely fortune. It’s poor Jessica I’m sorry about… all those dark forces …”
“They are there surrounding us all. We must be like you and look neither up nor down. Then we shall not see them … and perhaps our good angel will guide our footsteps in the right direction.”
I had brought money with which to pay her and I gave it to her. She accepted it gracefully with many thanks and we walked with her to the gates and then went back to the house.
Tamarisk and Jeanne had already left.
Guests were arriving for the party. Lord and Lady Pettigrew were there with Millicent and her son Jonathan.
Jonathan was a little younger than I, and Millicent, although my sister-in-law, was of an age with Amaryllis’ mother, Claudine. My birth to my parents late in life had made some rather complicated relationships for me.
I quite liked Jonathan. He had always been a high-spirited boy and was continually in some sort of scrape. He had a charming personality, and was always disarmingly sorry if he caused anyone any trouble. His mother said he was very like his father who had been killed nearly twenty years ago in a shooting affray with a French spy.
The Pettigrews were frequent visitors at Eversleigh and one day Jonathan would inherit the estate, and my father was quite interested in him, although he was often exasperated by him.
Lady Pettigrew was a very autocratic lady who thought she could manage everyone’s affairs better than they could themselves, and unfortunately tried to do so. Lord Pettigrew was a very pleasant old man, gentle and resigned. As I said to Amaryllis, he had to be, living with Lady Pettigrew for years. Claudine said she was getting old now and we must bear with her. Amaryllis was a great favourite with her; I was not because I could not resist the temptation to contradict.
The Pettigrews had come several days before the birthday and we were all invited over to the Barringtons’ to dine. I was next to Edward for dinner and I began to wonder whether we were being thrown together, for I always seemed to find myself close to him.
“I am very much looking forward to the party,” he said.
“We all are.”
“The eighteenth birthday! Rather a special one, isn’t it? Eighteen is supposed to be one of the milestones of life.”
“When one leaves childhood behind.”
He looked at me seriously and nodded. I felt faintly uneasy. He was hinting at something. Could it really be that he was thinking of marriage?
I hoped not. I had always fretted to be grown up but when one was an adult certain decisions had to be made. I did not want to be married yet. I liked Edward Barrington, of course. I also liked some of the other young men in the neighbourhood. Oh yes, I wanted to be grown up; but I did not want to leap straight out of girlhood into marriage. I wanted a little time to bask in the admiration of a number of people. I did not want to confine myself to the attentions of one, which I supposed I should have to do when I was married.
A faint gloom had been cast over the evening. Times change. Nothing remains the same for long. I looked along the table at my father and realized with a sudden anxiety that he was an old man. The great Dickon … old! I had always had a special relationship with him. I had been grateful from my earliest childhood when I discovered that I and my mother were the only ones who could soften him. I remembered Amaryllis’ saying “Ask your father. He’ll say yes … if you ask him.” Miss Rennie had said, “Miss Jessica knows how to get round her father.” It was especially wonderful because I did not have to know anything. I just had to be. I loved him dearly. For all his wickedness—and I believed he had been very wicked in his youth—I loved him more than I did anyone else—except perhaps my mother and that was equally. But they were both getting old and could not live forever. My father was fresh-faced; he looked healthy; but I realized with a pang that he was well into his sixties. The thought frightened me. And my mother was in her fifties. She was still beautiful, of course, because she had that kind of beauty which does not fade. There is a permanence about it. There was white in her hair now but it was still abundant; and her eyes, although they might be a little lined, were still of that arresting dark blue shade. But they were both getting old. Edward Barrington, by his insinuations … if insinuations they were … had reminded me of this.