“As for you, Maman,” he said, “you must visit us in Burgundy. We have a fine old house which somehow managed to survive the vandals. Louis Charles and I have had a great deal of pleasure repairing it. Pierre helped, didn’t you, my son? And Louis Charles’ eldest is quite a carpenter. We have plenty of room. You ought to come for the vendange.”
“I will. I will,” cried my mother. “And you too, Dickon. You’d be interested.”
“You’d be welcome, sir,” said Charlot.
And my father said he would be very interested to see everything. It added to my mother’s joy in the reunion that my father welcomed Charlot so warmly.
Amaryllis told me that her mother had said that when Charlot lived at Eversleigh there had been a certain antagonism between the two.
“In those days,” said Amaryllis, “your father had not long been married to your mother and he resented her having been married before and having two children. My mother said he tolerated her but could not bear Charlot. They were always sparring. Now he seems to have changed.”
“It is living with people that is so difficult,” I observed. “Visitors are quite another matter.”
So Charlot returned to France with promises of meetings in the near future.
My mother said excitedly: “It will be wonderful to visit France again. It is wonderful that all the troubles are over.”
My father commented that it was early days yet and while Napoleon lived, we must not hope for too much. But my mother refused to believe anything but good. She had recovered her son whom she had thought to be lost to her for ever. She was happy.
I noticed my father was a little preoccupied and one day, soon after Charlot’s departure, when I was alone with him, I asked him if anything was wrong.
“You’re a very observant girl, Jessica,” he said.
“I think we are all aware when those who mean a great deal to us are anxious.”
He put out a hand and gripped mine. He was not one to give way to demonstrations of affection so I guessed he had something really on his mind which was causing him concern.
“You’d better tell me,” I said. “I know something is bothering you.”
“Old age, daughter.”
“Old age? You? You’ll never be old.”
“What is the span? Three score years and ten? I’m approaching it, Jessica. With the best will in the world I can’t expect to be here much longer. Do you know how old I am?”
“Years have little to do with it.”
“It would be comforting if that were true. Alas, we wear out.”
“Not you. You never did what other people did. You’ll go when you want to and that will be never.”
“What a charming daughter I have.”
“I am glad you realize it.”
“My greatest regret in life is that I was prevented from marrying your mother when we were young. If we had not been stopped, we should have had ten children … sons and daughters like my own Jessica.”
“No use regretting that now. You have a wonderful son in David.”
“He’s a good son, yes. But what has he produced? One daughter. And now she has produced a daughter.”
“Oh, I see, it is this masculine yearning for men in the house.”
“I have the best daughter in the world and I wouldn’t change her, but it would have been a help if you had been born a boy!”
“I’m sorry, dear father, I would do anything I could for you but I cannot change my sex.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have my Jessica changed … not even for a son.”
“I am flattered. But is this all that is wrong? No boys in the family?”
“David and Claudine won’t have any more. David won’t live forever.”
“I hate talk about death. It’s morbid.”
“I’m just planning for the future. Seeing that boy, Charlot, with his Pierre growing up in the business, teaching him everything … and the other boys as well. It made me think. What about us? David … and then what? Jessica, I am sixty-nine years of age.”
“And you are as well and vigorous as someone twenty years younger.”
“Even I cannot defy nature forever, my dear. There is going to be a day when I go, and then David will follow me. And what of Eversleigh? Do you realize that for centuries this family have lived in this house?”
“Yes, I did know. They were Eversleighs at one time and then the name changed.”
“I want Frenshaws to be here for another four hundred years. You see, you have made this marriage. It was your choice. But I had hopes of you. If you had brought me even a girl I would have said Jessica’s girl would be as good as anyone else’s boy. Now what? Amaryllis has had this girl. If she had had a boy it would have been different. What I am getting at is that there is only one thing for me to do—Jonathan.”
“I see. You are going to bring him to Eversleigh.”
“That is what I am going to do, and without delay. But he’s wild. That worries me. He’s like his father. His father would never have been any good for the estate.”
“You were lucky to have twin boys. Just like you. Not content with one you had to have two.”
“That was indeed good luck. Jonathan was a fine fellow. Adventurous, brave … none braver … full of vitality and charm. But he would never have been any good on the estate. David stepped into the breach and I have to say he is a natural squire. I have been lucky. I had hoped David would have had sons, but all he gets is Amaryllis. That leaves Jonathan who I am afraid is going to turn out just like his father.”
“He is young yet.”
“But he already shows tendencies. I would never have attempted to put his father on the estate. Fortunately there were other interests, and he excelled in those. The estate would have gone to rack and ruin under him and that is what I want to avoid.”
“So you are going to train Jonathan?”
“That’s about it. But I must say I am uneasy. I know his sort. That affair with the farmer’s daughter. Fortunately there were no results, but there might have been and then he would have been saddled with keeping a child begotten in a few moments in a hayloft.”
“Quite a number of people recover from a misspent youth.”
“That’s what I want him to do. But one has to have a talent for managing an estate. I had it… in spite of being somewhat like Jonathan in my youth. I was in and out of trouble but it was always the estate which was of the utmost importance. Not only the estate … other business too. I have to make Jonathan realize this. That is why I am bringing him into the household.”
“And that is what is putting furrows on your brow?”
“Your mother is in such a state of excitement about Charlot’s return that I can’t get a sensible word out of her.”
“So you turn to your offspring who was so inconsiderate as to be born of the wrong sex.”
“She’s clever enough to know she couldn’t have meant so much to me if she had been a boy.”
“But how much more convenient.”
“And not half so charming.”
“You are a flatterer, dear sixty-nine-year-old Papa.”
“Jessica, my dear child, I don’t often mention this to you, but you and your mother are the most important things in my life.”
“Dear Father, do you know, you rank rather high in ours.”
There was a brief silence when I think both of us were too moved to speak.
Then he said briskly: “So you think it is a good idea to send for Jonathan?”
“I do. But what of the Pettigrews?”
“What of them?”
“They might not want to let their darling boy go.”
“He’s a Frenshaw. His duty is to his father’s family. Of course, it will mean having Millicent here too. Anyway, we’ll see.”
I kissed him on the forehead and left. I was touched that he had confided in me. But I was at the same time worried about him. It was disturbing to have brought home to me the fact that this man who had dominated my childhood, who was held in such awe throughout the estate—and the country it seemed—who had always harboured such a deep love for me, should be an old man.