Dublin 1943
Edwina placed the music box on the low table beside her chair and hoped that Charlotte would choose to pay a duty call during the day. With things so strained between them she couldn’t make a specific request to see her.
Around midday she heard the familiar footsteps and her heart quickened. Charlotte came in with her usual sour face, pulled along by Mary Anne, who was all set to explore the familiar things in the room. Her favourite item was the piano which Charlotte would not allow her to bang on, holding down the lid and saying, “Don’t annoy your grandmother” – a phrase she used constantly. Edwina always wanted to say ‘Leave her. I like to see her enjoying herself,’ but the words refused to form in her throat when she imagined the disbelieving scorn on Charlotte’s face if she said them.
During a visit three days earlier, while Charlotte was distracted reading the paper, Mary Anne, all trust and affection, had climbed on to Edwina’s lap and begun to play with her necklace. Edwina found herself affected by the touch of the little fingers as they lifted the brightly coloured beads in turn. When Charlotte looked up and saw the interaction she gave a cry of dismay and ran to scoop up the child, saying, “Don’t annoy your grandmother,” before carrying her to the far side of the room.
Edwina, feeling hurt, said, “My arms still function, you know. I wouldn’t let her fall,” wanting to add, ‘Let her stay. She’s no trouble. I like having her here,’ but was once again unable to say the words.
Edwina admired Mary Anne’s slender limbs, pretty face and dark, soft curls – no trace of Waldron or Charlotte there – but most of all she admired her spirit: she was not afraid of an old woman, ugly and immobile.
The maid had been sent out to buy something that would definitely appeal to a child approaching two years of age. Anything with moving parts that made a noise was irresistible, the shopkeeper had assured her. If this worked, Edwina would buy more and would even engage a toymaker to design novelty items that would tempt Mary Anne to visit more often and stay longer. A magnificent rocking horse had already been commissioned from a master carver to be ready for Christmas, and even though lap dogs were anathema to her, Edwina had ordered a Yorkshire terrier puppy as the ultimate enticement. In a year’s time she would buy a few acres outside Dublin and keep some ponies there so that Mary Anne could begin her training to ride better than a man, thereby compensating Edwina for not quite reaching that standard before her accident. Manus, for old time’s sake, could be inveigled up to oversee the initiation. How could he turn down a request from her after all they had shared in the past? To top all that, she would invite over Sir Dirk Armstrong, by now the most famous and most expensive artist in the British Isles, to paint Mary Anne’s portrait. Her letter to him would not be hectoring like Waldron’s had been, inviting rebuttal, but persuasive, recalling past intimacies that he was now too old to be threatened by, and she wouldn’t even hint at the possibility of a discount.
Edwina reached down to open the lid of the music box. Mary Anne heard the tinkling of ‘Greensleeves’ and followed the sound to the table beside her grandmother. The child stood staring at the twirling figure in a white tutu, reflected in mirrors angled in a semicircle around it. When the music and figure slowed and finally halted, Mary Anne pointed at the box and looked up at Edwina.
“How interested she is,” said Edwina. “What advanced concentration she has!”
Charlotte hovered suspiciously. Edwina lifted up the box, rewound it, placed it back on the table, and opened the lid again to release the twirling figure. Mary Anne, laughing and jigging, could not restrain her excitement.
“I’ve never seen that before,” said Charlotte. “Where did it come from?”
“I bought it,” said Edwina.
“You bought it?” Charlotte lifted up the box and examined it, noting the price written on the base.
Mary Anne made gestures signalling she wanted to hear the music again. Charlotte put the box back on the table and sat down to watch the interaction. For five minutes Edwina continued to wind up the box, and Mary Anne didn’t tire of it. At one stage she put her finger gently on the figure of the ballerina, pulled back at the feel of it, and then repeated the move. Charlotte noted the pleasure on her mother’s face. She picked up Mary Anne, saying, “I’ll take her down to the garden before she gets bored and restless,” and left.
That night Verity reiterated Charlotte’s faults, the main ones being her over-familiarity with servants, spending too much time with her sister-in-law drooling over babies, and worst of all, nursing – she couldn’t bring herself to use the more descriptive term – a practice abhorred by Queen Victoria who forbade her daughters-in-law to do it, and if the dear Queen didn’t know what was right and proper, who did?
“I blame that one-armed, Communist, French-speaking artist Delaney for the way she turned out. If she’d had a refined female tutor instead of that mad Irishman, she wouldn’t have ended up spurning her class and its military traditions,” she concluded.
Usually Edwina countered with, “I blame Waldron. He should have forced her to go to that school and there wouldn’t have been any need for any kind of a tutor,” but she had lost the heart for this conversation in its entirety and remained silent. She even had an urge to speak up in Charlotte’s defence, and not just to annoy Verity.
For Edwina had fallen in love with her granddaughter. She couldn’t understand how it had happened, and with things the way they were between herself and Charlotte, couldn’t admit to it. One thing she did know was she would have to disarm the mother to get access to the daughter. How she would go about it would require a lot of clever planning and she didn’t want Verity clacking away in the background while she was trying to think.