Home again
Everyone was fatigued, nerves frayed and pebbles in their shoes, the nurse and the child saved both soaked and shivering. Joan hadn’t decided if anyone deserved praise for heroics or if everyone needed a good spanking, but she sent up silent thanks she didn’t have to tell the parents one of the children had drowned.
At Greenway, they tumbled into the back corridor, a parade of noise and bother, dirty, cold, crying, the entire range of human misery and filth. Scaldwell, proper as you please, held the door as though they were the mistress’s own treasured guests.
“When you have a moment, Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot,” Scaldwell said.
A little white dog ran around them, barking uproariously, cheering some of the children into joyful hysterics and alarming the baby at Joan’s shoulder. One of the older boys saw his chance and made for the dinner gong while Scaldwell, who was particular about the instrument, only watched as the boy raised the hammer and struck. Joan grabbed him before he tried a second time, and Malcolm—“Please don’t worry about the hamper, darling. Mr. Scaldwell, whose dog—”
She had missed a turn, for it was Mrs. Christie’s dog—Mrs. Christie who stood in the entrance hall, silver haired, tall and foreboding. Strangers stood alongside, tweeds for her and golfing plaids for him, that insufferable sort. Upon seeing Joan, Mrs. Christie turned away.
“What is it, Scarsdale? Let’s have it,” Malcolm said.
“Malcolm,” Joan cautioned. The nurses and children watched from the stairs. They could not see Mrs. Christie, and her husband hadn’t. “Gigi, please take the children up and see they get washed and down for a rest. Sort their clothes for a soaking—Bridey, no. You stay for a moment.”
“This one needs his nap, too,” Bridey said over the sleeping child in her arms. She hadn’t let Edward go since she’d got him back, and had expertly got him to calm down. She was sodden, dripping.
“He’ll get to his bed shortly. Mr. Scaldwell, let us convene in the kitchen.”
Mrs. Scaldwell stood at the stove. She looked up and stared a long while at Malcolm, heaven knew why. “Are you just back?” she said. Then she noticed Bridey and Edward, went to the scullery, and came back with a deep soup pot to put on the hob.
Mr. Scaldwell said, “What’s happened?”
“One of the children,” Joan started in a low voice. Her heart fluttered to say it. A child truly could have died. On her watch. “We’ve only just managed to avoid—a catastrophic outcome.”
Scaldwell looked suitably serious. “Misadventure?”
Bridey wouldn’t look up from the boy. “I let go of his hand for a moment,” she said. “A moment. You know how fast they are and how many and Gigi—” Her face was red and bulbous with crying.
“I’ll have to call the parents,” Joan said. “I don’t know what they’ll do.”
Or what should be done. Should something be done?
Joan wanted to punish someone, she realized. Was that the war sneaking in through a crack? Turning her from one kind of participant to another? Men made war and women and children suffered it. What if their suffering turned to cruelty to be served down the line until the smallest and most powerless took the brunt?
Behind her there was a noise. She turned her head to find Malcolm lighting up one of his stinking cigars.
“Barely a chance to sit down, let alone get a sketch,” Malcolm said.
“All right,” Joan said. “Bridey, take the child up and see to them all. I’ll be up to help.”
“I’ll bring up something warm,” Mrs. Scaldwell said.
Bridey quickly took her leave.
“What are we to think of all this?” Joan said. “Malcolm, put that out.”
“Do you think the nurses are not up to the task?” Scaldwell said. “I would have thought that one could manage.”
“That’s the issue,” Joan said. “I don’t know. What should we do? But we can’t mind ten children in this house without them both.”
At the stove, Mrs. Scaldwell cleared her throat.
“Ah,” her husband said.
“Yes, Mr. Scaldwell,” Joan said. “You had something you wanted to say?” Announce, more like. He was the trumpeter making way for the queen.
“You might have noticed the mistress home,” Scaldwell said. “As you came in.”
Malcolm coughed into his hand. “Er, yes.”
He hadn’t.
“Indeed,” Joan said with effort. “It will be a pleasure to have her home.”
“She’s here to show the home to some potential buyers.”
“Greenway? For sale?”
“It appears so.”
“Well, why haven’t we been offered the chance to buy it?” Malcolm said.
Mrs. Scaldwell laughed, once, like a dog’s bark. Her husband’s eyes shifted away, uncomfortable.
Joan would not have her husband a laughingstock in their company. “I’d rather think of days ahead when we return to our proper home, Malcolm,” she said. “Wouldn’t you? As comfortable as Mrs. Christie’s home is, you understand.”
Mrs. Scaldwell sucked her teeth.
“The acreage,” Malcolm grumbled. “Could be a nice retreat for us when all this mess is over. We could come to terms, of course, Scarsdell. You staying on to wait at table and the like.”
Now everyone in the room was angry and Joan knew Malcolm wasn’t serious about buying the place. “The sale,” Joan said, “is early days, I suppose? But if it did sell, what might that mean for us? For the children, I mean.”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Mr. Scaldwell said.
“But I mean—we rented for the year and it’s only been six weeks. Where will we go?” Her dismay sounded like one of the gulls from the beach.
“You’ll stay for now,” Mrs. Scaldwell said, as though she herself granted the favor.
“Yes, of course you’ll stay,” Mr. Scaldwell said. “A sale will take some time. It might not happen at all, in fact, and you’ve rented the house in good faith.”
Good faith sounded like words transferred directly from Mrs. Christie’s mouth. Letters must have come and gone, buzzing with evidence against them. She had never been invited to take part, to have a say. Staying in this house, Joan felt that she, too, was one of the infants under care, always scuttled out of the room when the grown-ups needed to talk.
“Rented for a not-insubstantial amount of money, I might add,” Malcolm said.
The Scaldwells stared at him, as though he’d spoken out of the mouth of a second head. As though they had ever had any money.
“This seems all rather sudden,” Joan said. “I should talk to Mrs. Christie myself.”
“If Mrs. Mallowan wants to sell her house, I suppose she’ll do it,” Mr. Scaldwell said.
Was he enjoying himself?
“You’ll be out of a home, too, I suspect,” Malcolm said. “It’s not so big a home to need a full-time staff. Not these days.”
Mrs. Scaldwell’s back was stiff at the hob, stirring broth.
“Malcolm,” Joan said.
“It’s a new world out there, my dove,” he said. “And it’s not you and I who need to learn it.”