tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she struggled to retain her balance. Two of a kind, she’d probably say when Judy had gone, she and vulgar Mrs Archingford. Her lips would tighten, her whole face would look like iron.
‘I don’t want that girl here again, Helena,’ was what in fact she did say. ‘She is far from suitable.’
Helena did not protest, nor attempt to argue. She had long since learnt that you could not win an argument with her mother because her mother refused to engage in arguments. ‘Gor, she don’t half frighten me,’ Judy Smeeth remarked after that second visit to the house. Helena had realized a long time ago that she was frightened of her also.
‘The completion of your father’s work,’ her mother announced one day, ‘is taking a great deal longer than I had anticipated, even though he left such clear and copious notes. I am unworthy and ill-equipped, but it is a task that must be undertaken. So much begun, so much advanced. Someone must surely carry it to fruition.’
‘Yes,’ Helena said.
‘I cannot manage you and the work together, child. I do not wish you to go away to school, I prefer to have you by me. But circumstances dictate. I have no choice.’
So Helena went to a boarding-school in Sussex, and it never at that time occurred to her to wonder how the fees at this expensive place were afforded, or indeed to wonder where any money at all came from. She returned at the end of that first term to find her mother more deeply involved in the unfinished work and also somewhat changed in her manner, as if affected by the lack of a companion. Sarcasm snapped more freely from her. Her voice had become like a whip. She hates me, Helena thought, because I am a nuisance.
The house had become even more exclusive than it had been, no friend from school could ever be invited there now. The wireless, which had occasionally been listened to, was silent. The telephone was used only to order food and household goods from Barker’s of Kensington. Letters rarely came.
Then one afternoon just after Easter, when Helena was fifteen, a visitor arrived. She heard the doorbell from her bedroom and went to answer it because her mother wouldn’t bother to. It would be an onion-seller, she thought, or one of those people who pressed the
‘Hullo,’ a middle-aged man said, smiling at her from a sandy face. His short hair was sandy also. He wore a greenish suit. ‘Are you Helena?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m your uncle. One of your mother’s brothers. Did you know you had uncles and an aunt?’
She shook her head. He laughed.
‘I was the one who made up the games we used to play. Different games for different parts of the garden. Aren’t you going to let me in?’
‘I’m sorry.’
He stepped into the hall, that awful, fusty hall she hated so, its grim brown curtains looping in the archway at the bottom of the stairs, its grim hallstand, the four mezzotints of Australian landscape, the stained ceiling.
She led him into the sitting-room, which was awful also, cluttered with tawdry furniture her mother didn’t notice had grown ugly with wear and time, the glass-fronted cabinets full of forgotten objects, the dreary books drearily filling bookcase after bookcase.
‘I heard about your father’s death, Helena. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s ages ago now. Seven years actually. He died on my birthday.’
‘I only met your father once.’ He paused. ‘We’ve often wondered about you, you know.’
‘Wondered?’
‘The family have. We’ve known of course that your mother wouldn’t be short, but even so.’
He smiled his easy smile at her. It was her mother who had supplied the money there had been, Helena intuitively realized. Something about the way he had mentioned the family and had said her mother wouldn’t be short had given this clear impression. Not just obsessive in his scholarship, her father had been needy also.
‘I thought I’d call,’ he said. ‘I’ve written of course, but even so I just thought I’d call one of these days.’
She left him and went to knock on the study door, as her mother liked her to do. There was no reply, and when she knocked a second time her mother called out in irritation.
‘An uncle has come,’ Helena said.
‘Who?’
‘Your brother.’
‘Is here, you mean?’ Her mother, wearing reading-glasses on a chain, which she had recently taken to, had a finger marking the point on a page at which she had been interrupted. She was seated at the desk, papers and books all around her, the desk light turned on even though it was the middle of the afternoon.
‘He’s downstairs.’
Her mother said nothing, nor did she display further surprise, or emotion. She stared at Helena, her scrutiny suggesting that Helena was somehow to blame for the presence of this person, which in a sense Helena was, having opened the hall door to him and permitted his entrance. Her mother drew a piece of paper towards her, at the same time releasing her finger from the place it marked. She picked up a fountain pen and then opened a drawer and found an envelope.
‘Give him this,’ she said, and returned to her books.
Helena carried the missive to the sitting-room. The man had pulled back an edge of the grubby lace curtain and was gazing out into the empty street. He took the envelope from Helena and opened it.
‘Well, there you are,’ he said when he had read the message, and sighed. He left the note behind when he went. Her mother had simply ordered him to go away.
