The Snow Globe Page 7

  He glanced down at the name and bit hard on his lip. It was a ridiculous notion, he thought, wobbling again, but he had to tell her, had to ask her. Taking liberties, his mother would call it. But she was old-fashioned and locked in the past, and times had changed—hadn’t they?

  He crumpled the paper in his fist, closed one eye and took aim at the grate: If I hit it, she’s mine. It was his ninth hit—out of thirteen. Not bad, he thought, but not good enough.

  “Dear Daisy,” he began again.

  Down a darkened passageway, behind another firmly closed door, Daisy sat at her desk with her journal. She wore the long beaver-fur coat her grandmother had given her, her flannel striped pajamas and thick woolen socks. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, the curtain was pulled back and a mullioned window stood open. Snow had settled on the outer stone ledge, and powdery flakes danced into the room, where the embers in the grate still glowed orange. From time to time Daisy lifted her head, absently following a tiny crystal’s whirling descent, tapping her pencil on her lips.

  Daisy’s room was one of the smaller rooms at Eden Hall, was in fact the smallest bedroom, and had been hers for more than twelve years, from when the war started and she’d been moved down from the night nursery on the top floor. The mahogany desk contained two lockable drawers, one of which was where Daisy kept her journal, along with a few irreplaceable treasures: various pebbles, some marbles, a dried-out hawk-moth caterpillar in an old cigar box, a broken slingshot and some poems scrawled on scraps of torn pages in a slanting hand. Inside the other drawer were less valuable items: buttons and ribbons, postcards, items of jewelry and the hand-me-down Elizabeth Arden rouges and lipsticks Iris had given her.

  On top of a chest of drawers was the china phrenology head from Aunt Dosia, which showed every part of the brain and its corresponding function, such as AGREEABLENESS and SPECULATION. Next to it, a bookcase containing every book Daisy had ever read and her old collection of scrapbooks—with transfers and cuttings pasted in crooked—butted up against a line of cupboards, the front panels of which were covered in the same paper as the walls, a gray and pink trellis pattern. A variety of pencil sketches and watercolors—some faded, many poorly framed, of petals, leaves and stems, fungi and butterflies—adorned the walls, along with a signed photograph of Rudolph Valentino.

  Having gone to bed early, having had time to think and down a drink (gin, purloined from the larder while Mrs. Jessop was in the servants’ hall), Daisy now had no doubt—none whatsoever—that what she had overheard was true. Her father, Howard, had a mistress. He was nothing more than a philanderer, a rich philanderer. “Nouveau riche philandering hypocrite,” she wrote in her journal, underlining the last word twice. He was in all likelihood a sex maniac, and probably no different from that man she’d recently read about who had kept three separate families and countless women in various parts of north London. And that poor child, she thought, shaking her head, remembering Nancy’s words; somewhere, she had another sister or brother.

  It was her own fault, she decided, that she felt such shock, such pain. She had romanticized her father, endowed him with qualities he had never in fact possessed. He was less than ordinary, because ordinary implied a modicum of decency, which Howard clearly lacked.

  She would speak to Stephen first thing in the morning, she decided. She needed to hear from him where, exactly, he drove her father each and every Sunday evening. But why had Stephen not told her? “Sworn to secrecy?” she wondered out loud. And yet did a promise to her father override and mean more to Stephen than their friendship? If it were true—she shook her head; she knew it was true—Stephen had been colluding with her father, colluding in her father’s double life.

  She held her nose, took another swig from the bottle and lit another of Iris’s Turkish cigarettes, then sat back in her chair, placed her feet upon the desk and tried to focus her thoughts.

  Yes, she’d get an address from Stephen. “But what can one do—even with an address?” There was no way she could get up to London, and what would she say in a letter? What she wanted to do and what she could do were two different things. What she wanted to do was go up to London and confront Mrs. Margot Vincent; what she wanted to do was march into her father’s bedroom right now, cigarette in hand, and shout, Fucking wanker, like those boys who came to stay during the war. But what good would that do? And if her mother knew all of this anyway, if she had been turning a blind eye, hadn’t she also been protecting him? And wasn’t she then also culpable?

  It was all too confusing. Unbelievable. She needed to think . . .

  And why did women not think? Why did they allow themselves to be . . . to be used in that way? After all, it was about to be 1927! And how could women ever claim equality if they allowed themselves to be used like that? Enslaved to men, pandering to them, protecting them. What the world needed were more women like her aunt Dosia. She didn’t care what any man thought, what anyone thought.

  A new possibility occurred to Daisy: Mabel and Margot Vincent were both being used by her father. One to run his home and look after his family, the other to . . . No, she could not bear to think about what her father and the actress got up to. She shook her head—he was over fifty! And she imagined Mrs. Vincent must be equally ancient.

  Daisy lifted her feet from the desk and picked up her pencil. She glanced at the cigarette in her hand. It had gone out again. There was a definite art to this smoking lark. She leaned forward, tossed the thing out of the open window, then nipped her nose, took another swig, shivered and wrote: “I have tonight taken up drinking and smoking and tomorrow I shall cut off my hair.”

  She paused again, sniffing the air. It was a queer, unpleasant smell, acrid, almost like burning, she mused. Seconds later, after she had flicked the lit cigarette end from the fur of her coat, stumbled, picked up the phrenology head and seen the crack—a hairline fracture running through JUDGMENT—her passion finally broke. And she sat down on the floor and wept.

  Daisy did not hear the door open. She saw Iris’s vermilion toenails cross the carpet in front of her, heard the window close. She felt the china head as it was lifted from her hands. Then she heard herself through her tears: “He’s a liar, Iris . . . He’s a bloody liar.”

  “Yes, darling, I know.”

  Chapter Seven

  Exhausted from her private revolution of the night before, feeling like death and as white as the newly fallen snow, Daisy rose and dressed quickly. Still shivering, she pulled back the curtains, took in the alabaster landscape beyond the iced pane of glass, then laced up her leather boots, pulled on her fur coat and her hat and went down to the kitchen. She waited a moment before pushing on the door; waited to check that the conversation had moved on from the previous evening.

  It was safe. Mrs. Jessop was speaking about God. There was always a lot of talk of God and goodliness and acceptance of one’s lot at Christmas, and Mrs. Jessop always spoke about Him in a different voice, with a carefully considered pronunciation, as though He might be listening. A telephone voice, Daisy thought, not that Mrs. Jessop used the telephone, and quite possibly never had.

  “It’s what’s wrong with the country,” Mrs. Jessop was saying, huddled by the range and still wrapped in her shawl. She stared into a large gurgling pan, her face engulfed in steam, her forehead already damp. The kitchen as usual smelled of boiled cabbage and beeswax and carbolic soap. “If I was prime minister,” she went on, “I’d have it top of the agenda. Oh yes, I’d make church compulsory . . . make God compulsory.”

  “You can’t make Him compulsory. That would be like . . .” Nancy took a moment. “Like communism. Anyway, I blame the war,” she said. “When you think of all that praying . . . and for what?”

  “But it’s not just about this life, is it? No. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Nancy.”

  “Oh, morning, miss,” said Nancy, looking up from the silver cutlery spread ou
t on the table in front of her and noticing Daisy. “Off out into the snow, are we?”

  “Yes, thought I’d take a stroll.”

  Nancy stared at her: “Hmm. You do look like you could do with some fresh air.”

  “Is Stephen in the coach house?”

  “No, clearing the driveway. Been at it with Mr. Blundell since gone seven,” Nancy replied.

  Mrs. Jessop turned to Daisy, and it was then—under the cook’s narrowed gaze—that Daisy realized she felt different, newly exposed in front of them, as though their knowledge of her father’s immorality somehow tainted her, too; as though they judged her by him. She moved quickly toward the door to the passageway. Mrs. Jessop called after her, “Mind how you go; it’s ever so slippy out there.”

  The passageway at the back of the house had a herringbone-pattern red tiled floor and unpainted stone walls. A row of round windows overlooked the yard on one side, and on the other was a line of small, cell-like rooms, each with a stone floor and barred window: the scullery, with the new refrigerator (Mrs. Jessop had refused to have it in the kitchen—on grounds of safety, she’d said) and large game sink; the larder, with its slate benches and well-stocked shelves; and the butler’s pantry, flower room, boot room and parcel room. At the very end of the passageway—next to the door, the tradesmen’s entrance—was the locked gun room, as well as the storerooms for coal and logs.

  Hilda was already busy in the flower room, wrestling with freshly cut holly and evergreen foliage. Old Jessop stood in the boot room in his apron and hat, his back to the open door, a variety of shoes and boots lined up on the bench in front of him. As Daisy walked on she heard him ask himself, “Now, is that there black or is that there brown?” It was unusual to hear the man speak.

  Beneath the bars, the panes in the half-glazed door were opaque with ice, and Daisy paused for a moment to examine the intricate pattern of crystals; like a microscopic universe of burst stars, she thought, scratching at the glass. When she stepped outside, all was still and eerily quiet. The pale sky billowed, heavy with unspent snow, and long spears of ice hung from the drainpipes and gutters and from the shriveled ivy that clung to the walls of the coach house. Daisy walked on, following the newly dug gritted pathway through the snow, across the courtyard and out to the driveway. The only sound to puncture the silence was the occasional soft whoosh as snow slid from a gable or fell through the branches of trees.

  When she spotted the men toward the end of the driveway, Daisy began to march more purposefully, and as she neared them she called out to Stephen. He looked up and stood for a moment leaning on his shovel—staring back at her—before propping it on his shoulder and walking toward her. Daisy took a deep breath and pinched her cheeks.

  Stephen raised his cap, nodded. “Daisy . . .”

  “I was hoping I’d find you . . . I need to speak with you.” She moved nearer. “I need to know about Margot Vincent.”

  Stephen looked away, closed his eyes.

  “I can’t believe you knew and never told me. I can’t believe you kept this from me.”

  He put down the shovel, anchoring it upright in a drift of snow, and then looked back at her. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t.”

  “Where does she live? I want an address.”

  “London, Flood Street, number sixty-six.” He pushed back his cap, placed his hands over his face. “Your father will be mortified.”

  “No, he mustn’t know. I don’t want him to know that I know. You must promise me that you won’t say a word.”

  Stephen nodded.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Is she married?” Daisy asked. There were lots of women, Daisy knew, who prefixed their name with Mrs. who weren’t actually married.

  “Widowed, but only recently.”

  “Children?”

  “One. A son. His name is Valentine.”

  “Valentine? What sort of name is that?”

  “The sort of name an actress gives her son.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Nice . . . I think you’d quite like him.”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  “I’m . . . I’m not sure.”

  “How long?” she asked again.

  “Quite a while, I think . . . but—”

  “Does she have big bosoms?”

  “Daisy . . .”

  “I hate her.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, neither one prepared to look at the other. Then Daisy said again, “I can’t believe you never told me . . . that you’ve kept something so important, so huge about me, my life, from me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stared back at him, into his eyes—suddenly wretched and guilty and tired. She shrugged her shoulders. “And I thought we were friends,” she said, and then she turned and walked away.

  Veering off the gritted pathway, trudging through the snow, Daisy felt unusually hot beneath the layers of wool and weight of fur. Her head pounded, her limbs felt heavy and her mouth had a bitter, metallic taste to it. When she arrived back at the house, Nancy poured her a cup of tea and offered her some toast, but the smells in the kitchen made her more nauseous than ever. And later, as she sat beneath the oriel window in the drawing room, with her paints and paper, a jar of water and a fine sable-hair brush, Daisy felt no better.

  The light, which was always good in that room, so good Daisy had often thought it would be perfect as an artist’s studio, was brighter than ever this morning. The gold leaf-patterned wallpaper and faded bronze- and copper-colored velvets and silks shone with an iridescence that reminded her of a sun-drenched autumn morning. That short time, usually in November, she thought, when trees clung on to their burnished leaves, dazzling the eye before they fell.

  Daisy was still undecided on her life’s vocation, whether to become a painter or a writer, and now it seemed not to matter. It was the stuff of dreams, she thought: a fantasy as childish as the notion of heaven . . . or a true love . . . or a faithful husband.

  She turned to the snow globe on the table next to her. Even now, if she stared into it long enough, she imagined she could see them: still Lilliputian but cold and shivering, desperate to break free but trapped behind the minuscule windows of a minuscule house, in a minuscule snowbound world. If she smashed it, broke the glass, she could perhaps set them free, set herself free. Because Eden Hall was a prison—albeit a luxurious prison—and she had only ever escaped once.

  It had been three years before, after she had pleaded with her father to allow her to go to a coeducational boarding school not far away. “Bedales?” he’d repeated. “It’s not even a proper school, is it?” Daisy had been there for only two terms when she mentioned the Sunbathing Society and her parents agreed that an education in nude sunbathing was not what they were paying for.

  Recently, she had appealed to her father again, telling him that she’d heard of the perfect course for her at the South Kensington School of Art. But once again he had not been forthcoming. Artists, he said, were invariably penniless, troubled souls who squandered what little money they made on gin and cigarettes. Did she really want that sort of life? At the time she had laughed, ruffled his silvering hair and told him that he was becoming an old curmudgeon.

  “You’re talented, I know . . . but seriously, Dodo, painting? It’s hardly a profession . . . and you do not need a profession. Your future husband will surely arrive one day with that.”

  “Iris has a job.”

  He smiled. “Iris’s little shop is a hobby, my dear. She sells dresses to her friends. And anyway, Iris isn’t you.”

  “I could get a job,” she said sulkily. “And then I could fund myself, be independent. I’m sure I could find something . . . Perhaps in an art g
allery or a bookshop . . .”

  Her father laughed. “My dear girl, it’s out of the question.”

  “But why?” she persevered. “Why is it out of the question? It’s not as though I’m suggesting I want to run away and join the circus or become an actress . . . and I’d be able to look after you,” she went on, “live with you during the week in London . . . we’d be able to go out for dinner, to the theater . . . It must get so lonely for you being stuck up in town all week on your own.”

  Howard ran his hands over his hair. “Well, that’s another thing. I may sell the house in London.”

  “Sell it?”

  “Yes . . . it’s . . . not needed,” he said, glancing up at her. “As Iris prefers to live elsewhere, rent a flat, and I have my club . . . it’s become rather superfluous. Though I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention this to the others, at least not yet.”

  “Of course.”

  The house in London probably was superfluous, a luxury, Daisy concluded. Lots of families they knew had disposed of one of their homes of late. It was, as Noonie said, the way things were going. And her father must get lonely stuck up there all week on his own. It was no wonder to her that he’d prefer to spend his weeknights at his club, where there’d be company, other men like him. It had already struck her as rather selfish of Iris to insist on having her own flat when there was a perfectly good home she could have lived in with poor Howard. But her father and elder sister hadn’t seen eye to eye for years and so it was probably best that they did not live together.

  “I shall be sad to see the place go,” she said, for want of anything better and feeling a wave of sympathy for her father. “But I could live with Iris . . . She has a spare room.”

  He shook his head.

  “But I’m eighteen—nearly nineteen,” she pleaded, “and you said—you said that when I was eighteen you’d think about it; you said you’d think about me going to London.”

  “Daisy, Daisy, Daisy. You’re eighteen, yes, but you’re still too young to go off and live on your own.”