A Winter's Child by Brenda Jagger

in? Was he reluctant to open the gate for her, to suffer once again the assault of her youth upon his solitude, the effect of her presence upon the total concentration he enjoyed from her mother? Very likely. A dozen years ago, a fastidious, highly conventional bachelor of fifty-three, he had succumbed most astonishingly to the charms of a fresh-complexioned, full-bosomed woman of thirty-two, a widow fallen on hard times who had taken employment as paid companion to one of his neighbours. He had wanted the mother, never the daughter. For the first eight years of his marriage, boarding school had taken care of that, then the war. What now? Claire swallowed hard, ran up the garden path, past the elderly stranger in starched cap and apron who opened the door, to the drawing room, where another woman, who should have been a stranger, awaited her.
    â€˜Mother.’
    â€˜Claire.’
    They embraced self-consciously, finding it easier than talking to each other.
    â€˜You look well, mother.’
    â€˜Darling – take off your gloves and your hat.’
    She did so, revealing her neat, gleaming, outrageously shorn head.
    â€˜Good Heavens,’ said Dorothy, biting her lip, her hand going automatically to the heavy coils of her own waist-length tresses. But she had expected this, had read of it in the newspapers, heard of it in other families, had warned Edward. They had discussed it at some length and he had agreed – or at least she hoped he had agreed – not to make a fuss. For as Edward had pointed out, with some wit she had thought, hair grows. But she was flustered, nevertheless, and quite shocked to find her daughter looking not in the least boyish as might have been expected but, on the contrary, so very female. Sophisticated. That was the only word she could apply and it would be too much to hope – far too much – that Edward would like it.
    â€˜Tea,’ she said, retreating to familiar ground. ‘Everything is ready. Do sit down.’
    And as she obediently took her place at the table Claire wondered how many times she had already witnessed this scene, how many times she would witness it again, her mother waiting with her tea kettle, biting her lip and frowning over the consistency of Edward’s jam and – in this still meagre postwar world – spreading on his toast her own share, and the maid’s share, of the butter.
    â€˜Mother, how lovely to see you.’
    Yet there had never been any real closeness between them. Throughout the whole of Claire’s life Dorothy had been too preoccupied for motherhood, first with the problem of Claire’s feckless, spendthrift, gypsy-dark father: then with the hardships and humiliations of a debt-ridden widowhood: then with Edward. She had never regarded maternity as a joy in any case, only as a responsibility and she would have found difficulty in relating to Claire, who so very definitely had her father’s eyes – and therefore might just possibly be tainted with his disposition – even if Edward himself had managed to care for her.
    He had not.
    Perhaps – and then only perhaps – had she resembled her mother, he may have found her more acceptable. But the sight of his golden haired, pink and white Dorothy beside her dark almost foreign looking daughter never failed to make him uneasy.
    â€˜Now, just who do you take after, little girl?’ certain ladies of Upper Heaton had been fond of asking, their arch manner reminding Edward so forcefully that his Dorothy had once enjoyed intimate relations with another man that he began, without fully understanding the reason, to exclude Claire whenever possible from outings and invitations, discouraging her from attending the suburban church where – his health permitting – he often played the organ. Boarding schools, he sometimes felt, had been the salvation of his nervous system, his digestion and his marriage.
    Whenever the school holidays permitted