Read Online The Diamond Waterfall by Pamela Haines - Free Book Online Page B

than Fräulein, he had just finished his first year at university, but was already in trouble. He spent money that he hadn’t got and twice he’d been in a duel. One of his opponents had almost died, and he himself had a huge disfiguring scar.
    â€œThis alone—we don’t worry, although before he made the fight he is so beautiful. But he does
nothing
for his studies.
Und
the money, Alice—I should not say to you this—it
walks away
from him. …”
    She thought now, she might be better to go and sit with Nan-Nan, who had been Mama’s nurse but who in spite of that was not so very old. Only moody. She complained of too little to do now that she lived in the village as companion to an elderly lady.
    â€œAll I ask for, Miss Alice, is another baby in the cradle.”
    Alice knew she was talking of Papa’s marrying again. Now that it was three years since Mama had died, people did. At first it’d been “If he marries again.” Then, more lately,
“When
he marries again.” But there were some things one did not think about because they were unimaginable. And Papa, so sad at her going,
could
not mean ever to replace her. Mama could not be replaced.
    Mama’s going. Before and after. Like the Red Sea of the Bible, divided exactly in two. Before, although everything wasn’t always perfect, at least it was not cold and unkind. After, even if people tried to be nice, it was cold everywhere, and dark.
    Most of all now she missed that sacred half hour in the morning after breakfast, in Mama’s sitting room. Before other people claimed her. Before my lessons began at nine o’clock, when Mama was just up, not even her hair done.
    She talked to me then. She needed me (I think). I wasn’t just a child, an alone child; she used to say, “Alice, you are my friend. Darling, sometimes,
you are my best friend.”
And then she would take my hand and lay her cheek against it. She would let me brush her hair some days. It had a lovely smell, something like roses but not so sweet. I used to bury my face in it, and laugh. I used to laugh a lot then.
    But perhaps the early evening was better still. Because often I would be alone with her up there: not like other children, having to come down to the drawing room at five o’clock, brought by nurse, on their best behavior. I would sit with her often for a whole hour, she with her feet up on the sofa, resting. From as long as I can remember, she had to rest a lot.
    I had to tell her about my day. “Yes,” she would say,
“everything. Of course
I want to hear it all.” Then if something wasn’t right—her indignation: “No, no! They
shan’t
say that, Alice/do that/rob you of that….” She even took sides against Nan-Nan, who had been her own nurse. (“Alice, we shall speak to her nicely, and it will be all right.” And it
was.)
    I was allowed to be her friend. Because she wasn’t always happy, I know that. But I would never have asked her. She would say to me, “We shan’t bother today with how I feel. We mustn’t ever bother with that. This is
your
time, Alice.”
    Sometimes she complained, very slightly: her head ached, she was a little tired…. Sometimes Mrs. Anstruther, Aunt Violet, came to see her. Her friend. (My friend. Since Mama went, she’s been mine too, although Papa doesn’t like her very much.)
    She thought now, standing quite still, I might go and see Aunt Violet. She wasn’t a relation but she had been told to call her Aunt Violet. She was a Roman Catholic, which Papa didn’t like. He said Romanists were bad on the whole—though not as bad as Jews. She heard him say once to Mama, “Violet is a bad influence on you.” But she, Alice, had never been forbidden to go and see her. She could talk to her about Mama. Now, when things got too bad, she would say to herself, “I can go to Aunt Violet.”
    The