‘Yes.’
‘And you believe it?’
When she did not answer immediately he raised his head quickly, saying, ‘It is the truth, absolutely. I swear on it. You must believe me, my dear.’
What happened next happened so quickly that it gave her no time to escape from his touch, for he sprang from the chair and dropped down by her side on the couch and was gripping her hands. His face close to hers, his eyes pleading, as was his voice, he said, ‘Come back, Nancy Ann. Please. Please. I need you. Dear, dear God, how I need you, I’m lost without you. I’ll…I’ll do anything you ask. Make…make your own terms, only come back to me.’
Her lips were trembling, her eyes were moist as she looked at him; part of her was urging her to throw herself into his arms, the other, the newborn part that had emerged over the last week, was telling her there would never again be another opportunity like this.
Withdrawing her hands from his and easing herself along the couch, she rose to her feet, turned her back on him and walked to the fireplace; and there she stood for a while before she said quickly, ‘Very well, but only, as you said, on my own terms.’
She knew he had risen to his feet and that he was standing some way behind her, and was waiting.
Swinging round now, she said, ‘If I’m to go back into that house, I shall only go back as its mistress.’
‘You have always been its mistress.’
‘No, no, I have not.’ She only just prevented herself from putting her hands up to her lips because she knew she had shouted and in the presence of death laid out in the adjoining room. And she went on, more quietly now, ‘Of your large staff, no more than two or three have given me my place, and surely the events of the past week have shown you how little they consider me. Well, I want a clean sweep. If I am to be a real mistress in that house I don’t want to live among spies and traitors. I shall want to reorganise the whole staff.’
His voice, too, came quietly to her, saying, ‘Very well, my dear, you do that. If that is all.’
‘That isn’t all. There is something that has worried me since I have been in that house. You are not going to like this, but I must say it, it is the boy. He is a bright intelligent boy, he should be sent away to school.’
Even in the dimness of the room she saw his face darken and his jaws clench, and after a moment he said, ‘You ask too much, Nancy Ann. You know my feelings in that way. I…I could never bring myself to see to that boy’s education. It would be a concession, an acknowledgment that I have fought against.’
She broke in now, saying, ‘Would you object to someone else educating him?’
He paused for a moment as if thinking, then said sharply, ‘Not Mercer. I wouldn’t have that.’
‘Nor would I. I hadn’t thought in that direction.’
He knew in what direction she was thinking, and again she saw the muscles in his cheekbones tighten, but he said nothing, only half turned from her, muttering now, ‘Is that the sum total of your demands?’
‘No.’ Even the syllable trembled as it passed her lips. Now he was facing her again, staring at her, waiting, and then, her head down, she said, ‘Our life together cannot…cannot be the same.’
There was a long pause that went into a full minute before he said, ‘You mean you will not come back as my wife?’
When she made no answer he asked quietly, ‘For how long do you intend such a situation to continue?’
‘I don’t know.’
Again there was a pause; and then, his words seeming to come from deep in his throat, he said, ‘You know me, Nancy Ann, I would find that situation impossible were it to be…be permanent. Let us be frank when we have got this far. I want a wife. I need a wife. I need you.’
Why at this moment should she see the face of James and hear his voice saying, ‘Procreation; that was all I was needed for’? And then came Peter and a wisp of the conversation on the night they were driving to the ball, and his words, ‘That is no marriage.’
Her voice was small now as it came, saying, ‘You’ll have to give me time.’
‘How much time? I gave you too much time after William was born. That’s where I made the mistake.’
When she turned and again looked into the empty grate, he said, ‘I shall stay for your father’s funeral, after which I shall return to London. The house is being redecorated; I…I am thinking about selling that too. Anyway, in the meantime I am staying with Pat and George. They have made arrangements to tour through Northern France and have left it open for me to join them if I so wish. I shall do so, and in that case I will be away for about three weeks. When I come back we will talk again. Will that suit you?’
She forced herself to say, ‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Then I will take my leave of you until tomorrow. What time is the funeral?’
‘Eleven o’clock.’
‘I shall be there.’
As he turned from her she said, ‘Dennison.’ And at this he swung round to her, waiting.
‘May I ask you to inform the staff that l will now be in sole charge of the house and the yard staff?’
She saw his face stretch slightly, and he repeated, ‘The yard staff?’
‘Yes, the yard staff.’
‘Very well.’ His head moved slowly. ‘I will do as you wish. When will you return?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
‘I will inform them.’
Almost with military precision now, he turned and marched from the room. And she, going to the sofa again, sat down and leant her head in the corner of it while her hands gripped the back, and so mixed were her emotions that she couldn’t tell whether she was happy at the turn of events or desperately sad.
Two
The funeral of John Howard Hazel was well attended. Most of the men from the village joined the cortège outside the gates of the Manor House. And the new parson, the Reverend Michael Nesbit, spoke very kindly of his predecessor.
Those villagers who came back to the Dower House were given refreshments in the barn; the few carriage people who returned were received in the house. Dennison was not among them. But Pat and George, and her sister Florence and her husband did return. But within three hours of John Howard Hazel being laid in the ground the house was back to normal, except it lacked his presence.
And now Graham, who had stayed after all had gone, was bidding Nancy Ann goodbye. He did not offer any word of condolence; in fact, his words throughout the week had been few, although she had seen him every day. And she herself gave him no word of thanks, but she took his hand in between hers while her tear-filled eyes spoke for her.
They had reached the door when he said, ‘You are going back then?’ He did not look at her as he spoke and he had to wait for an answer: ‘Yes, yes, I am going back.’
Now he did look at her while saying, ‘You could do nothing else. He could, as I’ve said before, have claimed the children even if you had got a divorce.’
She was surprised that he could speak like this, and she was asking herself how he should know about the divorce, but then she remembered that he too was a friend of George and Pat, although he never went visiting there.
Without waiting for her to make any comment, he went on, ‘Don’t worry about your grandmama; she is not afraid to be on her own. But then, she won’t be entirely. When are you leaving?’
She had to wet her lips before she said, ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Oh.’ He was walking away from her when he turned his head slightly and said, ‘If you want any help, just let me know.’
She watched him disappear along the path and she did not check herself as she thought, Why are there so many different kinds of love?
She did not move back to the house the following day, for the weather changed and it poured with rain. But the morning after, the sun was bright and warm and at mid-morning she sent Mary and Agnes across with the children. Agnes was to stay in the nursery to see to them and Mary was to return, bringing McLoughlin with her to carry back the t
hings he had brought over in the first place.
This morning Jessica appeared to be her old brusque self, saying, as she watched the gangling Irishman shouldering the cases and bundles like a packhorse, ‘He’s a McLoughlin all right.’ Then as Mary picked up the last soft bag and went out of the door Nancy Ann kissed the old woman and felt herself being hugged in arms that were still strong. She returned the embrace, then hurriedly followed Mary.
It was as they entered the path through the trees that Mary, slowing her pace, said, ‘Ma’am, I’ve heard something that I think you should know.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, McLoughlin, he…he told me something that he…he thinks you should know.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well. Well, Jennie…Well, really, it wasn’t her at first, it was young David. Well, as usual the boy was where he shouldn’t have been; he prowls around, ma’am, and worries Jennie to death. But anyway, he saw them, the housekeeper and her sister, in one of the empty rooms upstairs and, as he described it to Jennie, Mrs Conway was putting silver things and little framed pictures like cameos into a cloth bag. And then they went down the back way. It isn’t the first time, ma’am, I understand. You see, they, by what McLoughlin said, they…well, they didn’t expect you back, so some of them must have been helping themselves, Jennie told McLoughlin, and he thought you had better know, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, Mary. At least it would appear I have one loyal servant in the house.’
‘Oh you have more than that, ma’am. But…but, you know, folks are frightened for their jobs, and those in a position at the top of a household like yours…well, ma’am, well, you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, Mary, I know what you mean. But there’s going to be a great change in my household.’ She noticed that she said, ‘my’ household, and for the first time it was to be her household, and she ended, ‘It will start this very day.’
The change in the staff’s attitude was very apparent when McTaggart came down the steps and relieved her of her bag. And at the top of the steps there was Trice waiting, and slightly behind was Mrs Conway.
It was evident to her that they had definitely been informed who was now in charge of the house and them. She passed them without moving a muscle of her face. She did not, as she usually had done, thank the footman for his assistance, but at the foot of the stairs she turned to Mrs Conway, saying, ‘I would like you, and you Trice and McTaggart, to await me in my office immediately. Also call Appleby and Gillespie, and have the rest of the staff assemble in the hall.’
The tone was one that neither Mrs Conway nor the others had ever heard her use and the woman even dipped her knee and replied smarmingly, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
In her sitting room she sat down heavily in a gold-framed Louis chair, and the long drawn breath she let escape seemed to deflate her body. Up to this moment she had felt strong in her determination to clear the household of those she now considered her enemies, and she still meant to get rid of them, but, nevertheless, she was finding it a strain to keep up this new pose. What was more, she was alone as never before: there was no Dennison to lay her head against; nor was there a grandmama to give her earthy advice and spur her on; nor yet Graham, to tell her he was behind her waiting to be used. No, here she was, in this huge establishment, about to rule it. But there was something she must do before she went downstairs and confronted those people.
She pulled herself up from the chair and, going to the wall, she rang the nursery bell. Within a few minutes Mary appeared in the room, and she said to her, ‘Will you fetch the boy up, Mary, please? Do it as unobtrusively as you can. Come up the back way. If he should be in the boot room, the best way to come would be to approach it from the yard and take him quietly out that way again.’
‘Leave it to me, ma’am. I’ll do that.’
She now went into the closet room and cooled her face and hands with water from the ewer. Then seated at the small dressing table, she gazed at her reflection and asked herself if she looked the same as she had done ten days ago, and the answer was, no, the bright sparkle had gone. There was no colour in her cheeks, the light in her eyes showed a pain in their depth. No, she was not the girl she had been ten days ago. She was no longer a girl. That period of her life was over.
When she heard the door opening in the other room she went back, and there was the boy. Mary had her hand on his shoulder pressing him forward, and when she was seated and he stood before her, she said, ‘Hello, David.’
And he answered, ‘Hello, ma’am.’
‘Would you like to tell me, David, what you saw the housekeeper doing, and which room she and her friend were in?’
He blinked his eyes, then glanced up at Mary. She nodded at him, and then he said, ‘Will they get wrong?’
To this she answered truthfully, ‘Not more than they deserve if they have been doing wrong. What kind of things were they putting in the case? Can you describe them? Were they little pictures like this?’ She reached out and took a miniature from the table standing to her side which showed a hand-painting of Rebecca at six months old. Dennison had commissioned it. And now the boy nodded and said, ‘Yes, that size. Some were bigger.’
‘And what else were they putting in the case?’
His eyelids blinked again before he said, ‘Just bits, ma’am, bits of silver like are on the breakfast trays.’
‘How did you manage to see them doing this, David?’
‘Oh.’ His head wagged, then he muttered, ‘I was looking around, ’cos you and the master were gone and…and I was in the bedroom in the far wing…and I heard somebody coming and I hid behind one like that.’ He pointed now to her dressing table and went on, ‘And I could see through the space atween the glass and the top what they were doin’.’
‘Did you tell anybody about what you saw?’
‘Yes. Yes, I told…I told our Jennie.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She was vexed.’ He smiled now, a slow smile that lit up his face and seemed to spread to the bright gold of his hair that had no brown streaks in it now, as he added, ‘She’s pleased you’re back, ma’am, and so am I, an’ the cook an’ all. She says…’
He had stopped abruptly and hung his head, and Nancy Ann, smiling gently at him, said, ‘I’m pleased to hear that, David. Now go back with Mary and if you should be asked why I wanted to see you, just say I wanted to know if you had been a good boy. Will you remember that, David?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Oh, yes, ma’am.’
She now turned to Mary, saying, ‘After you have taken him downstairs, go straight to my office and await me there.’
She let a full fifteen minutes elapse before she left her sitting room. From the gallery she could see the whole staff assembled and the sight of them en masse brought that quivering feeling to her stomach. But, her head held high and her gaze directed straight ahead, she slowly descended the stairs, passed the end of the two ranks they had formed, went through the arch, along the passage and into her office. There, Mary pulled out the chair for her and she sat down at her desk. Then after a moment, looking up at the kindly face of the young woman who had become closer to her than even her grandmother or Pat, she said on a sigh, ‘I hate doing this, Mary, but it’s got to be done.’
‘Yes, ma’am, an’ you’re quite right. The captain used to say, you know where I worked afore, whenever he had to face anything that was disagreeable, and such times were when he had to stop the mistress overspending, he would say, “Clear the decks ready for action!”‘
‘Oh, Mary.’ She pressed her lips together, closed her eyes and shook her head for a moment; then she said, ‘Well, here we go, clear the decks ready for action. Go and tell Trice, McTaggart and Mrs Conway to come in.’
It seemed that Mary almost skipped from the room to carry out this duty, and a few minutes later the three people who had considered themselves to be heads of the house under the valet, walked quietly into the room and stood before the desk.
Nancy An
n had a pen in her hand. She was writing names on a sheet of paper and she finished the last one with a flourish before looking up at them and saying without any lead-up, ‘Your wages are paid by the quarter: there are three weeks to go, you will be paid in full. But you will now all pack your bags and leave this house within the next hour.’
They were so stunned that not one of them said a word, but simultaneously their lower jaws had dropped. She had never seen the butler’s mouth open so wide for he always seemed to talk through his teeth. But it was he who spoke first, saying, ‘But, ma’am, you can’t do this, we were engaged by…’
‘To my knowledge the master has told you that I am now in sole charge. I am dismissing you all. But there is one more thing. Unless you want to find yourselves in court, the articles you have stolen must be returned within the next two days or else the police will be informed. Particularly you, Mrs Conway, you had better tell your relative to return the bag of miniatures et cetera you filled for her just recently, or you might find yourself in a dire situation.’
For a moment she thought the woman was going to faint. She saw the colour drain from her sallow face leaving it grey and her throat expand as if she was aiming to draw breath into her body.
She now looked at the butler. His countenance looked evil, but she faced him, saying, ‘You have all, for years, lined your pockets at the master’s expense. You have done deals with every tradesman who has called here. This I have proved from the order books. And so I need have no worry that I am turning you out destitute. Nor shall I worry that you will all find it difficult to obtain good employment; it would be impossible for me to foist any of you onto another family…That is all I’ve got to say.’
Not one of them moved, until the footman, McTaggart, muttered, ‘No reference?’
‘No reference.’
‘We could make you prove what you say.’
‘Oh, I can prove what I say, and witnesses would come forward.’ They seemed about to glance at each other but changed their minds; instead they glared at her with such ferocity that she wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had lifted his hand to strike her.
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