The woman’s face had altered yet again. For a moment Nancy Ann thought it was going to crumple into tears, but then, she couldn’t imagine this person giving way to tears; she was such a dominant, selfish, arrogant individual. There was only one other person she disliked more. She watched her turn about now and walk down the room. Her carriage was no longer upright. It appeared to Nancy Ann that she had lost inches. It could have been that she had taken off her brown leather buttoned boots and was in slippers, or removed the old-fashioned high silk and flower-bedecked bonnet. The attitude of the woman now brought another of Mary’s nautical sayings to mind: The wind had certainly been taken out of her sails, and that, she reckoned, was a very good thing, which would mean she would soon leave. Just the thought of having her in the household for weeks on end brought tenseness to her whole body.
After a moment she followed the lady into the hall where there were at least twelve packages and boxes still remaining. Most of the boxes looked light, being made of cardboard, but amongst them were three soft travelling bags, their contents bulging the sides.
Robertson was standing looking down on the array and she said to him, ‘Take the dressing case up but put the remainder of the bags in the storeroom, please.’ …
She was somewhat surprised when Lady Beatrice did not show herself at dinner, nor yet at tea, nor yet at supper. And becoming a little apprehensive, she sent Mary up to find out if she was all right. A few minutes later Mary came down and, standing before her, she shook her head from side to side, saying, ‘She’s all right, ma’am, but—’ And she paused so long that Nancy Ann prompted, ‘But what, Mary?’
‘Well, ma’am, if I may say so, if I hadn’t seen the lady that came in this morning I would not have…well, linked her up with the one that is sittin’ upstairs now.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s…well, she’s like an old woman; there’s no sprightliness about her. I asked her if she would like to come down for a meal and she thanked me civilly and said she wasn’t hungry.’
‘Were her things unpacked?’
‘Not that I could see, ma’am. She was sitting by the window looking out. And…and…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, she had washed her face. You know, it…it was no longer painted, and it was just as if she had wiped off the other person that came in this morning. It was a kind of a shock, ma’am. She’s old. Well, what I mean is, I would have taken her to be in her forties when I’ve seen her afore, but she always had her warpaint on so to speak, and her manner was…well, not pleasant, as you know, ma’am. But there’s a different woman upstairs tonight. If…if I hadn’t seen it for meself I wouldn’t have believed it.’
‘Could…could she be acting? I mean, playing for sympathy?’
‘No, no, ma’am. I came on her unawares like. I tapped on the door, and then went in because she hadn’t bid me enter and I thought she might have been out, gone for a walk in the grounds or something. But there she was, sitting by the window like a lost soul.’
Nancy Ann thought for a while, then said, ‘Get Cook to make a tray up with something light and send it up to her, will you, Mary?’
‘Yes; yes, I’ll do that, ma’am.’
Nancy Ann wondered if she should pay the guest a visit, then decided, No, she must not show any softening in that direction, for Mary, even with her keen insight into human nature, might have been taken in.
It was turned ten o’clock. She was already undressed for bed and was sitting in her dressing gown at the open balcony door. The night was cool, the moon was rising, and as she looked into the night she was again overwhelmed by the feeling of aloneness. She had no desire to go to bed because every time she lay on that bed she could see the two figures lying side by side; yet, even so, she was wishing he was here at this moment.
When the tap came on the door, she thought it might be Mary and said, ‘Come in.’ She was slow to turn about, but then she found herself stationary, twisted in her chair, for there, within the circle of the lamplight, stood Lady Beatrice. And it really did seem that only the name remained; for this person was far removed from the lady with the grand arrogant manners she had encountered this morning. Slowly, she rose from the chair as the woman, stepping towards her, said, ‘May I talk to you?’
‘Yes. Yes, if you wish.’ Nancy Ann pointed to the chaise longue, and then she watched the woman turn and look down on the couch as if she was hesitant to sit. When she did sit down, she placed her joined hands between her knees and rocked herself backwards and forwards two or three times before she said, ‘I’m…I’m not the same, am I? This person you are seeing now, I’m not the same.’
‘No, you are not the same.’ Nancy Ann had seated herself on the chair some little distance from the couch. ‘No, I am not the same.’ Lady Beatrice shook her head again, then said, ‘But this is me, this is the real me. Will you listen?’
‘Yes, yes. If you wish I will listen.’
‘You know why I come here and stay in bed for days on end, for weeks on end?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘I…I come to have a rest, to be waited on, like my mother was waited on. Has Dennison told you about me?’
‘Very little, only that you had a broken romance.’
‘Ha-ha!’ Now she put her head back and the ‘ha-ha!’ she emitted this time was much louder. ‘Dennison is kind. He’s always been kind to me, right from the beginning, and tolerant. Of course, it cost him nothing and made him laugh at times. And of course he knows what Delia’s like, Delia Ferguson, the Honourable Delia Ferguson.’ She stressed the last three words. ‘I’ve lived with her for twenty-six years. Shall I start at the beginning?’
‘If…if you wish.’
‘You are sure you don’t know the facts already?’
‘Only what I’ve already told you, Dennison said you had a broken romance.’
Lady Beatrice did not repeat the ‘ha-ha!’ but she put a hand up to her brow and with her two middle fingers, she rubbed the furrows that were now evident there backwards and forwards as if trying to erase them.
‘My mother was a very extravagant lady,’ she said. ‘She and my father travelled a lot. When they returned she always brought me dolls, sometimes six, one from each country they would have visited. I never went to school; I had a governess and a nurse. By the time I was twelve I had at least forty dolls, ranging from the size of my finger’—she held up the first finger of her right hand—‘to a cloth one that was four foot long and is so made that it can double up into a small parcel. When my mother was at home there were balls and parties. I was never allowed downstairs to enjoy them, but was promised that when I was sixteen I would be brought out. But my mother died before I was sixteen, two months before my birthday. After her death my father went travelling. He was away a year. When he came back I was carrying a child.’
Nancy Ann now watched her blink her eyelids rapidly, then turn her head and look round the room. It was in much the same manner as she had used in the drawing room when she asked where Dennison was. Then, in a low voice, and her head bent forward, she continued, ‘My only recreation was riding. My governess and nurse didn’t bother with me much, they were engrossed in their friendship. Anyway, they thought I was grown up. My daily companion was the groom. He was married to one of the housemaids. He was thirty years of age. He was very presentable, but above all he was kind, too kind. I fell in love with him, and he promised to leave his housemaid and we would run away together. He did run away, but not with me. But he didn’t run far enough, only to a village a few miles away. My father went looking for him with a gun; but it was supposed he didn’t find him, that he had run further away this time.’ She paused again, gasped at the air, then said, ‘My baby was born and it lived a month, and I went out of my mind. My father put me into an asylum. It wasn’t a really bad place. Apparently he had to pay quite a great deal of money for my care and they were kind to me. When at last I was well, I didn’t want to leave; it had become a form of shell
, I felt secure. Then my father died and I had to go home. And what did I find? That nothing was mine except the furniture; the house and land were mortgaged. But the sale of the estate wasn’t enough to meet the creditors, so some of the furniture had to be sold. But still there was quite a bit left and some good silver and china. So, my dear cousin Delia came forward with the offer of storing it for me. Her house was large and rambling. Like her parents, she hadn’t bothered very much about the interior, her main concern was the yard and the horses. So I went to reside with Delia. I had no money, nothing personal except my dolls and my clothes. And over the twenty-five years I have been with her I have been forced, as Cook would say, to earn me keep, because Delia has a very sparse staff. There is a cook and scullery maid, and one housemaid. I earn my keep, so to speak, by doing the needlework; I’m very good with my needle. I…I also clean the silver, my silver which Delia now considers her own, having kept me all these years, as she pointed out. The furniture, too, she considers part payment for my existence. Are…are you beginning to see?’
Nancy Ann could find no words to express her feelings at this moment. She was so astonished, so bewildered by this story that she felt from one moment to the next that she couldn’t believe it. Yet, she had only to look at this person before her to know that every word she was saying was the truth, and that it was being painfully dragged from her.
‘When Dennison came to my father’s funeral he said, “You must come and stay with me,” so I grabbed at the opportunity. And when I saw the number of servants lazing about the place, and there were more years ago than recently, I took the opportunity to make the best of them because I found that my mental trauma had left me, in some way, physically weak, and the demands that Delia made on me exhausted me, because as time went on I became little better than a housemaid…I am still little better than a housemaid. I’ve had a dream all these years of someone dying and leaving me their empty house, and I pictured myself bringing vans to the door and directing my furniture and plate and china into those vans, because my possessions filled two full vans when I arrived there, and I would derive pleasure from seeing Delia’s house denuded. But of late that picture has faded, and all I have to look forward to is my sojourn in those two rooms upstairs and hot baths, and my family around me. Yes’—she made two deep obeisances—‘my dolls are my family. I love them. I talk to them. Because of them I am classed as an eccentric, but that troubles me no more. Now…well, you have stripped off my disguise. There will be one person, however, pleased about this and that is Delia herself, because when I take my jaunts, as she calls them, to Dennison’s, she loses a maid, a personal one now because she suffers with her back and it has to be rubbed. So when I return she will be happy knowing that my route of escape is now closed. Well, I’ve said what it has taken me all day to gather courage to say, and I might as well finish by adding, I scorned Dennison’s choice when he married you, while at the same time knowing that if he had kept up his association in other quarters my visits would have been cut drastically short long before now.’
She now rose to her feet, drawing on two sharp breaths before she continued, ‘You seemed so young, and you appeared typically vicarage bred. But this morning I saw you as no longer young, and I realised that Dennison had seen what I and likely others had been blind to, that you possess strength of character, for which I admire and envy you at the same time. Well now, I will leave you. I’m sorry I’ve intruded. I’m also sorry I played the high-born lady with you. I’ve been a stupid woman not being capable of differentiating. I will leave in the morning. Goodnight.’
Nancy Ann was incapable of speech until the figure reached the door and was about to open it, when she said, ‘Wait a moment, please!’ She went hastily towards the older woman and there was no hesitation when she extended her hand and said, ‘You’re not the only one who has been blind; I too have been quite as blind in my own way. Come and sit down.’ She drew her back to the couch and now, sitting side by side, their hands still clasped, she said, ‘I shall be pleased if you will stay for as long as you intended. The only thing is, as I said, I have cut down on the staff. As you have said yourself, it was wasteful. And I would be grateful if you will take your meals with me downstairs.’
She watched the face that looked almost as old as her grandmother’s crumple into a mass of small lines. The eyes were lost in puffed flesh, the trembling lips looked colourless, the flesh under the chin hung in a loose round sack. She had never noticed this before, because when she had seen her, the strings of her bonnet, definitely drawn tight, had ended in a bow there.
And now she said softly, ‘Please, please, don’t distress yourself.’ Then, again to her surprise, for the second time in twenty-four hours a head was laid against her breast. But unlike the tears of the boy, this crying had the appearance of a river in spate, for the emotion shook them both, and as she held the bony frame tightly to her and muttered soothing words, a section of her mind was telling her that indeed she was now a woman, being a confidante of both young and old. Yet another section was longing that she herself could lay her head upon another breast and feel strong arms about her, and hear a voice murmur, ‘My Nancy Ann.’
When at last Lady Beatrice’s tears were dried and Nancy Ann had led her to the door and along the corridor to her own room and bade her goodnight and told her to worry no more, that they would talk more on the morrow, she had already made up her mind that on the morrow, too, she would write to her husband and tell him what had transpired during the week he had been away, without, of course, mentioning the boy, and she would indicate between the lines that she would be pleased to see him return.
PART SEVEN
THE PATTERN OF LIFE
One
It was Rebecca’s fifth birthday. The sun was shining for the first time in a week. The rain, that had been pouring down for days and had flooded fields and roads, had ceased two days ago. The water had drained from the land and only the streams and rivers were running high.
Everything was planned for the afternoon party. Ten children altogether were invited from the families of the Maddisons, the Ridleys, and the Cartwrights, together with their nurses. And, among them, were seven of Pat’s grandchildren. The children’s parents were to come later to join a dinner party.
A happy feeling of excitement pervaded the house; not an unusual feeling nowadays, for it could be said that the house had been happy for two or more years now. The master rarely journeyed to London since the town house had been sold. But that didn’t mean he had given up his gambling, as the household well knew; on two nights a week at least he would go to his club in Newcastle. At other times he visited the O’Tooles without taking his wife there. They were the evenings when the men got together. Only three months ago he had not returned until three o’clock in the morning from one of the ‘O’Toole sessions’, as he called them. And he had woken her, kissed her, then scattered a great handful of sovereigns around her on the bed, saying, ‘Five per cent of a thousand.’
She could not believe that he had won a thousand pounds in an evening, and among friends, and for the first time since their honeymoon he had talked about gambling. Some evenings a thousand was pin money, he had told her; on a Newcastle night some men could lose five or ten thousand.
When she had enquired where any man could have so much money to be able to lose that amount, he had laughed at her and said, ‘Some of the richest men in the country live in the three counties of Durham, Northumberland and Westmorland, not mentioning Yorkshire. Why, only take the Tyne. Look at the shipyard owned by the Palmers. Look at the glass works. Although they might have changed hands over the years, the Cooksons made a fortune out of them. Then there are the chemical works, the foundries, all owned by local men. And the offshoots from these, it’s unbelievable: candle factories, blacking factories, nails, bolts and screws factories. You think hard of any commodity, and this area produces it. What’s more, some of the owners hardly leave the district. They take their wives abroad once a year but
can’t wait to get back in case someone might be duping them. And yet there are other factories and businesses round about that never see their owners, men who consider this part of the country too dirty to stick their noses in, at least their wives do.’
But when she had said, ‘If there is so much money why don’t they distribute more to the workers who are now on strike in the mines?’ he had chucked her under the chin and laughed as he replied, ‘Miners and such are only happy when they are opposing something. They get better wages now than they have ever had in their lives and still they are not satisfied. It is the malaise of the working class, to grab.’
She remembered thinking later that night, or early in the morning, when he lay breathing heavily by her side: this was why he had lost the election eighteen months ago, he lacked sympathy for the poorer classes.
Since she was very young she had mixed with the poor of the village. Most were lacking in higher education, but in craftsmanship many of them were artists, like the blacksmith, and Mr Kell the shoemaker. His shoes lasted people for years. Her father had always said they were works of art. Then down in the hamlet there were Mr and Mrs Cooper. He was a marvellous tailor. Huntsmen often went to him to have the leather in their breeches renewed or to order a new pair rather than go to the breeches maker in Newcastle. His wife knitted stockings that you couldn’t buy at the hosiers in any town, for they seemed to last a lifetime.
In a way she had detected a pride in all these people, but Dennison seemed blind to this side of the workers. Yet, had he not for years overpaid his staff and allowed them to pamper themselves? He was a strange mixture was her Dennison. She had ceased trying to understand his deeper motives. And she had told herself she mustn’t worry about them any more, because the house was at peace. Everyone seemed to be happy.
The Parson's Daughter Page 34