by Dorothy Eden
‘Miss Fanny, you do say some things.’
‘Besides, I want to be near the children. Tomorrow, I shall have all my things moved up.’
‘Permanently, Miss Fanny?’
‘Permanently.’
Hannah, with her tired elderly eyes, stared at Fanny. Fanny said, ‘I know what you’re going to say, Hannah. Start a bad habit and you’ll have it always.’
‘No, I wasn’t, Miss Fanny. I was going to say, bless your kind heart.’
In the other room the children were chattering busily, but the moment Fanny went in, like startled birds, they were silent. All the same, their faces and hands were washed, they were dressed in their nightgowns and ready for bed. Ching Mei, when no strange eyes were on her, obviously worked swiftly and efficiently. She had even opened one of the trunks to get out the children’s night things. Now she stood again in her familiar deferential attitude, with clasped hands and downcast eyes.
‘That’s wonderful, Ching Mei,’ said Fanny. ‘You are very quick. Dora is bringing up some bread and milk. Try to persuade the children to have some.’
The Chinese bowed. Fanny said perplexedly, ‘How much English do you understand? You must have spoken it in my cousin Oliver’s home in Shanghai.’
Ching Mei stared.
‘Didn’t she?’ Fanny appealed to Nolly.
‘Not much,’ Nolly answered. ‘She was just beginning to learn when—when—’ She pressed her lips together, to stop their trembling. ‘When we came away,’ she finished flatly. ‘After that we just talked Chinese.’
‘There’ll be no more Chinese spoken,’ Fanny said firmly. ‘Do you all understand?’
Ching Mei bowed again. ‘Tly velly much, missee.’
Fanny felt a lump in her throat. If one wanted a lesson in self sacrifice and loyalty it was all there in this alien woman, with her sad wrinkled face, her expressionless eyes. Tomorrow she must tell Uncle Edgar what Adam Marsh had said. When the children were settled some way must be found to send Ching Mei back to her own country. She must not be allowed to die from homesickness.
The thought of Adam Marsh brought back a surge of warmth into Fanny’s heart. Suddenly she wanted to be alone to think and dream. She kissed the children quickly, ‘This is your bed, Ching Mei,’ she said, indicating the narrow one placed at the foot of the children’s, and was rewarded by Ching Mei’s sudden giggle which meant understanding. But Ching Mei pointed to the floor, indicating she would prefer to sleep there.
Fanny nodded. ‘Do as you like. I’ll be next door if you want me in the night.’
‘We’re not babies to want people in the night,’ Nolly said.
Fanny faced her reproving gaze.
‘I wasn’t suggesting you were. Such a travelled young lady as you couldn’t have remained a baby. Indeed, I’m surprised you haven’t already found a husband.’
Nolly pressed her lips together again, this time to prevent a surprisingly human giggle. Her hair stuck out in pigtails. She had, Fanny noticed, been hiding a doll under the blankets, for now its highly-coloured Chinese face and flat black hair emerged. She was only a baby, after all. Thank goodness, for her precocity had been a little alarming.
Only a baby…For in the night cold fingers touched Fanny’s face.
‘Cousin Fanny! Cousin Fanny! Marcus is afraid.’
Fanny sat up, fumbling for the candle at her bedside. She struck a match quickly, and the frail light showed her Nolly’s nightgowned figure. She was clutching the Chinese doll in its gaudy red kimono. Her eyes were dilated.
‘What is it, Nolly? Why are you afraid?’
‘Marcus is afraid,’ Nolly whispered. ‘He thinks he heard something.’
Fanny wondered if George had been walking about, as he sometimes did long after midnight. The house, as she listened, was as still as it ever could be. She was so used to the infinitesimal creakings and rustlings that she scarcely heard them.
‘Then come and let us see Marcus,’ she said, picking up the candle and taking Nolly’s hand.
If Marcus were frightened he was being remarkably silent about it. It required only one look to see that the little boy was fast asleep. Ching Mei, in her lowly position, wrapped in a blanket, didn’t appear to have stirred.
Fanny was beginning to realise Nolly’s tactics. Marcus was at once her scapegoat and her possession.
‘Come on, Nolly, what was it you heard?’
The child looked round fearfully. The wavering candlelight cast moving shadows over the high ceiling and the panelled walls. In the long mirror of the wardrobe they were caught, two nightgowned figures, Fanny with her dark hair on her shoulders, Nolly with her pigtails and her intensely disciplined face looking medieval, the forlorn child in an old story. The breathing of the sleepers made a faint whisper. There was still no other sound.
‘Something in the chimney,’ Nolly whispered. She pointed to the dark mouth of the fireplace. ‘Up there.’
A cool prickle ran down Fanny’s spine.
‘What sort of noise?’
‘A sort of fluttering, and something falling down.’ Her fingers tightened on Fanny’s. ‘Has something fallen down?’
Fanny resolutely shone the candlelight on the hearth, and into the cavernous chimney. There was a smattering of soot on the tiles, nothing more.
‘Look, that’s all it is,’ she said. ‘Soot from old fires. It gets loose and suddenly falls. That’s what you heard.’
Nolly stared. At last she said, ‘It’s dirty.’
‘Yes. Dora will tidy it in the morning. Now get back into bed.’
Nolly went quite willingly back to her bed.
‘It’s a good thing Marcus didn’t hear that,’ she said. ‘He’d have been frightened.’ And the amah sat up abruptly, mumbling in Chinese. She blinked. The candlelight seemed to dazzle her.
‘Trouble, Miss Fanny?’ for the first time she used Fanny’s name with a pretty deliberation.
‘Nothing, Ching Mei. Go back to sleep, both of you.’
In the morning, which was grey and chilly, with a rising wind and the high tors black against the sky, Dora couldn’t get the fire to burn. The sticks must be damp, she said, and a lot of soot seemed to have fallen down. Perhaps the chimney needed cleaning. With the fascinated children watching, she stuck the long poker up the chimney, and something fell to the hearth with a rush.
Nolly screamed. Fanny hurried to see the small light-as-paper skeleton of the bird, wings still outspread in its vain attempt for freedom.
‘It’s a starling,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Poor thing, it must have been caught there last summer and no one heard it.’
‘I did,’ said Nolly. ‘I heard it in the night. You didn’t, Marcus.’
‘I did,’ said Marcus. ‘I did so.’
‘Neither of you did,’ Fanny said. ‘That bird’s been dead for a long time, poor thing. Take it away, Dora. And later today in the garden I’ll show you some live starlings. They’re coal black, but the sun shines like diamonds on their feathers. Dora, what are you waiting for?’
‘I’d better not let Lady Arabella see, Miss Fanny. She’ll declare it was white, and that would mean—’
‘Dora!’
‘Yes, Miss Fanny,’ Dora mumbled, balancing the light draggled burden on a shovel and hurrying away.
Omens, thought Fanny impatiently. They didn’t exist. Intuition did, and perhaps a certain presentiment. But not omens. They were for the ignorant and the foolishly superstitious.
‘Cousin Fanny, why was the bird in the chimney?’ Nolly’s clear precise voice demanded an answer.
‘Perhaps it was building a nest. Perhaps it just fell down.’
‘Why didn’t it fly out again?’
‘I suppose it couldn’t. The chimney’s dark and narrow, like a tunnel. It wouldn’t be able to spread its wings.’
That was it exactly. Not being able to spread its wings…She had always thought so, from the moment she had identified herself with Lady Arabella’s fanciful white bird.
‘Then it should have flapped and screamed until someone came and rescued it,’ Nolly said with nervous distaste.
‘Yes, darling.’
‘But suppose nobody rescued it?’
‘That’s enough about the poor bird. See, the fire’s burning beautifully now.’
She stooped to hold out her hands to the blaze. It was absurdly chilly for mid-May. She felt very cold.
She had to go down to her own room to put away her finery from yesterday and get out the poplin day dress, faded from many washings. Amelia heard her and came bursting in in her usual unceremonious way.
‘Fanny, what do you think? Papa is buying George a new horse!’
‘Is he?’
‘You don’t sound at all surprised or indignant.’
‘Why should I be?’
‘Because George already has a perfectly good horse, and he knows he is free to ride any other of Papa’s horses. Even my Jinny, if he pleases. But now he is to get a pedigreed hunter, and all I get is money for a paltry bit of French ribbon. You didn’t forget to buy my ribbon, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t forget. I’ll unpack it presently.’
Amelia subsided on to a chair, her skirts flouncing out. She was still pouting and looking like a schoolgirl.
‘Mamma says Papa is talking economy all the time, and yet when George asks for something—or when Grandmamma asks for him, as Mamma says she did, not a no can be said. Fanny, do you think Papa is afraid to say no to Grandmamma?’
Fanny laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Amelia. Your father isn’t afraid of anybody!’
‘No, I didn’t think he was. But it’s awfully unfair. This is supposed to be my year.’
‘I expect you will get what you want eventually,’ said Fanny, twisting her glossy hair into place. ‘And after all, George—’
‘Don’t you say it, too! I know he nearly died for his country. But that was just the fortunes of war. After all, he had lots of splendid times with his regiment before that, and he wanted to go into the army. Oh, I suppose I’m mean and selfish to talk like this. Am I, Fanny?’
‘And vain,’ said Fanny.
‘Oh, I declare! Fanny, you’re the most unsympathetic person I ever met. And why did you sleep upstairs last night?’
‘It’s where I intend to sleep from now on,’ Fanny said calmly. ‘Dora is moving my things today.’
Amelia’s indignation grew again.
‘But what if I want you?’
‘One flight of stairs doesn’t mean I am living on the moon.’
Amelia giggled reluctantly.
‘Fanny, you’re in a mood this morning. I know Mamma thinks it will be nice if you take an interest in the children, but that isn’t to mean you won’t have time to do things for me. I must admit the children did look rather sweet last night. Papa was quite taken with the girl. And at least—wasn’t it terrible the way I blurted it out—they’re the right colour, so that worry is over. I may come up and see them in the nursery today.’
‘May you, indeed? Your own cousins, and it may please you to have the whim to visit them.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. Fanny, you are aggravating. You’ve changed somehow since you’ve had this journey to London. Turn round and look at me.’
Fanny finished pinning up her hair. She turned with deliberation.
‘Well, there you are. What do you see? The great metropolis written in my face?’
‘No-o. But your eyes are so bright. If it wasn’t impossible, I’d believe you’d fallen in love.’
‘Impossible?’ Fanny queried coolly.
‘Well, how could you, with Hannah at your shoulder, and then the wretched orphans. And besides who would you meet on a train?’ Amelia suddenly jumped up. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Fanny, you didn’t see him!’
Fanny couldn’t help her colour rising. How could Amelia know? Was her secret written so plainly on her face?
‘If you mean the clerk from the shipping company—’
‘Oh no, not him, I meant the new prisoner. The one Sir Giles said was arriving. Fanny, did you really see him?’
Fanny’s voice was casual with relief. Amelia could be a destructive person with secrets, whispering them, distorting them…
‘Just for a moment, yes.’
Amelia wrung her hands together.
‘Did he look awfully starved and desperate?’
‘I don’t think so. Really, Amelia, I believe you think Dartmoor prison is full of caged tigers or panthers, with claws and blazing eyes.’
Amelia had gone to look out of the window. She was a little round figure with a cosy domestic look. A man would put his arm round that softly fleshed waist and think of warmed hearths and well-laden tables and filled cradles. He wouldn’t think there was anything further to know about a young woman like that.
‘I don’t know why I have this longing to see one of them,’ she whispered. ‘I should be terrified, and yet—They are just human beings, aren’t they, with a mother who once loved them. I suppose they have long forgotten about love…’
Fanny contrived to keep her colour when Uncle Edgar asked her, at breakfast, about the young man from the shipping company.
‘We didn’t have the opportunity to talk last night. But I take it all the arrangements went well. The company sent a reliable sort of fellow?’
‘Very reliable, Uncle Edgar.’
‘Splendid. I shall drop them a line of thanks. I take it—’
‘I gave him the guinea, Uncle Edgar.’ Fanny lowered her head for this time she could feel the warm colour in her cheeks. She was more and more sure that the guinea had been pocketed by Adam Marsh simply to save her embarrassment, that he was quite unaccustomed to taking money from a lady. She was almost certain that they would laugh about it in the future.
‘Fanny looks well, doesn’t she, Louisa?’ Uncle Edgar boomed. ‘The little change has done her good.’
‘I said she had fallen in love,’ Amelia said boldly, then fell into her irrepressible giggle.
‘Who with? Who, damn him!’
‘George!’
His mother spoke so sharply that George fell back into his seat. He began to frown bewilderedly, the hard flush of anger leaving him.
‘It isn’t true, is it, Fanny? Amelia’s teasing as usual?’
‘Yes, she is,’ Fanny said, because at this moment there was nothing else to say.
She looked round, seeing Aunt Louisa behind the shining silver teapot and coffee pot, at one end of the table, Uncle Edgar with his napkin tucked into his waistcoat, his attention apparently solely on his food, Amelia in her fresh blue morning gown keeping her eyelids lowered to hide the wicked sparkle that the result of her sally had aroused, and George momentarily forgetting the food on his place, staring at Fanny in a way that the old George would have thought unmannerly and gauche.
Who would have thought the scene was anything but a pleasant friendly family breakfast? There was a bowl of freshly picked roses, still holding the night’s dew on the centre of the table. The furniture gleamed from the daily polish it had had before breakfast had been laid. There was a rich warm odour of well-cooked food and beeswax and roses, an odour as old as the house. Lizzie had come in with more hot water, and Aunt Louisa, lifting the teapot in her beringed hand, was saying, ‘More tea, Amelia? Fanny? What about you, my love? Lizzie, bring Mr Davenport’s cup.’
And no one would guess that a moment ago she had been hating Fanny intensely. She had never done more than tolerate her, but as a child she had been harmless enough, even useful as a companion for Amelia in the schoolroom, and later in many other little ways. She could still be tolerated if she hadn’t developed those disturbing ravishing looks that only a blind or preoccupied person would not realise outshone Amelia’s, and if George hadn’t got into that irrational infatuated state about her.
Fanny knew all this. But though she knew Aunt Louisa’s tolerance had turned to hatred, she didn’t know about Uncle Edgar. He was a man. He
would have a natural tenderness for a woman, even if she did represent a threat to his own children.
Amelia was young and silly, and affectionate. But she was easily influenced, and her mother could alienate her, too.
George—when his love was not returned? That was a dark question she could not answer.
But all those things lay beneath the calm privileged comfort of the breakfast table. And she was still not sorry she had returned to Darkwater…
‘Well,’ said Uncle Edgar, heavily playful, ‘if Fanny didn’t lose her heart on this journey, perhaps she will be able to put her thoughts to more practical things. My dear,’ he turned to Fanny, ‘as soon as my small nephew and niece are presentable, will you be kind enough to bring them to me in the library. I must set about making their acquaintance. They looked quite a promising pair, I thought. Oh, and the amah, too. There will be things she can tell me about my poor brother and the children’s mother.’
‘She speaks very little English, Uncle Edgar.’
Uncle Edgar looked up, puffing out his moustache.
‘Nonsense! She must have spoken it in the household in Shanghai.’
‘She says not.’
‘Then she’s not telling the truth. These Chinese are a devious race, all bows and smiles, and not an atom of their true feelings showing. I’ve no time for ’em. Frenchmen, either, or Greeks. Even Americans. They had the impudence to turn us out of their country.’
‘Or anyone who isn’t English, Papa?’ Amelia said archly.
‘Quite right, my dear, quite right. Oh, I grant you the other races serve some sort of a purpose, although I’m never sure what it is. Italians make good servants. And I remember getting some deuced good gloves in Vienna. But this Chinese woman must talk. I’ll make her. Bring her down, Fanny.’
7
THE NURSERY WAS THE old schoolroom where Fanny and Amelia and George, also, until he had gone away to boarding school, had endured so many years of Miss Ferguson’s rule. The blackboard was still in the corner, and the dais where Miss Ferguson used to sit so that she could look down on her rapidly growing ‘young ladies’.