Caroline England

by Noel Streatfeild

  “But why? I suppose you made a mess of the job?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “No. Why I can’t say—all mares can’t drop a foal. There it is, freak of nature.”

  The baby was christened Louisa. The weather was cold and the child unimportant, so no relatives came to the ceremony. Prudence stood proxy for Lucy, George Torrys’ wife, and Nurse for Arnagnes. Thomas Felton was the godfather.

  The only person really interested in the baby was Caroline. She was not supposed to go near the cot in case of waking the child, but she did succeed in surreptitious peeps and they left her marvelling. A doll come to life. How she wished Nurse would let her hold her.

  The arrival of Louisa was an advantage to Caroline, as it took attention off herself. The baby was not allowed out and, therefore, Nurse was kept indoors. This meant that for the first time Caroline was sent out to play alone. She was not allowed to get dirty, and fearful would be the results if she fell over, so she had to go carefully, but she had found a lot that was exciting.

  It was the end of February. Odd that Caroline, who was almost five, had never noticed the spring before. With Naomi, walks had been broken with exclamations: “See the pretty crocus. We must ask Mr. Pettigrew to let us have that for the nursery.”

  “Look pet, there’s the first daffy.” Caroline, trotting along beside her, had seen but not registered. Alone now for the first time she made daily discoveries. A clump of snowdrops under a tree. Primroses under the fence round the field. The points of the daffodils were poking up, new ones every day. She had never consciously looked at the flowers in the garden before. There had been expeditions with Naomi for a handful of marigolds from the pond, or for an armful of bluebells from the wood; but this quiet hunting for things, this discovering them for yourself, it made you feel light inside.

  Old Pettigrew watched her and with simple understanding left her alone. But one day she came to him. Might she pick one of those little white flowers? He took her hand and she led him to a clump of snowdrops.

  “You pick ’em Miss Caroline, but they’ve a name same as you. Snowdrops they be.” He watched her as she carefully picked one. “Were you wanting them for your nursery?”

  She held the flower to her nose, enjoying its cold old-moss smell. She had that afternoon seen Louisa having her nappie changed. Selina was trying to feed the baby, with the result that the child was often hungry. She screamed a lot. Sometimes Nurse was not too gentle. She had not been while Caroline watched. An immense pity filled her for something so defenceless left so much alone with Nurse. It was as consolation she wanted the snowdrop for Louisa.

  “It’s for baby,” she explained.

  Pettigrew never thought to point out that Louisa was too small to appreciate the gift. Instead, he made Caroline pick some leaves with her bunch, and took her back to his shed and tied it up for her with the fine wire he used for posies for Selina.

  The flowers were a failure. Caroline slipped up to the cot and laid them on the pillow. Nurse found them there. She was very angry and threw them into the fire. She said it was Satan at work trying to lead Caroline to poison the blessed baby. She gave her a beating to save God the trouble of punishing her. Caroline cried, partly from fright and pain, but mostly because the snowdrops Mr. Pettigrew had done up with wire had been thrown on the fire.

  On Caroline’s fifth birthday her father gave her a garden of her own, and a fork and trowel to dig it with. The idea had been Pettigrew’s but Caroline, of course, thought it was her father’s and it endowed him for many years with an entirely imaginary gift for knowing just what presents the household would like best. She had other presents of course. A needle-book which Miss Sykes had made for her out of cardboard. She had covered it with silk and edged it with tatted lace. Inside were leaves of cashmere, scalloped. The book was tied with a crimson cord. From her mother was a very handsomely dressed doll. From Nurse, a plate to eat her porridge out of. It was pink with a gold edge. On the bottom of it was written in curly gold letters: “Prepare to meet Thy God.” All these things had seemed beautiful at breakfast, but they paled before her father’s gifts. After all, a needle-book, however lovely, is an indoor sort of thing connected with lessons. The doll she hardly saw, for Nurse said it was too good to smash and put it away on the top shelf of the nursery cupboard. Nurse’s plate was of course very nice, but Caroline had always hated porridge and she felt, quite rightly, that Nurse would consider that any child ought to eat quickly when there was a treat like seeing “Prepare to meet Thy God” written on the bottom of the plate.

  Pettigrew was a perfect man to have about for the beginning of a garden. He helped plant things that would be nice presently, but he quite understood the need for some sort of show right away. He found some pansies, a polyanthus or two, and a few scarlet tulips that he had over from bedding-out. It was quite a presentable garden by tea-time on the birthday itself. She was carrying the last pansy to plant when Bates beckoned her to the wood-shed. She did not want to stop because she wanted the garden finished by tea, and she could not dig with all of herself as Pettigrew did, for fear of soiling her pelisse. This made her slow. Unwillingly she stopped.

  “Miss Caroline,” Bates spoke in a nervous whisper. “Naomi sent you this and said ‘Dear love for your birthday.’” He felt in his pocket and brought out a shell. “She said to hold it to your ear and you’d hear the sea.”

  Caroline put down her basket with the pansy in it. The shell was big and turned into itself with brown edges. She put the crack between the edges to her ear. She had no idea what the real sea was like, except what she had seen in pictures, but now she knew just how it sounded. There was a distant rushing and roaring. Naomi’s figure was growing faint. Notes in other people’s voices, certain inflexions, would always bring her back. When not hearing these, she was one with Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. Had she ever been there? This shell made her the more fabulous. How could a person be real who could put the sea into as hell?

  Caroline dug a hole in the corner of her garden and buried her shell. In the nursery nothing was safe. Nurse was the judge of what was worth keeping. Perhaps, like the snowdrops, it would go on the fire. Perhaps, like the new doll, on to the top shelf out of reach. She smiled with satisfaction as she patted the earth smooth. It was nice to think she could hear the sea whenever she chose to dig up her shell.

  For tea there was a cake. Selina was still in her room, so Caroline and Nurse ate a pink slice apiece, looking at each other in silence across the five candles.

  “There,” said Nurse when they had finished. “Fold your hands and shut your eyes, and when you say your grace remember you’ve the Lord to thank for all the blessings you’ve had to-day, and that because of them He expects you to keep from sin throughout the year.”

  Caroline said her grace exactly as usual, not because she was not grateful for the blessings received, but because if she thought of anything else except the grace, she was apt to forget it and be smacked. She was just scrambling down from her chair when Hannah came in with a message that, as it was Miss Caroline’s birthday, her papa would like her to go down to him for an hour. Nurse was annoyed.

  “What’s he want her down for? No thought he hasn’t got. With baby’s gowns to clear starch does he think I have time to waste on dressing Miss Caroline?”

  Hannah looked sympathetically at the child. They were all sorry for her in ‘the hall.’ Clearing meals had been fun in Naomi’s day. A birth in the house made a lot to talk about; especially when a lady suffered the way Mrs. Torrys did. This psalm-singing pocketful-of-misery never seemed to want to gossip. However, it was Miss Caroline’s birthday and ought to be made nice for her, which rubbing Nurse up the wrong way certainly would not do; so she said good-naturedly:

  “Well, I’m here. Why not let me dress her for you?”

  Nurse hesitated. She disliked any other influence in her nurseries, which was why she had no
t demanded a nursemaid. Still, she was tired and there would barely be time to get her starching done before baby had to go down to her mother.

  “Very well.” Her voice showed she thought she was granting a favour. “She has a new dress. I’ll show you.” Hannah would have liked to have spoken her mind, but the thought of Caroline’s comfort kept her mouth shut. Instead she held out her hand to the child and they followed Nurse into the night-nursery.

  The new dress was of maroon Lyons velvet. It was open down the front to show a panel of gold and maroon satin. The trimming was stripes of plaited passementerie and steel buttons. Hannah was full of admiration.

  “Well, isn’t that handsome? Just the thing for a little lady.”

  Nurse sniffed.

  “If the ‘little lady’ ever remembered ‘handsome is as handsome does,’ she’d be a better girl.” She opened a cupboard and took out a pair of drawers. “She’ll need these clean. Never knew such a child for getting her seat in a mess, and here’s a petticoat.”

  Caroline stood meekly in her underbodice while her clean, straight-legged, prim little drawers were buttoned on, followed by her scalloped-edged flannel petticoat and on top, one of her lace-edged best petticoats. She took a deep breath while her frock was being buttoned. Mama liked a little girl’s dress to fit properly. Then, as Hannah sat down and picked up the comb and brush, she carefully placed herself with her back to her, leaning against her knees.

  Hannah, twisting the child’s curls round the stick kept for the purpose, thought what a little caution she was. When she had been a child she would never have stood so still. Not that with a cottage full of children anyone had troubled to put her hair into ringlets. All the same, such goodness seemed unwholesome. Hannah decided to talk to her mother about the little thing next time she got home.

  The curls finished, her front hair fixed firmly back with a bow, Caroline put her hand into Nurse’s, prepared to go down to her father.

  James was on little more than nodding acquaintance with his daughter. He had rather liked the look of her since he had seen her in church, but he had not bothered to know more than her outside, and indeed had little opportunity. When she was not with her nurse she was with Prudence Sykes or her mother. He had scarcely seen the child alone since she had been born. Pettigrew’s news of her fondness for the garden had awoken his interest in her. He had been fond of the garden at her age. She made him consider for the first time the actual earth on which the Manor stood. The countless children who perhaps had delighted to dig in it. Had those first-known Torrys children, Richard, Mary, Anne and the rest of them, dug in their day? He was pleased to buy .the trowel and fork Pettigrew recommended. Pleased to give her a plot of her own. There was something very right in a Torrys turning over Torrys’ earth. Thinking of her not as an unwanted girl but as a child of the Torrys line had made him take the unprecedented step of having her down after tea.

  Caroline was naturally in awe of her father. The attitude of all the females in the house suggested that he was an easily angry man. “Hush. You’ll disturb your papa.” “Now you’ve trodden on your papa’s flower-bed. I dare not think what he would say if he knew.” Then, too, she was impressed by his immunity to the wrath of Heaven. If she so much as swung a leg in church she was giving great offence which might end in fearful punishment, but Papa could sleep, and even snore, and nothing happened to him, neither did he appear to fear that it would. To-day, however, with his garden and fork and trowel foremost in her mind, he appeared in a far more friendly light.

  James waited until the door had closed on Nurse. Then he held out his hand.

  “Well, birthday Mis.s How is your garden?”

  She came across the room to him and leant against his knee and looked up at him.

  “Thank you, Papa, for my birthday gift.” This was what Nurse had told her to say and it was lifeless. Then her face lit up. “I’ve planted lots and lots of flowers. I like the tulips best. But I like the pansies too, only there’s only buds on them. Can Louisa have a garden too, when she is five?”

  “Of course.” A slight frown crossed his face as he thought of the disappointment upstairs. “You shall all have gardens. Perhaps one day Mama will give you a little brother. He would like a garden, wouldn’t he?”

  “A little brother!” Caroline considered the subject of brothers. She knew no little boys. She had an idea they were rough and rude. “I would rather have another little sister.”

  James thought this almost blasphemous. He drew Caroline on to his knee.

  “You mustn’t say that, dear. We must all pray very hard that dear Mama will give us a little boy.”

  Caroline stared up at him, trying to understand. “Why Papa?”

  James ran his forefinger in and out of one of her curls. “Do you know that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers have lived here for nearly four hundred years?”

  Time meant nothing to Caroline. Neither did what he said make sense. Grandfather Ellison did not live here and Grandfather Torrys had gone to be with God. Yet there was that once-upon-a-time sound in her father’s voice which in grown-up people meant they were going to tell a story. Contentedly she leant back against his shoulder.

  “You know that window in Mama’s and my bedroom that looks out at the back?” James moved her slightly so that he could see her face and be sure she was attending. “Well, that window is on a wall. It is covered with paper now but—”

  “There’s daisies on it,” Caroline put in.

  “Yes. Well, under those daisies is a bit of wall that has been standing since the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was built by a great-great-grandfather of yours called Richard Torrys.”

  Caroline’s mind was still on the wall-paper. “Did he put the daisies on it?”

  “No. He built a whole house nearly all of wood. A fire came and burned it down, except that wall, one bit of which is in the bed-room and the rest in the dining-room.”

  Caroline nodded knowingly. The moral of this story was obvious.

  “God burnt it. What had he done that was bad?”

  “Nothing.” James tried not to sound impatient, but considering how often his ancestors had suffered from fire, he found Caroline’s suggestion unfortunate. “He was a good man. Why should God have burned his house?”

  “Perhaps he had little children that was bad.”

  “He had children—eleven of them—but they were not bad. They were relations, just like Uncle George and the other uncles and aunts are to-day.”

  Caroline let the subject drop without comment.

  Uncles and aunts were, of course, never bad, but in spite of this she gravely suspected an angry God of incendiarism. She still hoped that a story was coming.

  “Were there any little girls in the house when it was all burned?”

  James cast a mental eye over the family tree.

  “There must have been six. There were five boys. Richard, the eldest, inherited the house. It was not burned then. It was not burned for nearly a hundred years. Then another Richard built it up again.”

  “Like the House that Jack Built?” Caroline suggested, still hopeful of getting her story.

  He rumpled her curls.

  “Something. There was always a son ready to build it up again even if his name wasn’t Jack.”

  Caroline visualised rows of boys building houses of toy bricks for other boys to knock down. Seeing there were also six girls in Papa’s story this seemed unfair.

  “Didn’t the girls never build a house?”

  “Never got a chance.” He sighed. “There were always boys to carry on the family name.”

  James had not had a chance lately to talk on his pet subject. Since the birth of Louisa, Selina had grown even more sensitive over the Torrys family tree. Her face would flush at the thought of that unbroken line. There was only one feature of it on which she cared to dwell. “Dear James, th
ey often had to wait.” She would draw his attention to George and Rose in the reign of George the Third. “Remember James dear, they had Agnes and Lucy to start with and when they did have Frederick he died, and then there was Rebecca, and then twin boys that died; then not until after Jane did they at last have John. It could easily be the same with ourselves.” James missed the pity for the long dead Rose in Selina’s voice. He realised that he was not the first Torrys to have married a wife who was not good at child-bearing. He failed to see why that should make it any easier for him. He never faced squarely the possibility of there being no son. Thomas Felton was an ignorant country doctor, what did he know? He felt convinced that every woman could bear a son if she tried long enough. Yet even his deliberately blind eyes could not fail to see how thin and white Selina had become since the arrival of Louisa. She was suffering from some misplacement inside which drained her strength. It was clear there could be no thought of another child for some time yet. Mention of a boy upset her. He was delighted to find an audience who knew nothing of the history. Caroline might be only a baby, but it was time she knew the glory of her antecedents. He drew her more comfortably into the crook of his arm.

  He told the family story simply, using easy words. The first Richard. Then the Richard who was exiled in France, of whom he succeeded in making a Prince Charming figure, completely at variance with history.

  Of Henry, who was killed out hunting. He left out the rather unfortunate figure of George lurching drunkenly round the house with his silver candlestick. He finished with a hallowed picture of his father building the library. He gave the impression that the Gothic atrocity had practically been built by the owner’s hands.

  Caroline did not follow much of the story, but she liked the fire warm on her legs, and her father’s voice rumbling on, which, since her head was against him, gave a pleasant tickling sensation. Trained as she was to the moral stories told by Nurse, she was quick at picking up the right point. Now she delighted her father.