Caroline England

by Noel Streatfeild

  Prudence in the excitement over her marriage naturally was not interested in who should succeed her. She was sorry to leave Caroline, dear little thing, with that dragon of a nurse. But a new governess was coming and a resident governess would be likely to take complete charge. It was possible the child need scarcely put a foot in the nursery. She piled up the lesson books neatly. Rubbed out, with a piece of bread, any dirty marks. Joyfully received from James and Selina a present of money, to spend on clothes. Succeeded in getting permission for Caroline to attend her as bridesmaid. Was married under the approving and affectionate eyes of almost all the parishioners. Kissed her father good-bye. Then danced off joyfully to a home of her own, and put Caroline out of her mind.

  Caroline did not realise that Prudence’s marriage would make much difference to her. Of course, she understood that she would not teach her any more. But she was not going far away. She would be able to see her. She was to be invited to spend the day sometimes. Child though she was, a very few hours of facing Letitia across the lesson books, and she realised that the school­room outlook had changed. Prudence, straight from the smaller friendlier atmosphere of the Rectory, had swept in each morning with her lungs full of air which had never been breathed by Nurse. It was clear from the outset she had not cared a fig what Nurse said or thought. She never spoke of her disparagingly, yet by subtle glances and smiles, she made it known that whenever she and Caroline were doing this or that which would be disapproved of upstairs, she was glorying in it.

  Poor scared Letitia held a very different outlook. She had not been in the Manor more than a few hours before she realised with whom the power lay. She knew Nurse’s type so well. In her younger, more courageous days she was the sort with whom she had fought. The woman who needed to feel her power. Whom it pleased to have permission asked for any simple action. Who considered the children of the house hers to rule. Very well then. The days for courage were over. Food was food. A roof a roof. If pleasing the creature could ensure it, then Letitia would please.

  “Well dear, what do you usually work at on Monday mornings?”

  One of the charms of Prudence had been that you could not say with any certainty what you might learn from her on any given day. However, Caroline was anxious to help.

  “Sometimes the piano. Sometimes French. Sometimes history. I was learning about Queen Elizabeth. Sometimes we began by reading and then did sums.”

  Letitia made distressed clicking noises with her tongue against her teeth. Never in any schoolroom of hers had such casual methods been allowed. She drew a piece of paper towards her.

  “We must draw up a curriculum.” She ruled six lines down the paper. “You said nothing about recitation. You have learnt to recite, I suppose?”

  “Po’try?” Caroline asked enquiringly. “Oh yes, I learnt some po’try.”

  “And recited it to dear mama perhaps?”

  Caroline was horrified at the thought. Wasting the after-tea hour reciting, which would bore her mother as much as herself.

  “No.”

  “No?” Letitia wrote the days of the week at the top of the paper, between her ruled lines. “Then to Nurse, I expect.”

  “Nurse!” Caroline’s tone expressed just what she thought of that suggestion. There was a pause. Then she explained. “I used to learn po’try for Nurse before I did Bible with Mr. Sykes. I said that to her.”

  “Did you?” Letitia turned the paper and ruled lines in the opposite direction so that she had squared it. “And what sort of poetry does Nurse like?”

  Caroline leant back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. Much water had passed under her bridge since the days when she had struggled with Doctor Watts. She frowned. Then out of space a verse came to her.

  “His soul was gentle as a lamb;

  And as his stature grew,

  He grew in favour both with man,

  And God, his Father, too.”

  Letitia smiled. The verse brought back her own childhood. She remembered, too, the unwilling way in which the words were ground out. How well she recalled using just that flat tone. Used so that no one would be tempted to suggest that she ought to recite to some grown-up. She went on ruling her squares but her thoughts were on Caroline. Surely the tone in which the child had said “Nurse!” was unnecessarily violent. She did hope there was no tiresome friction there. So awkward if Caroline was against Nurse; that would mean that she sided with the schoolroom. The pupils siding one way or the other always ended in somebody leaving. On this occasion there could be no doubt who would be the somebody. She finished the last line and laid down her ruler. She wrote “Arithmetic” in the first square under “Monday.” “Now,” she said, “this is our Arithmetic hour. Let me see what work you have been doing.”

  While Caroline struggled with subtraction, Letitia looked round the schoolroom. Curious how alike all such rooms were. The cloth curtains which should have been sage-green, but with the sun on them turned yellow. The red carpet. The tablecloth which covered a table on which many children had written their initials. The large wooden cupboard in the corner for books. The inkwell made of a horse’s hoof mounted in silver. The gritty pens. The globe on the table under the window. Sometimes the pictures varied, but she had met most of these before. Queen Victoria giving Bibles to heathen. Engravings of a martyr being hurled to some lions, and another of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. A lithograph of the opening of the Crystal Palace. There was only one original note and that was in a selection of family photographs. In the centre was Rose Torrys and her husband Henry. Around them, popping through ovals cut in the surround, were grouped James, George, Robert, Frederick, Agnes, Rose, Elizabeth, Sylvia and Dymphna. In and out amongst the photos had been written by Henry, in elaborate gold letters: “Make them to be numbered with Thy Saints in glory everlasting.” Under each of the photographs he had written the dates of all their births, including his own. Next to the date of his birth someone else had written: “Numbered: May10th, 1865.”

  Letitia looked with respect, slightly tinged with amusement, at this family affair. She admired the hand that had so boldly written ‘Numbered.’ She looked at the places left for future dates of numbering.

  “Is that your family dear?”

  Caroline glanced round at the gilt frame behind her. “Yes. All of them. It was done by Grandpapa-who’s-gone-to-be-with-God.” She went back to her subtracting.

  Letitia eyed Caroline’s bent head. What sort of child had been bred by a family so assured of future haloes?

  Determined to buy her favour, Letitia took Caroline’s work chart to Nurse.

  “I thought you would advise. You will know where her weaknesses lie. Where most work is needed.”

  Nurse was pleased. Terms that she had been on with past resident governesses had not led her to hope to get this one to heel quite so soon. She knew them for a stuck-up, make-trouble class, calling for a lot of Christian forbearance from the nurse. However, pleased though she was, she was not deceived. She knew what lay behind the humble voice, the request for advice. One look at that scrawny figure, and that anxious face was enough. Getting on. Afraid of losing her job. This knowledge acted on her as a glass of gin might on another. Now she had her world as she wanted it. A nurse-maid who was her own cousin and of an age to learn what was what. No more of that independent Hannah upsetting things. Then this Miss Long. No trouble there. One hint of being given notice and she’d pipe a proper tune. Three children and a staff right under her thumb. That was a nursery as it should be.

  Yet for all her scheming, Nurse could not hold Caroline. There she was, docile, hard-working, obedient. Yet who had her? Not Miss Long. Quickly the child had summed her up. Her pitiable efforts to please had been noted, and herself relegated to hob-nob with Nurse, since she chose her. Not Nurse. Strict obedience she got, nothing more. Caroline’s world was outside. Her garden. Her father and, later, her mother.

 
; Selina gave up being an invalid after the birth of Elizabeth. She had so little actual strength that she had to rely entirely on her nerves, but they stood her in remarkable stead. Even while still in bed, recovering from Elizabeth, she planned her future life. As a woman she was a failure. Apart from producing with ludicrous fuss nothing but girls, she spent most of her days on the sofa. What a spectacle! A woman, even if she has no son, can yet be a help-meet. She can entertain. She can have her children constantly about her, even if they are only girls. She was doing none of these things. A woman’s home should be a shrine. It is very difficult to keep up that feeling when the centre-piece of the shrine never gets off a sofa except to get into bed. These thoughts crowded on Selina. How kind dear James was. How forgiving of her stupid weakness. But he should see no more of it. She had done better since her visit to Brighton, but not nearly well enough. So many more calls should have been paid. So many more dinners given. The family should have been entertained. There were many outlying cottages she had not been to. She would get up. Put ill-health behind her. Be in every way the mistress of the Manor.

  Fortified by her mental vows, Selina defied Thomas. She came down before he thought it wise. She laughed at the suggestion of Brighton, or any other health resort. Her first action was to send for Letitia and Minnie. She was thankful to find both satisfactory. It was not right that the people who looked after her children should be chosen by others, but on this occasion she felt she could not have done better herself. Minnie seemed a gentle little creature, likely to give no trouble. Letitia she thought admirable. Good references and a sound church-woman. Able to teach all the usual subjects, including fluent French. It was perhaps a pity she was not younger.

  Selina had noticed in the ladies’ periodicals that many girls seemed to be taught physical exercises and archery nowadays. She read that it was considered good for them. However, she had never learnt such things and in every other respect Miss Long seemed a dear, kind creature and most anxious to please. If necessary the little girls could go to extra classes for exercise later. With a sigh of relief and a perfectly clear conscience, she decided she need make no changes.

  The moment she got some strength together she started on a modified programme of calls, visiting the tenants, and a few dinner parties. In between these efforts she had days of hopeless collapse. Not pleasant collapsing, into the arms of sympathetic servants, but a shameful collapsing alone, behind her locked bedroom door. If you mean your world to think of you as the calm, dignified mistress of her house, then it must not see you in floods of tears, or being sick from sheer tiredness, or ignominiously fainting on your bed. Her will-power won. If she did not succeed in hiding her fragility, at least she was no invalid. She learnt to gauge herself to a nicety, to know to a hair when she could keep up appearances no longer. Then, with some light excuse, she would disappear. It was very well done.

  The part of her programme which Selina could not manage was having her children constantly round her knee. She could have Caroline, but she was hardly of the knee age. Louisa, who was, she found, too tiring. Elizabeth she fed for a time, as a good mother should, but the good mother was short of milk, so Elizabeth was constantly hungry, with the result that she screamed a great deal. Even when she was weaned she went on screaming, for her digestion was upset by her ill-nourished start. Screaming was more than Selina could bear. If any screaming was to be done she would have been glad to do it herself. She was sorry about Louisa. She came down, of course, after tea, but she could no longer manage the crawling on the floor games with her that she had played with Caroline. Instead, she lay back in the corner of the sofa and watched Louisa crawling. She felt it was dull for Louisa to have a mother who never played with her. She hoped, between them, Nurse, and Minnie, and that nervous Miss Long, were providing some of the warmth she had not the energy to give. Now and again, watching Caroline playing with Louisa, she felt a qualm. They were such aloof children, her daughters. At their age she remembered climbing on to people’s knees and hugging them. Why did Caroline and Louisa never behave like that?

  During the next year Selina started entertaining the Torrys’ relations. They came in relays. First her mother-in-law, with Sylvia, who was just engaged to be married to a curate.

  “Quite suitable, James dear. Of course, he is a younger son, but they have three livings in their gift and all quite good.” Dymphna came at the same time. She was just emerging from the ‘backfisch’ stage, she was all giggles and femininity. Rose was quite pleasant, for her. The truth being that, save for the fact that there was no heir, there was little to find fault with. Selina appeared to be doing her duty towards James as best she was able. The nurseries and schoolrooms were run just as she liked them run. The servants and cottagers seemed as obsequious and humble as they were intended by God to be. She took any opportunities that offered for a dig at Selina, who even at her best annoyed her.

  “Elizabeth is a beautiful baby, dear, but what an expense! Of course, I know I am old-fashioned, but a woman from the village was all I required to bring my mine into the world.”

  “Things were easier as it happens, this time,” Selina replied. “I hope too to have nine, and long before that I shall have got over my foolish weakness. Even Doctor Felton admits I am far stronger.”

  Rose looked at her fixedly, so that no flicker of a glance should deceive her.

  “Felton is an old fusser.” Selina returned her look. “He does not fuss me.”

  “Good.” Rose turned away satisfied. It was obvious the creature meant to go on trying anyway, and that was something.

  When Rose, Sylvia and Dymphna had gone, there arrived at intervals, George, his wife and children, Robert and his, Frederick and his, and Elizabeth and young Rose and their husbands, and Rose’s baby boy. Between every visit there was Agnes. Selina could have done with less of Agnes, who wanted gentlemen asked to dine, and there were not many gentlemen about. She had, too, a prying eye. Selina felt that she not only saw her weakness but gloated over it. Agnes had such radiant health.

  In the nursery and schoolroom the visitors made little impression. With the arrivals of the uncles and aunts there were, of course, new nurses and governesses about the place, and new children to play with. But the well-trained Caroline and the small Louisa were not allowed to have their routine disturbed. There were presents on arrival, and the wives of the uncles, and the two aunts, came upstairs sometimes, and looked round, and said something civil to Nurse, about how well she managed.

  The only two visitors that made any impression on Caroline were Aunt Rose and her husband Peter. Peter called Rose Posy; he said he thought one Rose in any family was enough. He was an artist. He would never have been allowed to marry one of the Torrys girls if his future depended on anything as ephemeral as painting. It did not. He had plenty of private money. He got to know Caroline, for he painted her working in her garden. One day, when he had finished, he caught hold of her by the chin and lifted her face up to his.

  “Do you have fun?”

  “Fun?” It was obvious she did not know the meaning of the word.

  He and Aunt Rose asked leave to take her out walking with them. They did not exactly ask her questions, but they led her on to talk. Aunt Rose spoke about her to Selina.

  “I like that daughter of yours. You ought to take her out driving with you, she is such a good companion.”

  “I should like to,” Selina agreed, “but Nurse and Miss Long, quite rightly I think, disapprove of her hours being upset.”

  “I should not be so sure that it is ‘quite rightly,’” said Aunt Rose. “When my baby is old enough to go about with me, I shall not let his nurse or governess dictate how much I shall see of him.”

  Before Aunt Rose and Uncle Peter left, they gave Caroline a half-sovereign.

  “That’s to spend,” said Uncle Peter. “Buy something you like.”

  “Yes, something you really want,” Aunt Rose urged.


  She leant down to Caroline. “Don’t let them make you put it in a money-box.” They both kissed her good-bye. After they had gone Caroline looked at the piece of gold. Aunt Rose was like Prudence. ‘Don’t let them make you put it in a money-box.’ It was just like Prudence to say ‘them’ in that voice. Never exactly saying whom she meant, but, of course, anybody would know. She put the half-sovereign under a stone in her garden. If she asked to be taken to spend it Nurse would be sure to say ‘No.’ If she waited they would have to drive to the shops sometime. Caroline never forgot Uncle Peter and Aunt Rose.

  Twice Mrs. Ellison came to the Manor, once with her husband and once without. At other times, Selina’s uncles, one visit each. Mrs. Ellison, on her visits, went to the nursery as often as she could. She bought beautiful presents for everyone, including Nurse, and was gentle and apparently admiring. She was, however, worried. Selina had been a quiet little thing, but her quietness had been different to Caroline’s or little Louisa’s. She mentioned it to Selina.

  “The dear children seem very quiet in their nursery. You don’t think, dear, that they are at all afraid of Nurse? An excellent woman, I am sure, but she has rather a stern face.”

  Ever since her sister-in-law Rose had left, Selina had pondered on the nursery. She did allow Nurse to dictate to her about her children. Perhaps she ought to make a stand, insist on seeing them more. If only she had greater strength. Extraordinary how feebleness of body seemed to make for feebleness of will.

  “I believe they are happy, Mother,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I am going to see more of Caroline. I am telling Miss Long to re-arrange her day so that she drives with me in the afternoons.”