Autumn Softly Fell

by Dominic Luke

  Dorothea nodded. The cosy feeling that had grown inside her after meeting Nora and eating the big breakfast was rapidly withering away, but there was one question that could not wait. She took a deep breath. ‘Please, where’s my papa?’

  A look of irritation crossed Nanny’s blotchy face. ‘Now what have I just said? I don’t know where your pa is and I’m sure I don’t care. Hold your tongue now! And that goes for you, too, Master Roderick! The next person to open their mouth will get a good hiding!’

  Nanny settled herself in a chair by the fire. She soon fell asleep, snoring. Nora was called away to help downstairs. Roderick went back to his toy soldiers. Dorothea inched her way towards one of the windows. She felt that if she could just see outside, she might not feel so hemmed in. But there were bars on the window which only increased her sense of being trapped, and the world outside – the fields and trees and the great grey sky – seemed very remote and unfamiliar. It was not at all like the world she knew and gave her no clues as to where her papa might be.

  Time ticked by. The trees and fields faded into an early dusk. Dorothea’s eyes filled with tears as she leant against the bars. She felt as if everything was drifting away from her. Her whole life – everything she had known – was being swallowed by the grey gloom. But crying got one nowhere. Mrs Browning, back in Stepnall Street – a million miles away, as distant as the moon – boxed their ears if they started ‘bawling and carrying on’, Dorothea and Mickey and Flossie. But Dorothea wouldn’t have minded having her ears boxed – wouldn’t have minded going without that glorious breakfast – if only she could have been home again.

  With nothing to do and nowhere to hide, she found she could no longer keep back the memories of last night: all the bits she had tried so very hard to forget. She saw in her mind’s eye her papa and her uncle confronting one another in the midst of the lavish room, growling and snapping their teeth like half-starved dogs in the narrow courts back home.

  ‘Well, Albert, so this is where you’re holed up now. Very nice. Very nice indeed. Landed on your feet and no mistake. Though it’s a bit off the beaten track, you might say. I had a devil of a job finding the place.’

  ‘You are drunk, Frank.’

  ‘I’ve had a nip or two, to keep out the cold. Only a nip.’

  ‘A bottle or two, I should say, by the state of you.’

  ‘Now then, Albert, there’s no call for that sort of talk! But why should I expect any different? You always did have it in for me. You always did try and blacken my character.’

  ‘Is it any wonder, after what you did?’

  ‘You’re no better’n me, Albert, that’s the long and short of it. There’s only one difference between us. My old man didn’t have a business to pass on. That was where you struck gold.’

  ‘I built up my own business, Frank. I didn’t need my father’s.’

  ‘But his money helped, Albert, you can’t deny that. You had all the luck, see? You had all the luck, whereas I fell on hard times.’

  ‘Took to drink.’

  ‘That’s a lie, that is! Nor I didn’t, neither – not till I’d lost everything, not till it was all gone.’ Her papa had stopped short, had looked down at her. He’d smiled, the special smile that was hers alone. ‘No,’ he’d murmured. ‘Not everything. Not quite everything. I’ve still got one thing left. One precious thing.’ But then the smile had faded and tears had come into his eyes, the tears that had so frightened her. ‘Breaks my heart, so it does, but it’s for the best, it’s all for the best….’

  Her uncle had said nothing. When she’d glanced up at him she’d realized that he wasn’t looking at her or her papa. He’d been watching instead a lady on the edge of the crowd: a very stiff, upright lady in a sumptuous gown trimmed with miles of lace, a huge flared skirt sweeping out behind her. Seeing the lady’s icy blue eyes, Dorothea had known that she was very angry, but the anger had been all shut up inside her and had not shown on her face, which had been as cold and blank as a statue’s. She was beautiful like a statue, too, immeasurably dignified, somehow timeless. Dorothea had sensed that her uncle was more aware of this lady than of anyone else in the room, as if the frost in her eyes was piercing him to the marrow.

  But she had forgotten all about the beautiful lady when her papa began speaking again. She had watched in dismay as he retreated towards the door, bowing and scraping. Hadn’t he always said, Just remember, Dotty, we’re as good as anyone, me and you; we’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Hold your head up, Dotty: always hold your head up…

  ‘I’ll not presume on your ’ospitality no longer, Albert. And I do hope—’ (bowing) ‘—that all you fine ladies and gents will ’scuse the interruption. It was family business, you must understand: family business. But now—’ (bowing again) ‘—I’ll leave you to get on with your party. And you, Dotty: you be a good girl for your uncle, do you hear? And just remember that your old Pa loves you and … well.…’

  With that he had gone. Her uncle had followed him out. A low buzz of conversation had broken out in the room, but Dorothea had only had ears for the faint voices in the hallway. Only brief snatches of the angry exchange had been audible.

  ‘… can’t you do this one thing, for her sake, for Flo…?’

  ‘… dare you talk of my sister—’

  ‘My wife!’

  ‘… regret the day she ever clapped eyes on you!’

  ‘… and we belonged together, but it was the child what did for her. She made me promise … do your best, Frankie … but my best ain’t good enough….’

  Standing by the window in the day room, the metal bars pressing into her forehead, Dorothea tried to make sense of the remembered words.

  ‘It’s what Flo would have wanted. She’s your niece, Albert, your own flesh and blood.’

  ‘Do you seriously imagine you can palm your brat—’

  She had heard no more as the piano began to tinkle and the hum of conversation grew louder, and Henry Fitzwilliam had appeared and scooped her off her feet just as she felt her wobbly legs could not hold her up any longer.

  She looked out of the nursery window. It was growing dark. Hours and hours had passed, and her papa had not come.

  He was not going to come. He had abandoned her. Forsaken her.

  It seemed suddenly very cold in the big room, despite the glowing fire. She was shivering, her hands pressed against the cold window, the icy metal of the bars digging into her head.

  ‘Will I ever see him again?’ she whispered to her dim reflection in the glass.

  But the winter dark gave no answer.

  TWO

  DOROTHEA LAY FORLORN between crisp sheets listening to the rain beating against the window and trying to count the days and weeks since she’d arrived at Clifton Park. It was impossible. One day blurred into another. Time dragged, yet seemed to pass her by. It had been weeks and weeks since she’d last left the confines of the nursery – since she had seen her fierce uncle or kind-hearted Henry or the black bat-figure of Mrs Bourne. Did any of them even remember her, after all this time? She felt as if she was being slowly suffocated.

  Nanny had sent her to bed early this evening. ‘I can’t be doing with you, fiddling and fidgeting.’

  ‘But I didn’t—’ (She hadn’t).

  ‘None of that! I won’t have you answering back! Now off you go, and be quick about it!’

  Dorothea did not really mind. It was all the same being bored in her bedroom as bored in the day room. It was Sunday, too, which made things even worse. Sundays were days that lagged, dreary days when the nursery seemed more like a prison than ever. Nothing was allowed; even reading was forbidden on Sundays.

  ‘The Sabbath is a day of rest,’ said Nanny. ‘Whoever doeth any work on the Sabbath, he shall surely be put to death.’

  But this did not seem to apply to Nora who did as much work on the Sabbath as she did on any other day – not that Dorothea dared point this out to Nanny who, she felt, was more than capable of putting people to death. N
anny reminded her of Mrs Browning with her short temper and cuffs round the ear. They even had the same red nose; but Nanny never smelt of gin.

  The nursery was a lonely place. Baby was no company at all, Nora was often too busy to talk, and Roderick had gone away. Dorothea was not entirely sure that she liked Roderick, but he was better than nothing. He had, however, been sent off to school. There were schools where boys went to live for weeks at a time without ever coming home. That was where Roderick had gone. The way he’d described it sounded horrible, another kind of prison, but Roderick had stuck out his chin and said, ‘It’s not as awful as all that, not really.’ Afterwards she wondered if he’d been telling the whole truth. There’d been a look in his eye that she remembered seeing in Mickey’s when he was telling fibs.

  So Roderick had gone, and even Nora escaped the nursery each evening when she went home to the village.

  ‘I wish I could go too, Nora! I’d much rather live in your cottage than here!’

  ‘Whatever for, miss, when you’ve a room to yourself and your own comfy bed? What a funny one you are! Why, there’s no room to swing a cat at home, and six of us to share two bedrooms. You’d not like it at all.’

  But Dorothea felt it was exactly what she would like. Had not five of them shared just one room in Stepnall Street? Nora’s village, she was sure, was a place where real people lived – ordinary people: not like this house, full of the strangest, most objectionable people you could imagine.

  Dorothea shivered, listening to sleet pummelling the window and the sound of the wind seething amongst the branches of the big tree (a cedar tree, it was called). Whatever Nora might say, Dorothea could not get used to a room of her own. It made her think of the old woman in Stepnall Street – the old woman who’d lived in a basement room in the same court where Dorothea lived. The old woman had hardly ever been seen. No one had noticed when she’d stopped being seen altogether. And then one day she’d been found dead. Mickey had known all about it, of course. Someone had come looking for the rent, he said. When their knocking went unanswered, they had broken down the door. The old woman had been found sitting in her chair dressed in her old rags, covered from head to foot in lice. She had been dead a week at least. Mickey had laughed. He was like that.

  Lying in the dark of the deserted room, Dorothea wished she had never known about the old woman. She wondered if she would end up forgotten too. She wondered if she might die and no one would know.

  When at last her eyes shut and she slid into sleep, it seemed to her that she woke up again almost at once but somehow she knew that she wasn’t awake in truth. She tried to ignore that because she wanted the dream to be real. She was at home, in Stepnall Street, in the room on the third floor, lying in the ramshackle bed with only one blanket. The wall beside her was cold and damp to the touch, but Mickey was there to cuddle up to, warm as toast. He was fast asleep, gently snoring, dribbling too. The way spittle leaked from the corner of his scabby mouth always made her queasy but for once she didn’t mind a bit. She was just glad to be home.

  The room was in darkness. The others were sleeping too. Flossie was gurgling faintly in her banana crate cot. Beyond the pinned-up curtain, Papa and Mrs Browning were breathing noisily out of sync, Mrs Browning whimpering every time she exhaled. Dorothea listened happily to these familiar sounds. There were others. Rats were scrabbling under the floor boards; there were muffled voices and the sound of thumping and bumping from other rooms. Outside, cats were fighting on a nearby roof, mewling and hissing, their claws scraping and sliding on the tiles. Faint footsteps came from the street; someone was singing out of tune; down in the court a man and a woman were arguing, their voices shrill, their words slurred. After so long away – weeks and weeks – these well-known noises which had so often disturbed her sleep sounded more like a favourite lullaby.

  She smiled drowsily and tightened her grip on Mickey, pulling his warm body close. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. She felt herself drifting, drifting….

  She woke with a start. There was still a smile on her lips but this time she was really awake. She was not in Stepnall Street. She was lying in the big bed in her room at Clifton Park and it was morning. Another dreary day had arrived.

  The sense of disappointment was crushing.

  Slowly she sat up, wiping away the tears that had sprung into her eyes. As she did so, she suddenly realised what she had to do. Her papa had not come back for her, so she must go to him. Stepnall Street was not just a dream, it was a place, it existed, and maybe – just maybe – her papa would be waiting there for her.

  She reached a decision. It was like a weight being lifted. She would go to London. She would go to Stepnall Street. She would go home.

  Dorothea sat at the big table in the day room fingering carved wooden objects that Nanny called ‘chess pieces’. Chess was a game, Nanny said. Dorothea did not know anything about it. She moved the black and white counters across the scrubbed tabletop, putting her plans into place.

  ‘Nora….’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘When Roderick goes to school, does he go by train?’

  ‘He does, miss.’

  ‘And is the station far from here?’

  Nora paused in her scrubbing of the floor, sat back on her haunches. ‘It’s not far at all, miss. I’ve walked it many a time.’ The station, Nora said, was on the main line down from London. It was at a place called Welby.

  But where was Welby? How did you get there?

  That was easy, Nora said. She knew the country hereabouts like the back of her hand, could find her way to Welby with her eyes shut. From Clifton you would go down the drive, turn left at the road, head for the village. Once in the village it was straight on at the Green and out the other side. You crossed the turnpike and took the road to Welby. The station was on the right, just before you reached Welby village itself. ‘You must have come that way yourself, miss, the day you arrived. You came by train, you said.’

  ‘I don’t remember. It was dark. I was asleep most of the time.’

  Nora looked at her curiously. ‘What’s brought this on, Miss Dorothea? Why are you so interested in the railway all of a sudden?’

  Dorothea sidestepped the question, wrinkled her nose instead. ‘That smell….’

  Nora laughed. ‘Carbolic, miss. Helps keep the place clean. Never mind, I’ve nearly finished. You can help me put the rugs back, if you like.’

  One step at a time, Mrs Browning said. The first step of Dorothea’s escape was to get out of the house. She called it her escape because, although no one really seemed to want her (‘A plague and a nuisance,’ Nanny muttered, casting dark looks at her, and hadn’t Mrs Bourne said something about an orphanage?), she felt sure that they (Nanny, her uncle) would never agree to her going off on her own and would probably veto any idea of returning to Stepnall Street under any circumstances. She had no choice but to keep her plans under her hat. This troubled her. Was it the same as telling fibs? Mrs Browning maintained there was nothing wrong with a little white lie, but Papa thought differently. He had taught her that all lies – white or otherwise – were wrong. But what else could she do? She just hoped Papa would understand.

  Mulling things over, she took considerable heart from the experience of her first morning. She had managed to get all the way to the front door without being caught. Would she be able to do so a second time? And when would her chance come?

  ‘Now then,’ said Nanny, looming over the table. ‘Eat your breakfast. I want it all finished by the time I get back. But I must just have a quick word with Cook.’

  Off she went to the kitchen (wherever that might be in this labyrinth of a house) for yet another of her ‘words’ with Cook: words which, Dorothea had soon learnt, were never ‘quick’. At first she thought nothing of it, carried on eating. But Baby was being particularly fractious that morning and Nora had her hands full. ‘She’s teething, poor thing.’ Cradling Baby, gently rocking her, Nora looked round the day room and sighed. ‘I jus
t can’t get on today, no matter how I try.’ There was always so much for Nora to do, cleaning, tidying, dusting, scrubbing, polishing, laying and lighting the fires, making the beds, feeding and bathing Baby, but Nora rarely complained. It was Nanny who felt hard done by. ‘I’m nothing but a slave, and never a moment to rest my weary legs.’ But what Nanny actually did was something of a mystery.

  As Nora stooped over the cot, laying Baby down, Dorothea suddenly remembered her plan. Swiftly, she slipped two pieces of toast into her sash and stood up. As she edged towards the door, Nora didn’t so much as give her a glance.

  In her room, Dorothea pulled on her coat and tam o’shanter, her heart thumping. The coat was a boy’s and rather too small for her; the hat was too big and kept slipping down over her eyes. All the same, she would be leaving Clifton in better clothes than those she’d arrived in. She had the toast, too, to sustain her on her journey.

  She took a last look round. It was then that she had her first wobble. She would not have said until now that she had grown fond of her room, but it seemed something of a wrench to be leaving it forever. She trailed her hand over the old wardrobe (still mostly empty) and over the dressing table with the three-folded mirror. She looked at the big bed, so soft and comfortable. Must she really give it all up?

  She took a deep breath. She was just being soppy. Mickey would have jeered at her. He was never soppy and not afraid of anything. He took on boys twice his size in the blink of an eye. But even Mickey would be bowled over when she walked into their room in Stepnall Street after so long!