Autumn Softly Fell

by Dominic Luke

  As she collected herself, Henry jumped down, tore off his gloves, threw up the bonnet. He began poking around inside with an oily rag.

  ‘Come on old girl. Don’t let me down today of all days.’

  He was speaking to the machine as if it was a person. Dorothea remembered that someone had said Henry was cracked. Perhaps they’d been right. But at that moment he looked up at her and grinned and she knew that he wasn’t cracked at all. He was, in fact, the nicest grown-up she had ever met – apart from Papa, of course.

  ‘Now don’t you worry, Dorothea. This often happens. It’s only a glitch. I’ll have her going again in no time.’ His grin broadened as he looked her over. ‘That coat is far too big for you. It’s like a marquee.’

  But he’d been right about it being warm. It was much better than her own coat. She felt warm now inside, too, just as she’d done all those weeks ago sitting on his knee with his arm around her. She wanted him to know. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t think he was cracked, that he was nicer than anyone, that she too believed in autocars – because if Henry believed in them, how could you not? But when she opened her mouth to speak, the right words wouldn’t come out and all she could manage, stammering and blushing, was, ‘You’ve got a black eye.’

  ‘Yes. A real shiner.’ He touched it gingerly. ‘Someone threw a stone at me. Well, more of a rock, actually.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because they want autocars kept off the roads. They don’t think autocars belong there. A lot of people get very angry about it indeed. Most just shout and wave their fists, but one or two throw things too. Luddites, I call them.’

  ‘There was a man who wanted a law against it,’ said Dorothea, thinking back to her first morning, the overheard conversation in the hallway.

  ‘That would be Colonel Harding – the chief of all the Luddites. I drive past Newbolt Hall every day to annoy him!’ He chuckled, then ducked back down inside the machine. His muffled voice came floating up to her. ‘No news about your father, then?’

  ‘He hasn’t come back. That’s why I have to go and look for him.’

  But even as she was speaking, she suddenly wondered why. Why hadn’t he come back, why should it be down to her to go looking for him? How dare he bring her here and just leave her! How dare he! It was wrong. It was cruel. It was … selfish!

  She was choked with rage, knocked off balance by it, flooded with guilt too because Papa wasn’t cruel or selfish, of course he wasn’t. He was the kindest, the best man who’d ever lived! But just at that moment she couldn’t quite believe it. It was as if the world had been tipped upside down.

  Tears sprang into her eyes. The wind whipped her. The big, grey, empty sky made her want to cower and hide.

  ‘Why did he leave me? Why?’ Her voice was little more than a whisper but Henry must have heard because his head reappeared and he regarded her thoughtfully.

  ‘Who can say why parents do anything?’ he said at length. ‘Take my mother, for instance. She’s forever trying to marry me off. She won’t let it lie. I’ve told her time and again that it’s too early for all that. I’m only twenty-two and I’ve no intention of getting married until I’m thirty at least. But she won’t have it. Says I need a steadying influence. Can’t imagine why.’ He wiped his hands on the oily rag, put it aside. ‘Hey now! Don’t look so glum! I’m sure your father only wanted to do right by you. He wouldn’t have left you at Clifton if he didn’t think it was for the best. And I don’t suppose he’s gone for good. I daresay he’ll turn up again sooner or later. Which is more than can be said for my pater. He’s dead and buried.’ She caught her breath and he glanced up and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it all happened long ago, I’m over it now.’ But as he closed the bonnet and climbed back into the seat beside her, a faraway look came into his eyes. ‘Funny thing, really. I haven’t thought about it for years. It hits one hard at the time but I’d almost forgotten. Cried my eyes out, I seem to remember. But I was only ten.’

  Dorothea looked at him – his plain but affable face, his thin moustache, his deep eyes. He looked so grown up that she couldn’t imagine him aged ten. Had he really cried for his father? Mickey would have died of shame at the very idea. But Henry was not like Mickey. He was not like anyone she had ever met.

  ‘I wish I could live with you, Henry, instead of at Clifton!’

  He smiled. ‘That wouldn’t work at all. I’d drive you up the wall. I do Mother. Me and my fads, as she puts it. She thinks it’s high time I took a more serious view of life. But why would you want to live with me when you’ve an aunt and an uncle and all the comforts of Clifton Park?’

  ‘Nobody there wants me. They keep me locked in the nursery, I never see anyone. Roderick has gone away and Nanny is horrible and – and—’

  ‘Well I never! What a life! But it can’t all be bad, surely? As for your nanny, I wouldn’t take too much notice of her. It’s her job to be horrid. All nannies are. Mine used to lock me in a cupboard for misbehaving. It didn’t make a better boy, but I’m jolly well terrified of the dark even now!’

  Was it true, she wondered? Could someone as brave and wise as Henry really be scared of the dark? She watched him rubbing his chin. There must have been a speck of oil on his fingers because when he took his hand away, there was a black smudge on his jaw.

  ‘I’m sure your aunt and uncle will be wondering where you are. They’ll be worried about you, mark my words!’

  ‘But I never even see them. And my uncle—he and Papa—they had the most terrible argument—’

  ‘Don’t take it to heart. Grown-ups are always having disagreements. It never amounts to anything.’

  ‘But why does my uncle hate Papa so much?’

  ‘Well, let me see. I’m no expert of course. I’ve not had much to do with your uncle, being away at college and so on. Some people in these parts consider Mr Brannan an interloper. He’s not one of us, as Mrs Somersby would say. But Mother’s always got on with him, and she’s no fool, so….’

  ‘But the argument, what was it all about?’

  ‘Well, now, what can I say?’ He caressed the steering wheel absently, weighing his words. ‘I only know what Mother’s told me. She says it’s all to do with the elopement.’

  ‘What’s an … elope…?’

  ‘An elopement. It’s when two people run off together without telling anyone. That’s what your parents did, or so Mother understands. I suppose you can see that your uncle might be angry about it, when it was his own sister and it was your father she ran off with.’

  Dorothea looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why did they do it? Why did they run away?’

  ‘For love, I suppose. People do the rummest things for love – or so I’ve been told.’

  ‘And now I’ve run away and Uncle Albert will be angry with me, too!’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t be angry. He’ll be glad to have you safe and sound. You’re his niece when all’s said and done. Blood is thicker than water, as Mother always says.’

  Dorothea looked at Henry from under the hat with the ear flaps and wondered what it was like to have a mother. She thought of the sister who’d eloped, someone she had never known, a stranger. You couldn’t call a stranger mother. Mrs Browning was the nearest thing Dorothea had ever had to a mother but it had never crossed her mind – it wouldn’t have seemed right – to call Mrs Browning mother. Not that she’d ever felt she was missing out, not having a mother. She had her papa, and that was enough.

  Except that now he had gone.

  She shivered inside Henry’s dust coat. Grey clouds scudded across the vast sky. The cold wind gusted round her. The road stretched ahead, rutted, muddy, empty. Fields receded endlessly in every direction. It was a wild and cheerless place and Henry her only friend in all the world. He looked rather comical with his black eye and the matching smudge on his jaw. She smiled but the smile faltered and tears came into her eyes as she thought how Henry was afraid of the dark, how he’d cried as a boy for his father, how
people called him cracked because of his enthusiasm for autocars. Why did she feel so miserable? Why did the world seem so topsy-turvy and beyond repair? And all she had to look forward to was returning to the big house, being locked in the nursery again. It filled her with a sense of despair. No one would ever come for her, no one cared, she would end up forgotten, discarded, like the old woman in the basement.

  ‘Hey now!’ Henry was watching her anxiously. ‘Why the long face? It can’t be as bad as all that, surely?’

  But it was. It was all hopeless. All the same, she swallowed her sobs and put on a brave face for Henry’s sake. And she thought of her papa, too. Gee up, Dotty. Look on the bright side. There’s always a bright side, no matter how well hidden.

  Henry was the bright side – meeting Henry. Nora, too. Perhaps Roderick, if she ever saw him again. And what about the boy with the big dark eyes? Might he become a friend too? But she didn’t even know who he was! Perhaps Henry might know.

  ‘What boy’s this?’

  ‘He said his name was Richard.’

  ‘Ah. That boy.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was there until today.’

  ‘He often seems to get overlooked, one way or another.’

  ‘But who is he? Why is he in bed?’

  ‘He’s Richard Rycroft, your aunt’s nephew. A delicate creature, they say, but I don’t really know what is wrong with him. You’d have to ask Mother.’

  ‘He wanted me to stay but I couldn’t. I was running away. I felt mean, leaving him.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘He looked sad. I wanted to … to make him smile.’

  ‘Did you, now?’ Henry gave her a curious glance. ‘You’re quite something, Dorothea, do you know that?’

  ‘Is … is that good?’

  ‘Yes. Very good. Very good indeed.’

  ‘I … I think you’re something, too, Henry.’ She felt it a great cheek using his name so freely but he didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘My word! You certainly know how to make a chap blush!’ He laughed, looked rather bashful, but then rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘We should get going, before we catch our deaths. If Bernadette will oblige….’

  Bernadette did oblige. In the blink of an eye, it seemed, the Daimler was juddering up the long driveway between the tall evergreens. Huddled in Henry’s dust coat, Dorothea couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling inside. Her escape was over. The big house was waiting to claim her once again.

  Uncle Albert put in an appearance. Dorothea had never seen him in the nursery before. He did not look best pleased.

  They left her alone with him. She felt all trembly, as if her legs might give way at any moment. It didn’t help that she was still giddy from Nanny’s cuffs and blows. Not that she was a stranger to such treatment – Mrs Browning was none too gentle – but Nanny seemed to take a particular pride in that aspect of her work. Dorothea did not like to imagine what Uncle Albert would have in store for her. She wished she had run along that endless road as far as her legs would have carried her. She might have been curled in a ditch, starving, by now but anything would be better than this.

  ‘Why did you go off like that?’ Uncle Albert’s voice was an angry growl. ‘Eloise – your aunt – is very cross. Very cross indeed.’

  Dorothea stood frozen, couldn’t speak a word.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he murmured after a pause. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best.’ His big, thick fingers tapped impatiently on the table but he wasn’t looking at her, which was a blessing. ‘Ellie would prefer it if you were sent away, but … well … I don’t like the idea of … of those places.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Don’t you like it here, eh? Eh? Is that why you ran away?’

  Dorothea quailed. His fierce eyes seemed to burn into her. But it was important to tell him the truth. ‘Please, uncle, I just want to go home.’

  ‘And where is home? Where did you live before you came here?’

  ‘In … in Stepnall Street.’

  ‘Stepnall Street?’

  ‘It’s in London.’

  ‘Big place, London.’

  ‘There’s a house, a court, cobbles….’ She tried to put her thoughts in order. ‘There’s a road nearby where the trams run. Mickey likes to race the trams.’

  ‘And who is Mickey?’

  ‘Mickey is….’ Who exactly was Mickey? She’d thought of him as a sort of big brother, but he wasn’t really her brother. He belonged to Mrs Browning. But who was Mrs Browning? Papa had called her the landlady but he gave a strange sort of laugh when he said it, as if it was some sort of joke. Their room, though, was Mrs Browning’s, she’d been there first. Dorothea found herself wondering who Mickey’s papa was, and Flossie’s. She’d never thought about it before.

  But it wasn’t important. All that mattered was her own papa. ‘Please, uncle, can’t you find him? Can’t you find my papa?’

  ‘It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, child. He could be anywhere. Anywhere.’ Her uncle turned away, crossed to the window. His broad shoulders seemed to blot out the light, as if a shadow had fallen across the day room. But Dorothea drew comfort from his words which seemed to suggest that he had made an effort to find her papa even if the search had been, up to now, fruitless. She wanted to tell him to go on looking, not to give up. It was more important than anything.

  But at that moment he turned to face her and the words died in her throat.

  ‘Come here, child.’

  It was the last thing she wanted, but Uncle Albert was not the sort of man you dared to disobey. Her feet dragged, her legs were like jelly, she hung her head because she could not bear to look into his eyes but there was no escape. His big hand tilted her chin and she had to look up at him.

  Her head was spinning. She felt faint. He was so tall and grim and angry that she couldn’t bear it. But as he moved her head from side to side, she realized that the angry glare was fading from his eyes. He was looking at her now with a curious expression, half wonderment and half something else – pain, perhaps?

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It’s quite definite. I can’t think why I didn’t see it before. It’s Florence all over. Florence reborn.’

  She found her voice. ‘Who, who is Florence?’

  ‘Eh? What? But surely you know, child? Surely you know! Florence was your mother. My sister. And you are the spit and image of her.’

  He let her go and turned away. A shudder seemed to pass through him. The shadow in the room had gone. Dorothea could breathe again.

  ‘I think,’ he muttered, ‘I think for now it would be best if you stayed here, with us.

  ‘Until, until Papa comes back?’

  ‘Yes, yes. When—if—he does. Or maybe….’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s not a bad place, once you get used to it. Not bad at all.’

  He sounded almost as if he was trying to convince himself, and Dorothea remembered Henry’s words: he’s an interloper … he’s not one of us….

  ‘No more running off, now, do you hear me, child? There’s no knowing what might have happened if young Fitzwilliam hadn’t come along. Do you promise?’

  ‘I, I promise, Uncle.’

  ‘Good. Good. And now, well, talking of Fitzwilliam, he had rather a bright idea. A governess, he said. To keep you in line. To improve you.’

  A governess? What was a governess?

  Dorothea did not have chance to ask. Uncle Albert, with one last keen glance, departed as abruptly as he’d arrived.

  She was to have a governess. But what did that mean? If Henry had suggested it, surely it couldn’t be too bad.

  Nanny soon put her right on that score.

  ‘It’s no more than you deserve, my girl. If you’d behaved yourself properly, it needn’t have happened. Running away like that! Mrs Brannan was most put out. Spoke very sharply to me, she did. Well, I can’t be everywhere at once. I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head – which she doesn’t understand, seemingly.’

  Nanny
glared at Dorothea. (Don’t take any notice, Henry had said: it’s her job to be horrid.)

  ‘Wilful disobedience, is what I call it. And see what’s come of it! You’ve been such a naughty, wicked girl that only a governess will do. You needn’t think that a governess will be all kindness and charity like dear old Nanny! Gracious me, no! A governess will beat you as soon as look at you. Why, I knew one as used to hold her boy’s head under water for two whole minutes at a time, to teach him his manners. So just you watch out, little madam! You’ll soon be put in your place, make no mistake!’

  THREE

  ‘WHATEVER SHALL I do?’ said Dorothea in despair. She had just been given the terrible news. As if it wasn’t bad enough that all governesses were monsters, the one who was arriving at Clifton Park tomorrow was a foreign monster. Nanny had been breathless with horror, having heard it from Cook who’d got it from Mrs Bourne who knew every last detail of the business of the house.

  The boy Richard, propped on his pillows, looked at Dorothea with his big dark eyes, guarded. ‘Tell them to send her away. That is what I would do.’

  ‘No one will listen. There is no one to tell.’ Only Nora, who had no standing at all, or Nanny, who never took heed and who might either brush you aside or lash out, give you a hiding. Dorothea knew that she had not been forgiven yet for her wilful disobedience in running away. ‘You don’t understand,’ she told Richard. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. I’m no better than Polly, locked in a cage.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Richard sulkily. ‘How would you like it if you weren’t even allowed to get up? How would you like it if you had a withered leg?’

  Very proud of it he was too, thought Dorothea bitterly, her mind on the terrible governess as she sat there on the edge of Richard’s bed. But then she listened to her words again and told herself to stop being so unkind. Richard might be a bit of a misery at times, he did tend to wallow in it (as Mrs Browning would have said). But wasn’t it enough to make anyone a misery, being in his shoes? Besides, most of the time she enjoyed his company and being permitted to visit his room was the only lasting advantage of her failed escape. She had a duty to cheer him up, not to wallow in troubles of her own.