Autumn Softly Fell

by Dominic Luke

  Dorothea’s legs were like jelly. She felt that she’d never been so deeply terrified of anyone in her life.

  Aunt Eloise folded the letters precisely and placed them on the table. ‘Thank you,’ she said with a regal nod of her head. Then she turned and went, her long skirts rustling as she glided effortlessly from the room. Dazed as she was, Dorothea would not have been surprised just then to see her aunt ascend through the ceiling in a shower of silver.

  ‘Goodness me, miss! You’re shaking like a leaf! Come and sit by the fire.’ Dorothea was aware of the warmth of Nora’s arm round her waist, helping her to a seat. ‘Here we are. Sit in Nanny’s chair, she’ll never know. Well, your head feels cool, so you can’t have a fever, but you must be sickening for something. I’ll go and see Cook. She’ll make you one of her restoratives, then you’ll be right as rain.’

  Leaning back in the chair with a rug over her knees, Dorothea was at a loss to explain what had come over her, but as she looked round the day room which had become so familiar, as she thought about Uncle Albert and the bicycles, Roderick and his letters, Nora and Richard and Mlle Lacroix – she wondered if all that was enough to make her belong here. Would the house in time come to accept her? Or, despite everything – despite her papa’s best laid plans – would the mean little court off Stepnall Street always be her real home?

  FOUR

  ‘WHY, MISS,’ exclaimed Nora as she brushed Dorothea’s hair, ‘to think what a scarecrow you were on your first morning! You’re a different girl now. You’ll look such a picture for Master Roderick’s tea, with your new frock and all.’

  Sat in front of the three-folded mirror in her room, Dorothea did not think of the picture she would make but of the scarecrow she had been. There’d been holes in her boots, and the clothes she’d stood up in had been all that she had. There were no new frocks in Stepnall Street, no maids to brush one’s hair – no mirrors, either, for that matter – not in the little room she’d shared with her papa, and Mrs Browning, and Mickey and Flossie.

  She lowered her eyes. She had still not got used to seeing her own reflection. She did not like it, picture or not. Would her papa even recognize her now, after so long? Two birthdays had come and gone since she’d come to Clifton. She’d reached the dizzy heights of double figures. And she had so many clothes now that she wasn’t sure there were enough days in the year to wear them all.

  Nora sighed, still brushing. ‘I wish I had your curls, miss. A new frock would come in handy, too. Curls and a new frock, it would be just the thing for our Jem’s wedding.’

  ‘Why not borrow my new frock, Nora? I wouldn’t mind at all.’

  ‘It’s a lovely thought, miss, but I’m not sure it would fit. Never mind. There’s an old frock of Mother’s that’ll suit me down to the ground. It only needs a few alterations.’ She stepped back, admiring her handiwork. ‘There, miss, that’s your hair done, ribbons and all. Shall we try that frock now?’

  And so Dorothea was ready for the big birthday tea. Roderick’s birthday came nearly two months after her own, but Roderick would only be nine this year whereas she was ten. He was not best pleased.

  It was early yet. She had time to kill. She wandered around the day room which was unaccountably empty, Polly the only sign of life. The big table was littered with Roderick’s tin soldiers, all massacred that morning in a vast and noisy battle. Mlle Lacroix’s latest book – one from the library downstairs – lay open and face down on the chair by the window. Dorothea picked it up. The pages crackled as she turned them.

  The present house (she read) was built by Sir John Massingham on the site of the old manor early in the eighteenth century.

  Now, when was the eighteenth century? Did it have years beginning with eighteen or with seventeen? She could never remember. Mlle Lacroix would despair.

  Putting the book aside, Dorothea looked out of the window, leaning on the ledge. The sky was glossed with clouds, but deep wells of blue had opened here and there. Away on the horizon the sun was slanting down brightly. Nearer at hand, the green meadow known as The Park sloped down to where the grey ribbon of the canal was half-glimpsed in its shallow valley.

  The day looked warm and inviting. Dorothea decided to go outside, to blow the cobwebs away, as Nora would say. Now that she was as old as ten, she didn’t always need the governess to hold her hand.

  Out in the fresh air, Dorothea wandered through the vegetable garden, past the beans on their poles and Becket’s neat rows of cabbages, onions and carrots (‘Vegetables can be just as comely as flowers to my way of thinking,’ Becket said, ‘and there’s some utility in vegetables as there ain’t in flowers.’). There was no sign of Becket himself but as she passed through a doorway into a walled walkway, the sun broke through and her spirits rose. She wished she’d asked Richard to accompany her. It was just the sort of afternoon when he would be allowed out. A turn around the gardens worked wonders. Even Dr Camborne himself had admitted as much. On his last visit, he’d said that he’d never seen Richard looking better.

  ‘The credit is all yours, Florence Nightingale.’ The doctor had patted her head but her glow of pleasure had been tempered only moments later when she’d overheard him talking to the governess in the corridor.

  ‘…quite a remarkable transformation….’ She’d thought at first that he was speaking of Richard. ‘One would never guess at her origins if one didn’t know. It just goes to show that even a child from the very lowest orders can be raised up, if the effort is made. I’d never have believed it myself. Catch them early; that must be the key.’

  Mlle Lacroix had spoken rather stiffly. ‘I think, Monsieur docteur, that Dorossea would be the same girl whatever her circumstances.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right, Mlle, perhaps you are right. She may be the exception that proves the rule. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.’

  Dorothea pulled a face as she turned left, passing under an archway into a rather neglected corner of the gardens. She did not want to be an exception, she did not think of herself as having been raised up. A few posh clothes did not change who you were. Whether you had holes in your boots or not was neither here nor there. Perhaps that was what Mlle Lacroix had meant when she said Dorossea would be the same girl whatever her circumstances.

  The sun faded. Dorothea looked round, standing in the middle of what might once have been a neat lawn but was now overgrown and strewn with weeds. There were some hives, crumbling, the paint peeling, many dead and silent, one or two still active. Watching the bees coming and going, engrossed in their own affairs, Dorothea experienced an inexplicable feeling of restlessness. Their buzzing was the only sound apart from the wind in the grass. But then, from far off, as if in answer to her mood, she heard the chimes of the church clock marking the quarter hour. Ever since the dreams of her first night, those chimes had held a mysterious significance for her. Today they were like beckoning fingers – as if the village was calling her, the village she heard so much about but so rarely saw. Sometimes she thought it might be the one place where she might have belonged, if she could have lived in a little cottage like Nora’s with her papa – with her mama, too, if in some other life her mama hadn’t died. Perhaps there’d have been brothers and sisters as well – real brothers and sisters, not stand-ins like Mickey and Flossie.

  The village, she thought longingly. And the wedding, Jem’s wedding. If only—

  Oh, but what was the use? The village beckoned, but she was netted here, up at the big house, wandering like a waif in the gardens. The bees might be full of purpose, but she had nothing, just silly dreams like the one about the cottage. She didn’t have a mama, never had.

  Her skirts dragged through the long grass as she walked to the far wall. Ivy grew all over the crumbling brickwork and dangled in front of a doorway. The door itself had rotted away long ago leaving just the rusty hinges. Brushing aside the tendrils, she stepped through, entering the Orchard, a remote and little-known outpost. It hardly seemed part of the gardens a
t all. There was no wall or hedge round it apart from the one she had just passed. The Orchard simply faded into the big field beyond.

  Her heart was beating. She suddenly felt oddly excited, the house hidden behind her, the wide world just a few steps away on the other side of the unmarked boundary. Uncharted lands stretched ahead of her. Rookery Hill was hunched against the sky with its crown of trees. If she had possessed any courage at all, she thought – if she’d been like Roderick, fearless – she would have gone running heedless right to the top of the hill and back again. Roderick would think nothing of it, never mind if it was forbidden. But Roderick was a boy, such mischief was expected of boys. She was a girl with a new frock and ribbons in her hair, and running anywhere would spoil how she looked. But perhaps if she put a foot – one toe, even – out into the field, she might feel as if she had achieved something.

  She walked forward, ducking under the straggling branches of long-neglected apple and plum trees but as she rounded a gnarled old trunk she suddenly realized with a shiver of alarm that she was not alone in the Orchard as she’d thought. Someone else was there.

  The someone was a boy – not much older than her, she recognized on second glance – a short, wiry boy with a sun-browned face and a thin white scar on his forehead. He was wearing a grubby shirt and a tatty waistcoat. His coarse trousers were fraying at the ends. His cap, wedged on his head, was too small for him. Unruly brown hair stuck out. In one hand he held an apple that he had just picked from a tree, in his other hand was a sack in which he had obviously gathered a great many other apples. Something about him made Dorothea want to take a step back, but it was too late to retreat. He had seen her.

  She shrank against the gnarled tree as he approached her, glowering.

  ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

  ‘I … I … my name is Dorothea. What’s yours?’

  ‘Mind yer own business.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. I ain’t doing nothing. What’s it to you?’

  She drew herself up. ‘There’s no call to be rude!’

  ‘There’s no call to be rude,’ he mimicked with a sneer.

  ‘Those apples don’t belong to you.’

  ‘They’re not yours, neither.’

  ‘You shouldn’t take them without asking.’

  ‘There’s no harm in a bit of scrumping. But don’t you go telling anyone, see?’

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do! I shall tell who I like!’

  ‘Oh, will you, now!’

  He hoisted his sack on his shoulder, came nearer, menacing. Dorothea had met boys like this before, in Stepnall Street and thereabouts. But in Stepnall Street there had always been people around, there had been Mickey to look out for her. Here in the orchard, she was on her own.

  ‘My, you’re an uppity one, ain’t ya.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m not uppity at all.’

  ‘Yes yer are. I’ve seen yer, tripping in and out of church of a Sunday with your nose in the air. You’re from up the big house, ain’t yer, Miss La-di-da Posh Frock.’

  ‘But I’m not posh at all, really I’m not, I’m—’

  ‘Don’t give me that! You people up at the house with your airs and graces. I hate you – we all hate you. You’re against us. You’ve always been against us. Ask anyone in Hayton and they’ll say the same.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘If you dare tell anyone I was here – if you dare to tell a living soul—’

  ‘I won’t, I promise, I—’

  ‘You’d better not, or it will be the worse for you!’

  He dropped his sack, bunched his fists, came so close she could smell him, his eyes boring into hers.

  ‘Leave her alone, you swine!’ The unexpected voice came down from on high, making them both jump. It was as if a guardian angel had appeared to protect her. But the voice certainly wasn’t the voice of an angel.

  She looked up. Roderick was balanced on top of the wall, staring at them ferociously, but the boy with the apples didn’t flinch.

  ‘I ain’t scared of you, Roderick Brannan.’

  ‘Then you jolly well should be. I’ve knocked you down more than once, Nibs Carter.’

  ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten, neither. I’ll get you back, you just wait.’

  ‘That’s what you think, you worm!’

  With that, Roderick leapt from the wall. Dorothea’s heart was in her mouth, afraid he would break his neck. He seemed to hang in the air for an eternity. Landing in a heap with a resounding thump, he was up in an instant. The other boy had grabbed his sack and was off, zigzagging through the orchard, but Roderick was too quick for him, hurled himself bodily at his enemy.

  The two boys crashed onto the ground, rolled over and over in the grass, pummelling each other, heaving and grunting. It was nothing that Dorothea hadn’t seen a hundred times in Stepnall Street – and not just amongst the boys. But here in the peace of the neglected orchard it seemed somehow a hundred times worse, sickeningly brutal. What if they killed each other?

  ‘Stop it! Stop it! Please … please … stop!’

  But they took no notice. She wrung her hands, not knowing what to do. Once, she remembered, when Mickey had been going at it hammer-and-tongs in the court with some deadly foe, a woman had opened an upstairs window and emptied a chamber pot over them, followed by a string of terrible oaths. But Dorothea had no chamber pot to hand, and she dared not use the wicked words (though they were graven on her memory).

  At that moment the boy slithered free of Roderick’s grasp and staggered to his feet. Roderick leapt up, but this time the boy dodged out of reach. Snatching up his sack, he went haring through the trees, yelling over his shoulder, ‘I’ll get you, Roderick Brannan, you see if I don’t!’ And then he was away, flying across the field, a thin streak of next-to-nothing.

  Dorothea turned her attention to Roderick who had stumbled and fallen in attempting to catch the boy. He was now sitting in the grass gulping air. The fight, though brief, had been vicious.

  ‘Oh, Roddy! You’re bleeding!’

  ‘I bit my lip. It’s nothing.’ He gave a blood-drenched grin. ‘I showed him what for, didn’t I!’

  ‘I don’t see what’s so funny! You could have been killed!’

  ‘Killed? What rot, Doro! Nibs Carter couldn’t hurt a fly! He might be two years older than me, but I always come out on top – well, nearly always.’

  ‘Why don’t you just leave him alone?’ She found that she was shouting, couldn’t understand why she was so furiously angry. ‘What’s he ever done to you?’

  ‘What’s he done? I’ll tell you what he’s done, the worm, the swine—’

  ‘I don’t care! I don’t want to know! Fighting is silly, is stupid!’

  ‘Well, I like that! After I saved you!’

  ‘I don’t need saving!’

  ‘I suppose you’d rather have knocked him down yourself? I suppose that’s what girls do, where you come from.’ He looked up at her, scowling, rather pitiful with his cap missing, his black hair tousled, clothes askew, blood running down his chin. ‘You’re a rum sort of girl, I must say,’ he added, aggrieved. ‘I was only trying to help!’

  Dorothea opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. A wave of desolation washed over her. She felt as if she was about to fly into pieces. What was wrong with her? Tears pricked her eyes. To cry in front of Roderick would be the ultimate ignominy, so instead she turned and fled.

  The day room was just as she’d left it, deserted except for Polly – poor Polly who spent her whole life in a cage. But wasn’t it the same for people, too? Weren’t houses cages, even a house as big as Clifton? And life, life was just a series of traps and pitfalls and dead ends.

  She sobbed, thinking of a dream she sometimes had – not the dream of the cottage or the portentous chimes but a cold, clammy, smothering sort of dream in which she was walking the streets at dead of night trailing after her papa and sucking her thumb, her tummy empty, her feet s
ore. She had an idea that something of the sort had really happened – perhaps more than once, in the days before Mrs Browning and the room in Stepnall Street. But she couldn’t be sure. London was slipping away from her, getting hazier and hazier in her memory.

  She thought of the girl in her dream, the girl she’d once been. She thought of the words that the boy had used: la-di-dah … uppity … Miss Posh Frock. Would the people in Stepnall Street – Mrs Browning, Mickey and the others – would they see her in the same light, all airs and graces, a toff? Was she too grand now even for her papa?

  But she didn’t fit in here, either. She was an outsider, a cuckoo in the nest, the girl who’d been raised up, nothing more than a guest, a lodger. ‘You should think yourself lucky, my girl,’ Nanny often said. ‘You ought to be grateful.’ But she was grateful; she tried her hardest to be the perfect guest. But that didn’t stop her from feeling that they might send her away at any moment. Uncle Albert, perhaps, wouldn’t but Aunt Eloise would have no compunction, nor Nanny or Mrs Bourne. And as for Roderick…. ‘I suppose that’s what girls do, where you come from….’

  Where you come from.

  She ground her teeth, stamped her foot, hating Roderick with a passion, setting himself up as a hero, so nice in his letters from school, so horrible in real life – so contradictory, you never knew where you stood with him.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, she began to sweep the toy soldiers off the table and started stamping on them, enraged, howling. Polly watched in amazement, flexing her wings anxiously. Finally she gave a single loud squawk.

  The sound of Polly’s squawk was like a douche of cold water. Dorothea stood stock still. She looked down at the tin soldiers on the floor and began shaking. She had never lost control like that in her life. It made her afraid. And the soldiers, the poor soldiers!

  She fetched their box and knelt to pick them up, putting them slowly away one by one. Many were broken and mangled, some were squashed quite flat. Here was one, its head skew-whiff, its legs missing. What had it ever done to deserve that?