Autumn Softly Fell

by Dominic Luke

  Tears began to flow again, silent tears, sliding down her cheeks, dripping onto the little body of the disfigured soldier that she held in her hand.

  ‘Why, Miss Dorothea, whatever’s the matter?’ cried Nora when she came into the day room some minutes later to begin laying the table for tea.

  But Dorothea couldn’t explain. It was all such a jumble in her head: the toy soldiers, the boy in the Orchard, the sense of being adrift.

  ‘Don’t you worry about those soldiers, miss. Most of them were broken already, and no wonder the way Master Roderick treats them. As for Nibs Carter – well, I’m sure he didn’t mean to upset you. He’s a handful, I’ll grant you, but he’s not a bad boy at heart. What’s a few apples when all’s said and done? There’s no need for Master Roderick to go picking on him and pointing the finger. They’ve enough troubles, the Carters, what with their mother passing on and then their dad, and Arnie Carter being left to bring up his brothers and sisters all on his own – and him little more than a boy himself! I think he’s done a grand job, whatever folk say, but there’s always somebody ready to pick holes, even when they wouldn’t have coped half so well had they been in Arnie’s shoes!’

  Nora grew heated in her defence of Arnie Carter and Dorothea, drying her eyes, wondered who he was – but before she could ask, Nanny suddenly loomed up, catching them unawares.

  ‘What’s this? What’s this? What nonsense are you filling the girl’s head with now, Turner? Why isn’t the table laid?’

  Nanny hated to be left out of anything, so of course the whole story had to be gone through again, such as it was. But, like Nora, Nanny didn’t seem to understand what Dorothea was trying to say either.

  ‘Well! Pardon me, I’m sure, if I’ve got it wrong,’ she said officiously, ‘but it was always my understanding that it says in the Bible, Thou shalt not steal. And what’s taking those apples if it’s not stealing? I’m surprised at you, Turner, for suggesting otherwise. I thought you’d been brought up better than that, even if your father is only an agricultural labourer. Yes, yes, Miss Dorothea, I know very well that the apples aren’t being used for anything, but that doesn’t mean just anyone can take them! Where would we be if everyone got their food for free? No one would want to do any work at all! Everyone would live in idleness! And need I remind you that the devil makes work for idle hands? No. No. People must go hungry, that’s what I say. People who go hungry soon find an appetite for work to match that of their bellies. Those Carters of yours, Turner, would do well to remember it. But now, that’s quite enough of that. I won’t hear another word about it. I want that table laid, Turner, and Baby needs feeding once you’ve finished. And as for you, my girl, you just go and make yourself presentable. You look a fright with your eyes all puffy and grass round your hem! Where’s that governess, I’d like to know? I shall be having words, you may be sure!’

  Nanny folded her arms and looked down her nose and Dorothea hung her head but Nora said nothing, merely pursed her lips and began laying the table, banging the cutlery about and rattling the crockery in a most un-Nora-like way, almost as if she didn’t give a fig for Nanny at all.

  Don’t you worry about the toy soldiers, Nora had said. All the same, Dorothea could not help but worry. She felt duty-bound to own up. ‘If you give Master Roderick an inch, he’ll take a mile,’ Nora warned, but Dorothea didn’t care about inches or miles. She just wanted to do what was right.

  She confessed as they sat down to the birthday tea, adding, ‘Don’t worry, Roddy, I shall buy you some new ones.’

  He looked perplexed as he piled his plate with cakes, ignoring the sandwiches. ‘There’s no need for you to buy me anything. Mother will buy new soldiers if I ask. She likes to buy me things.’

  ‘You mustn’t tell Aunt Eloise about the soldiers! She will be angry! She will want to send me away!’

  ‘No she won’t! I shan’t let her, anyway.’

  ‘It’s not up to you.’

  ‘It’s up to Father and he shan’t let her either.’

  ‘But I will buy you new soldiers. I feel I should.’

  His mouth was too full of cake for him to argue anymore and she was glad to have that settled. But now there was something else to worry about. Where would she ever find the money?

  She was no longer mad at Roderick. It was never possible to stay mad at him for long – especially this afternoon when he looked as ill-treated as his soldiers, with his split lip and bruises. Nanny had given him a beating, too, for it would be her head on the block (she’d said) when the mistress saw the state of him. Roderick had shrugged this off as if it was nothing but he was sitting on his chair rather gingerly all the same. It would almost have been possible to feel sorry for him – if he hadn’t been so infuriating.

  He was eyeing the table with a disgruntled air. ‘There is to be a dinner party downstairs in honour of my birthday, but all I get is this shabby tea.’

  Dorothea thought it was a sumptuous tea, and said so, although secretly she thought her own birthday tea six weeks ago had been better. But then she was Cook’s special friend and Roderick was not. (Was he anyone’s special friend?)

  Roderick helped himself to more iced buns. ‘There is a chink in the Dining Room door. We could watch the grown-ups as they eat and listen to what they’re saying. I don’t see why we shouldn’t. It’s all in my honour.’

  ‘But wouldn’t that be rather … naughty?’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s naughty or not, it’s what I’m going to do. You can do what you like.’

  ‘We could ask if—’

  ‘That’s no good. One doesn’t get anywhere by asking.’

  ‘But—’

  Roderick rolled his eyes. ‘We can’t all be as pure as you, Miss Goody-Goody. I’m surprised they haven’t made you a saint already.’

  Dorothea was stung. ‘I am not a goody-goody! And I shall look through the chink!’

  Roderick broke into a grin, spoke with his mouth full. ‘I knew you would.’

  Dorothea’s heart was thumping. What if they were caught? Oh, but it was worth the risk, she thought, putting her eye to the chink and seeing the long table draped with a white cloth and glittering with glass and silver. Candles flickered in the tall candelabra which served as the centrepiece. There were a dozen or so grown-ups seated there. They looked as if they’d been polished up just as diligently as the cutlery.

  It wasn’t such a lavish occasion as the party on the night Dorothea had arrived. There had been no more parties of that sort. Aunt Eloise, it was reported, had considered that evening a failure. And that is all my fault, thought Dorothea, recalling the consternation that had greeted her unexpected arrival. Clifton’s social occasions in the days of Aunt Eloise’s youth had been renowned, Dorothea had learned, but after the failure of the New Year’s party, Aunt Eloise had vowed never again to try to emulate the past – which was rather a shame, thought Dorothea, nursing feelings of guilt.

  Roderick gave her a shove. ‘It’s my turn! Let me look!’

  ‘In a minute, Roddy. I haven’t finished! Stop pushing!’

  Some of the guests Dorothea recognized. Colonel Harding was there – the bluff man who hated motors. His son was there too. Mrs Somersby of Brockmorton Manor was accompanied by her eldest daughter. And the Fitzwilliams were in attendance, Dorothea’s especial friends. Henry, of course, had been her knight in armour that day on the Welby Road but his mother took an interest too and never failed to ask after ‘Albert’s little niece’ whenever she called. Dorothea’s allies told her this, for not all the servants were as ill-natured and terrifying as Nanny or Mrs Bourne. There was Nora, there was Cook, there was Bessie Downs and Becket and even Tomlin would pass the time of day when he was pushing Richard in the bath chair.

  Roderick gave her another shove and she surrendered her place to him, stepping back, looking up and down the dusky corridor. Light still glimmered through the glass panels of the back door, the tail end of twilight.

  Roderick was giggling,
his eye pressed against the gap. ‘Look at the way Henry eats his soup! He is a goose! And Miss Somersby is making eyes at him, like this—’ He rolled his eyes wildly. ‘I don’t suppose Henry has even noticed, the pudding-head!’

  ‘Henry is not a pudding-head, nor a goose!’

  ‘Yes he is. And so is Charles Harding. Charles Harding is a half-wit, everyone says so. And—oh, I say! Father has bits from the soup caught in his moustache! How killing!’

  Roderick doubled up with laughter and Dorothea took the opportunity to push him aside and reapply her eye to the chink. Why did Roderick have to pick fault and laugh at people all the time? Why did he exaggerate? Miss Somersby was not making eyes at anyone. She looked far too stodgy for that, was busy with her soup, a frown of concentration on her face as she lifted the spoon to her mouth. Henry had finished his soup already. He looked very dapper and gallant in his dark jacket and waistcoat, his hair slicked back and shiny with oil. He was crumbling his roll absently as he listened to Colonel Harding going on and on as usual. Dorothea watched as Henry narrowed his eyes, puffed out his cheeks, as if he was trying to stop himself from yawning.

  ‘Stromberg, Magersfontein, Spion Kop: disaster after disaster!’ boomed the Colonel. ‘I was beginning to have my doubts, I don’t mind telling you. Is this what the British Army has come to, I asked myself? Things must have changed, I said, if this is the kind of shambles that….’

  But Colonel Harding, strident and bombastic though he was, was somehow not as imposing as Uncle Albert, sitting there silent at the head of the table. He was just as smart and polished as the others (even if he did have bits in his moustache) but there was also something blunt and rough-edged about him, his big hands resting on the table as if, at any moment, he might get to his feet and say— she could not imagine what he would say, but his words would be hard, incisive, to the point. Not like Colonel Harding, blustering and bumbling.

  ‘…it wouldn’t have happened in my day! No! No! You can be sure! In my day—’

  ‘In my day,’ Roderick imitated, elbowing her aside.

  ‘Stop pushing Roddy!’ She gave him a shove, turned back to the chink.

  ‘The Boer, the Boer,’ thundered Colonel Harding, reaching a crescendo. ‘The Boer is—’

  But Dorothea’s gaze was drawn to where, enthroned like an empress, Aunt Eloise sat at the far end of the table. Her mauve gown shimmered as she moved. Her hair was up, made her neck look slim and graceful – like a swan’s. She was listening to the Colonel with a slight smile as if to say, Yes, yes, go on. You are doing well, you are doing oh so well. As Dorothea watched, however, Aunt Eloise glanced along the length of the table, her blue eyes questing, and with an all but imperceptible movement of one finger she brushed her upper lip before turning back to the Colonel. At the other end of the table, Uncle Albert laid hold of his napkin and mopped at his moustache.

  Dorothea’s heart beat fast. So that was what it meant to be married, that was the secret: a flick of the finger, a dab with a napkin. She remembered Bessie Downs’s words: she only married the master because no one else would have her. But that couldn’t be right. There was more to it than that, much more.

  Dorothea struggled to put this feeling into words. ‘Aunt Eloise is … is beautiful!’ she breathed.

  ‘Mrs Somersby is beautifuller,’ said Roderick at her side, mulish.

  ‘Mrs Somersby is not beautifuller! She looks like a … like a Christmas tree, with all those jewels stuck on her!’

  Turning her back on Roderick, she looked through the chink once more, saw Tomlin the footman clearing the plates. As he did so, a moth came fluttering in through the half-open window and began circling round and round his head.

  ‘—those, those people, those sympathisers, those traitors! Lloyd George!’ Colonel Harding seemed to be running out of steam at last. ‘And that Hobhouse woman….’ He trailed to a stop, as if words failed him, as if nothing he could say would serve to describe that Hobhouse woman.

  In the silence, Mrs Somersby said, ‘For myself, I shall simply be glad when it is all over and my son … my son—’

  Even as she was speaking, the moth made a sudden dive towards the candelabra. There was a spark as it met the candle flame – then nothing. The moth had gone. Dorothea caught her breath. No one in the room seemed to have noticed. No one remarked on it. And yet it was horrible – ominous.

  Roderick gave her a hearty push. She pushed back. They tussled in the doorway, fighting to get at the chink.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  The sudden voice was like the crack of a whip. It made Dorothea jump out of her skin. The terrifying figure of Mrs Bourne was bearing down on them, eyes blazing. Even Roderick cowered.

  ‘Should you not both be in bed? What is Nanny thinking of? This is bad, too bad!’

  She swept them up as if they nothing more than moths themselves and drove them towards the stairs. They fled up them, pursued by Mrs Bourne’s voice. ‘This is bad, too bad!’

  But once in bed, Dorothea found it impossible to settle, tossing and turning, her head full to bursting and everything jumbled up: her new frock; the ribbons in her hair; Jem’s imminent wedding, like a glittering ball just out of reach; Nibs Carter in the Orchard; Stepnall Street like a faded picture in a frame; Roderick, hard, brittle, discomfiting; the tin soldiers; the grown-ups sitting resplendent at dinner. Half asleep and half awake, she floundered in the bed, murmuring to herself, her mind weighed down with it all like the branches of a tree overburdened with plump ripe plums.

  Plums, she muttered, grappling with the bedclothes: apples and plums. Richard’s apples, Richard’s plums. Because everything belonged to Richard.

  No, she said, her eyes suddenly opening wide. Things are things, not plums on a tree. Everything is what it is, it is not something else too. Mrs Somersby is not a Christmas tree. Why did I say it? How could I be so cruel – when her son is in danger, abroad, fighting the Boers?

  The Boer, the Boer…. She sank back into the mire of sleep, hearing Colonel Harding’s voice booming, thinking of the moth, the poor moth, burnt up in the candle flame.

  So shall it be at the end of the world! Colonel Harding’s voice had changed into that of the sour-faced vicar who she saw in the pulpit each Sunday. So shall it be. The angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from the just, and shall cast them into the furnaces of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth…

  God, she thought, as she felt herself sinking deeper, deeper, her eyelids flickering. But which was the real God? Was it Mlle Lacroix’s God who held your hand to guide you? Or was it the vicar’s God with the fiery furnaces, the God who let moths burn? How was one to know? How was one to know anything? How, how….

  Her eyelids stopped fluttering. She finally lay still. Sleep lapped over her.

  ‘Dorossea, you are not paying attention, I think?’

  ‘I … I’m sorry, mam’zelle.’

  Mlle Lacroix closed her book. ‘Bon. I think we will take our walk now, yes?’

  ‘Our walk? But it’s not time!’

  ‘Ah, but if we go now, ma petite, we shall be able to see the bride and groom as they leave the church!’

  ‘Oh! May we really go? Oh, mam’zelle, thank you, thank you!’

  Dorothea jumped up, astonished that the governess seemed to know that the wedding was the very thing occupying her thoughts. It was the reason for Nora’s absence today. Now that the harvest was over, Jem was to marry the inn-keeper’s daughter. Not that Jem had been involved in the harvest. He had given up his job on the farm to work in a shoe factory in Lawham, walking three miles there and three miles back every day. Nora had shaken her head at such folly – not the six miles, which she seemed to think was nothing – but the factory. Working in a factory, she said, was only one step above the workhouse, which meant it must be bad indeed, for in Stepnall Street not even the fiery furnaces had held more terror than the workhouse.

  Dorothea buttoned her boots in a rush, grabbed he
r hat. She was to visit the village, to see the wedding. She could barely contain herself!

  The sun was golden. The fields, stripped of corn, were bristly and pale brown. The footpath stretched like a ribbon from stile to stile. They were taking a short cut from the house to the village, not going round by the road. Dorothea had never been this way before. She pressed ahead, her heart brimming with happiness. A crow took flight, swept into the air with ragged black wings. Crow, she said to herself, la corneille in French.

  It was quite extraordinary, the things she knew, the names of things in French and English, the names that Nora used too. And did she not read from great big books and do sums in her head at a whim? Who would ever have guessed she would become so wise! Astonishing!

  She waited for Mlle Lacroix in the shade of some elms. The governess was serene, smiling, her skirts trailing, her dress plain but oh-so-elegant. She came to the stile, balanced her parasol, lifted her legs, eased herself over, effortless. When Dorothea tried to do the same, she wobbled and lost her balance, went sliding and tumbling – laughing – landing with a bump in the grass. This field – Row Meadow, Nora called it – was where the rabbits had their burrows and yellow ragwort grew, goatsbeard, too, which Nora called Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon. The church was nearby, just the other side of the meadow, the grey crenulations of its squat tower etched against the sky. It was the only place in the village that Dorothea knew first hand, the place where the sour-faced vicar held forth about the fiery furnaces, where the seats were hard and uncomfortable, where the daylight came dim through stained glass. It was always cold in the church, no matter what the weather outside. But Mlle Lacroix knew nothing of it, because she went to her own church in Lawham.

  They were just in time. Standing on the Green, hand-in-hand, they watched the bride and groom emerge from the church and walk slowly – meekly – down the path. So that was Nora’s brother, thought Dorothea – the famous Jem in his Sunday best with a smart new waistcoat, a burly-looking fellow with a plain round face all scrubbed and glowing, colour flaring in his cheeks. And the bride – her name was (had been) Pippa Cheeseman. She had a smile as bright as the sunshine. Her frock was the one that her mother had been married in, exquisite, but Nora had said it was out-of-date with its big bustle and all that hand-worked lace. Pippa, Nora said, had no idea when it came to clothes, had no idea about anything. All she knew was how to pour beer in her father’s pub. You had to wonder, Nora said, if she was quite the girl for Jem, but – and here Nora had sighed – Jem had made his choice and there was nothing more to be said.