by Dominic Luke
But now – at last – Henry was getting to the interesting bit. It had been in that same year of the lost election, 1885, that Lord Lynford had asked Aunt Eloise to marry him. This, it turned out, had really happened. It wasn’t just a figment of Nanny’s and Cook’s imaginations. Lynford and Aunt Eloise had known one another for years, with Lynford and Fred being such good friends and Fred later marrying Lynford’s sister. Aunt Eloise had formed what Henry called an attachment, by which he meant love, thought Dorothea.
But 1885! It was nearly twenty years ago, ancient history! One did not really think of Aunt Eloise as being that old. Then again, one never thought of her as being any age at all. She was timeless, like the Snow Queen. But if Henry could remember these events, then he must be getting on a bit, too – he must be a quarter of a century old at least!
She looked at Henry with new esteem as he explained that the expected marriage had never taken place and that no one could say for certain why. Everyone had their own theory. His mother was of the firm opinion that Old Harry (as she called Mr Rycroft, Aunt Eloise’s father) had been against the match from the start, especially so since he had seen how Fred’s marriage had turned out. Aunt Eloise had been devoted to her father, it was well known. She would never have gone against him. And so Lord Lynford had slunk away with his tail between his legs and had disappeared from view. The next anyone had heard of him, he had sailed to America and married an heiress.
‘Mother says that this proves Lord Lynford had been up to no good all along – he only wanted to marry your aunt for money, to pay off his debts. But that doesn’t ring true to me. Your aunt wasn’t an heiress. She had no money to speak of. So I think, in his own muddled way, Lynford did have a … a soft spot for her.’
Dorothea wrinkled her nose, remembering the viscount’s cadaverous appearance and haughty manner – the way he unsettled Richard and ruffled Bessie Downs’s feathers. She doubted that he’d ever had a soft spot for anyone except himself. Perhaps Lord Lynford – unlike Frederick Rycroft – had never turned his back on his wild days, was a rake/rapscallion even now.
But this didn’t help in trying to guess what might happen next. She could understand why Uncle Albert might be vexed at Lord Lynford’s visits, but surely he couldn’t imagine that Aunt Eloise was still attached to the viscount – could he?
When she asked Henry about this, he went red and began stammering. ‘I don’t … it’s not my place to— Oh lord! Mother’s always saying I should learn to think before I open my mouth! I really shouldn’t have told you any of this! It’s not … not suitable. I’ve been horribly indiscreet. The problem is, I always think of you as being older than you are.’
‘But I am older, Henry; I’m quite grown up, nearly twelve. And you are the only one who talks to me properly, who tells me about things. Even the mam’zelle won’t talk about this sort of thing.’
‘She’s obviously got a good deal more sense than me.’ A grin stole onto Henry’s face which – with his red cheeks – made him look rather sheepish. ‘You mustn’t worry, you know, about your aunt and uncle. Grown-ups are forever having disagreements. It never amounts to anything.’
‘You told me that once before.’ She smiled at Henry, who really was the best sort of friend one could have but there was no time for any more talk. ‘I have to fetch the mam’zelle’s letter, and then—’ She was already running towards the gardens. ‘Goodbye, Henry! Goodbye! And thank you!’
He waved, the spanner still in his hand. ‘Don’t mention it! Any time!’ He sounded pleased as punch, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what she’d done to make him so happy.
Nora came into the day room in a fluster.
‘Mrs Brannan has asked for you, without delay,’ she said, bundling Dorothea into her hat and coat.
Dorothea went cold. ‘Aunt Eloise never wants to see me!’
‘Well, she wants to see you today. Oh, these dratted buttons! I’m all fingers and thumbs!’ Aunt Eloise had that effect on people.
As they hurried downstairs, all manner of thoughts chased through Dorothea’s mind. Perhaps Aunt Eloise was taking the opportunity – with Uncle Albert away – of sending her unwanted niece to the orphanage, as she had wanted from the start. Or maybe, thought Dorothea, I will be turned out and made to work for my living. Girls of her age in the village were in service by now. But would Aunt Eloise really do any of these things? Dorothea could not decide. The thought that she might be leaving the house forever clouded everything else.
Aunt Eloise was waiting in the hall, dressed to go out. ‘Come along.’ She led the way, sweeping past Mr Ordish who was holding the door open, unobtrusive as always (Mr Ordish was so unobtrusive as to be almost invisible). The carriage was waiting at the foot of the steps – the carriage, not the motor. Had Henry not fixed it? Or was Aunt Eloise rejecting everything that spoke of Uncle Albert?
‘Quickly, or we shall miss the train!’
Dorothea looked out from the carriage as it jerked into motion, the horses treading the gravel. Nora was standing on the steps, a tight little smile on her face. Dorothea was too shy to wave, with Aunt Eloise sitting up beside her, and already the house was slipping away, quickly lost behind the trees.
They reached Welby station in no time. Aunt Eloise hastened up to the platform. Dorothea ran to keep up.
Almost at once, a train came in. They got on. The train pulled away, hissing and clunking. It trundled over the Hayton Road on the grey brick bridge and quickly gathered speed. Facing backwards, Dorothea saw Welby dwindling into the distance. Goodbye to Welby – to Hayton, to Clifton too. Goodbye forever?
The door to the corridor opened. A man in a dark suit and a bowler hat stood there. He was carrying a rolled-up newspaper. His eyes took in the spare seats, then swivelled round to look with obvious approval at Aunt Eloise. Aunt Eloise met his gaze. Her cold, blue stare raked over him. The man stepped back, seemed suddenly overcome with embarrassment, as if he’d been caught out in some unseemly act. The door slid shut. He was gone.
They were alone together. Dorothea had never been alone with Aunt Eloise before. She did not dare to look at her and looked out out of the window instead. The train was bowling along, swaying and rocking, the clackety-clack of the wheels loud in her ears.
Without warning, they plunged into a tunnel. The darkness outside roared and seethed, the lamps in their compartment gave out a pale yellow glow.
‘Duncan’s Hill Tunnel,’ said Aunt Eloise: the first words she had spoken since leaving Clifton. ‘My father remembered it being built. Navvies from Ireland worked on it. They were hard-bitten men. When they went on the rampage in Welby village, the militia had to be called in. But even their games were perilous. They dared each other to leap across the top of the air shafts. One slip equalled death.’
Aunt Eloise spoke almost as if she approved of the rough-and-ready navvies. For a split second, Dorothea had a glimpse of a different Aunt Eloise, the young girl Mrs Turner had spoken of, riding wild and free on her pony or horse, her hair flying in the wind.
But then the train poured out from the tunnel into the daylight again and the brief vision shattered like glass. The navvies, too, who’d loomed up real and threatening in the dark, were now swept away, lost in the whirling hedgerows. With a sharp, precise movement, Aunt Eloise straightened her skirt. Dorothea thought of Nanny and Cook and Bessie Downs, and all the talk of Aunt Eloise carrying on. It seemed monstrous, meaningless. It couldn’t possibly be true. Perhaps once, long ago, that wild girl on her pony might have been dazzled by Lord Lynford who’d been older, glamorous, titled, but not now. Now – sitting poised on the seat, her back perfectly straight, her face set – Aunt Eloise was a pillar of virtue. Her very blood ran with it.
‘Rugby! This is Rugby!’
They had come to a station. Dorothea looked out of the window, watched people milling on the platform, saw them pointing, gesticulating, their mouths opening and closing soundlessly on the other side of the glass. Uniformed porters pu
shed trolleys, carried bags. The black minute hand of the station clock moved forward one notch. Immediately, a whistle blew.
The train jerked into life, eased away from the platform, quickly got up a head of steam, went streaking into the green spring countryside. Overhead, grey clouds swirled and began to thicken. Despite her apprehension, Dorothea was aware of an irrepressible excitement building up inside her. The speeding train, the ever-changing view from the window – it was buoying her up, sending her spirits soaring like a bird on the wing. And she knew now where they were going. This must be the very journey Uncle Albert made each morning on his way to the factory. They must be going to Coventry.
They took a cab from the station. Dorothea was glued to the window. After Hayton, after Lawham, Coventry seemed like the centre of the world. Crowds of people surged along the pavements. Traffic clogged the streets. Carts and carriages rattled over the cobbles, horses were plodding here, prancing there, their hooves clip-clopping, their eyes hidden by blinkers. Motor cars buzzed like angry bees. A stately tram glided past.
There was a sudden gust of wind. Shop awnings flapped, hands clutched at hats. People went scurrying for shelter as rain began to fall, a sudden downpour. Umbrellas popped up. Raindrops bounced high off the road. The cobbles glistened. Water streamed in the gutters. Puddles formed and spread.
The outside world grew remote as the window fogged up. Dorothea saw rows of shops, caught a glimpse of a lowering grey sky. A tall spire pierced the clouds like the point of a knife but was quickly obscured by the fat raindrops which spattered on the window and ran down the glass in streaks of wet. All the while, Aunt Eloise sat still and silent.
The rain ceased as abruptly as it had begun. They had left the city centre behind, turned into a long avenue lined with trees. Rows of well-appointed villas were set back from the street. Through the misty glass, Dorothea made out a sign: Forest Road.
The cab came to a halt outside one of the villas, a solid brick-built house with a large bay window. Angry clouds churned overhead as they stepped down onto the pavement. Dorothea looked along the empty street. The trees swayed in the gusting wind. Smoke trailed from the chimneys. Water dripped from the branches, pooled in the gutters, glistened on the paving stones. It seemed very quiet and tranquil after the noise of the train, the bustle of the city.
Dorothea followed Aunt Eloise up the short path to the front door, jumping over the puddles. A woman in cap and apron came hurrying to answer the bell. She was middle-aged and capable-looking. She gave a start of surprise at seeing Aunt Eloise.
‘Mrs Brannan! We didn’t know – we didn’t expect—’
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Reade. I believe my husband is in residence.’ (Did Aunt Eloise know this for sure? Or was it merely a guess? There was no sign of doubt at all).
The woman was apologetic. ‘Mr Brannan is at the works just now, ma’am. Mr Simcox too.’
‘Then we shall wait.’
Aunt Eloise swept into the house, handing her hat and gloves to Mrs Reade. Dorothea followed meekly.
They sat together on a wide settee in the room with the bay window. There was a decorated screen in front of the fireplace and a large mirror over the mantelpiece. The woman called Mrs Reade brought them tea and sandwiches. Mrs Reade was the housekeeper, Dorothea assumed – a very different personage to the forbidding Mrs Bourne. They ate and drank in silence. A carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the slow minutes. Why had they come?
After a time, Aunt Eloise got up, taking her empty cup and saucer and placing it on the side table. She held out her hand for Dorothea’s. Now that she was standing, she was reflected in the big mirror over the mantelpiece. It was as if there were suddenly two Aunt Eloises in the room.
‘This is where Mr Simcox lives.’ Aunt Eloise put Dorothea’s cup aside, looked slowly round the room as if reacquainting herself. ‘Mr Simcox has worked for your uncle for many years. The house itself belongs to your Uncle Albert. For a time – after we were first married – your uncle and I lived here. Four years….’ The words trailed away, making four years sound like an eternity. She crossed to the mantelpiece, her back to Dorothea.
It was impossible, somehow, for Dorothea to imagine Aunt Eloise established in these surroundings, even though she knew it had really happened. Over the years, she had pieced together the story, how Aunt Eloise had been visiting her cousin in Coventry, how she had met Uncle Albert at some sort of gathering and gone on to marry him, how they set up home in the city. It was in Coventry – perhaps in this very house, incredible though it seemed – that Roderick had been born. Dorothea wondered what sort of a boy he would have been if he lived here still. He claimed to have no memory of Coventry.
The second Aunt Eloise had stepped forward in the mirror, like a ghost out of the past. The ghost’s eyes stared into the room, cold and blue, deep too – and sad, thought Dorothea suddenly, so terribly sad.
‘I—’ Dorothea bit her lip, not having meant to speak.
Aunt Eloise turned towards her. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m … sorry—sorry that you were unhappy here.’
Aunt Eloise looked at her in a way that made her shiver, as if the cold eyes could see right through her. Yet it also seemed to Dorothea that this was the first time in the three and a half years they had lived together that her aunt had really noticed her.
Aunt Eloise’s expression changed – softened perhaps. Her eyes grew distant as if a mist had descended. ‘I used, when I lived here, to dream often of home—of Clifton….’
Like me, thought Dorothea, dreaming of Stepnall Street.
At that moment they heard the sound of the front door being opened followed by voices in the hall. Aunt Eloise stepped away from the mantelpiece, her eyes straying towards the door. The ghost in the mirror receded, vanished.
It was not Uncle Albert who came into the room but another man, short, slight, with a straggly moustache and a balding head.
‘Mr Simcox.’ Aunt Eloise bowed her head ever so slightly. ‘Forgive the intrusion. I have come to see my husband.’
‘Of course. I … I … we….’
‘And if he won’t see me, he can hardly refuse to see his own niece!’ Aunt Eloise wrenched Dorothea up from the settee, pushed her forward. Dorothea could almost feel the strength of her aunt’s iron will, transmitted through the long, elegant fingers that gripped her wrist, but she tore herself away, suddenly angry. Aunt Eloise had tricked her, cared nothing for her; she was just a pawn in a game, a decoy.
She stood between the two of them, her cool, calm and collected aunt, and timid Mr Simcox, her chest heaving. They both looked at her. She grew afraid. What would happen next? And whatever would become of her?
Dorothea sat on the stairs in her borrowed nightdress with her hands in her lap, pressing her fingers together, listening to the muffled voices coming from the room with the bay window and the mirror over the mantelpiece. She could not hear much of what Uncle Albert and Aunt Eloise were saying and she felt guilty about listening at all. If only Roderick had been with her! He often said that grown-ups told you nothing, that eavesdropping was the only way to find anything out. In this situation, he would be neither intimidated nor conscience-stricken. But he was miles distant, out of harm’s way at school. He knew nothing of what had been happening.
Last night, Dorothea had eaten her dinner with Mr Simcox and his daughter, a quiet girl of fifteen who wore spectacles and whose name was Peggy. Arnie Carter had been there too. Dorothea had forgotten until she saw him – pasty-faced and famished-looking as always: a worrier, Nora said – that this was now where he lived, ever since the great fire nine months ago. She thought how jealous Nora would be – sitting to dinner with Arnie Carter! But when would she ever see Nora again?
There had been no sign of her uncle and aunt last night. At bed time, Mrs Reade had taken her up to a little room at the front of the house. ‘I hope this will suit, miss.’ The housekeeper had sounded put out, reproachful. Dorothea had wanted to shout a
t her: It’s not my fault; I didn’t ask to come here! She had stopped herself just in time, had got undressed like a lamb, put on the nightdress borrowed off Peggy Simcox. Lying awake, lonely and miserable, she had wondered what Nora was doing, and the mam’zelle and Richard – Baby, too. ‘But we must,’ she had said out loud, her voice sounding small and flat in the darkness, ‘we must stop calling her Baby. She is growing up. She has a name of her own.’ But for some reason, this thought – that Baby was growing up, was a baby no longer – had brought tears to her eyes.
She had slept at last – though fitfully – to be awoken by Mrs Reade with a breakfast tray. Dorothea had picked at her food as Mrs Reade lingered in the room, opening the curtains, tidying round, taking clothes out of the wardrobe. Spying on me, Dorothea had said to herself. But having such uncharitable thoughts made her feel contrite.
‘I will come back for your tray by and by,’ Mrs Reade had said at last, heading for the door. ‘I must just take this clean shirt to Arnie – to Mr Carter, I should say. This is his room, of course.’ She had hesitated a moment longer, adding, ‘When you are up and dressed you might like to come to the shops with me. It will do you good to get out of the house.’
But Dorothea had not wanted to go anywhere with Mrs Reade and when the housekeeper returned she had pretended to be asleep. Mrs Reade had gone away. Dorothea had lain with her eyes shut, listening to doors opening and shutting, footsteps on the stairs, muted voices, water gurgling in the pipes. Finally the front door had banged shut one last time. The house had creaked, settled, lapsed into silence. Had they all gone away and left her? She had opened her eyes, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. An occasional cart or carriage had passed by outside, wheels rattling, hooves clopping, fading into the distance. She had thought of poor Arnie Carter whose room she had taken. Where had he spent the night?