by Dominic Luke
‘Are you sure? You’re not just making this up to get back at him?’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Roderick had got on his high horse. ‘All right then, don’t believe me, see if I care.’
‘Why must you be such a child!’ she shouted after him as he stomped off. But afterwards she’d felt remorse, wondering if this time she’d got it wrong. After all, on the very first occasion she’d met Nibs Carter, he’d been stealing apples from the orchard. Perhaps he hadn’t changed.
Directly after luncheon, she’d set off on the walk with Uncle Albert. It had seemed inevitable that their steps should take them to the village. They had stopped briefly at Richard’s grave, turfed over now, slightly sunken, adorned with only a simple headstone – but a simple headstone seemed fitting, somehow. He had not been an ostentatious sort of boy. Starlings had been chattering on the church roof; the sun had been veiled by high clouds; her eyes had filled with tears. But only a single, solitary tear had run down her cheek as she stood there, realizing that she was now older than Richard would ever be. Uncle Albert had taken her hand without a word and they had left the churchyard, crossed the Green, walked slowly down School Street. After four years, the jagged walls of the burned-out cottages had been rubbed smooth at the edges by the wind and the rain and the sun. The black stains were slowly fading into the sandstone. Ivy wreathed them; grass lapped them. They seemed indeed to be slowly sinking into the greenery. Down in Wilmot’s yard, smart new stables had appeared, but there was no hay rick yet this year.
Strolling up Back Lane, Uncle Albert had taken a detour down the footpath towards Manor Farm to call on Noah Lee in his little cottage. ‘I have a new kind of ointment for his rheumatics which I want to drop off.’ But Dorothea had known that this was just an excuse. Once they got going, the two men would chunter away for half an hour at least, ‘putting the world to rights’, as Uncle Albert said. Dorothea, leaving her uncle to his talk, had taken the opportunity to hurry on up Back Lane. She had not been sure what good she could do even if she dared knock on the Carters’ door but she hadn’t had to knock, for Nibs had been at work in the garden.
He had been at his most exasperatingly obtuse. ‘Well, miss, if they say I took the vegetables, then I suppose I must have done.’
‘Did you or didn’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say, miss.’
‘Robin Carter! You’re sixteen years old! I thought you’d have grown out of these childish ways by now! And stop calling me miss, there’s absolutely no need, if you aren’t working at the big house any longer.’
He’d looked at her in his deadpan way and said, ‘You’re alright, miss, as I’ve said before. And I don’t call you miss because I have to, but because I want to. But there’s others I could mention who think they’re God Almighty and who’ll need to watch their step in future.’
‘Roddy, you mean?’
But he wouldn’t say, just repeated over and over that he’d been taken for a muggings and he wouldn’t fall for that sort of trick in the future.
Standing now on the terrace with the evening sun giving a golden sheen to the world, Dorothea sighed, wondering if she would ever get to the bottom of this latest run-in between Roderick and Nibs – or indeed any of their other arguments over the years. What was it all for? Did they even know themselves? She had never been given any satisfactory explanation as to how and why the feud had started. It was lost in the mists of time. Perhaps there was no explanation. Perhaps boys couldn’t help being pig-headed and silly. Nibs went out of his way to make life difficult for himself, that was certain.
Unable to make any headway that afternoon, she had left Nibs to his own devices and loitered in the street, waiting for Uncle Albert and feeling that the afternoon had been spoiled. But then Mrs Turner had come out of her cottage wiping her hands on her apron and had called Dorothea over to her gate, wishing her many happy returns and offering her a choice of flowers from the garden to make into a bouquet or corsage.
‘You may have as many as you like, miss, with my blessing, only I won’t cut them now. I’ll send them up later so they stay fresh and you can wear them to this dinner which our Nora says is to be given in your honour.’
Hours later, on the terrace, Dorothea fingered her corsage with a sense of pride, for Mrs Turner did not give her flowers to just anybody. Billy Turner had conveyed them from the village, had come right up to the nursery, a bunch of pinks, wallflowers and forget-me-nots in his fist.
‘Mother made me promise to give them to you personal. And see, I’ve not crushed a one.’ And in that he’d confounded his mother’s expectations – for cack-handed wasn’t the word, she’d said, when it came to their Billy. ‘Seventeen, he is. A lubbery great lad. But he has a heart of gold for all that.’
Dorothea had always found him rather dour but was willing to take the heart of gold on trust. He was, after all, a Turner.
The day room had been busy by then, Dorothea resplendent in her new frock, all the buttons and hooks-and-eyes finally fastened. Mlle Lacroix, Nora, Nanny, little Eliza had all exclaimed at the vision she made; Aunt Eloise had stood silent to one side with a contented look on her face. It had been rather an odd moment, thought Dorothea now as she strolled up and down the terrace, a strangely satisfying moment, to have Billy Turner in the nursery with his clodhopping boots and his cap in his hand and his cheeks on fire whilst Aunt Eloise stood there regally, not a hair out of place. Such a clash of opposites! And yet … and yet….
Dorothea paused in her perambulations, unable to frame her thoughts, unable to explain why it should make her heart beat so fast to be wearing Aunt Eloise’s dress and Mrs Turner’s flowers at the same time. Looking out from the terrace, watching the ponderous flight of a heron as it skimmed in the distance along the invisible line of the canal, it suddenly struck her that in all the hustle and bustle of the nursery earlier one had barely given a thought to Nanny sitting in a corner as quiet as a mouse – if one could legitimately compare such a plump and solid-looking woman to a mouse. Thinking back in history to her first days and months at Clifton, it seemed to Dorothea scarcely credible that she had held Nanny in such dread. Over time, Nanny’s potency had diminished. Even little Eliza was not browbeaten by her these days.
Was this what it meant to grow up, Dorothea asked herself, this ability to see people in a different light – then and now, house and village, two different vantage points?
The heron dwindled, was lost in the distance, and Dorothea turned away, went back inside. The room was empty and expectant. She couldn’t sit still. She walked round and round, trailing her hand over the piano, peering at the delft vase on the sideboard, keeping half an eye on the door, wanting it to open, dreading it. But at least she could await Roderick’s appearance with a bit less anxiety now that she had made her peace with him.
She had gone looking for him after her return from the village, conscious that Nibs’s vagueness over the vegetable affair would allow her to sidestep the question of who was in the right and who wrong: the woolly thinking of a goody-goody, as Roderick would say.
She had found him in the library, smoking.
‘Smoking! You’ll be in the dog house, Roddy, if Aunt Eloise catches you!’
‘I’m quite safe. Mother never comes in here.’ He’d been blasé about it, sitting with his feet propped on the desk. ‘Odd, really, about Mother never coming here. I’ve not considered it before.’ He’d blown out smoke, his eyes coming to rest on her speculatively – trying to pass himself off as older than he was, she’d thought; trying to make out he was grown up and worldly-wise. The vexing thing was, it worked. One had to remind oneself that he wasn’t yet fourteen.
As if he could read her mind, he’d said with a mocking smile, ‘And how does it feel to be the ripe old age of fifteen?’
‘Why must you be so … so horrible?’
‘What did I say?’ All innocence. ‘I only asked what it’s like being fifteen. I wouldn’t know, as I’m such a child. That was t
he word you used, wasn’t it, earlier?’
‘Well, you are a child. You are. You’re horrible, too – sometimes.’
‘I can’t help that. It’s in my nature. Slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.’
‘That’s what you’d like people to think, but it’s not true. Underneath, you’re … you’re nice.’
‘Nice!’ He’d been affronted. His voice had cracked, seesawing from baritone to treble and back again as he spoke. ‘I am not nice at all! Nice people get walked on. I’d have thought you’d have learned that by now – at your age.’
She had managed to rein herself in, to smile, wise to his ways. ‘I’m not going to argue with you, Roddy. I know that’s what you want and I shan’t do it!’
Roderick had smiled too, had given her a superior look as he sauntered over to the window to throw out his cigarette end. Well, let him smile, she’d thought, let him think he’s superior if that’s what he wants, if it makes him happy. And let Nibs sit at home without a job nursing his precious pride. I don’t have to pander to either of them.
As they left the library together, they’d run into Mrs Bourne in the corridor. It was impossible not to quail, impossible not to shrink against the wall and wait for the lash of her tongue. But the housekeeper had merely nodded and in a voice drenched in age-old decorum she had said, ‘Miss Dorothea. Many happy returns of the day.’ Then she had swept on her way, the sound of jangling keys fading as she went down the stairs to the basement.
If Dorothea had been astonished, then Roderick had been more so. His mouth had dropped open, he had looked at her as if she had just tamed a wild dragon. She had burst out laughing, because he looked so ridiculous – so like a child. But she had spared his blushes by not telling him so.
‘Such a beautiful view, Madame,’ said Mlle Lacroix to Aunt Eloise as they stood by the French windows, looking out. ‘So very English, I have always thought so.’
‘But it is not quite the view that was intended, Mademoiselle. The landscaping, unfortunately, was never finished.’ Aunt Eloise gave a sweep of her hand which, to Dorothea looking on, seemed to indicate not just the wide meadow known as The Park, but the whole panorama: the hedges, the trees, the hidden canal, the dark smudge of Ingleby Wood – even the distant mass of Barrow Hill, perhaps, and the sky too, deepening now to a dusky blue laced with thin white clouds. All this, Aunt Eloise seemed to be saying, was to have been encompassed in the unfinished landscaping of Clifton Park. And why not? What else was there? On this June evening, with the light lingering on the horizon, the heat of the day slowly fading, the air still, a hush on the land, it was impossible to think of being anywhere else. Coventry was a mirage, London a fading dream. Such a place as Stepnall Street might as well never have existed except in the darkest of half-forgotten nightmares. Clifton was the centre of everything – was everything.
I am seeing Clifton, thought Dorothea, through Aunt Eloise’s eyes.
‘Almost no work was done on the grounds,’ Aunt Eloise continued. ‘The present gardens belonged to the old manor house which was demolished nearly two hundred years ago. If you notice, the gardens are not quite aligned with the house: the garden wall runs at an angle. New gardens were planned but – like the parkland – they were never set out. One must use one’s imagination to see how it would have been.’
‘I like your gardens as they are, Madame. So parfait. Delightful.’
‘That is my opinion exactly, Mademoiselle.’ Aunt Eloise bestowed on the governess a noble smile. After all this time, thought Dorothea, Mlle Lacroix was finally being approved of.
It has taken Aunt Eloise as long to accept the mam’zelle as it has taken her to accept me, thought Dorothea. But in the governess’s case, it had come all but too late.
This reminder of Mlle Lacroix’s imminent departure was a twist of sadness, sharp and bitter. Clifton Park without her was unthinkable. Nothing, thought Dorothea, is ever perfect. There is a flaw, a blemish that runs through everything. But, oh! If only one could draw the sting!
She was glad, though, that her ordeal was over. She was no longer the centre of attention. She had braved the little shocks as people came in and said – oh, so many nice things, she couldn’t remember half of them. She’d felt such an imposter, listening to them. ‘You will be the belle of the ball – the belle of the ball,’ Nanny had said, asking her to turn round and round in the day room, looking at her from every angle, not put out or irritable but rather wistful, as if once upon a time she had dreamed of being the belle of the ball. But Dorothea didn’t want to be a belle. How could any girl want it? How could any girl bear to be the centre of attention, to experience all the little shocks as people looked at you, the nice words that were words all the same, like beaks pecking – pecking, plucking, pulling you apart, each taking their portion. How could any girl want that?
She shivered, moved away from the French windows through which a breeze was now whispering, like the first faint presage of the deep, dark night. On the far side of the room, Uncle Albert was sitting on the settee with Lady Fitzwilliam. Dorothea listened. Uncle Albert was talking.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m as right as nine pence, in perfect health.’
‘But you gave us such a fright, Albert, that day at Darvell Hall, I shall never forget it.’
‘My dear Alice, that was a year ago. I’m quite recovered now. Ask Camborne if you don’t believe me.’
‘Is it really a whole year since the fete at Darvell Hall? How time flies at our age!’
‘Our age!’ scoffed Uncle Albert. ‘I am in the prime of life, and you, Alice, are a spring chicken in comparison.’
Lady Fitzwilliam laughed. ‘Such flattery! And you used to be such a plain-spoken man! But even a man in his prime must rest now and then, yet Eloise tells me you are busier than ever!’
‘Ellie fusses,’ said Uncle Albert. (Dorothea tried to imagine Aunt Eloise fussing and failed). ‘Ellie fusses, but in actual fact I am all but retired now. Some weeks I am in Coventry only three days out of six, if you can believe it.’
‘You have your trusty lieutenants, Henry tells me, Mr Simcox and Mr Smith.’
‘True, true. Simcox takes care of things at Crown Street – the bicycles, that is, and the motor components. Smith rules the roost at Allibone Road. Your son has told you, I suppose, about our new works in Allibone Road – the new BFS factory. Business is so brisk now that we needed larger premises. There’s the new four-seater Mark II on the way, too. It will be launched at the Motor Show later this year. And then there’s the competition department. But you will know all about that, with your boy being in the forefront there.’
‘My boy – as you call him – talks of nothing else.’
‘Then you don’t need to hear it from me. I am boring you, Alice. I’m sorry.’
‘My dear Albert, you couldn’t bore me if you tried! But here’s Dorothea. Come and sit with us, my dear, there’s plenty of room. There. That’s it. A rose between two thorns. Tell me, how have you been spending this auspicious day?’
‘She has spent some part of it with her old uncle. We walked to Hayton this afternoon, didn’t we, child? Mind you, it took twice as long as I expected. The girl seems to know the whole village. Everyone we met wanted to stop and talk.’
‘People talked to you, too, Uncle. And you were ages with Noah Lee.’
‘Ah, so you’re acquainted with him, are you, Albert? My late husband rather admired him on the quiet. A village character. Of course, he was an incorrigible poacher in his day. Old Harry – your aunt’s father, my dear – used to tirade about it. But he was a great sportsman, of course, Old Harry, and so all poachers were anathema to him. Not only poachers. The railways, too, and Gladstone. They were all the work of the devil in Old Harry’s eyes.’
Dorothea ventured to say, ‘Noah Lee once told me he was a tyrant.’
‘It didn’t do to cross him, my dear, that’s true enough. But he was always charming to me. A real gentleman, I like to think.’
‘I daresay he did. Dear Old Harry. But he wouldn’t have got on in the modern world. He wasn’t like you, Albert. He was a creature of his time.’
‘Well, all I know is, I’m no sportsman. On our walk this afternoon we saw rabbits, pheasants, woodpigeon and I don’t know what else but I felt no desire to shoot any of them. I no longer feel the need to pander to such pastimes, even if I do live in the countryside, God help me.’
Lady Fitzwilliam laughed. ‘Such an admission does you no discredit, Albert. I have never been wildly enthusiastic about that sort of thing myself. But we must look lively, my dears, I do believe it is time to go through to dinner.’
‘Eight,’ Aunt Eloise had said, looking at the names on her list. ‘Such a small number. I could, I suppose, ask the Somersbys or maybe the Adnitts from the village at a pinch.’
But Dorothea had been content with the list as it was. The Somersbys were not special friends like the Fitzwilliams, and the Adnitts she only really knew by sight.
Aunt Eloise had sighed. ‘Very well. If that is how you want it. But it will be rather an intimate dinner.’ She had drawn a line at the bottom of her list. ‘Now comes the problem of who shall sit where.’
Dorothea found that she had been placed next to Roderick’s friend from school. She watched him shyly out of the corner of her eye as he spooned his soup and tore up his bread roll, keeping his eyes down, his face flushing every shade of pink, beads of perspiration on his forehead. Was dinner, then, such an ordeal? She wished she had the gift of putting people at their ease the way her aunt did. Aunt Eloise made a success of every occasion, whether it was a tête-à-tête in her parlour or a grand dinner party like tonight. People went away content, thinking they had made a conquest. They went on at length to anyone who would listen about their dear new friend Mrs Brannan. But it was all a sleight of hand, for no one really knew Aunt Eloise at all, least of all her own family. This, anyway, was how it seemed to Dorothea. If Aunt Eloise had been a house, she would have been a grand place like Clifton but all one would know of her was what one could glimpse through the windows.