The moment she saw the way Nanny Tradescant was entering the drawing room the following afternoon Aunt Tattie began to hold her breath. Portia was reading in a wing chair by the window but hearing her aunt’s slow and deliberate inhalation she knew what her nurse referred to as a set-to was about to take place.
‘Miss Tattie,’ Nanny began. ‘I must have words with you at once, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh dear me, must you, Nanny dear?’ Aunt Tattie asked anxiously. ‘Could it not possibly wait?’
‘Most certainly not, Miss Tattie. This is a matter of the utmost urgency. It concerns this creature you have engaged as governess to poor Miss Portia.’
Portia, who was hidden from her nurse’s view because the wing chair in which she was sitting was turned to look out on the gardens, hardly dared breathe herself for fear of being discovered by Nanny and deprived of overhearing the set-to.
‘The creature as you call her, Nanny dear, is newly arrived here. It is only right we should give her time to settle herself in before forming any definite opinions as to her exact character, surely?’
‘She could settle in for a month of Sundays for all I care, Miss Tattie, and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. She is not, I have to say and I’m sorry to have to do it but I have my duty, she is not at all nice.’
‘Oh, nice is as nice does, surely, Nanny? At least that is what you were forever telling Master Lampard and me, I seem to remember. She is a sensitive soul, Nanny dear, and that is what counts. Miss Collins is one of the most sensitive souls I have met in a very long time so I am afraid I am quite at a loss to see what nice as you call it has to do with it.’
‘Breathe out, Miss Tattie. You are withholding breath again. Nanny can see what you are up to.’
‘I am not holding my breath, Nanny dear. I am merely breathing in.’
‘Then it’s time for you to breathe out again, I do assure you. Unless you would rather Nanny gave you a good slap on the back. As she used to.’
That was obviously enough of a threat for Aunt Tattie.
‘Heaven forbid!’ she cried, exhaling at once. ‘You know how I have always lived in dread of your slaps on the back!’
‘Good,’ Nanny said, with a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Now I have to assure you and you have my word for it that this creature is not suitable to look after a cat let alone a young lady, Miss Tattie. Perhaps you’d like to know what she is doing at this very moment? She is out in the rose garden rehearsing with Mr Swift a play she has written – and—’ Here Nanny Tradescant had to stop and draw breath herself, so shocking was the disclosure she was about to make. ‘And they have young Edward dressed as a girl. While Miss Collins herself – Miss Collins is wearing bloomers.’
At this Aunt Tattie stopped her breath-holding and, smiling her most spiritual smile, decided to bring comfort to her old nurse. ‘Ah, Nanny dear, in Shakespeare’s day, remember? In Shakespeare’s day all the women were played by boys, so it is quite correct for Edward to be dressed as a girl and for Miss Collins herself to be wearing what I should imagine are meant to be canion and hose, rather than bloomers as you describe them. And do bear in mind, Nanny sweet, whatever costume Edward is wearing at present it is only for the play. It is only for the play.’
Nanny gave a small helpless moan and came round to the table by the window to help herself to some lemonade, thus discovering Portia in her wing chair.
‘Ah ha!’
‘Now what?’ Aunt Tattie wanted to know.
‘We have a spy in our midst. Come along, young miss, out of that chair and come and sit here where we may see you. Did you not realize this young lady was here, Miss Tattie?’
‘Of course I did,’ Aunt Tattie sighed. ‘But what of it? The point is, Nanny dear, the point is that making plays on a fine summer afternoon is precisely what children should be doing. Instead of sitting inside learning algebra and geometry indeed.’
‘Nonsense, Miss Tattie,’ Nanny retorted. ‘They should be learning things which will be of use to them, like the three Rs, not a lot of useless old poetry.’
‘Why don’t you go and see how the play is progressing, Portia dearest?’ Aunt Tattie suggested tactfully, picking up her volume of poetry as if declining to say anything more in front of her niece. ‘I think that is a better thing to be doing than sitting here inside, don’t you?’
Portia agreed and went, not because she thought her aunt was right but because she was curious to see how Edward was taking to being dressed as a girl, and even more curious to see Miss Collins in bloomers. She was not disappointed.
‘The-ah moon-ah above-ah us-ah is to me-ah the orb upon which-ah mine eye-ah must-ah rest-ah!’ Mr Swift was declaiming to the bloomered Miss Collins when unnoticed Portia finally came upon them in the rose garden. ‘And must-ah I-ah have-ah mine-ah light-ah e’er eclipsed-ed by thine-ah awesome-ah beam-ah?’
Poor Miss Collins in her bloomers had indeed just such an awesome beam, Portia thought, so awesome a beam in fact that it brought on a quite uncontrollable fit of the giggles, forcing Portia to run away and hide herself deeply in the laurel bushes in case she was discovered and made to join in. From there she watched as much as she could of the rehearsals until her sides ached so much from her suppressed laughter she had to take herself finally and quietly away to the peace of the distant trout lake to recover.
At the outset Portia found all the distractions infinitely preferable to formal lessons, but after a while the novelty began to wear off and she began to feel suspicious of the new arrivals, for the fact of the matter was that by the end of Mr Swift and Miss Collins’s first month of residency at Bannerwick Park all formal classes had been abolished, all primers and grammars set aside, and the only written task Portia had been set to do was the regular copying out of Miss Collins’s perfectly dreadful poetry.
After considerable prompting from Nanny Tradescant Aunt Tattie was finally moved to summon Mr Swift to her during school hours to enquire what precisely was going on.
‘You required the best-ah for your niece and nephew as I understood it, Miss-ah Tradescant, so-ah that is what Miss Collins and-ah I are attempting to supply,’ he explained. ‘This is the very latest method of-ah Education. The Ingestion Method as-ah, devised by Gertrude Tennison. Her theory sets out to prove-ah that the most efficacious and-ah lasting mode of teaching is by general ingestion, do you see? That is that eduahcation is best directly ingested veea the pores, Miss-ah Tradescant. Directly veea the pores. The Tennison method encourages learning by osmosis, through the skin-ah, not parrot-style, do you not see?’
Aunt Tattie nodded but was really none too sure at all and so returned to her weaving. She was making a fine gossamer wool shawl from tufts left by sheep on hedgerows supplied especially to her by the Bannerwick Loose Wool Society, and if the truth be known she much preferred to concentrate her mind on this rather than try to understand precisely what learning by ingestion meant. Mr Swift, however, failed to take the hint and continued with his elucidation, walking slowly round the room and gesturing expansively while Uncle Lampard’s snores grew ever louder.
‘Laming must never be taught-ah, dear Miss Tradescant? Instead we allow-ah the children to make dramatic plays, we encourage the performance of imaginary games-ah, and we teach them-ah to behold rather than to be beholden. We teach them to behold-ah nature, the sun and the moon. We let them float-ah beneath the heavenly skies. If they wander freely in-ah beauteous gardens they wish to know the names of the plants, and thus all the time they are-ah learning veea their pores. In the beauty of the gardens they will espay a plant and they may want to know-ah its name – and thus Acacia armata will be told to them and they will be learning Latin. Or Mesembryanthemum glabrum. Et voilà! Latin is being taught-ah yet again! Likeways – beside the moon-ah they will see the stars, n’est ce pas? Et voilà encore! Thus will they learn the names of the constellations and of-ah the planets. Likeways story becomes myth, and lo – they are transported to the Ancient Warld! To Roma! To Greece! Is this
not a better way, dear Miss-ah Tradescant? Eduahcation all the tame but through the pores. Not through endless repartition!’
A long shadow fell over Tatiana Tradescant’s loom, blocking out the sunlight entirely. She looked up about to request Mr Swift politely to step aside so that she could continue with her shawl-weaving, but when she did so she found Mr Swift smiling down at her, his hands clasped behind him as he bent slightly forward.
‘And when your niece and-ah nephew have learned the meaning of beauty, Miss Tradescant,’ he murmured to the sounds of the sleeping Lampard, ‘when I have taught them a true understanding of-ah the nature of the Aesthetic, then when they come again to look on-ah you, they will see Raphael’s Madonna, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, if not indeed the Blessed Damozel of Rossetti.’
‘Why, Mr Swift, your poetic nature is overwhelming you,’ Aunt Tattie murmured, leaning out to the light behind him.
‘I go too far, I realize, Miss-ah Tradescant,’ Mr Swift agreed, standing back for the light once more to flood upon the loom. ‘But nevertheless I must insist-ah that Master Edwarrrd and Miss Porshiaaah, if they were to study you and you alone, would learn to understand the meaning of true-ah beauty. Of that I am-ah sure more than I am of my own-ah poor existence.’
He turned on his heel and, raising one thin hand in what he considered to be a gesture of poetical sensitivity outwards towards the windows and the sea, he finally left Aunt Tattie alone with her thoughts and her loom.
* * *
Given the continuing fine summer weather and the sublime beauty of the gardens at Bannerwick Park, once Portia discovered her aunt had given their tutors’ revolutionary method of education through the pores her blessing, her niece could not find it in herself to object, since the system seemed to allow her more or less to do as she pleased every day, provided Miss Collins was somewhere at hand to translate the names of flowers into Latin or to compare one of Portia’s many flights of fancy to some ancient Greek or Roman myth. Edward, however, was different. He did not find Mr Swift in the least funny, and it was obvious even to Portia that learning through his pores only made him miserable and hate Mr Swift more with each passing rehearsal.
From the first it had become apparent that because of his beautiful golden curls and his quite angelic looks he was to be marked out as the leading player in his tutor’s Greco-Roman verse play, and as his inner fury mounted the young boy became less and less communicative until it seemed not even Portia could get a word out of him. Sometimes in the middle of the night she even thought she awoke to the sound of his crying in the bed next to hers.
Indeed the more rehearsals progressed the more Edward withdrew from a world he had previously so enjoyed, losing his appetite both for games and for food, and complaining bitterly every morning in the nursery at breakfast that he was going to be sick or that he hated Mr Swift so much that if everyone wasn’t careful he might throw himself down the stairs. At last, worried by her brother’s unhappiness, Portia thought she ought to tell Aunt Tattie how miserable Edward had become, but Aunt Tattie simply smiled her not-quite-of-this-earth smile and ascribed Edward’s behaviour to simple stage fright. So despite Edward’s misery rehearsals continued, taking on a newer and greater importance as each day passed and the village fête loomed large, an occasion which had long been earmarked for the première of A Pastoral Enchantment With Some Musick by Mr Nathaniel Swift.
‘Even as we speak, there are some moth-lace clothes being made especially for you in the village, Edward dearest,’ Aunt Tattie told him, thinking to cheer him one day during a break in what now seemed to be endless rehearsals. ‘Is not that too thrilling, do you not find? Personally, dearest, I think you will look simply gorgeous as a moth dancing around the moon.’ As she expressed her excitement Aunt Tattie absently patted the front of Edward’s head, tidying his curls with one finger, something which he always hated her doing, and this time from the depth of the scowl on his face even Aunt Tattie became suddenly aware that something was amiss.
‘What is it, Edward?’ she asked, bending down so that her face was opposite his. ‘Are you not feeling quite the thing, dearest?’
‘No!’ Edward suddenly shouted at her. ‘I don’t want to be a moth and wear dancing pumps! I hate Mr Swift! I hate him! And I don’t want to be in his bloody play!’
Portia, who was waiting in the laurels from which she was due to make her entrance as a Scudding Cloud, hearing Edward’s sudden outburst rushed out of the bushes just in time to see Aunt Tattie staggering backwards her hand to her bosom as Edward, tearing off his temporary costume of a lace curtain pinned to his shoulders, took to his heels as fast as he could run in the direction of the house.
‘I will go after him,’ Miss Collins ventured uncertainly after a moment, putting down her mask, her boss eyes circling wildly in alarm at the outburst and the shock of the bad language.
‘No, I’ll go!’ Portia called after her, afraid that the sight of Miss Collins in doublet and knickerbockers running after him would be enough to induce Edward to lock himself in one of the turrets. Finding herself easily outrun, Miss Collins dropped back to help Mr Swift with Aunt Tattie, who had fallen in a dead faint backwards into the laurels from where Mr Swift was busy trying to retrieve her.
‘Are you all right, dear Miss Tradescant?’ Mr Swift asked his employer as he got one arm around her waist. ‘Oh please, please do not say that something-ah dreadful has happened to you? Please, please let it not!’
When he looked up he found Miss Collins staring back down at him, hands on hips, with a very distinct gleam in her now no longer circling eyes.
Edward had such a head start that he was up the stairs and in the nursery well ahead of his sister.
‘What is going on, I’d like to know?’ Nanny demanded as Portia finally burst into the room. ‘First your brother and now you. What is going on out there, please?’
‘Where’s Edward?’ Portia looked round the nursery, unable to spot her brother anywhere.
‘Oh, your brother has gone and locked himself in the bedroom, that’s where your brother is, young lady,’ Nanny replied, smoothing down her apron. ‘There was I having a little rest when I hear this great commotion all of a sudden and the next thing I know is your brother’s shut himself in your room – barricaded himself in I should say. He’s pulled the chest of drawers or somesuch across the door. So what I want to know is what exactly has been going on, young lady.’
‘Edward said a bad word, Nanny,’ Portia replied carefully, not wanting to tell tales on her brother but thinking it might be better coming from her rather than from either Mr Swift or Miss Collins.
‘Edward doesn’t know any bad words, young lady.’
‘Yes he does. We both do. We’ve heard the gardeners using them.’
‘Oh, you have, have you?’ Nanny said grimly. ‘That’ll teach you to eavesdrop then, won’t it?’
‘We didn’t mean to, Nanny. It’s just that they use them rather loudly.’
‘Hmm.’ Nanny looked at her, deciding which path it was best to pursue. ‘Very well, we’ll leave that to one side for the moment and instead you tell me why my Edward would want to use a bad word in the first place. Why should my Edward be moved to use a gardening word in the first place, might I ask? He never has had to before. Not when he was happy and normal. So in that case I don’t think I shall have to look very far to find the reason.’
‘He doesn’t want to be in Mr Swift’s play, Nanny,’ Portia said, going to try the bedroom door and finding it tightly shut. ‘If we could get him out of there he’d tell you himself. It’s really not his fault. He’s never wanted to be in the play but now they’re finishing his costume and will make him wear it – well. It really isn’t his fault, Nanny.’
‘I know that, dear,’ Nanny said, coming to her side. ‘But didn’t I say from the moment those people set foot in this house that it wasn’t right? All this new education? It’s all play and no work that makes Jack a bad boy, you mark your nanny’s words, and I don’t lik
e any of what’s been going on here, not for one minute I don’t. Giving the likes of them sherry in the library and now dinner in the dining room no less. And as for their clothes – no. No, it’s all been asking for trouble, just as I said it would.’
Portia remained silent on the matter, thinking that in this instance the less said the worse might be the result for Miss Collins and Mr Swift. She also knew that the more silent she was the more concerned Nanny Tradescant would become, since normally she and Portia discussed everything fully, particularly anything which concerned Edward.
And then an idea came into her head.
‘Nanny?’
But Nanny was too busy thumping on the bedroom door to hear her the first time.
‘Come along, young man!’ she was calling. ‘Time you were out of there – so come along, please! Before Nanny gets cross with you!’
‘Nanny?’ Portia tugged at her old nurse’s sleeve.
‘What is it now, child?’
‘Go away!’ Edward called from inside the barricaded room. ‘I hate you all!’
‘Well,’ Nanny said after a moment. ‘At least the cat hasn’t got his tongue, any rate.’
Portia hesitated. ‘I told a lie, Nanny,’ she said.
‘Did you indeed?’ Nanny turned away from the bedroom door, her interest now in Portia. ‘And what exactly did you tell a lie about, young lady? Was it anything to do with what’s going on this afternoon?’
‘Well, yes and no,’ Portia replied, crossing her fingers behind her back for the fib she was about to tell. ‘It’s about the bad word. It wasn’t the gardeners, you see. It was the other day when we were rehearsing Mr Swift’s play in the rose garden. Mr Moth was pruning the roses and Mr Swift asked how he could possibly concentrate on rehearsing the play with Mr Moth hacking away at the undergrowth and Ted Jackson whistling and wheeling his barrow backwards and forwards across the lawn. Mr Moth said he was sorry but he had his job to do and so did Ted Jackson. So do I! Mr Swift replied. And Mr Moth said Mr Swift could go and do his job somewhere else that afternoon but that he Mr Moth couldn’t because he had to prune the roses and that’s where the roses were. In the rose garden. Then Mr Swift got frightfully cross and started throwing his arms in the air the way he always does, and he began arguing with Mr Moth but Mr Moth wouldn’t stop his pruning and Ted Jackson wouldn’t stop his whistling and so finally Mr Swift lost his temper completely and ran off out of the rose garden using this bad word.’
Debutantes Page 18