During this period of reformation there was one loss and one addition. Knowing herself to be found out, Mrs Whiteways packed her bags and stole away into the night. Portia refused Cook’s recommendation that she set about finding a new housekeeper at once, telling her there was no need because Portia herself was going to take over the role. There would then be no danger of the accounts being manipulated and it would save her uncle and aunt money, a commodity which according to Sir Lampard was currently in somewhat short supply. Besides, she and Cook had always got on very well, so rather than introduce a stranger who might finally prove to be as bad as if not worse than the last incumbent it was mutually agreed that Portia’s plan was presently the most sensible. In return Cook would teach her everything about the design and creation of the sort of meal for which Bannerwick had always been famous.
It was an experiment which proved successful straight away, with the staff accepting the new order and responding to it enthusiastically. It seemed that the moment the brooding and malevolent Mrs Whiteways had removed herself from the house the atmosphere had lightened, and whereas Portia had to begin with been a little hesitant about directing servants some of whom were three or even four times her age, she soon found it easy enough because, as Mr Louis pointed out, she was blessed with a happy way of giving orders without seeming to give them.
As a direct result of Portia’s happy knack, Bannerwick was soon back on an even keel, housekeeper or no housekeeper, so much so that when Sir Lampard returned after a two-month absence he was so taken by the restored order that he happily resumed his old ways, sleeping off lunch in a hammock slung in the shade of the cedar tree and dressing up in his velvet suit and floppy black bow tie for dinner, after which he would play and sing at his piano in the drawing room until the very last log had burned itself out in the great fireplace.
Aunt Tattie’s restoration to full health was nowhere near as immediate, although it must be said in the new housekeeper’s favour that her management of Bannerwick, which included acting as her aunt’s companion whenever her time allowed, most certainly arrested her relative’s decline. But while she grew no worse, there was still very little sign of the Aunt Tattie of old. She now got up at midday rather than late afternoon and allowed her maid to dress her properly, but although she had begun to eat a little more she was still painfully thin and given to prolonged bouts of either melancholy or indetermination. Even more alarmingly she was still prone to wander off at dark causing the occasional panic.
‘It’ll take time, but that’s all it’ll take,’ Cook kept telling Portia. ‘Time is the great healer, Miss Portia, and he invariably comes up trumps. It’s not as if she’s actually sick or anything, is it now? She’s just had some sort of nasty shock and one day she’ll snap out of it just as if it had never happened.’
So with the loss of Mrs Whiteways came a gain to everyone, plus in addition one other thing which was purely to the profit of Miss Portia, and not one person in the house begrudged her it.
* * *
Indirectly it was Mr Louis’s doing. Portia was sitting in his pantry helping him polish the silver when the butler suddenly decided to confide in her.
‘Hi ’ave une letter today frum my frender,’ Mr Louis said. ‘From my frender in ze villarge what makes me most sad.’
‘Why does it makes you sad, Mr Louis?’ Portia frowned, worried by the doleful look in the butler’s eyes.
‘You know my frender who work for Mrs ’erbert in Orion ’ouse?’ Mr Louis asked. ‘She is ’er companion, no? Miss Fleming, yes? Well, she die.’
‘Miss Fleming? Or Mrs Herbert?’ Portia said, putting down the cup she was polishing. ‘Whoever it is, I am so sorry.’
‘It is Mrs ’erbert who die, Miss Porsher. She is ill for a long time, of course, but you know—’ Mr Louis shrugged his shoulders and then breathed on the ladle he was buffing. ‘So sad. An’ my frender Miss Fleming – now that Mrs ’erbert she die, my frender she ’as to go to a new job.’
‘I do hope she can find one nearby, Mr Louis,’ Portia said. ‘You two have been friends for so long now.’
‘Yes we ’ave, Miss Porsher. We are frenders now for eight year.’ Mr Louis slowly shrugged again and sighed, then picked up a cream jug to clean.
‘I would suggest that she might come and work here—’
‘No no, Miss Porsher! No, zis was not what I am meanin’, please!’
‘I am quite sure it wasn’t, Mr Louis,’ Portia replied. ‘But it would be a happy solution to your problems, would it not?’
‘Ah yes. But my frender already ’as zis interview wiz Lord and Lady Markham over in Stone’am,’ Mr Louis said carefully. ‘An’ if zey like ’er, Stone’am he is not too far off, no? But zare is anozer problem. Mrs ’erbert’s little dogue.’
‘Oh! Oh, the dog.’ Portia let out a long soft sigh as she remembered the puppy, the only survivor of the last litter of puppies born to Mrs Herbert’s much loved old four-legged friend and companion. Mr Louis had told Portia all about it, how upset Mrs Herbert had been to lose her old dog, and how even frail and sick as she was Mrs Herbert had insisted on keeping the puppy, which by Mr Louis’s and her joint reckoning must be about a year old by now. ‘Exactly what is the problem, Mr Louis?’
‘Yes, well,’ Mr Louis replied carefully. ‘The problem is zat no-one at Orion ’ouse want to ’ave ze dogue no more. Zare is no-one to look after ’im an’ of course my frender, even zough she lerv the leetle dogue, she cannot take ’im around wiz ’er when she ’as no job. Zus if no-one take ze dogue by tomorrow – alors. ’E is shert.’
‘No!’ Portia said, putting down the silver she was cleaning. ‘No, that just isn’t fair. Mrs Herbert would never have allowed such a thing.’
‘Mrs ’erbert she is died, Miss Porsher. No-one listen to ’er now.’
Portia thought for a moment, laying out all the cutlery in a perfect row in front of her while she did. ‘What sort of dog is it, Mr Louis? I’ve forgotten. I know it’s a small breed, but I can’t remember exactly what sort.’
‘I can, Miss Porsher,’ Mr Louis replied. ‘He is a very nice. He is a little pogue dogue.’
‘A pug! He is a little pug, of course!’ Portia said, for her benefit, not Mr Louis’s. But even so, her pupil stood corrected.
‘Yes, sorry,’ he agreed. ‘Yes. ’E is a little perg derg. And ’e is called ’enri.’
‘A pug called Henry,’ Portia repeated and she stood up. ‘Very well, then there isn’t a moment to lose, Mr Louis. Is there? Not if we are going to save ’enri’s life!’
Which was how Henry Pug came to Bannerwick aged one year and one month. Just at first Portia thought he was going to be a failure, since all he seemed to want to do was to sleep. He wouldn’t even go up the stairs to her bedroom where she had put his bed, but just stood at the bottom of the great flight of stairs looking forlorn, his enormous brown eyes wide open, his pretty little black velvet ears dropped back and his tail unlooped and sticking out behind him for all the world as if it was for sale, and not part of him at all.
As soon as Portia tried to pick him up he went rigid, clamping both his beautiful shiny black-toed paws around her neck while burying his small permanently worried black face in her shoulder. ‘What do you imagine the trouble could be, Mr Louis?’ she asked the butler, who just shook his head and shrugged. ‘He won’t come up the stairs with me, he certainly won’t come down them if I carry him up, and wherever we are he just seems to want to get on my lap and sleep.’
‘Ah yes, of course!’ Mr Louis said later on the first day of Henry’s residence. “E nevaire go on ze stair at Orion ’ouse, do ‘e? An’ you know why? Becorze Mrs ’erbert since she is sick zeeze sree years, she stay down in the ground floors where he slip on her knee. So ze pogue ’e not know ze stair.’
Mr Louis was of course proved right and so while Henry Pug was settling in Portia made him up a bed in the cloakroom which she surrounded with fire guards to prevent him wandering. The little black-faced pug slept
there quite happily for the first night, but when it was time to put him to bed on the second night he began to give vent to a series of the most anguished sounds Portia had ever heard.
‘That is not like a dog at all, Miss Portia, so it in’t,’ Evie exclaimed in wonder as they both stood at the cloakroom door staring at Henry who was standing on his hind legs with both front paws on the nearest fire guard. ‘Normal dogs don’t cry like ’at, do ’ey? ’E sounds more like a babby with a croup. Still I ’spect ’e’ll be all right, Miss Portia,’ Evie went on in an attempt to reassure her mistress. ‘Soon as us ’as gone ’e’ll go to sleep, juss you wait ‘n’ see.’
Portia couldn’t agree, however, and after they’d closed the cloakroom door she waited outside listening. For five minutes the pug cried and cried until Portia could bear it no more. Taking the candle from Evie she went back into the cloakroom and hurrying over to Henry’s bed she bent down with the guttering flame held low to see what was troubling the dog.
‘Quickly, Evie!’ she whispered to the maid who was still waiting at the door. ‘Come over here quickly and see this! Quickly! Henry’s actually crying! Look!’
And sure enough the candlelight showed two streams of tears flowing from a pair of the largest, brownest and most mournful pair of eyes Portia had ever seen, eyes whose permanently worried expression had been achieved at who knew what cost to his ancestors and which at that moment were releasing great round tears which dripped down his concertina-ed little black nose.
‘Aaahhh,’ Evie sighed, almost satisfied by the sight. ‘See what I says, Miss Portia, he in’t no different from a babby.’
Handing the candle back to Evie, Portia lifted Henry up in her arms so that his head rested on her shoulder. Evie ran a finger down his velvety black face and sighed again.
‘’Tis true, Miss Portia. ’Is little cheek is soakin’.’
‘I can’t leave him down here for the night, Evie. Not now. Not if he’s really that upset.’
‘Course ’e can’t, Miss Portia.’
‘I’ll have to take him up to my room.’
‘Course ’e will.’
‘You won’t tell anyone else, will you?’
‘Course us won’t. But if anyone objects, Miss Portia, don’t ’e mind, ’cos if they don’t allow you to have ’im up there, he can al’ays sleep with us.’
Henry behaved as if he knew he was part of a conspiracy, making himself as small as he could in Portia’s arms as she tiptoed up the stairs with his front legs wrapped tightly round her neck and his muzzle buried in the shoulder of her velvet nightrobe. In actual fact it seemed to Portia that he was holding his breath all the way to her room, where he continued the good work playing statues while watching Portia’s every move as she prepared for bed, brushing out her long dark hair fifty times, kneeling down and saying her prayers, and dowsing her candle before finally pulling the curtains back to let in the moonlight.
It was as she got into her bed that he made his first move and got into it with her, sliding down underneath the covers until he circled and circled and finally curled up under one of her arms, which was where he settled down after giving one deeply contented snort. A moment later he was fast asleep, snoring gently like an old man in his favourite club chair.
At first Portia hardly dared move in case whatever spell she was under was broken and when she lifted the covers Henry would be gone as if he had never existed. She realized that the feeling which had suffused her from the very first moment she had picked up the little dog at Orion House had been long gone from her, but was now back. It was a feeling that she had not once stopped to consider was missing in her day-to-day existence, living as she did between the upper and lower floors at Bannerwick, a feeling that she used to have and that had been absent since that day long ago when she had helped to pack Edward’s Gladstone bag and he had left Bannerwick seemingly for good. She was happy again.
THE BLUE BEYOND
‘There’s something about today, but for the life of me—’ Sir Lampard shook his head as he examined the date on the day’s newspaper, leaving the rest of the sentence unfinished. Portia said nothing as she helped herself to some scrambled eggs, the making of which she and Cook had perfected by the simple use of a bain-marie. Instead she retook her place at the breakfast table, failing to notice that Henry was up to his favourite trick of undoing people’s bootlaces, this time the object of his devious attentions being Mildred who was standing daydreaming by the sideboard.
‘Twenty-ninth of June, dash it,’ Sir Lampard wondered out loud. ‘Rings a bell. It certainly rings a bell. Twenty-ninth of June. Anyone know anything special ’bout the twenty-ninth of June? Eh? And while you’ve all got your thinking caps on, need some more toast. You, girl.’ He pointed to the musing Mildred. ‘That’s it. Go and fetch us up some more toast, if you will.’
‘Yessir.’ Mildred picked up the empty silver salver, bobbed a half curtsey and disappeared through the pass door. A moment later from down the corridor there was a crash as the maid obviously tripped on her undone boot laces and went flying, silver salver and all. Henry, appalled by the din but utterly unaware that he was the cause of it, bolted across the floor and under cover of the tablecloth leaped up onto Portia’s knee where he lay with his muzzle buried in her lap.
‘That girl’s forever falling over,’ Sir Lampard observed, turning to the next page of his paper. ‘Must have somethin’ wrong with her ears.’
‘Why her ears, Uncle?’ Portia wondered, slipping a small portion of toast crust to the hidden Henry, who regarded the tit-bit with the greatest suspicion even though he was fed such morsels regularly. ‘Why should having something wrong with your ears make you fall over?’
‘It’s a medical fact, missy. Didn’t you know? Apparently people balance with their ears, d’you see. And if there’s anything wrong with them down they go! And has anyone remembered what it is that’s so special about the twenty-ninth of June, please?’
Since there were only the two of them now in the room, Portia thought that it was about time she put her uncle out of his misery, however reluctantly. ‘The twenty-ninth of June is my birthday, Uncle Lampard,’ she told him.
‘Well done, missy,’ he congratulated her, shaking his newspaper out with such a rattle that Henry dropped his crust of toast on Portia’s shoe, having successfully mumbled it into a little wet mess. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be long before one of us remembered. I suppose you’ve had some sort of present, or a card from Nanny, perhaps?’
‘It is only breakfast time, Uncle,’ Portia reminded him, gingerly refeeding Henry his thoroughly soggy portion of toast. ‘You and Aunt Tattie don’t normally give me my card until tea time and Nanny is no longer with us, if you remember.’
‘I shouldn’t think for a moment your aunt’s remembered, missy. Got all dressed up and ready to take herself off to church yesterday and I had to remind her it was Monday. And she’d been only the day before. So I shouldn’t think for one moment she’ll have remembered it’s your birthday. Lucky for you I did, really. Eh? Otherwise no-one would have wished you happy birthday. So Happy Birthday to You.’ He sang a snatch of the song from behind his newspaper without so much as a look over the top. ‘That’s it, then.’
‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘Any more toast?’
‘Mildred’s gone to fetch some.’
‘I suppose somebody round here will remember something one day,’ Sir Lampard sighed. ‘So. If your aunt’s gone and forgotten to get you anything that’s not going to do, is it?’
‘It doesn’t matter if no-one’s got me anything, Uncle,’ Portia began carefully.
‘Course it does, missy. Chap’s birthday’s his birthday. Or hers, quod vide. Can’t go empty-handed on a birthday. Here.’ Still reading his paper, Sir Lampard fished into his pocket and took out a florin. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing the coin across the table. ‘Get yourself a bag of sweets or whatever.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Uncle, but I don’t think you sh
ould,’ Portia replied, leaving the coin exactly where it lay.
For the first time since he’d picked up The Times her uncle looked at her, lowering the paper just enough so that he could stare at her. ‘What’s the matter? Gone off sweets, have you? So buy yourself something else if you will. Don’t matter what you spend the money on, missy.’
‘I meant it would not be fair on you, Uncle.’ Portia smiled, stroking Henry’s soft head under cover of the tablecloth. ‘You see Aunt Tattie did remember it was my birthday, or rather she remembered my birthday was coming up the other evening, and she asked me what I would like. What I would really like, as a reward so she said for all my hard work, and I said—’ Portia stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I said there was something I’d really like and that was to learn how to sail.’
The newspaper didn’t move. Nor did her uncle’s eyes.
‘How to sail?’
‘Only a dinghy or something small, at least at first,’ Portia hastened to add.
‘You want to learn how to sail, missy? Goodness me, what had your aunt to say about that? That’s a bit of a healthy pursuit, isn’t it?’
‘She didn’t actually seem to mind, Uncle.’ Henry jumped down off Portia’s knee and appeared at her side where he gave a huge yawn, making a noise like an opening door. Whereupon Sir Lampard looked round at once to the service door which to his visible surprise he saw remained still closed. Portia took advantage of his confusion to continue. ‘In fact Aunt Tattie seemed to think it rather a good idea, saying that it would be yet another way of communicating with the elements. There’s no problem about a boat either, you see. Because—’
‘Where on earth’s the maid with my toast, you think?’ her uncle interposed. ‘She’s been gone goodness knows how long.’
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