by Sara Seale
“Hasn’t she got a schoolroom of her own?” she enquired of Jimsy, trying to discover how best to avoid an innocent appropriation of the child’s favourite haunts.
“Oh, ay—the old nurseries in the servants’ wing,” Jimsy had replied vaguely, and Harriet had gone to explore for herself.
The servants’ wing, still so-called though a row of musty rooms testified to long years of disuse, seemed to her cold and depressing. It seemed an unnecessary banishment for a child when there were so many unoccupied rooms in the Castle which could have been adapted for her use, and Harriet said as much to Duff, who displayed a surprising lack of interest.
“But don’t you care whether your daughter is happy and well looked after when she comes home?” she asked.
“Nonie’s looked after well enough,” he replied quite mildly. “Whether she’s happy is another matter.”
“But surely that’s up to you—to see that she is happy, I mean. Children aren’t difficult to please.”
“You’d better wait till you know my daughter. Nonie, you will find, doesn’t react like a child to normal treats and pleasures, neither, I’m afraid, will she thank you for moving her to one of the other rooms, but by all means make changes in the nursery if you want, only don’t say I didn’t warn you if your efforts fall flat.”
It was not an encouraging start, but Harriet, determined to prove his forebodings wrong, set about transforming the neglected nurseries with a will, plundering the many unused rooms for furniture and ordering modern books and games to replace the discarded toys. With Molly’s help she shifted the furniture around a dozen times before she was satisfied.
“Wouldn’t that please you, Molly, if you were a little girl thinking yourself too old for a nursery?”
“Well, as to that, I wouldn’t be knowin’, for ‘tis not what I’d be expectin’ for meself,” she said. “An’ Miss Nonie’s the quare one, always slippin’ away by herself an’ no company for her da at all. Rest aisy, ma’am, she’ll not trouble you if you let her be.”
It was not a very reassuring hope for a future relationship.
“Oh, well...” said Harriet inconclusively, then put the problem of Nonie out of her mind and went about her preparations for Christmas, but here again she seemed to meet with discouragement. Clooney was too big a house to decorate unless it was done on a grand scale, and with only herself and a possibly disapproving child to sit down at Duff’s table on Christmas Day the pattern of everyday life would scarcely change. She had become accustomed each evening to sitting opposite him in the chilly dining-room, eating her dinner with the mute politeness of a child taught not to chatter unless spoken to. She occupied her vagrant thoughts with the positioning of holly and paper streamers, and once he observed:
“Planning where the mistletoe will go, Harriet? Your eyes keep darting round the room with rather a distracted look of uncertainty.”
“Well, it’s difficult to decide,” she said, grateful that he should take an interest, however casual. “Little bits of holly would look lost and not enough grows round here, Molly says, to make a really good show.”
“Go and buy it up by the truck-load in Knockferry if it will satisfy your love of make-believe,” he said carelessly, and she looked a little shocked.
“Spend good money on stuff that grows in the hedges!” she exclaimed, too recently plucked from the rigid economies of institutional life to countenance such wanton waste, then added on an afterthought: “But Christmas isn’t make-believe. It’s real.”
“What a child you are,” he said, but he spoke with tenderness and not with his customary amused tolerance, and she gave him that sudden mischievous grin across the table.
“How nice you can be, when you really see me,” she said, and he looked quite startled.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Well, you often don’t—see me, I mean. I’m a guest—a sort of unexpected dependent wished on you, rather like Uriah.”
“For the love of sanity, what next!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet to move round the table.”
“I must have failed very badly if I’ve given you that impression,” he said a little roughly. “You should remind me more often that I make you feel like the subservient Uriah.”
“But he’s very happy. This place must be like heaven to him, surrounded by love and affection as well as good food and comfort, so why shouldn’t I feel the same?”
“There’s one small difference, I would imagine. Do you feel yourself surrounded by love and affection?”
She sighed, resting her head against him; her contentment was new and sweet, and she resisted the temptation to take advantage.
“That wasn’t in the contract,” she answered, and felt the spasmodic tightening of his fingers on her shoulders.
“Contracts can be amended—even reconstituted to meet changes in circumstances,” he said, and turned her gently round to look into her face. “Have I been keeping too much to the letter of the law in the matter of our agreement?”
She felt the colour rising under the unfamiliar demand in his eyes.
“Whatever you want of me, Duff, I’m willing to give,” she replied, striving to capture and keep the moment of perception. “But you haven’t wanted anything, have you?”
“I wonder if you realise what you’re offering,” he said on an odd little note of tension.
“I think so, but—”
“But what?”
“You think of me as a child, don’t you, Duff?” she said, but for him the moment of perception had already passed.
“Well, you are a child,” he said, moving away from her. “A good, conscientious child, ready to please in any capacity and quite ignorant of the ways of the world.”
“Because you want me that way,” she said, and he began snuffing out the candles on the table.
“Perhaps,” he replied, his ugly features oddly distorted in the flickering light as each flame died. “Or perhaps I’m more concerned for your happiness than you think.”
The day came for Nonie’s return for the holidays, and Harriet drove with Duff into Knockferry to fetch her feeling as nervous as she used to on being summoned for an interview with Matron.
“Does she know you’ve married again?” she asked, wondering if Duff, with a masculine dread of a possible scene, was leaving it to her to break the news.
“Oh, yes. The Reverend Mother told her at once. There was no surprise and not much interest, I understand, so you needn’t be nervous,” he replied rather dryly.
But there was a flicker of surprise in the child’s eyes as she shook hands politely with Harriet in the convent parlour, and she said with grave deliberation:
“You aren’t at all what I expected. Has Father really married you?”
“Oh, yes. She can’t be sacked if you two don’t get on, so you’ll have to learn to accept her,” Duff said before Harriet could answer, and Nonie gave him a cool, level look very like one of his own and replied with old-fashioned composure;
“Naturally. Clooney’s quite big enough for us to go our separate ways.”
Duff merely lifted an eyebrow but made no comment, and Harriet was too taken aback by such an adult egression of disinterest that she could think of nothing to say. They left the parlour where the smell of beeswax and carbolic reminded her forcibly of the orphanage, and out to the waiting car in silence.
By the time they had reached Clooney, Harriet was beginning to think that it was going to be as difficult to come to terms with Nonie as it sometimes was with Duff. The child answered questions politely, but volunteered no more information about herself than was necessary, and such brief exchanges as took place between father and daughter sounded like the conventional small talk between strangers. Harriet consoled herself with the fact that her efforts to give the nursery a more adult air had been a step in the right direction, but when she accompanied the child upstairs and waited for some evidence of appreciation, there was none forthcoming.
Nonie s
tood sedately in her neat school uniform looking about her with critical eyes, then she took off her coat and hat without speaking and hung them up carefully in the Chippendale wardrobe which had replaced the original shabby painted deal, glancing without curiosity at the new pile of children’s books on the table.
“Don’t you like the nursery now it’s more like your own sitting-room?” Harriet asked at last a little wistfully, and the child answered politely enough:
“I liked it better as it was.”
“Oh! Did you play with those old toys, then? I’ve only put them away.”
“No.”
“Well, I ordered these books for you. They’re all newly published and some have lovely illustrations.”
“It was kind of you, but I always use the library when I’m at home,” said Nonie with her first hint of smugness, and Harriet wanted to smack her.
“In that case the tenants’ children can have these for Christmas. They haven’t the advantages of a library,” she said on a note of retaliation that was more reminiscent of a schoolgirl than a reproving grown-up, and the child looked at her with the first flicker of interest.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Eighteen.”
“Good gracious! Father must have been out of his mind!” The involuntary exclamation was so mature and so ludicrously an echo of Duff that Harriet laughed.
“Well, out of his mind or not, you’re stuck with me, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t both make the best of it,” she said.
“What am I to call you?” asked Nonie.
“I don’t know,” said Harriet, who hadn’t considered that question, but Nonie, of course, had the answer, as she would, Harriet was beginning to think, to most things.
“I shall call you Harriet,” she said with the indulgent firmness of an equal. “Mother would sound rather silly, wouldn’t it?”
“Extremely silly,” Harriet snapped with heartfelt agreement, and whisked out of the room. She found Duff in the snug drinking sherry, with a second glass already filled and waiting for her.
“I had a notion you might be needing this,” he said with a twinkle, observing her flushed face. “My precocious daughter must be something of a shock to the ample product of an orphanage. Didn’t she care for your titivations to the nursery?”
“No. You knew she wouldn’t, didn’t you?”
“My dear, I did warn you—”
“Yes, I suppose you did. But why is she like this, Duff? I know you’ve left her alone a lot when you were abroad, but surely, later, you could have tried to make up for that.”
“The blame doesn’t entirely rest with me, you know,” he said, sounding suddenly tired.
“Who, then?”
“The grandparents—Kitty’s people. I told you I had come to the conclusion that long visits to Dublin were a mistake.”
“You mean they turned her against you?”
“I think so—not deliberately, I imagine, but they never forgave me for the way the marriage turned out, and Nonie is enough like her mother to enjoy being the centre of attraction.”
“But surely when you came home again you could have done a little spoiling yourself?”
“Oh, no. By that time I was the bogey-man, you see. Heaven knows what yams she spun the grandparents, who write accusing letters from time to time but can never bring themselves to visit Clooney. It’s another nail in my coffin with Nonie, of course, that I don’t allow her to stay there any more.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like your daughter,” Harriet said suddenly. “A child that is precocious and unnatural is bad enough, but a spiteful child I can’t abide,” she said, and heard an echo of Matron’s sweeping statements.
“Nonie’s not spiteful,” he said, smiling at such vehemence. “Don’t let me give you a wrong impression. She wouldn’t, I’m sure, make capital out of imagined grievances from any deliberate intention of spite; she’s simply cute enough to know what’s expected in the matter of questions and answers, and plays up.”
“I see. Well, it doesn’t sound attractive all the same. What do the nuns think of her?”
“She always has an excellent report. The sole criticism appears to be that she’s a bad mixer and won’t make friends, and that, unfortunately, you’ve discovered already for yourself. Give her time, Harriet. I’m depending on this warm-hearted simplicity of yours to crack the ice.”
“It hasn’t cracked yours,” she retorted.
“You might be surprised one day. I, unlike the fond Uriah, don’t wear my heart on my sleeve,” he said with such an alarming air of censure that she felt chastened. It was almost a relief when Nonie joined them, her long dark hair neatly brushed and tied back with a bow, and the school uniform replaced by a skirt and sweater.
Luncheon was something of an ordeal until she realised that Nonie’s presence made very little difference, for she, like her father, was not disposed to chatter and received Harriet’s efforts to draw her out with polite surprise. She was a very polite little girl altogether, Harriet had to admit.
She was, indeed, a very plain child, and Harriet’s tender heart softened towards her, remembering her own sense of inadequacy when faced with the superior attractions of others.
She was glad when the meal ended, but wondered a little apprehensively if Duff expected her to amuse Nonie for the rest of the afternoon since the child had been a considerable factor in his decision to remarry, but when asked what she would like to do, Nonie intimated with such a condescending air that she preferred her own company on the first day of the holidays that Harriet found it hard to resist the impulse to stick out her tongue and reply with orphanage rudeness.
She might yet have preserved her adult superiority had Nonie not cast a disparaging eye upon Uriah and remarked: “That really is a most hideous animal. Where on earth did you find him, Father?”
It was too much. Before Duff could answer, Harriet had risen in wrath from the table and advanced upon the child, her cheeks scarlet.
“You,” she said, reverting to orphanage idiom, “are the most ill-mannered little twerp it’s been my lot to meet! The dog happens to be mine, and if you don’t like his looks, take a gander at your own ugly mug!”
Nonie’s mouth fell open with sheer surprise, then she retaliated with a healthy reversion to childhood:
“You’re no beauty yourself, and you’re not proper grownup either, even if you have married Father, so there!” she shouted, and stuck out her tongue. This time Harriet had no hesitation in sticking out hers, accompanied by a hideous grimace, and Nonie ran out of the room with her hands over her ears, her father’s burst of laughter completing her discomfiture.
“I’m not sorry,” Harriet told him with the mutinous defiance of a child refusing to apologies, but Duff only laughed louder with the helpless mirth of an overgrown schoolboy.
“Don’t apologise, my dear,” he said when at last he could speak. “I wouldn’t have missed that for worlds! It’s the first time I’ve seen poor Nonie behave like a normal, rather rude little girl. You, too—I wonder how often you’ve been tempted to put your tongue out at me and call me names?”
But Harriet’s unaccustomed spurt of temper was already dying, and she was reproached with the knowledge that on the very first day of testing, she had been found wanting.
“I wouldn’t dare—I mean, I wouldn’t dream,” she replied, eyeing him warily, and his amusement turned abruptly to a sober mood of thoughtfulness.
“Dare, I think, was the operative word, for your dreams have never been rationed, have they, Harriet?” he said. “Well, that delightful prep-school exhibition has probably broken the ice, but I don’t want two difficult daughters on my hands, so grow up a little, will you?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT was a relief to Harriet when bedtime came, for she had been obsessed with her own shortcomings as the afternoon wore into evening.
Nonie, bearing out her desire for solitude for the first day of the holidays, disappeared on pl
oys of her own, and Duff and his dogs were presumably about the policies after rabbits, his usual occupation if there was no estate work to be attended to. He had not come in, however, by the time it was too dark to shoot, and Harriet, left alone with her thoughts, had ample leisure to repent, and regret her undignified behaviour.
Nonie did not come down for tea, and Harriet supposed she was showing her displeasure by sulking, so she had hers alone, and was thankful. Her conscience pricked her, however, for she felt her duty certainly lay in making sure that the child was being properly cared for and the bedtime hour, whenever it might be, observed, but she could not bring herself to invade the nursery inviting further snubs, so went instead to the kitchen to enquire.
“I wanted to ask what the holiday routine for Miss Nonie is,” she said. “Should I be seeing to her supper or her bath, or something?”
“Och, you don’t need to trouble yourself, ma’am. Molly takes a tray up at half-past six, an’ she gets herself to bed an’ won’t thank anyone for bedtime stories and the loike,”
But even Harriet’s imagination boggled at the prospect of regaling such a precocious child with bedtime stories and she smiled.
“Well, so long as this is the usual practice, I won’t go up tonight. I’m afraid Miss Nonie hasn’t taken very kindly to me.”
“Sure, you don’t need to take heed of that wan’s airs and grace—all play-actin’ an’ she thinkin’ to take a leaf from her da’s book, for himself can get on his high horse when he chooses, beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.”
Harriet smiled again, warming to Agnes, sitting in a basket chair by the roaring fire. She was quite accustomed now to the curious knack the Irish had of being familiar with their betters without ever forgetting their place, and she had personal acquaintance with Duff’s high horse.