by Dominic Luke
Contents
Dedication
Chapters
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
By the same author
Copyright
. . . No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes,
only the young girl’s hazed and golden dreams
that veil the Future from her . . .
A Castaway
Augusta Webster
Chapter One
‘I don’t like this photograph.’
Eliza Brannan, aged twelve, was standing in the middle of the day room in the nursery with her back to the barred window.
‘What photograph?’ Her cousin Dorothea Ryan, eight years older and seated by the fire, looked up from her sewing.
‘This photograph.’
Eliza tilted the silver frame first one way then the other. Cold December light glinted on the glass. Her brother Roderick stared back at her, a cryptic expression on his face. In the picture he was wearing a cap and gown. He was a fresher – whatever that might mean.
But what did any word truly mean, thought Eliza: not just fresher but brother, as well? Brother, brother, brother: if you repeated a word too often, it shook itself free of all meaning and became just a sound, like a dog’s bark or a cat’s miaow.
My brother.
It meant nothing.
Eliza lowered the photograph to find Dorothea at her side.
‘That’s the photograph from the parlour, isn’t it? You’d better take it back before Aunt Eloise misses it. What do you want with it, anyway?’
‘I wanted to remind myself what Roddy looks like.’
‘You can’t have forgotten already! He’s only been away since September.’
‘But I wasn’t sure that the way I remember him is the way he really is.’
Dorothea laughed. ‘What odd ideas you get in that head of yours!’
‘I can’t help it, Doro. Ideas just pop up without my asking.’ Eliza held the picture up at arm’s length, looking at it critically. ‘I don’t like this photograph,’ she said once more.
‘It isn’t the best likeness, I agree. The photographer hasn’t captured Roddy’s . . .’ Dorothea hesitated.
‘His swagger?’ Eliza suggested.
‘His vim and vigour, I was going to say.’ Dorothea returned to her chair. ‘Take the picture back now. It’s not as if you need it. The real Roddy will be here before you know it.’
Eliza sighed and turned to go but at that moment the nursery maid Daisy came into the day room, staggering under the weight of the coal scuttle.
Eliza held out the picture. ‘Oh, Daisy, take this back, will you?’
‘No, Eliza,’ said Dorothea, ‘you must take it back yourself. Daisy has enough to do without running round after you.’
Eliza wrinkled her nose. Roderick, were he here, would have said that running round was exactly what Daisy was for. He would also have called her Turner, as Mama did, and not Daisy. But spending so much time with Dorothea, Eliza had picked up Dorothea’s habits.
Eliza decided that she might as well return the photograph as not. Apart from anything else, it would give her a legitimate excuse for what Mama called ‘rampaging round the house’. Mama held the firm opinion that children should be seen and not heard. A child’s place was in the nursery, Mama said. But one always took Mama’s opinions with a pinch of salt.
Swinging down the stairs, Eliza turned her thoughts back to her brother (brother, brother, brother). He would not be arriving alone. He was bringing guests with him, four new friends from Oxford. It was just like Roderick to make four new friends in one term and then to persuade them all to come for Christmas (not to mention persuading Mama to invite them): Roderick never did things by halves.
One of Roderick’s new friends was a boy called Milton, a member of that immense tribe of Miltons, many of whom lived not far away at Darvell Hall. There were two girls coming as well. One was a cousin of the Milton boy, the other a friend of this cousin. They too were students. Eliza had been taken aback to discover that there were women at the university. And yet why not? Why should boys like Roderick have all the fun? In this day and age – it was 1911, after all – sisters ought to be treated the same as brothers.
‘I shall also go to university when I am older,’ she had announced.
But Mama had said it was unnatural for women to be undergraduates; it only encouraged loose morals. Female students were dry sticks for the most part and never got married in later life.
Eliza was in two minds about whether she ever wanted to marry, but she was quite certain that she didn’t want to be a dry stick. She’d decided against university.
All of which didn’t say much for Roderick’s guests: two dry sticks and a ten-a-penny Milton. But there was a fourth guest. And the fourth guest was a Russian – a real live Russian!
Eliza shivered with excitement as she jumped the last few steps to land in a heap on the black-and-white tiles of the hallway, only just saving the photo frame from extinction. Just think! A Russian at Clifton Park! It was too thrilling for words! She couldn’t wait! But what would he look like? Russians, Eliza knew, were numerous, barbarous and perfidious. People spoke of ‘the Russian menace’ and ‘the great Russian bear’ – not that Russians had fur (did they?). Russia was ruled by an emperor called the Tsar who was forever plotting to invade Turkey and Persia and India (but the King was in India just now, he’d put a stop to that). Russia in the map book looked quite big enough already, which only went to show how greedy Russians must be, wanting more, more, more. To think of a Russian coming here, to Clifton Park in the heart of England, was rather disturbing. Might he not be part of a secret plot to add Northamptonshire to the oversized empire? Would Roderick’s friend be a savage, menacing brute? Would he growl like a bear and help himself to the whole of the joint at dinner?
Dorothea was keeping an open mind. There was nothing wrong with foreigners as a rule, she insisted. Just look at the mam’zelle (the mam’zelle, now back in France, had once been Dorothea’s governess). And what about those German gentlemen they had met on holiday in Switzerland last year? No one could have been nicer, kinder, friendlier.
Eliza had all but forgotten the German gentlemen. The holiday seemed such an age ago now. She had grown up immeasurably since then.
Mama took a rather different attitude towards foreigners. She was not as trusting as Dorothea. Secretly, Eliza wondered if Mama might have a point. Dorothea never saw bad in anyone. But there had to be bad people somewhere or else why was there so much wickedness in the world? Not that there was any wickedness at Clifton Park, nor in the nearby village of Hayton. In fact, there was probably no real wickedness anywhere closer than – say – the little market town of Lawham three miles away. But what went on in Lawham was anyone’s guess.
Bursting into the breakfast room, Eliza skidded to a halt by the big round table. She cocked an ear. There were voices in the next room, the parlour. Mama, of course. And, by the sound of it, Mrs Bourne.
The thought of Mrs Bourne made Eliza reconsider the idea of wickedness at Clifton. Was the housekeeper wicked? Perhaps not. But she was certainly rather terrifying. To come up against both her and Mama at the same time was more than anyone ought to be expected to cope with.
Eliza placed the photograph face down on the sideboard. Someone would find it eventually and put it back where it belonged. Dorothea would be none the wiser.
As she waltzed back up the stairs, curtseying on the half-landing to the portrait of the red-faced man in the white wig, Eliza turned her thoughts from Roderick and Russians and the wickedness
in the world to the more immediate and important question of what sort of sandwiches and cakes Cook would send up for tea.
As it turned out, Eliza that day took tea not in the nursery but in the drawing room: a special treat. This was no doubt Dorothea’s doing. Mama would not have thought of it, would probably have argued against it. But Mama on occasion deferred to Dorothea, especially on nursery matters. No one apart from Dorothea could work this magic with Mama. Eliza knew. She’d tried – and failed.
Mama this afternoon was being what Roderick called ‘the Perfect Hostess’. It was a persona she slipped on when guests called, in the same way that she slipped on her best tea gown. The advantage of having the Perfect Hostess in the room was that all attention was turned to Mama. One could watch and listen without much danger of being caught staring.
From her place on the couch by the French windows, Eliza took stock. Her eye was drawn first – naturally – to her brother, who was standing by the piano drinking his tea. He was rather tall, rather handsome (much more handsome in the flesh than in the photograph), and he had that look on his face which Dorothea called ‘cat that got the cream’ and which Eliza called ‘puffed up’ and ‘insufferably pleased with himself’. She could tell that Mama wished he would sit down. This was probably because of some rule to do with good manners. There were lots of rules of that sort. One could not hope to remember even half of them – unless one was Mama. But even if Roderick was breaking the rules, Mama would not tell him off. She never told Roderick off.
Mr Milton and the two girls were sitting in a row on the settee on the far side of the room. Mr Milton was dull. He stammered and blushed and was not worth bothering with. The two girls were of more interest. They were cool and reserved and rather intimidating. There was no hint of loose morals that Eliza could see. They wore button-up blouses, long narrow skirts, and shiny boots. They sipped their tea and took bites from their cakes and looked incredibly sophisticated. Eliza felt a positive child by comparison.
Sitting apart was the Russian. Eliza’s heart beat fast. She hardly dared look. But when she finally plucked up courage, he proved to be something of a disappointment. He did not look in the least barbaric. He looked, in fact, rather ordinary. He had an ordinary face, rather round, rather pale, with a nose that was neither one thing nor the other and a mouth that was just a mouth. His hair was sort of blond and sort of wasn’t, and it was cut quite short but not very. He had an odd accent and his clothes looked slightly shabby (Mama would have noticed this), but apart from that, he could easily have come from the village or Lawham or just anywhere. In actual fact, he came from a place called Petersburg and his father was a professor (these were the sort of facts the Perfect Hostess elicited from her guests almost by sleight of hand). The Russian was studying at Roderick’s college in Oxford which was how they had met. Eliza wondered why he couldn’t study at his own college. Perhaps they didn’t have colleges in Russia.
The Russian was looking round with keen interest. This room, Eliza realized, so familiar to her, would be wholly new to him. What did he think of it? What did he think of the Delft vase and the Chinese fan on the sideboard; of the tea things on the low table, of the landscape painting on the wall? What did he think of Mama – and of her, Eliza Brannan? She shivered. His eyes, a sort of translucent grey, had seemed at first just as ordinary as the rest of him. But as she watched him looking round the room, she got the uncomfortable impression he could see into things, that he could see their very essence, as easily as reading the pages of a book.
She dismissed the idea. It was probably her imagination. It usually was.
Mama had switched her attention now to the dark-haired girl, the one whose name Eliza had forgotten but who wasn’t Mr Milton’s cousin. The dark-haired girl was being interrogated under the guise of what the Perfect Hostess called ‘polite conversation’.
‘There are three of us, Mrs Brannan: my brother, my younger sister, and myself. We have a house in Bloomsbury.’
‘In Bloomsbury? How interesting. I believe Bloomsbury has become quite respectable recently.’ Mama tilted her head a fraction, as if she still harboured doubts about Bloomsbury. (Where was Bloomsbury?) ‘What about your parents, Miss Halsted? Who are your parents?’
‘Both my parents are dead.’
‘How sad. I am so sorry.’ Mama did not bat an eyelid. She was never caught off guard. Whatever else one might say about Mama, no one reigned over a drawing room in quite the same way.
Mama turned to the other girl, the Milton cousin. ‘I knew your mother quite well at one time, Miss Ward. We came out in the same season. She is a widow now, I believe – as am I, of course. Tell me: do you see much of your Uncle Philip these days?’
Eliza sensed that this for some reason was a trick question. The girl did not seem to notice.
‘I’ve never met Uncle Philip, Mrs Brannan. He is persona non grata at Darvell Hall – isn’t that right, Gerry?’
‘Oh . . . er . . . yes . . . rather. Grandpa won’t speak of him.’
Interesting, thought Eliza, taking up the mystery of Uncle Philip and just as quickly dropping it: there was simply too much else to think about. (Persona non grata: was that the way dry sticks always talked?)
‘Another of your uncles, Mr Giles Milton,’ Mama continued, ‘is – I’m sure you know – in charge of the BFS showroom in town. My late husband, Albert, built up the BFS Motor Company from nothing. I don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, but I’m told that BFS motors are now amongst the most popular in the country.’
Eliza wondered if, despite Mama’s smile, mention of the motors and the showroom was a subtle way of putting Mr Milton and his cousin in their place. Their grandfather at Darvell Hall was a millionaire – so the story went – but their Uncle Giles was, to all intents and purposes, a mere employee: Mama’s employee, for the BFS Motor Manufacturing Company had passed to Mama when Daddy died two-and-a-half years ago. Mama, of course, had little to do with the day-to-day running of Daddy’s factories. The fact that they were as far away as Coventry meant that one forgot all about them most of the time.
Mama now got to her feet. Afternoon tea was over. There was a bustle of movement in the drawing room. The little gathering dispersed.
Led back upstairs by Dorothea, Eliza could not stifle a sense of disappointment. She had looked forward to meeting the new guests but they were in their way just as dull as the boys Roderick used to bring home from school: boys who had either been as timid as church mice or insufferably full of themselves. Those boys had often taken up much of Roderick’s time during school holidays. Would the new guests do the same? If only one could have Roderick all to oneself! But there was time for that yet, weeks and weeks until Roderick had to go back to Oxford. The guests would not stay that long. In the meantime, afternoon tea in the drawing room was quite enough excitement for one day.
A dinner party was arranged for Christmas Eve. Everyone was to be there. Everyone, Eliza learned, except her.
‘You are too young, Elizabeth, to eat with the grown-ups,’ Mama said firmly, not to be budged. Even Dorothea could not change her mind this time.
To add insult to injury, the nursery maid Daisy would be at the dinner too: she was going to help out downstairs for the evening. It was an affront! It was an outrage!
Eliza began to make plans.
‘My hair!’ sighed Dorothea, fingering her dark curls as she looked at her reflection in the three-folded mirror on the dressing table in her room.
Now that she was grown up – as old as twenty – Dorothea by rights should have moved to a bigger room on the floor below, leaving the nursery behind as Roderick had done. But Dorothea preferred to keep her old room. Eliza was glad. Together they made a little colony of their own, separate from the rest of the house.
But why was Dorothea worrying about her hair? It was quite out of character.
Standing behind her cousin, Eliza said, ‘Your hair is lovely, all those curls. You are beautiful: much nicer than the
dry sticks.’
Dorothea smiled at her in the mirror. ‘You do exaggerate, Eliza. I am not beautiful. I have never been beautiful.’ The smile faded. She sighed again. Then she gathered herself, turned on her stool. ‘Now, you will be good, won’t you, whilst I’m downstairs? You’ll eat all your supper and won’t stay up late? Promise me.’
‘I promise.’ (I promise to do whatever I choose.)
Eliza waited until Dorothea was safely out of the way before leaving the nursery. She ran along the corridor to the far end where the servants’ rooms were. It was better to use the back stairs this evening. One might meet anyone on the main stairs, with the house so busy.
She hurried down, trailing her hand on the wall. It was a rather grubby wall. The paint was peeling. But that didn’t matter because only the servants ever saw it.
There was a whirl of activity downstairs, guests arriving, servants flitting back and forth. Eliza made a dash for the dining room. As she’d expected, it was all in readiness and for the moment deserted. She closed the door and circled the room, drinking it all in: the leaping fire; the glowing lights; the flickering candles in the candelabra, centrepiece of the long table. The table itself was covered by a vast white cloth, pristine. Eighteen places were set. Each place had a napkin in a silver ring and a menu card. Cutlery gleamed, glasses shone. There were vases on the cabinet and on the mantelpiece, each crammed with flowers: half the contents of Becket’s greenhouses by the look of it. There were Christmas decorations too, green and red and silver-sparkly. It all looked so lovely, so perfect, that it made Eliza’s mouth water. To spy on such a dinner as this – for that was what she intended – would be just as much of a treat as sitting down herself: better, in a way, for she would not have to make polite conversation and remember which knife and fork to use. There was a peephole in one of the dining room doors, a tiny crack in the wood. It was Dorothea who’d once pointed it out: she’d used it herself, she’d said, when she was a little girl. Roderick had used it too. ‘Now,’ said Eliza, ‘it’s my turn.’
She had to go. Someone might come. To be discovered at this juncture would be a disaster.