Dreams That Veil

by Dominic Luke

  Eliza stared at him. Coal, ordinary coal, which Daisy brought up from the cellar as a matter of course: was it really the stuff of heroism?

  Mr Antipov broke into a grin. ‘I am sorry, Leeza. I am carried away: is that correct idiom? I can never keep opinions to myself. You see now why secret police take interest.’ He jumped up, jamming on his cap, pocketing his book. ‘Now I think we must go or we will be late for your English teatime.’

  He held out his hand, he helped her to her feet, he picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.

  Eliza sighed as they took to the road again. ‘Clifton won’t be the same when you’ve all gone away. Doro’s gone, you will go soon, Roddy will go back to Oxford. Life will be so dull.’

  But Kolya squeezed her hand and said, ‘Life is never dull, Leeza, unless you make it that way. Life is never dull, you will see!’

  Chapter Six

  Miss Halsted arrived at Clifton, stayed a week, departed. Mr Antipov – Kolya – also took his leave.

  ‘Life is never dull,’ he’d said. For him maybe. For Eliza, the days dragged and the weeks stretched on, interminable. Nothing happened. The nursery was silent, lonely; there was only Polly for company, and Daisy when she wasn’t busy elsewhere. The beautiful weather during the week of Dorothea’s wedding now seemed almost unreal as a cold, miserable August gave way to a cold, miserable September.

  Roderick was next to go, heading back to Oxford. The day after, the new governess arrived: a grey-haired, pinch-faced, humourless woman. She was a poor substitute for Dorothea but the best Mama could do.

  ‘It is becoming impossible to get hold of good servants,’ Mama complained. ‘I am still a maid short. Heaven knows where I will find one.’

  Dorothea herself now existed only in letters and postcards. Eliza used them to track her cousin’s progress as the newly-weds retraced the steps of the continental holiday two years ago when it had been Eliza and Roderick with Dorothea instead of Johann. They went first to France, to the village where Mlle Lacroix lived, Dorothea’s old governess (if only it was possible to find another governess as nice as the mam’zelle!). Johann was introduced to her and approved of. After that the newly-weds went on to Switzerland to stay in the very Gasthaus or pension where they had first met. Finally they made the journey to Hamburg and Dorothea’s new home. Here, as the only woman, Dorothea had taken up the role as mistress of the house. She not only had Johann to look after but Dr Kaufmann, Siegfried and cousin Gerhard too. The other cousin, Heinrich – the one Eliza remembered from Switzerland – was a frequent visitor along with his wife, two daughters and new baby son. The two little girls, Dorothea reported, were lovely creatures, clever and charming and adorable. ‘Her new favourites,’ said Eliza bitterly. When would Dorothea give her old friends a thought and come back on a visit?

  ‘Goodness, miss, she’s only just left!’ said Daisy. ‘She’ll want to settle in, I expect, and get used to her new home. Besides, it must be a fair step from here to Hamburg. It takes long enough to get to Northampton. Heaven knows what it’s like to travel all the way to Germany!’ Daisy, in fact, was quite well aware of what it was to travel. She had accompanied them on the continental holiday two years ago. But she had hated it so much that she liked now to pretend that it had never happened.

  Distance was one thing but there were dangers too. The world was a perilous place. There were icebergs, earthquakes and epidemics; there were train smashes and motor accidents; there was the threat of distant war. A new war began that autumn in which Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbians and Turks fought one another in places called Thrace, Salonika and Kumonovo. Eliza was not sure who was on whose side nor where the places were. Nowhere near Northamptonshire, she knew that much, but perhaps near Hamburg? She had no opportunity to find out as the map book had been confiscated. Soon The Times was forbidden too: forbidden apart from carefully selected clippings which the new governess cut out neatly with scissors. The new governess was of the opinion that Eliza’s education up to now had been decidedly lax and far too haphazard. There had been an excess of history and geography at the expense of more suitable subjects such as sewing, embroidery, table manners, polite conversation and deportment. Gone were the days when Eliza could while away a lazy afternoon bent over the map book looking for places with exotic names (Timbuktu). Now she had to sit up straight and read the clippings out loud, taking particular care with her diction (whatever that might be).

  ‘ “The British motor manufacturer”,’ Eliza read, ‘ “will lose a valuable market to foreign imports unless he produces small cars as good and cheap as those from abroad.” ’

  ‘This article has a bearing on the family business,’ said the governess crisply. ‘One should always be able to converse on the subject of the family business.’

  Or again, ‘ “It has been announced that George Pelham Huntley, Seventh Earl of Denecote, passed away yesterday at the age of ninety-seven.” ’

  ‘Lord Denecote was a relative of the family.’ The governess sounded most prim, as if Lord Denecote had been a relative of hers. Eliza was sure that she herself had never heard of such a person.

  Eliza at first did her best to be friendly and obliging in a way that Dorothea would have approved of. As The Times was considered unsuitable, might they not take the Daily Mirror instead? (The Daily Mirror was in any case preferable as it had pictures.) But the governess looked down her nose and said that the Daily Mirror was a publication for the semi-literate and would never be found in a respectable home. Besides, it was not seemly for a young lady to be seen reading a newspaper: it gave quite the wrong impression. Now, would Miss Elizabeth please sit still and finish her sampler? It ought to have been finished years ago if there’d been any sort of structure to her development.

  ‘I don’t want to make a sampler!’ cried Eliza, venting her frustrations at Daisy when the governess was safely out of the way. ‘I don’t want to be developed, I don’t want to be seemly, I just want to be me!’

  ‘It’s all for your own good, I’m sure, miss,’ said Daisy as she emptied the ashes and swept the grate, behindhand as always these days because they were still missing a maid downstairs and Daisy had to double up.

  ‘Everything is forbidden, Daisy, everything! And I have to practise curtsying over and over, and walk around with books on my head, and learn Barnet and Tewkesbury and boring Bosworth in the right order!’

  ‘What’s Barnet and Bosworth got to do with the price of butter?’

  ‘It’s the Wars of the Roses. Proper history, she calls it. She’s a—’

  ‘Now, now, miss. Don’t take on so. There’s worse things happen at sea. If it’s roses you’re learning about, you’d best ask Becket: he knows more about roses than anyone.’

  ‘It’s servitude, Daisy! Servitude and oppression! I want freedom and . . . and equality!’

  ‘Do you, indeed!’ Daisy cocked an eye at her. ‘If I was you, miss, I’d spend less time flouncing about the place and more time minding my tongue.’

  ‘I can’t, Daisy, I can’t! I do have opinions, you know! When you have opinions, you can’t always keep them to yourself even if the secret police try to stop you!’

  ‘I’ve never heard of no secret police in Hayton,’ said Daisy. But she didn’t realize what it was like. She didn’t have to undergo the indignity of being summoned downstairs to perform like a circus animal for Mrs Somersby or Lady Fitzwilliam or whoever else had happened to call. Eliza was made to recite poetry or play the piano or show off her other ‘accomplishments’ (as the governess called them). Eliza hated playing the piano. She was all fingers and thumbs. Nothing she attempted ever sounded quite right. ‘If you would only apply yourself, Miss Elizabeth,’ the governess scolded, ‘you might come to play the pianoforte tolerably well.’

  ‘Apply yourself . . . pianoforte. . .’ Eliza mimicked the tyrant and the tyrant’s habit of overemphasizing her words. The mimicry made Daisy giggle. But Eliza felt there was nothing to laugh about. She wondered how she could eve
r have found Clifton dull. The summer months after Dorothea’s wedding that had dragged at the time now seemed like an oasis of peace and freedom. As for the time before Easter – before Johann’s proposal, before Stepnall Street, before the kitten – it was a golden age that Eliza could scarcely believe in. She had never realized how lucky she was. And now it was all gone.

  The governess decided that Eliza did not mix enough: she needed to mix with young ladies her own age. A series of visits was arranged. Eliza was dragged miles and miles across country to different houses and forced to mix with dull, lumpy girls in various nurseries whilst their governesses and nannies sat around gossiping and eating copious amounts of cake. Eliza despised the lumpy girls and all their stupid talk about frocks and ponies and whose mama said what and when. None of the girls were the least interested in hearing why coal miners were heroes and how cruelty lurked in the heart of everyone.

  In the motor on the way home, the governess scolded Eliza for being aloof and told her she must make more of an effort. ‘And,’ she added sharply, pursing her lips, ‘we’ll have no more talk of miners, if you please!’

  A sigh worked its way up from deep inside but Eliza swallowed it back: sighing was forbidden too.

  The weeks dragged by. December came. Roderick arrived from Oxford, bringing Kolya and Miss Halsted. Eliza was permitted to go down to the drawing room to see them. She sat there with a feeling of dread, terrified lest the governess demand she display her accomplishments. Nothing would be more mortifying than to show herself up in front of the Russian and Miss Halsted.

  Miss Halsted had a cold. It served her right, Roderick said, for standing in the rain all day at that by-election. (What was a by-election? Eliza didn’t dare show her ignorance in such company by asking.)

  ‘The by-election was weeks ago,’ said Miss Halsted. ‘In any case, a few sniffles are a small price to pay in the cause of women’s suffrage.’

  ‘But all your efforts came to nothing,’ said Roderick. ‘Lansbury lost. People voted for the Tory standing on a ticket of Women Do Not Want The Vote.’

  ‘Not people, Mr Brannan, men: men voted for the Tory. It’s typical of men that they should decide what women want without bothering to ask women themselves. But whatever the outcome, the by-election advanced our cause by bringing it to the attention of the public.’

  ‘What about smashing windows and setting fire to pillar boxes?’ said Roderick. ‘Does that also advance your cause? Or is it just mindless destruction?’

  Kolya broke in. ‘Any method is justified that brings about downfall of this rotten system. But by-election was, I think, a mistake.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ cried Miss Halsted, rounding on him. ‘After all the hard work people put in, after all the public interest it aroused.’

  ‘You are being particularist,’ said Kolya. ‘Women’s suffrage is only part of problem. We must address whole problem. Only way is to change society. Miss Pankhurst – Miss Sylvia Pankhurst – she say this too; she understand.’

  The argument raged. Miss Halsted was attacked from both sides: by Kolya for putting women’s suffrage first, by Roderick for bothering with it at all. Finally Mama said, ‘For goodness’ sake, leave the poor girl alone! It’s bad enough that she feels unwell without you two tormenting her.’

  Eliza was rather surprised. Could it be that Mama felt sorry for Miss Halsted?

  Later, in bed, lying sleepless, Eliza came round to thinking there might be more to it. Mama that afternoon had not reigned over the drawing room in her usual sure-handed way. She had lost control of the conversation as the argument progressed. All attention had been on Miss Halsted instead of the Perfect Hostess. Perhaps Mama knew as little about by-elections and ‘the cause’ as Eliza. Perhaps she had been out of her depth.

  Eliza turned over and over, unable to get comfortable. She wondered if she would get an opportunity on this visit to talk to Kolya alone as she had in the summer. Kolya explained things. He made you see differently. The nameless horror that had haunted her after her return from London had somehow been tamed by his words. The nightmare about the kitten had stopped coming. She had been able to sleep peacefully again.

  She wanted to tell him about the governess, the tyrant. ‘We must fight tyrannies,’ he had said. But how? And if she spoke to him about it, how could she be sure she would not end up sounding like one of those lumpy girls bleating about their ponies being lame and their lack of new frocks? If only she knew enough about society and the rotten system to be able to talk with him the way Miss Halsted did! It was impossible, however, at Clifton, to learn anything of importance. The library had no books that could help and when she’d asked if she might be permitted to read Kropotkin the governess had said that she’d never heard of Kropotkin, that he sounded foreign, that foreign authors were markedly inferior to English writers such as Shakespeare and Dickens. However, it would be much better if Miss Elizabeth did not get into the habit of reading. Being bookish was a grave defect in a young lady. Young gentlemen did not care for girls who were bookish.

  Eliza ground her teeth in the dark of her room. Why should she care what young gentlemen thought? Why shouldn’t women read books if they wanted? Why, for that matter, shouldn’t they have the vote?

  But this thought was rather disturbing. Somehow she’d reached a point where she was in sympathy with some of Miss Halsted’s ideas. She was not at all sure that she wanted to be in sympathy with Miss Halsted.

  Eliza shut her eyes and tried to sleep, counting sheep in her head. But the sheep all ran off in different directions. They refused to come back and be counted no matter how much she shouted and stamped her feet.

  When the governess’s back was turned, Eliza ran off and went downstairs in the hope of finding Kolya. She found instead Roderick and Miss Halsted talking in the billiard room. She lingered outside the billiard room door, listening.

  ‘Why won’t you stay?’ Roderick was saying. ‘I want you to stay!’

  ‘I stayed last year,’ said Miss Halsted. ‘This year I must spend Christmas with my family.’

  ‘Your family!’ sneered Roderick. ‘Those aunts you despise.’

  ‘I don’t despise them. You are putting words in my mouth. Please leave me alone. I don’t feel well. Having you bully me is not helping at all.’

  ‘Leave you alone? Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you!’ There was a nastiness in Roderick’s voice which was rather unpleasant to hear and made Eliza think of all the times when she too had been bullied by her brother. She found herself almost feeling sorry for Miss Halsted. ‘I suppose you’re saving yourself for Antipov now,’ he added harshly.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You must know that Antipov is in love with you.’

  ‘I . . . ah . . . ahh . . . atchoo! I know nothing of the sort. Kolya and I are friends, nothing more.’

  ‘Perhaps we should tell him about last Thursday.’

  ‘That was a mistake.’

  ‘So I’m a mistake, now, am I?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. All I meant was – oh, I don’t know what I meant. I can’t think when my head is aching like this. I wish you’d go away – you, Kolya, everybody. Men are all the same, making demands, riding roughshod.’

  ‘If that’s how you feel—’

  ‘There’s no need to—’

  ‘—then I won’t bother you again!’

  ‘Roderick, please, wait—’

  But he didn’t wait. He came storming out of the billiard room taking Eliza completely by surprise. He paused, looked at her with blazing eyes.

  ‘You! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I – I—’

  He brushed past her, stalked out of the drawing room, slammed the door behind him.

  A moment later, Miss Halsted emerged from the billiard room, slow and hesitant as if unsure of herself – and who wouldn’t be after being shouted at by Roderick! She looked in her highly coloured clothes rather like a bright-plumed tropical bird: there was e
ven a feather in her hair. Dark-haired, olive-skinned, she presented a rather exotic appearance when compared with the staid surroundings of the drawing room. If she was surprised to see Eliza, she didn’t show it.

  ‘Your brother can be so overbearing.’ She sneezed. She seemed in that instant very fragile, laid low by her cold and by Roderick’s bullying. But then she managed a smile. ‘Are you looking forward to Christmas? I’m sure you will have a jolly time of it!’

  As if speaking to a little girl, thought Eliza resentfully. Any compassion she had felt for Miss Halsted drained away. She drew herself up. ‘I am not a child,’ she said coldly.

  Miss Halsted appeared taken aback. Her eyes met Eliza’s. Her expression slowly changed. ‘No,’ she said slowly as if feeling her way toward some new discovery. ‘No, you’re not. I see that now. I’m sorry. I should have known better.’

  She was talking now as if to an equal. But in what way were they equals, Eliza wondered: equal in enmity?

  Eliza turned away, confused, finding it impossible to hate Miss Halsted but finding it impossible to like her either. ‘I’m . . . I’m going upstairs,’ she said.

  She left Miss Halsted alone in the drawing room.

  Miss Halsted departed, heading for Tonbridge and her aunts. On Christmas Eve, the governess packed her case too and went off to spend Christmas with her brother and his family (they were welcome to her). That evening, Eliza ate dinner alone with only Polly for company. There were guests downstairs and she was not wanted. She found herself envying the lumpy girls who at least had each other. The nursery seemed very drab and silent. The fire was a mess of glowing coals. Clothes were drying on the fender.

  Eliza pushed her plate away. She had no appetite.

  Daisy came at length to take the tray away. She’d been working downstairs most of the day on Mrs Bourne’s orders.

  ‘Goodness, miss, you are an old misery this evening! You’ve a face like a wet blanket and you’ve not even touched your steamed pudding.’