Amberwell (Ayrton Family Book 1)

by D. E. Stevenson

  Anne sighed, she was being drawn back into the atmosphere of deception and fear. “You do understand definitely that I’m not coming to live at home?” she said firmly.

  “Yes, but you will try to — to be nice to her, won’t you? It will be so dreadfully difficult for everybody if she — if you can’t —”

  “I’ll try,” said Anne. She had said this before and she continued to say it quite patiently for she was very sorry for Nell and understood exactly what Nell was feeling. It was not so very long ago since she herself had been in thrall, terrified to open her mouth, practising all sorts of silly little deceptions to keep things running smoothly … but now she had tasted freedom and found it sweet.

  3

  The two children had run on. Stephen was a little shy at first (he was not used to other children, in fact he knew no children except his Glasgow cousins whom he did not like at all) but Emmie was not shy and it was she who did most of the talking.

  “It’s frightfully exciting seeing Amberwell,” she said. “Of course I know all about it. We made a book about it — Mummy and I — a real book that you can buy in a shop.”

  “About Amberwell?”

  “Yes, and about the children: Roger and Tom and Connie and Nell and Anne.”

  “Roger is my Daddy.”

  “Yes, I know — and Anne is my Mummy so we’re cousins. My Mummy is wonderful,” added Emmie proudly.

  “So is my Daddy,” declared Stephen, not to be outdone. “My Daddy won the M.C. in the war. He’s terribly brave. When I was a baby he saved my life. We were in London, you see, and there was a bomb, and the house was blown to bits and Daddy crept into the ruins and found me. What d’you think of that?”

  Emmie thought it was marvellous and said so without reserve; even Stephen was completely satisfied with her reaction.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Emmie, stopping suddenly and looking round. “Oh, this is the bowling-green! I didn’t know it would be so big. It’s simply huge, isn’t it? And there’s the stage where the children used to have tea — and the steps and everything.”

  “Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it?” agreed Stephen. “I can show you lots of other things too. I’ll show you everything — I’ll even show you Ponticum.”

  Emmie was aware that this was friendship indeed, and she was suitably grateful.

  “Perhaps you’d like to see the lily-pool first,” suggested Stephen.

  “Oh yes — and the mermaid!” cried Emmie. “The dear little mermaid sitting on the rock. Will you turn on the fountain for me?”

  Stephen was not allowed to turn on the fountain. Nobody was allowed to turn it on except occasionally Mr. Gray. “Well, I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “The fountain is rather special.” He hesitated for a moment — he was very anxious to please his new cousin — “But we’ll see,” he added. “P’raps if there’s nobody about I might turn it on — just for a minute.”

  He led Emmie through the walled garden, pointing out the potting-shed and the greenhouses and other objects of interest, and then they came to the sheltered garden, surrounded by trees, where the lily-pool lay asleep in the sunshine in the middle of its emerald-green lawn. It was even more beautiful than Emmie had expected. She stood quite still and clasped her hands in delight.

  “We can’t turn it on,” said Stephen.

  “Oh, Stephen, why not?”

  “Because that’s Grannie, sitting on the seat.”

  He spoke in hushed tones for, like everybody else in Amberwell, he was frightened of his grandmother (Stephen was aware that you had to be very quiet when Grannie was present … and as a matter of fact it never occurred to you to be anything else. She did not talk to you of course but sometimes she pointed at you with her stick and said, “That child ought to have his hair cut” or, even worse, “That child’s hands are dirty.” Certainly Grannie was not a person to be trifled with.) This being so, Stephen was more than a little alarmed when his newly-found cousin suddenly came to life and darted off like a rocket and did not stop until she was standing in front of the seat where the old lady was sitting.

  Emmie had known several old ladies at Harestone. There was old Mrs. Wight, who lived in the cottage next door. Mrs. Wight was a little queer in the head, but very kind and full of interesting stories about the time when she was young and had been scullery-maid in “The big ’ouse.” Emmie was not frightened of old ladies, in fact she liked them.

  “Hallo!” said Emmie cheerfully.

  The old lady had been asleep but now she opened her eyes and looked at Emmie in surprise. “Anne!” she exclaimed.

  Emmie was too intent upon her project to notice. “Please,” she said breathlessly. “Please could we turn on the fountain?”

  “You are Anne, aren’t you?” asked Mrs. Ayrton in a dazed sort of voice.

  “I’m Emmie.”

  “Emmie? None of them were called Emmie. I thought you were Anne — but Anne went away years ago —”

  “Anne is my Mummy,” said Emmie smiling. “Lots of people think I’m just like her when she was a little girl — and of course you were asleep, weren’t you? I often get muddled when I wake up suddenly.”

  “Do you?” asked Mrs. Ayrton vaguely. “I thought it was just being old.”

  “Oh no, everybody’s like that. You’re not very old, are you? You’re not nearly as old as Mrs. Wight. Her face is wrinkled and she walks with two sticks.”

  Mrs. Ayrton was not really listening. The mists of sleep were beginning to recede from her brain. “Are you really Anne’s daughter?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Yes,” said Emmie nodding. “Yes, and you’re her Mummy, aren’t you? So Mummy belongs to us both.”

  The wide eyes, innocent and trusting and friendly, looked straight at Mrs. Ayrton; and Mrs. Ayrton, who had now remembered everything, was at a loss how to reply.

  “Your mother —” she began sternly and then stopped.

  “My mother is your little girl,” said Emmie (who had often had to explain things very clearly to Mrs. Wight). “Of course she isn’t a little girl now — she’s grown-up — but she was your little girl long ago.”

  Mrs. Ayrton was silent. Emmie puzzled her for she was not used to this sort of child. Stephen was completely dumb in her presence and she had formed the opinion that he was stupid; Connie’s children were noisy and ill-behaved.

  “She was your little girl, wasn’t she?” asked Emmie with a shade of anxiety.

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. Ayrton. What else could she say?

  Emmie smiled in relief. “You aren’t a bit like Mrs. Wight,” she declared.

  “Mrs. Wight?” asked Mrs. Ayrton vaguely. It seemed to her that she had heard the name before — but where? Names were very muddling.

  “Oh, you don’t know her,” explained Emmie. “She lived next door to us at Harestone. She was much older than you and not nearly so pretty.”

  Mrs. Ayrton had always liked compliments and she had not had any for years. Nobody bothered to pay her compliments nowadays. “Pretty?” she said with a little smile.

  “I think you’re pretty,” said Emmie frankly. “Very few people are pretty when they get old — Mrs. Wight was rather ugly — but you’ve got pink cheeks and silver hair, haven’t you?”

  “I suppose I have,” agreed Mrs. Ayrton laughing.

  The conversation had been so interesting that Emmie had forgotten about the fountain, but now she remembered it and drawing a little nearer laid her small brown hand upon Mrs. Ayrton’s knee. “Please,” she said wheedlingly. “Please may I see the fountain.”

  Mrs. Ayrton hesitated. It upset her to see the fountain playing, for William had always turned it on. It was William’s prerogative to turn it on and off and somehow Mrs. Ayrton could not bear to see other people “fiddling with it.”

  “Please,” repeated Emmie. “I do want to see it so terribly much. She’s such a darling little mermaid, isn’t she?”

  They both looked at the mermaid.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Ayrton
, whose mind had wandered back down the years. “Yes, she’s rather sweet. I made a little sketch for them to copy — in fact I made several sketches.”

  “You drew her out of your head?”

  “It wasn’t difficult. I knew just how I wanted her to look; sitting with her tail coiled round the rock, and a shell in her hand.”

  “Does the water come out of the shell?”

  Mrs. Ayrton nodded.

  “I would like to see it!”

  “But I don’t know how to turn it on,” said Mrs. Ayrton.

  Emmie recognised the signs of weakening. “Stephen knows,” she said eagerly. “Stephen could do it.”

  During this extraordinary conversation Stephen had been standing some distance away. His instinct had been to fly and leave Emmie to her fate but somehow he felt it would be cowardly; so he had remained where he was, neither approaching nor retreating. His grandmother had not noticed him before, but now she looked up and saw him and beckoned to him.

  “Turn on the fountain, Stephen,” said Mrs. Ayrton. She rose as she spoke and walked over to the edge of the grass where the drops would not fall; Emmie followed her and they stood together waiting.

  Stephen hesitated. It was difficult to believe that Grannie really wanted him to turn on the fountain, but obviously she did or she would not have moved from the seat. He came forward and began to roll up his sleeves.

  4

  It was at this moment that Nell and Anne came round the corner of the house and stood at the top of the steps which led down to the lily-pool. They paused there in astonishment (the little group below them was quite unconscious of their presence). They saw their mother and Emmie standing together at the edge of the grass and Stephen kneeling beside the pool, searching for the handle.

  “Can’t you do it, Stephen?” asked Mrs. Ayrton impatiently. “If you can’t do it yourself you must run and find Mr. Gray. Your cousin wants to see it playing.”

  “I’ve found the handle,” replied Stephen. “It’s rather stiff — that’s all — but I think I can do it with both hands —”

  Suddenly the water began to flow. At first it was no more than a trickle which spilled out of the shell and ran down the mermaid’s arm; and then the water leapt up bravely, a column of silver glistening in the sunshine; the drops pattered into the pool and the mermaid was veiled in the shower. To-day there was a fitful breeze, so that at one moment the fountain was as round and smooth as an upturned wine-glass and the next moment the drops were wafted across the garden like a gauzy scarf of rainbows. As always there was enchantment in the sight and the audience of five watched it for some time without speaking.

  Mrs. Ayrton tired of it first and signalled to Stephen to turn it off which he did without any trouble.

  “Oh, thank you —” said Emmie with a sigh. “It was just beautiful —”

  Anne had been waiting for this moment. She ran down the steps and across the grass. “Mother,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve come to say I’m sorry — I was terribly silly — I think I must have been mad —” She hesitated, for she was not sure whether her mother knew her or knew what she meant.

  “I think we’ll have tea,” said Mrs. Ayrton. “It’s been — rather a tiring afternoon and — and I feel a little — upset.”

  “Mother, this is Anne,” said Nell who had followed Anne more slowly.

  “We’ll have tea,” repeated Mrs. Ayrton. “It would be nice to have it on the terrace — the children would like that — but we shall need the larger table. You had better see to it, Nell.” She turned to Anne and added, “Mrs. Duff always makes the tea too strong.”

  “Mother, listen —” began Nell in anxious tones, but a look from Anne stopped her.

  “Run along, Nell,” said Mrs. Ayrton.

  Nell obeyed. She collected the children and went in to give the necessary instructions and to make the tea herself. It was a strange way to welcome the prodigal but Nell had never understood her mother.

  Anne understood. She realised that her mother had become a very old woman (it was pathetic to see her so small and frail); she realised that her mother did not want to rake up the past and have a reconciliation scene — she was too tired. All she wanted was a cup of tea made as she liked it, hot but not too strong, with a little sugar in it.

  “I expect you notice a sad change in the gardens,” said Mrs. Ayrton, taking Anne’s arm to help her up the steps. “Gray is doing his best to get everything put right but it will take a long time.”

  “I’d like to see Gray,” said Anne.

  “You can see him to-morrow. I wonder where Nell is putting you. Perhaps the blue room would be best.”

  It was now or never, thought Anne. “It’s very kind of you, but we’re not going to stay here,” she said. “You see my husband died and I haven’t any money so I have to work. I was working in a nursery-garden for a time, after Martin died, but that came to an end.”

  “Oh well,” said Mrs. Ayrton doubtfully. “I suppose perhaps … quite a lot of girls are taking jobs now. Mary Findlater was in the Wrens. It seems funny, but —”

  “I’m going to Mr. Orme as his housekeeper.”

  Mrs. Ayrton stopped and gazed at Anne incredulously. “To Mr. Orme — as his housekeeper!”

  “He needs a housekeeper and I need a job,” said Anne with the utmost simplicity.

  “Oh dear!” said Mrs. Ayrton in a trembling voice.

  “Oh dear, I don’t understand things very well — the world seems to have got so topsy-turvy — sometimes I feel it was a good thing that your father died. He wouldn’t have liked the world nowadays.”

  “There’s Nell waving to tell us tea is ready,” said Anne gently. “It will be nice to have tea, won’t it?”

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