Drop of the Dice

by Philippa Carr

  We were just about to rise and leave the men at the table when one of the servants came in, looking bewildered.

  Arabella said: ‘What is it, Jess?’

  Jess said: ‘Oh, my lady, there’s a person at the door. She’s foreign… don’t seem to be able to talk. She just stands there and gibbers saying… Miss Clarissa… and Miss Damaris… That’s all she seems to say that makes sense, please, my lady. The rest is all nonsense… like.’

  Damaris had risen. ‘We’d better see what it’s about. She mentioned me, you say?’

  ‘Yes, Mistress. She said Miss Damaris… plain as that. And Miss Clarissa too.’

  I followed Damaris into the hall. Arabella and Priscilla were close behind. The great oak door was open and on the threshold stood a figure in black.

  It was a woman and she was clutching a bag. She was talking rapidly in French. It came back to me as I listened and I ran to her.

  She looked at me disbelievingly. I had changed a great deal in five years, but I recognized her.

  ‘Jeanne!’ I cried.

  She was delighted. She held out her arms and I ran into them.

  Then Damaris was there. Jeanne released me and looked at her rather fearfully and began to explain rapidly and incoherently, but I could understand quite easily what she was telling us.

  We had always said that she would be welcome. We had asked her to come but she could not leave her mother and grandmother so she had not gone with us when we left. But we had said she might come, and she remembered. Grand’mère was dead; her mother had married and Jeanne was free. So she had come back to her little Clarissa whom she had saved when there was no one to look after her. And she wanted to be with her again… and Damaris had said…

  Damaris cried out in her very English French that Jeanne was very welcome.

  Arabella, who spoke French tolerably well because during the days before the Restoration she had lived in a château there, waiting for King Charles the Second to regain his throne, said that she had heard all about what Jeanne had done for me and she would be very welcome here.

  Damaris kept saying: ‘Of course. Of course.’

  And I, who was suddenly transported back to that damp cellar with the hostile Grand’mère and Maman, and only Jeanne to protect me from the harsh Paris streets and from life, cried out: ‘Do you understand what they are saying. Jeanne? You are to stay with us. You have come to us and your home is here now.’

  Jeanne wept and embraced me again, looking at me with wonder, as though I had done something very clever by growing up.

  We brought her to the table where she opened her eyes wide at the sight of so much food. Damaris explained who she was and Great-Grandfather Carleton rose rather ponderously, for as I have said he was getting older and stiff in the limbs, though he wouldn’t admit it, and he told her in very anglicized French that anyone who had served a member of his family well should never regret it, and although Jeanne could understand very little of what he was saying, she was well aware of the warmth of her welcome.

  Damaris said she was sure she was hungry. Hot soup was brought for her which she attacked ravenously, and then she was given a slice of beef. She told us how she had wanted to come to England but that it had been impossible during the war. But now there was this Treaty and the fighting had stopped she had at last found a boat to bring her across. It had cost her a great deal but she had saved when she did not have to keep her grandmother and her mother, so she had a little more money. She was ready when the peace was signed—and here she was.

  So that was how Jeanne came to England.

  SIR LANCELOT

  IT IS AMAZING HOW great events which seem so remote from us can play such a big part in deciding the course of our lives. But for the great revolution when Catholic James had been driven from the throne and replaced by Protestant William and Mary, I should never have been born. And then my adventures in France were all part of the same situation. But the peaceful years I had spent at Eversleigh had made me forget such impressive conflicts and it was only when Great-Grandfather Carleton talked so fiercely of Jacobites that I remembered there was a struggle still going on.

  Because of the peace, Jeanne was with us and something of even greater importance was to follow—and all because of the peace.

  Jeanne had settled happily into our household; she seemed to be in a perpetual state of delight. She said it was like being in the hôtel and serving Lord and Lady Hessenfield again. To be assured of enough to eat was, during those first weeks, like a miracle to Jeanne. She talked volubly and I found I could chat easily with her and my early grounding in her language enabled me to pick it up again with speed. Jeanne had a smattering of English learned from my mother and from me and as she learned quickly we had no difficulty in communicating.

  She told me how sad she had been when I had left, although she knew it was the best thing for me, and great good fortune that my Aunt Damaris had found me.

  ‘We suffered much in the winter when there was little to sell,’ she told me. ‘Then I must go out to wash floors… if I can get the work… and what did it bring? Nothing but a few sous. There were Maman and Grand’mère to keep. In the spring and summer I could manage with the flowers. I liked that. It gave me freedom. But to work for tradesmen… oh ma chérie… you have no idea. Those days in the hôtel working for milord and milady… ah, that was heaven… or near it. But this was different…’

  She told me that she must work… work… work all the time, and never a moment to be lost or they would take off sous for wasted time.

  ‘I worked for the druggist and grocer one winter. I liked the smells though the work was hard. But I did it… and sometimes when there were many customers… I served in the shop. I loved the smell of that shop. Parfum… in the air. I learned too… how to weigh out the cinnamon, the sugar, the ground pepper… arsenic too. That was sold to the fashionable ladies. It did something for their complexions… But they must take care, they were always told. An overdose of that… Mon Dieu, it could give you more than a good complexion. It could give you a coffin and six feet of earth to cover you.’

  Jeanne’s conversation—delivered half in French, half in English—was racy. It took me right back to my life in Paris—not only the days in the dark damp cellar but to the glorious time when Jeanne was in attendance, with my beautiful mother paying fleeting visits to my nursery and my wonderful Hessenfield coming even more rarely.

  Jeanne brought a new atmosphere into Enderby. She showed me what the new hairdressing was like. She herself had a beautiful head of hair and had once or twice earned a few sous by being practised on by a hairdresser. She would laugh hilariously at the recollection. She had emerged bowed down by the weight of two or three pounds of flour and a considerable helping of pomade, looking like a lady of high fashion on the top and a poor flower seller everywhere else. But it was one way of earning a few sous although she had a hard task getting the stuff out of her hair.

  But her greatest stroke of luck was with the druggist. She had done well there and was offered the opportunity to stay, which she did; and it was thus that she had been able to save enough money to make her journey to England.

  It was amusing to hear her talk of the ladies of Paris. She would prance about the room in imitation of their elegance. They drank vinegar to make them thin while they took arsenic in the right doses to give them a delicately tinted skin. The druggist’s wife had aspired to be a lady. She had her arsenic at hand for her skin and she drank a pint of vinegar every day; her coiffure was a sight for wonder and at night the astonishing erection was wrapped in what looked like bandages, which made the whole contraption twice its normal size. And she would go to bed supporting false hair, flour and pomade on a kind of wooden pillow in which a place had been cut out for her neck to fit into, and which for all the discomfort gave the lady immense satisfaction.

  Jeanne communicated her happiness to me and we would laugh and chat together for hours. Damaris was delighted to see us together. So J
eanne’s coming had been a very happy event.

  One day a servant from Eversleigh Court rode over to Enderby with a special message from Arabella. A visitor had called on them and he came from the Field family of Hessenfield Castle in the north of England. It appeared that the present Lord Hessenfield was eager to make the acquaintance of his niece.

  It was a moment of great excitement to me. Damaris, however, was a little apprehensive. I think she believed my father’s family would try to take me away from her.

  We rode over to Eversleigh at once. Arabella was waiting for us, looking rather concerned.

  ‘This man is a sort of cousin of the present lord,’ she whispered to us when we arrived. ‘I gather he has been sent to see us.’

  My heart was beating wildly with excitement as I went into the house. Arabella laid a hand on my arm. ‘He may make suggestions,’ she went on. ‘We shall have to discuss whatever it is all together. Don’t make any rash promises.’

  I scarcely heard her. I could only think that I was going to discover more about my father’s family.

  He was tall, like Hessenfield; his hair was light with a touch of red in it. He had the clear-cut features which I remembered my father had had; and he had very piercing blue eyes.

  ‘This is Clarissa,’ said Arabella, propelling me forward.

  He came to me swiftly and took both my hands.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see the resemblance. You’re a Field, my dear Clarissa… isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s my name. What is yours?’

  ‘Ralph Field,’ he answered. ‘My uncle, Lord Hessenfield, knows of your existence and he wants to meet you.’

  ‘He is… my father’s brother?’

  ‘Exactly. He says it is not right that there should be such a close relationship and that you should not have met.’

  ‘Oh.’ I turned to look at Damaris.

  Her face had puckered a little. I knew she was apprehensive because this man had come looking for me.

  ‘We feel that such a state of affairs should be rectified without delay,’ he went on. ‘You must want to meet your family.’

  I tried not to look at Damaris. ‘Oh yes… of course.’

  ‘I was hoping that I could take you back with me.’

  ‘You mean for a visit?’

  ‘I mean just that.’

  Damaris said quickly: ‘We should need time to get Clarissa ready for such a visit. And the North… it is a long way.’

  ‘The whole length of the country, one might say—your being in the extreme south and we in the north… right on the border.’

  ‘Is it rather lawless country up there?’

  He laughed. ‘No more than the rest, I trow. You can be assured that the Fields know how to take care of their own.’

  ‘I am sure they do. But for a child…’

  I felt a faint irritation. When were they going to stop referring to me as the child? It was at moments like this that I felt more intensely than ever the suffocation of this love they wrapped me in. It was like a great blanket—warm, soft and smothering.

  ‘Aunt Damaris,’ I said firmly, ‘I should see my father’s family.’

  I wished I hadn’t spoken, for she looked so hurt. I went to her and took her hand.

  ‘It would only be for a little while,’ I reminded her.

  Arabella said briskly: ‘I think this needs time and thought. Perhaps in a year or so…’

  ‘We are all impatience to meet our kinswoman. Her father was head of the family. It was a great shock to us when he died so suddenly… in his prime.’

  ‘It was such a long time ago,’ said Damaris.

  ‘That does not make it any less tragic for us, Madam. We want to know his daughter. Lord Hessenfield is very anxious that she should visit us for a time.’

  Damaris and Arabella exchanged glances. ‘We will think about it,’ said Arabella. ‘Now you will be tired after your journey. I will have a room prepared for you. You will not want to start the journey back today, I am sure.’

  ‘My dear lady, you are so good. I shall take advantage of your hospitality. Perhaps I can persuade Clarissa to come back with me; I am sure if she knew how much we are longing to see her she would agree right away.’

  ‘She is a little young to make such decisions,’ said Arabella.

  And again that insistence on my youth irritated me, and I think in that moment I determined to go to see my father’s family.

  Poor Damaris! She was most distressed. I was sure she thought that if I went to the north I should never come back.

  There were family conferences. Great-Grandfather Carleton was all against my going. ‘Damned Jacobites,’ he growled, growing red in the face. ‘There’s peace now, but they haven’t given up. They’re still drinking to the King over the Water. No, she shall not go.’

  But Great-Grandfather Carleton was not the power he had once been, and Arabella finally decided that there was no harm in my going. It would only be a visit.

  Priscilla was dubious and said I was too young to make such a journey.

  ‘She would not be on her own,’ persisted Arabella. ‘She would have a considerable bodyguard. Jeanne could go with her as her maid. It will keep her French up to standard. I always thought she shouldn’t lose that.’

  ‘And what of Damaris?’ demanded Priscilla. ‘She will be so wretched without her.’

  ‘My dear Priscilla,’ said Arabella, ‘she will miss the child, of course. We shall all miss her. We shall be delighted when she comes back. But Damaris cannot expect to keep her with her for ever… just for her own comfort. She’ll have to remember that Clarissa has her own life to lead.’

  Priscilla retorted hotly: ‘You are not suggesting that Damaris is selfish, are you, Mother? Damaris is the sweetest-natured…’

  ‘I know. I know. But she sets such store by Clarissa. I know what she did for Clarissa… and what Clarissa has done for her. But that does not mean she can stop the child seeing her father’s relations just because she is going to miss her sadly.’

  Priscilla was silent then. But the argument was continued later. Leigh thought I should go. They were, after all, my relations. ‘And it is only for a visit,’ he said.

  Jeremy was against my going. But that was mainly because it upset Damaris.

  This was when I really began to feel closed in by them all, and I decided that I had a right to choose my own future.

  I said to Damaris: ‘Aunt Damaris, I am going to see my father’s people. I must.’

  She looked sad for a moment; then she sat down and drew me to her. She looked at me very earnestly and said: ‘You shall go, my dear. You are right. You should go. It is just that I shall hate to be without you. I want to tell you something. I am going to have a child.’

  ‘Oh… Aunt Damaris!’

  ‘You will pray for me, won’t you? You’ll pray this time that I shall succeed.’

  All my animosity had left me. I threw my arms about her neck.

  ‘I won’t go, Aunt Damaris. No, I won’t go. I couldn’t. I should be so worried about you. I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll wait until you have the little baby… and then I’ll go and see my father’s brother.’

  ‘No dear, you must not think of me.’

  ‘How could I stop doing that! I couldn’t be happy if I were not here. I want to be here with you. I want to make some of the baby clothes. I want to make sure that you are all right.’

  That settled it. I should in time visit the North, but it would have to be later. It would be several months before I could set out.

  Grandmother Priscilla was very pleased with the decision. She kissed me tenderly. ‘It could not have been better,’ she said. ‘Damaris is so delighted that you want to stay with her. Pray God this time she will have a healthy child.’

  So Ralph Field went back with the promise that I should visit my relations in a few months’ time.

  We gave ourselves up to the preparations for the baby’s arrival. At first Damaris was too much afraid
of losing it to talk very much about it. But I soon put a stop to that. I had a feeling that to imagine the worst might in some mystic way bring it about, and I insisted on believing that this time the baby would live; and I watched over Damaris with a care and tenderness which was greater because of what I thought of as my recent disloyalty.

  Jeanne was very useful at this time. I was amazed at the change in her. When I had known her in France she had been obsessed, first by the need to please in the hôtel and later by an even greater need to exist when she was in the cellar. She had been careworn with these necessities and they had suppressed her naturally volatile nature.

  Once she realized she was safe in this comfortable household from which she would not be ejected unless she committed some terrible crime, her character reverted to what nature had intended it to be. Her rendering of our language was a continual source of amusement to us all and she was delighted to see our smiles and hear our laughter. Sometimes I think she deliberately sought to arouse our mirth. She made herself very useful. I was a little old for the services of a nursemaid, so she became my lady’s-maid. She dressed my hair, saw to my clothes and was with me constantly.

  ‘Clarissa is becoming elegant,’ commented Arabella.

  ‘We don’t want any of those fancy French fashions here,’ growled Great-Grandfather Carleton.

  But everyone was pleased that Jeanne had come. They all realized what a service she had done me and we were a family who did not like accepting favours, so when we had them bestowed on us, it was a point of honour that we repaid them a hundredfold.

  Jeanne, of course, was delighted at the prospect of a new baby. She loved little babies and she knew a great deal about them. She was full of advice and, as she was very handy with her needle, she provided some exquisite garments.

  It was not surprising that with such events looming in the family we should not pay a great deal of attention to what was happening in the world.