A Mother's Courage (8 page)

In the days that followed, life settled into a basic
if dull routine. Hilda and Joan remained in
ignorance of the fact that Eloise slept in the
nursery with her children. Nancy was delighted
to have a bedroom all to herself and Mabel had
been sworn to secrecy, so the flouting of Hilda's
wishes passed unnoticed. Eloise spent her days
mainly in the nursery with Joss and Beth, only
leaving them for her compulsory meals in the
dining room, or occasionally during their nap
times when she took the opportunity to venture
outside the house in order to get a breath of fresh
air.

Joan largely ignored her and if Hilda spoke it
was only to deliver some homily, or occasionally
to enquire as to 'our Ronald's' health. She still
refused to call him Joss, and she showed little
interest in Beth, who was merely a girl. Eloise
soon learned that she could not win with her
mother-in-law. If she said nothing, she was
accused of sulking. If she attempted to voice an
opinion she was branded a know-all, and if she
retaliated when goaded, she was told to hold her
tongue and given a lecture on ingratitude.

In the evenings, when Harcourt dined at home,
Eloise was grimly amused to note that Hilda and
Joan treated her quite differently. On these
occasions, Hilda masked her animosity towards
Eloise with such skill that an onlooker would
have been convinced that she was a concerned
and affectionate mother-in-law. Joan was not so
hypocritical, but she refrained from making the
barbed and bitter comments that were her customary
way of speaking to Eloise. Unfortunately
business called all too often and Harcourt rarely
returned home until long after the evening meal
was over, but Eloise was well aware that without
his benign influence life at Cribb's Hall would
have been intolerable.

As the days turned into weeks, Eloise came to
rely more and more on Mabel, who kept her up
to date with everything that went on below stairs
and amused her with scraps of gossip from the
village. As the weather began to improve, Eloise
had let slip to Mabel that she would love to take
the children out walking, but this was almost
impossible, as Joss could not walk very far and
Beth was too heavy to be carried for long
distances. One sunny morning in late March,
Mabel came to the nursery bubbling with
suppressed excitement, and she insisted that as it
was such a lovely day it would be criminal to
stay indoors. With the children well muffled
against the biting east wind, Eloise followed
Mabel down the servants' stairs and out into the
stable yard, where she discovered that Ted was
waiting for them grinning from ear to ear. With a
flourish that would have done credit to a stage
magician, he snatched a piece of sacking from a
sturdy wooden pushcart. 'There, ma'am. What
do you think to that?'

Mabel nudged Eloise in the ribs. 'It's for the
little 'uns,' she whispered. 'Our Ted made it all
by himself.'

'I daresay it isn't as grand as them perambulators
that the rich folk have for their babes,'
Ted said, puffing out his chest. 'But it'll save you
having to carry the little lass, and Master Joss can
have a ride when he gets tired of walking.'

For a moment, Eloise couldn't speak. She had
grown hardened to the verbal abuse from Hilda
and Joan, but this extraordinary act of kindness
made her want to cry.

'Don't you like it, ma'am?' Mabel asked
anxiously.

Eloise searched for a handkerchief and found
she had none. Her mother's words came back to
her, and in her mind's eye she could see the
tender smile on her mother's lips as she had
passed her a handkerchief, saying that she had
never known her to have one when needed. It
was these little flashes of memory that were so
poignant, but also acted as a painful reminder of
their enforced separation. Eloise swallowed hard
and dashed the tears from her eyes with the back
of her hand. 'It's beautiful, Ted. It's absolutely
splendid and you are so kind – I don't know
what to say.'

'Steady on, ma'am,' Ted said, blushing to the
roots of his hair. 'It's only a cart made out of old
crates.'

'And if I fetch a cushion and some blankets, it'll
be comfortable enough,' Mabel added hastily.

Lost for words, Eloise hugged Mabel, and to
Ted's obvious embarrassment she took him by
the hand and kissed him on the cheek. 'You are
the kindest boy I have ever known,' she murmured,
smiling through her tears. 'If Mabel will
be good enough to get something to sit Beth on,
we'll go for a lovely long walk.'

Mabel scurried off into the house and Ted
backed away with a sheepish grin. 'Glad to be of
service, ma'am. It were only a few bits of wood,
after all, and I like working with me hands.' A
shout from Riley in the stables made Ted hurry
back to work and Mabel came scurrying from the
house with a crocheted blanket and an old
cushion covered in cat hairs. Eloise made Beth
comfortable and they set off for their first proper
outing since they arrived in Yorkshire. After that
she took the children out as often as the variable
weather conditions allowed, and with fresh air
and exercise she found that her spirits began to
revive.

In the evenings, after the nightly ordeal of a
meal with Hilda and Joan in the dining room,
Eloise would put the children to bed and sit by
the fire in the nursery, writing letters to her
mother or reading old copies of
The Young Ladies'
Journal,
which she knew that Hilda and Joan
studied avidly, although neither of them seemed
to have profited from their reading. It was on one
of these evenings, when the wind was soughing
round the house and rain was lashing at the
windows, that Eloise was startled by the sudden
opening of the door as Ada erupted into the
room, gasping for breath as if she had run all the
way from the far corner of the house. She closed
the door and stood mutely, shivering in her thin
nightgown and clutching a book to her bosom.

Eloise put aside her writing case and smiled,
holding out her hand. 'Come and sit down by the
fire, Ada. You look perished.'

Ada came slowly towards her, holding out a
dog-eared copy of a book of fairy tales. 'My
book,' she murmured as she knelt down by
Eloise's side. 'Pretty pictures.'

Eloise studied the crumpled illustrations and
she nodded her head. 'Very pretty, Ada. Do you
like fairy tales?'

'Dunno,' Ada said, staring at her blankly. 'I
can't read. My mama used to read to me until she
fell asleep and didn't wake up again.'

Eloise reached out tentatively to brush a lock of
mouse-brown hair back from Ada's forehead,
and her heart swelled with pity for her. 'Would
you like me to read to you, dear?'

Ada nodded eagerly and settled down at
Eloise's feet to listen to the story of Cinderella
with rapt attention. She sobbed brokenheartedly
when the Ugly Sisters were cruel to
Cinders and she clapped in childlike glee when
the glass slipper fitted Cinderella and she
married her prince.

After this, Ada brought her books to the
nursery every evening and she would sit,
warming her bare feet by the fire, listening to
Eloise as she read her tales about beautiful
princesses and handsome princes. She showed
such enthusiasm that Eloise began teaching her
to read, and to her surprise, Ada was an apt
pupil. Although Eloise could elicit very little
more about Ada's childhood, apart from the fact
that she had been born and raised in Bridlington,
any mention of Joan and their relationship upset
her so much that Eloise thought it best to let the
matter lie.

Every evening, after Ada had gone back to her
room, Eloise would spend an hour or so writing
to her mother. The only address she had was of
the mission headquarters in Mombasa, but she
hoped that they would forward the letters to
wherever it was in the depths of Africa that her
parents had been sent. It was too much to hope
that she would receive news from Mama in the
near future, as mail took many weeks to arrive,
but it gave her comfort to put pen to paper. She
wrote mainly of the little milestones that Joss and
Beth had passed. Beth had cut another tooth and
Joss had drawn a picture on his slate; it might
look like a squiggly line to anyone other than a
doting mother, but Eloise could see quite clearly
that it was meant to be a puppy just like the one
that Mabel had smuggled into the nursery. Joss
had fallen totally in love with it and had cried
bitterly when the puppy had to be returned to its
mother in the kennels where Mr Cribb kept his
hunting dogs, but Mabel had promised faithfully
to bring it to the nursery whenever possible.

One day, Eloise thought, as she folded the
letter and tucked it into an envelope, we will
have a home of our own again. Joss and Beth will
have a puppy and a kitten too if they want one.
She sighed. It was just a dream, but holding on to
it was the only thing that kept her from despair.
She addressed the envelope and placed it in a
drawer out of sight of Nancy's prying eyes.
Eloise suspected that Nancy reported everything
that was going on to the servants below stairs,
but by the same token Eloise knew that she could
trust Mabel. Tomorrow she would give the letter
into Mabel's hand and she in turn would give it
to Ted, who would take it to the post office. He
always travelled on the box with Riley when he
drove Mrs Cribb on her frequent shopping
expeditions to Scarborough, and since Riley was
not as agile as he had been, Ted would run
errands for Hilda, carrying her purchases or
holding the horses' heads while Riley popped
into the pub for a beer and Hilda met friends for
afternoon tea. Sometimes Joan went on these
outings, but Eloise was never invited.

April came, bringing with it skies of a peerless
blue as winter gave way to spring, but the
weather was capricious and sudden showers
could come from nowhere, along with blustering
winds that swept across the wolds, bending trees
and cutting through outer garments to chill the
unwary walker to the marrow. On fine days,
Eloise still took the children out into the grounds,
but Harcourt was no gardener and he had put all
his money into the building of the house.
Although trees had been planted in order to form
a windbreak, they were still little more than
saplings and the rest of the land had been put
down to lawn. Sheep grazed on the grass,
keeping it short, but this was not the sort of
garden that Eloise remembered from her
childhood in the gently rolling countryside of
Dorset.

As the weather improved, Eloise put the
children in Ted's cart and ventured outside the
walled perimeter of Cribb's Hall to the open
countryside where swathes of yellow daffodils
grew wild on the hillsides, and the hedgerows
were softened by a haze of green buds. Eloise
had discovered a pleasant walk by the river,
which was overhung with catkins dangling from
willow trees and its banks were studded with
primroses. On one of these outings in late April,
when the sun shone brightly and there was no
hint of rain, Eloise made the bold decision to take
Ada with them on their walk. Hilda and Joan had
gone off in the carriage to Scarborough for
luncheon with friends and a shopping expedition.
It would be teatime at least before they
returned.

With Mabel's assistance, Eloise managed to get
Ada dressed in outdoor clothes borrowed from
one of the taller housemaids, who just happened
to be one of Mabel's many cousins, and could be
trusted not to tell. Mid-afternoon was always a
sleepy time in Cribb's Hall, when the maids had
a couple of hours' rest before starting up again
later with preparations for dinner, lighting fires
and turning down beds. It had been relatively
easy to smuggle Ada out of the house unnoticed,
and Eloise felt a degree of elation and a sense of
triumph in her achievement. She could not
openly defy her mother-in-law or Joan, but at
least she could do something to alleviate the
tedium of Ada's dreary existence. As they came
to the riverbank, Eloise was rewarded by Ada's
sudden outpouring of joy as she began to gambol
about as crazily as any of the spring lambs that
could be seen in the distant fields. Her ungainly
limbs seemed quite out of control as she waved
her arms above her head, raising her pale face to
soak up the warmth of the sun. Eloise was afraid
that Ada might tumble into the fast-flowing
river, but she could not help laughing as she
watched her antics. Joss ran about too and Beth
sat up in the cart chuckling and clapping her
hands. It was such a happy scene that Eloise felt
her spirits rise. The harsh reality of the winter
seemed far behind them at this moment, and she
experienced a surge of optimism which was not
entirely due to the freedom of being outside
Cribb's Hall, or the beautiful spring weather. She
pulled the cart over to a tree stump and she sat
down to reread the letter from her mother, which
had arrived only that morning.

It had been posted in Gibraltar not long after
the start of her parents' long journey. It was a
determinedly brave missive, filled with love and
hope that their enforced separation would be
short, but there were water marks where Eloise
could only guess that Mama had shed a few
tears, as she had herself when she had first read
the letter. She read it and reread it, closing her
eyes and trying to picture the cabin, which
Mama said was dreadfully cramped, and the
bunks which were hard and too narrow, but
apparently her father was in his element. He held
services on board every Sunday and was
convinced that he was following his true calling.
He could not wait to arrive in Africa and begin
his work as a missionary. Eloise folded the letter,
raised it to her lips and kissed it before tucking it
away beneath her stays, close to her heart.

Joss chose this moment to take a tumble and
began to howl, but before Eloise could get to him,
Ada had picked him up and was cradling him in
her arms. 'Poor boy,' she crooned. 'All better,
Joss. Kiss it better.' She angled her head and
kissed his sore knee.