Eden Falls (20 page)

‘Oh, my little bear,’ Eliza said. He held her face between his two sticky palms and kissed her on the nose in a final, authoritative way that he clearly intended to signal his release. ‘Who’ll I cuddle when you’re not with me?’ she said.

‘Timothy,’ Angus said in a helpful voice, but pushing at her now with stiff arms so that even she couldn’t ignore his desire to be set down. ‘I shan’t be taking Timothy.’

Eliza placed him down on the couch and he clambered off awkwardly, then looked up at her with a magnanimous smile.

‘Timothy?’ she said. ‘Not likely. He bites.’ He had mean pink eyes, too, and a pair of back legs that could punch the wind out of you if you held him wrongly.

‘Oh well,’ Angus said, waving his little hand in a funny, dismissive gesture, as if he thought Eliza impossible to please. He climbed into one of the trunks and sat down. ‘Close it,’ he said in the peremptory way of a small child.

‘Please,’ Eliza said.

‘Close it, please.’

‘Well, just for a mo’, then. We don’t want you suffocating.’

She lowered the lid and he ducked his head, shunting his body lower. He liked this game, although it was bizarre to Eliza, who couldn’t bear to be confined.

‘Knock and shout if you want to come out,’ she said, feeling anxious at the very thought of it in there, dark and airless. He began to sing, a sea shanty that his pa had taught him, so that he could join in with the sailors when they swabbed the decks. Daniel came into the parlour now and looked at the trunk, from where his son’s muffled voice was telling a lilting tale of gentle nor’westers blowing the sloop o’er the seas.

‘In the box again, is he?’ Daniel said. ‘Och well, good practice for the cabin.’

Eliza shuddered. ‘Don’t. That’s not funny.’

He smiled. ‘Sorry. You do know they’re going first class, right? Captain’s table, quoits on deck, all that malarkey?’

She nodded. ‘I wish we all were going,’ she said, and then, because she thought that sounded petulant, added, ‘But we’ll be just fine, won’t we?’

Daniel ruffled her hair and pulled her to him for a reassuring hug. Eliza warmed and melted his heart: she always had, from the day he met her. She was effortlessly good and kind, and full of a blessed, innate happiness that she shared indiscriminately. She had her mother’s lovely face too, and it was tilted up at him now.

‘They’ll be back in no time, won’t they?’ she said, though they both knew this was nonsense. Eve and Angus would be gone for at least three months, and without them the house and their lives would be entirely out of kilter.

‘Aye, sweetheart, they will,’ Daniel said, and for a moment they stood together thinking about tomorrow’s goodbyes. Then, inside the trunk, the shanty ended and Angus, with a mighty heave, flung open the lid and shouted, ‘Land ahoy, cap’n!’

They all laughed, although Eliza could just as easily have cried.

Later, after they’d eaten and the dishes were cleared, after they’d drifted to their different corners of the house and garden and Eve, finally, had begun to fill the trunks with clothes for Angus and herself – worrying, all the while, that nothing they owned was suitable for the tropics – there was a rap at the door. Eve had been thinking about Anna – wishing she were here, being brisk and practical – so when she heard the clatter of the brass knocker the impossible thought that it might be her friend flashed through Eve’s mind, then was immediately dismissed, not because Anna was in London – although she was – but because Anna would never knock first. For a moment Eve hesitated, waiting, listening for the sound of someone else going to the door. Then, when no one did, she left the room, huffing a little with irritation, and crossed the hall, still holding, in the crook of one arm, a little heap of Angus’s woolly combinations, which she knew she probably shouldn’t pack but couldn’t quite give up, because a place where it didn’t get cold at night was simply unimaginable. So, thus encumbered, she opened the door to find a young woman, certainly familiar to her but not quite known. She wore a striking skirt of red velvet, a black bombazine jacket and a little black boater trimmed with red ribbon. Her hair, also black, was smoothed over her ears and pinned into a twist at the nape of her neck. She had bright eyes, like a squirrel’s, and she smiled in a swift, pragmatic way before speaking.

‘Good evening, Mrs MacLeod,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry to arrive like this, out of the blue, as it were.’ The accent was barely discernible, but still there was something distinct and unusual about her perfect diction. She held out a pale, slim hand and Eve took it, noting its cool softness, but she still couldn’t place the visitor, and it showed in her expression of mild bewilderment.

‘Evangeline Durand,’ said the woman. ‘Eliza’s—’

‘Dance teacher, of course, of course.’ Eve was all confusion, feeling somehow caught out though in fact they had met only twice before, and then only at the dance school. There followed an awkward silence, broken by Evangeline, who said, ‘May I come in?’ and Eve answered, ‘Oh, yes!’ as if she’d entirely forgotten the simple protocol of admitting a visitor to one’s home. She held the door a little wider and the dance teacher stepped inside, delicately, precisely. Her patent-leather boots made pleasing clicks on the tiled floor. She looked about her appreciatively.

‘What a beautiful house,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

‘No, it’s beautiful. The light is magnificent, and this colour…’ She reached out a hand and grazed it on the wall, then looked at Eve. ‘Like a field of wheat.’

‘Mademoiselle!’

This was Eliza, who had clattered out of her bedroom and along the landing, but whose descent of the stairs was abruptly halted by the extraordinary sight of her dance teacher standing in the hall, her dainty feet in third position, which was where they always seemed naturally to settle. Evangeline looked up at the girl and said, ‘Eliza, you must forgive me, but I thought it best to speak with your mother.’

‘Why? What’s ’appened,’ said Eve, alarmed now.

On the stairs Eliza opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Evangeline said to Eve, ‘I wanted to impress upon you the value to your daughter of my proposed trip to Paris, and to urge you to reconsider your decision.’ Her voice was a little stern and teacherly. Eve turned to Eliza, still frozen on the stairs, and raised her eyebrows.

‘Down you come, young lady,’ she said. ‘I think we need to have a talk.’

France, the Ballet de l’Opéra, the glories of Paris: it was all news to Eve and Daniel. Eliza had simply never mentioned it, though she’d gone back to Mademoiselle Evangeline and said she wasn’t allowed to accept her offer because her mam and stepdad thought her too young. There was a brief, kindly inquisition at the kitchen table and Eliza grew tearful, though no one was angry with her. On the contrary, it was evident that she’d acted from the sweetest motives, believing her presence at Ravenscliffe essential during Eve’s absence.

‘You said you’d be relying on me,’ Eliza said to Daniel, her cheeks wet and her eyes sorrowful. ‘I just thought I shouldn’t even ask.’ She didn’t add that on the evening she’d come home bursting with the news, riding high on a sense of her own thrilling future, Eve and Daniel had been at loggerheads, and there had been no speaking to either of them, really; not about something like this.

‘Whisht, child, dry your eyes,’ Daniel said, and he passed her his handkerchief. Eve asked Evangeline when she’d planned to travel and for how long, and it dawned on Eliza that a trip to Paris was, after all, a simple and perfectly possible thing, not the shattered dream she had believed it to be.

‘Two weeks,’ said the dance teacher, holding up two fingers as if to clarify. ‘And we would leave, perhaps, June the nineteenth? Or a little later, if it suits you better. We would visit the Ballet de l’Opéra, but also the Ballets Russes, which has arrived in Paris and will be simply…’ – she hesitated, summoning a suitable English word, then turned instead to her native language – ‘…
stupéfiant, incroyable
.’ She was looking, now, at Eliza, who in turn looked at Eve. Eve cleared her throat. Everything seemed to be moving a little quickly, and the woman was now speaking in French. She liked her: liked her brisk manner, her lively face, her obvious affection for Eliza. But still.

‘Thank you, you’re very kind,’ she said. ‘But there are lots of things to consider. Can we let you know?’

A small spasm of alarm crossed Eliza’s face, but Daniel, spotting it, winked at her and she took heart once more. Evangeline nodded, stood and clapped her hands smartly, twice, just as she did in class when she required silence.

‘
Bon
,’ she said. ‘
Alors, c’est très bien.
I am so pleased that I came and got to the bottom of the mystery.’ Her voice dropped to a lower register and she widened her eyes at Eliza, who blushed and looked down into her lap, then up again, before saying, ‘I’m sorry I lied to you, Mademoiselle.’ Evangeline placed a cool hand on the girl’s cheek.

‘It was not a lie, merely a different version of the truth,’ she said. ‘And it shows us what a good girl you are, and so thoughtful.’ Eve and Daniel, both slightly mesmerised by the Frenchwoman, watched as she stooped to bestow two darting kisses, one on each of Eliza’s cheeks. ‘
A bientôt, petit papillon
,’ she said. When she straightened up again, she said to Eve, ‘How proud you must be.’

‘I am, yes. We are.’

‘One day you will be prouder still,’ said Evangeline. Then she turned on her heel, and before anyone had the wit to stand and show her out, she was gone.

‘Papeeyon?’ Eve said.

‘French for butterfly,’ said Eliza. ‘It’s what she calls me.’

‘I see,’ Eve said. ‘You’ve a fan there, then.’

Eliza dipped her lashes modestly, then peeped up again at her mother and at Daniel. ‘Can I go?’ she asked. ‘Will you manage?’

‘What do you think?’ Eve said to Daniel. ‘We hardly know ’er.’

‘But I know ’er,’ Eliza said. ‘That’s t’main thing.’

‘And you want to go, do you?’

‘With all my ’eart and soul,’ Eliza said, so passionately that Eve laughed.

‘Well,’ Eve said to Daniel. ‘As I shall be away, it should be your decision, really.’

He considered Eliza with pursed lips and narrow eyes, as if weighing up the pros and the cons, and then, ‘Ah, get on with you, wee butterfly,’ he said. ‘Away and spread your wings.’

Eliza squealed and hugged herself and Eve said, ‘Three down, two to go, then. Somebody best talk to Ellen, let ’er know she’s in charge.’

‘Och,’ said Daniel. ‘I reckon she knows that already.’

W
hen the Sykes entourage left London for Ardington, Norah Kelly went with them. In Yorkshire they didn’t keep an equivalent of Norah – not that there was one; they broke the mould, said Amos – for although they had the income for more domestic staff, they didn’t have the inclination. That is to say, Amos didn’t. Anna would happily have hired an army of maids to facilitate the smooth running of their two homes, but his unease with questions of deference and – perish the thought – exploitation meant that Norah was where the comfort and convenience of domestic help began and ended. One capable girl was ample for all their needs, Amos maintained. One capable girl might well have been ample, Anna said, but they had Norah.

They all travelled by train from King’s Cross and the maid shared their carriage, because – irritating though she was, with her near-constant observational prattle – neither Amos nor Anna could countenance sending her down the train to third class, while they journeyed in greater comfort with Maya and Miss Cargill. However, being Norah, she displayed neither grace nor gratitude; she pushed herself forwards in the group, eager to settle herself into a window seat that faced the direction of travel, while Anna, Amos and Miss Cargill arranged their sundry cases and a wicker picnic hamper on the overhead luggage rack and organised their coats into a tidy pile. By the time they too were able to sit down, Norah had already begun her observations on the comings and goings on the platform.

‘Sure that fellow looks fit to pop, all red and out of puff like that. If he did but think to set off five minutes sooner, he’d be doing himself a favour. My word, look at the size of that lady. You’d think someone fat as a barrel would dress modest, but no, she thinks well of herself, so she does, all dolled up to the nines just to catch a train. She’ll be needing an extra seat with a rear that wide…’

On she went, and as the train moved out through the suburbs and into the dreary farmland of Hertfordshire, she found the view no less remarkable and was able to comment on the condition of the crops, the likely weather pattern indicated by the clouds, the cosy appeal of the clustered rooftops and Norman church towers of rural villages, and, more than once, the comical expressions on the faces of the Friesian cows. Miss Cargill was absorbed in Herodotus, Maya had a book of conundrums and Amos had taken the precaution of bringing enough newspapers to last the journey. Currently, he was hidden by
The
Times
, but the
Daily Chronicle
and the
Labour Leader
were waiting in the wings to perform the same function.

It was Anna, then, who sat by Norah and made a credible job of pretending to listen to her, though her mind was on Eve, who was sailing tomorrow, and on Daniel, who was being left behind. She felt for him; felt for them both, in fact. If Maya was across the seas and needed her she would go in a heartbeat; and yet, the influence of Silas – self-serving, arrogant, manipulative – seemed to colour the picture. For everyone, that is, but Eve. Norah’s monologue washed over and around her as she let these thoughts turn in her mind until suddenly, like the snuffing of a candle, the maid fell asleep, overcome by the effort of passing comment on everything she saw. Her head was against the window, squashing the brim of her green felt hat, and she whistled quite distinctly on each exhalation of breath.

‘You can come out now,’ Anna said to Amos. ‘You’ll be quite safe.’

He lowered the newspaper. ‘Even when she sleeps she makes a racket,’ he said.

Maya laughed and Miss Cargill looked up from her page with a distracted expression, as though she wasn’t sure exactly where she was, then looked back down again. She was reading
The Histories
, in the original Greek: Miss Cargill shunned translations. Thanks to her tutor’s classical leanings, Maya already had the Greek alphabet off pat, and Anna had noticed that when her little daughter doodled she drew dumpy little sigmas and omegas, long rows of them marching across the page.