Master of Melincourt (2 page)

CHAPTER II

BUT Tina remained in a fairly amenable mood throughout lunch, and afterwards, as it was a fine afternoon, they went for a walk in the park.

Melincourt was a fine old house, dating back to Jacobean times, and unspoilt by recent development. The park was as extensive as it had ever been, and the surrounding country was a joy to Edwina, who had spent years of her life in towns. She disliked towns, because they both oppressed and depressed her, and in the country, even while working for a not entirely appreciative employer, and with her authority flouted at regular intervals throughout the day—and with the knowledge that she was likely to be sacked at any moment hanging over her—she could feel free to enjoy it, and it didn’t cost her anything, and she wasn’t envious because none of this beauty was her rightful background, and life for her was rather like living on a mess of
quicksand
.

She had had one other job as a governess, and one as a secretary-companion. It was the lady for whom she had worked as a secretary-companion who had recommended her to Jervis Errol, and she did hope she would not be dismissed with ignominy, if only because it would reflect badly on her one really nice and considerate employer.

She could have been with her still if she hadn’t felt the urge to try something new. But having
t
ried something new she hoped she could keep the newness
... at any rate, until it wasn’t quite so new.

Jervis Errol was paying her a good salary, and she had very comfortable quarters at Melincourt. The only fly in the ointment was Tina, her eight-year-old charge.

Tina had a corgi called Strawberry, and the two of them went flying across the park ahead of Edwina as she walked more sedately behind them. It was a warm May afternoon, and the blue of the sky was dappled with little lazily drifting clouds. The trees of the park were mostly giants, towering into the blue above her head, and all around her. There were green rides where the turf was soft as velvet, and in the hazy distance the square tower of the Norman church indicated the location of the village. Otherwise there was not a dwelling in sight, and no other human being apart from the childish shape of Tina. The hedges were white with hawthorn and pink with may, and from the distant rose-garden of Melincourt came the scent of early roses.

It was almost too much, Edwina thought, to be a part of her everyday life. It was like something she wanted so desperately to hang on to, but which she feared might be snatched away from her at any moment
... and then there would be nothing but the return journey to London, possibly a month’s salary in lieu of notice since she was to be paid by the month, and a dreary settling back into the room she had occupied in Kensington—if it was still vacant.

It would mean employment agencies—and she disliked them as much as Jervis Errol did—and a careful hoarding of her limited amount of money. She had no longer any close relatives, and few friends, and the smart of being dismissed would make looking for a fresh job seem all the harder.

After all, if she could be dismissed from one job, she might be dismissed from another. It was just possible there really was something about her that caused a
childlike
Tina to rebel. Perhaps she really was prim, and demanding, and not particularly lovable. She had been brought up primly by a very prim aunt, and that kind of upbringing made it difficult to adjust, to understand the whims of a wild waif like Tina.

She wanted to understand her, and she didn’t enjoy lecturing her, and constantly finding fault with her. But when you’d never been allowed to leave anything at all lying in your own room, let alone the other rooms in the house, and you never spoke out of turn because you were frowned at if you did so, and it was dinned into you that your school work was important, and all set tasks had to be accomplished however difficult they were, or distasteful, it was extraordinarily difficult—not to say almost impossible—to feel entirely sympathetic towards someone like Tina, who, although she was an orphan, had been thoroughly spoilt by a devoted uncle, had everything she wanted apparently right from her cradle, and had never been ordered to do anything at all that she did not like doing.

Edwina, as she followed her across the park, attempted the well-nigh impossible task of keeping up with her, and resolved at the same time to be a little more patient, a little more perceptive, perhaps, of what made a small thing like Tina react as she did
...
not at all unlike, at times, a filly with the bit between its teeth.

Unfortunately Edwina knew next to nothing about horses, so likening her to an unmanageable filly did not simplify her problem in any way, or enable her to see it from a different aspect. But she made up her mind—in her own interests, and possibly also Tina’s
—
that she
would
take the uncle’s advice and try, at least, to understand her. She would try a little more psychology than she had so far done, and perhaps it might yield results.

Having arrived at this decision, and feeling a little breathless because she had quickened her steps considerably for the last quarter of a mile or so, she suddenly realised that Tina in her light blue slacks and yellow cardigan had vanished from the scene. She had vanished as completely as if she had never been
... she and Strawberry, who was never more than a foot or so behind her.

Edwina frowned as she surveyed the landscape. Although there were a lot of trees it was fairly open, and it shouldn’t have been possible for anyone to disappear unless they were some distance away. Tina had been increasing the distance between them during the last few minutes, but one minute she stood out against the skyline like a gaily coloured elf with lank locks and a curious, tireless, skipping gait, and the next she had gone to ground.

Edwina stopped, called sharply:
“Strawberry,
Strawberry
!”
in the hopes that the dog, at least, would hear and return to her. But nothing moved in the hazy distance ahead of her, the church clock chimed three, and after that there was a curious, spreading silence.

Edwina started to move forward hurriedly, and finally she broke into a run. Someone giggled hard on her heels, a conker that had lain buried in leaves since the previous autumn hit her a light, glancing blow on the side of her head, and she wheeled pantingly to find herself confronted by Tina, who promptly started to laugh uproariously, and to bound up and down like a delighted sprite.

“I fooled you, I fooled you!” she cried. “I was right behind you all the time, and you didn’t know! Part of the time I was hiding behind a tree.”

She was hugging Strawberry up in her arms, and staggering slightly under the weight of the distinctly plump animal.

Edwina was about to admonish her with severity
—
or as much severity as she could manage after running at top speed for a hundred yards or so—but then she remembered the resolution she had formed so very recently.

Very much to Tina’s surprise—and possibly, also, to her disappointment—the new governess closed her lips, shrugged her shoulders and turned.

“Oh, well,” she said, “it just shows how clever you are, doesn’t it
?
You and a tree are capable of looking very much alike!”

Tina gazed at her curiously. She fell into step beside her, and they made for home.

“I don’t like that old suede jacket you’re wearing,” the child remarked, when the silence between them had lasted that much too long for her. “For one thing it isn’t real suede, is it
?
Sort of imitation.”

Edwina glanced down at the front of her jacket, and grimaced slightly.

“I don’t like it myself very much,” she confessed. “But I can’t afford to throw it away and buy another
one.

“Why? Haven’t you got much money?”

“Not much.”

“Doesn’t my uncle pay you a lot of money to look after me
?
”

“He’s very generous,” Edwina admitted. She decided to elaborate: “As a matter of fact, he’s far more generous than any other employer I’ve ever had.”

“Then why don’t you smarten yourself up a bit
?
” With the cruelty of eight years of age, and the knowledge that her own pale blue nether garments and her canary yellow sweater had been created in Switzerland, and bought there when she and her Uncle Jervis had decided to do a little shopping in Zurich’s Rue de la Paix during their most recent visit to the Continent, Tina’s bright eyes narrowed and she pressed home her point. “It’s important to look smart, you know. My Uncle Jervis simply can’t
stand
women who look dowdy! The other night when you wore that black lace thing at dinner he said afterwards that he expected you picked it up in a jumble sale.” She giggled. “I don’t really think you did, because it fitted you quite well, I thought, but it was an amusing thing to say, wasn’t it? Uncle Jervis is terribly amusing when he feels like it.”

“I think it was a hilarious thing to say,” Edwina commented with heightened colour.

Tina glanced at her under her tight little black brows.

“You don’t mind being made fun of? Uncle Jervis makes fun of nearly everybody except Marsha Fleming
...
and she’s so
beautiful,
and her clothes are so
gorgeous,
that he couldn’t possibly do anything but adore her. Which he does!” with emphasis.

“Highly satisfactory, I’m sure,” Edwina murmured, “if he’s going to marry her.”

Tina kicked the ground with the toe of a badly scuffed shoe.

“Of course he’s going to marry her,” she said a trifle shrilly. “And he’s going to marry her very soon. He must, he must, because I want him to!” kicking up part of a dandelion root and scattering it to the four winds. “He promised me when we were in Paris that he would, and I’m going to see that he does!” She looked more slyly up at Edwina. “When Marsha comes here she’ll make fun of you, too. She’ll probably make you feel hideously uncomfortable,” making use of a word that she had only recently acquired. “Don’t you think it would be better for you if you went home now, and then you could escape it and someone else mightn’t mind your old suede jacket and that black lace dress? They might even think you look all right in them
!”

“No,” Edwina answered quietly, “I have no intention of leaving if your uncle wishes me to remain.”

Tina made a petulant movement, aimed a kick at a bronze nymph in the rose-garden, they having by this time emerged from the park on the west side of the house, and as the stables were not very far distant went racing off to them to inspect her uncle’s most recent present to her, a chestnut pony.

Edwina followed in a more decorous manner, and when she entered the stable yard she saw that Bimbo—the dog who had on more than one occasion prevented the postman from delivering his letters—was on guard in the middle of it, and Jervis Errol was leaning against one of the half doors and having a few words with a groom about his own rangy grey, that was being led up and down for exercise and displaying a distinctly skittish tendency to prance about the yard.

Now Edwina was very fond of animals—most animals. But she had been bred in a town, and horses and large dogs still made her feel nervous
... particularly horses.

In endeavouring to give the grey as wide a berth as possible she unwittingly came closer to Bimbo than anyone who knew Bimbo at all well would have considered wise, and the dog showed its teeth. It growled, and its hackles rose. It was of uncertain ancestry, and it looked very fierce.

Edwina unwisely turned her back on it, and it leapt at her.

“Down!” It was Jervis Errol who came to her rescue and shouted at the dog. “Down, Bimbo! Blast the dog, hasn’t anyone succeeded in training it yet?” But although he glanced in a mildly vexed fashion at the groom and the stable lad it was at Edwina that he looked in surprise, and to emphasise his astonishment his shapely black eyebrows rose, and his deep blue eyes narrowed, and looked for a moment almost sinister. “Don’t you know better than to turn your back on a dog when it looks like threatening you?” he demanded. “It’s the very way to be savaged if you want to be savaged!”

Edwina, who had turned very white, stammered something that sounded like:

“I’m—I’m not very used to dogs. I’ve only seen it once or twice
.
..
”

He glanced at her contemptuously, short, cheap suede jacket, home-washed hairstyle and all. She was quite certain that for once he really took her all in.

“Then in future I’d either make overtures of friendship, or keep away from the stable yard,” he recommended. He looked as if he simply couldn’t understand a young woman like her. “Don’t you know anything at all about the country?”

“She’s terrified of horses,” Tina shrilled at him triumphantly.

He frowned.

“Didn’t you ever keep pets? You must have, at some time or other in your life.”

“Cats,” Edwina answered. “I—I like cats.”

The expression of contempt on his face grew. “That all?”

“I once had a couple of budgerigars in a cage ... and a pet mongoose.”

“Well, that could have bitten you. At least it can be said that you risked life and limb.” But Edwina understood perfectly that his opinion of her was not appreciably increased. “It’s a pity you don’t ride, because I like the infant here to have a daily canter, and she has to be accompanied. It’s not always convenient for me to accompany her, and Richards hasn’t got the time.” Richards was the groom. “Do you think you might possibly be induced to overcome your nervousness and take riding lessons while you’re here? It would be an additional accomplishment when you go looking for another job.”

But Edwina hesitated.

“I’ll—I’ll think about it, if you don’t mind.”

He turned away with a shrug of his shoulders, and
—
although she couldn’t really see his face—a slight curl of the lip, she was sure.

“Well, chicken, I’ll ride with you to-morrow morning,” he promised his niece, “so make sure you’re up early and ready when I throw a handful of gravel up at your window. I don’t like to be kept waiting, as you know ... not even by a charmer like you, my sweet,” with such ironical emphasis that Edwina wondered whether he really did consider his niece the complete infantile charmer.

She and Tina went up to their rooms and for the remainder of that evening there were no violent clashes, although when Edwina was supervising her bathing arrangements Tina deliberately emptied the contents of a large jar of bath salts into the water. Without correcting her or making any complaint Edwina ran away the water and filled the bath afresh, and as the small attempt to create a diversion had misfired Tina more or less meekly submitted to the process of being cleansed under the eyes of her governess, and afterwards drank her milk and went to bed without fuss ... although as usual she took her transistor radio to bed with her, and there was the usual short argument about the cat sleeping on the bed—which always meant
in
the bed—and how many of its kittens when they finally arrived would be allowed to survive.