Nine Coaches Waiting (5 page)

And now Mrs. Seddon was preparing to go about her own affairs.

She plodded firmly away to the door, only to hesitate there and turn. I bent over my case and began to lift things out onto the coverlet. I could feel her eyeing me.

She said: "You… the Master… he seemed all right with you, did he? I thought I heard him laugh when I was waiting upstairs for you."

I straightened up, my hands full of folded handkerchiefs. "Perfectly all right, Mrs. Seddon. He was very pleasant."

"Oh. That's good. I'd like to have been able to have a word with you first and warn you what he sometimes was like with strangers."

I could well understand her slightly anxious probing. It was obvious that the emotional temperature, so to speak, of the Chateau Valmy, must depend very largely on Léon de Valmy and "his days".

I said cheerfully: "Thanks very much, but don't worry, Mrs. Seddon. He was awfully nice to me and made me feel very welcome."

"Did he now?" Her eyes were anxious and a little puzzled. "Oh, well, that's all right, then. I know he was very pleased when Madam's letter came about you, but as a rule he hates changes in the house. That's why we were so surprised when Master Philip's Nanny was dismissed after being with the family all those years, and they said a new girl was coming from England."

"Oh, yes, Madame de Valmy told me about her." I put the handkerchiefs down and lifted some underwear out of the suitcase. "But she wasn't dismissed, surely? I understood from Madame that she didn't want to live in the wilds of Valmy and, as Madame was in London at the time, Monsieur de Valmy wrote urgently and asked her to find an English governess while she was there."

"Oh, no." Mrs. Seddon was downright. "You must have misunderstood what Madam said. Nanny was devoted to Master Philip, and I'm sure she broke her heart when she had to go."

"Oh? I was sure that Madame said she'd left because the place was so lonely. I must have been mistaken." I found myself shrugging my shoulders, and hastily abandoned that very Gallic gesture. "Maybe she was just warning
me
what it would be like. But she did seem very anxious to engage someone to teach him English."

"Master Philip's English is excellent," said Mrs. Seddon, rather primly.

I laughed and said: “I’m glad to hear it. Well, whatever the case, I suppose if Philippe's nine he's old enough to graduate from a Nanny to a governess of sorts. I gathered from Monsieur de Valmy that that was the idea. And for a start I'm going to try and remember to call the nursery the 'schoolroom'. I'm sure one's too old for a nursery when one's nine."

"Master Philip's very young for his age," she said, "though there's times when he's too solemn for my liking. But there, you can't expect much after what's happened, poor mite. He'll get over it in the end, but it takes time."

"I know," I said.

She eyed me for a moment and then said, tentatively: "If I might ask-do you remember your own folks,

now?”

”Oh, yes." I looked across the room and met the kindly inquisitive gaze. Fair was fair, after all. She must be every bit as curious about me as I was about the Valmys. I said: "I was fourteen when they were killed. In an air accident, like Philippe's. I suppose Madame de Valmy told you I'd been at an orphanage in England?"

"Indeed, yes. She wrote that she'd heard of you through a friend of hers, a Lady Benchley, who comes up every year to Évian, and Lady Benchley thought very highly of you, very highly."

"That was very nice of her. Lady Benchley was one of the Governors at the orphanage for the last three years I was there. Then when I left to be assistant at a boys' school it turned out she had a son there. She came up to me on Visitors' Day and talked to me, and when I told her I hated the place she asked me if I'd ever considered a private job abroad, because this friend of hers-Madame de Valmy-was looking for a governess for her nephew and had asked her if she knew of anyone from the Home. When I heard the job was in France I jumped at it. I- I'd always fancied living in France, somehow. I went straight up to London next day and saw her. Lady Benchley had promised to telephone about me, and-well, I got the job." I didn't add that Madame must have taken Lady Benchley's recommendation to be worth a good deal more than it actually was. Lady Benchley was a kindly scatterbrain who spent a good deal of her time acting as a sort of private labour-exchange between her friends and the Constance Butcher Home, and I doubt if she had ever known very much about me. And I had certainly got the impression that Madame de Valmy had been so anxious to find a suitable young woman for the post during her short stay in London that she hadn't perhaps probed as far back into my history as she might have done. Not, of course, that it mattered.

I smiled at Mrs. Seddon, who was still eyeing me with that faintly puzzled look. Then all at once she smiled back, and nodded, so that the gold chain on her bosom glittered and swung. "Well," she said, "well," and though she didn't actually add "You'll do," the implication was there. She opened the door. "And now I really will have to be going. Berthe'll be up soon with some tea for you; she's the girl that looks after these rooms and you'll find she's a good girl, though a bit what you might call flighty. I expect you'll make yourself understood to her all right, and Master Philip'll help."

"I expect I shall," I said. "Where is Master Philip, Mrs. Seddon?"

"He's probably in the nursery," said Mrs. Seddon, her hand on the door. "But Madam particularly said you weren't to bother with him tonight. You were to have a cup of tea-which I may say
is
tea, though it took near thirty years to teach them how to make it-and settle yourself in before dinner and you'll be seeing Master Philip tomorrow. But not to bother yourself tonight."

"Very well," I said. "Thank you, Mrs. Seddon. I shall look forward to that tea."

The door shut behind her. I could hear the soft plod of her steps along the corridor.

I stood where I was, looking at the door, and absently smoothing the folds of a petticoat between my hands.

I was thinking two things. First that I was not supposed to have heard Mrs. Seddon mentioning the lift in her conversation with Madame de Valmy, and that if I was going to make mistakes as easily as that I had better confess quickly before any real damage was done.

The second thing was Mrs. Seddon's parting admonition: "not to bother with him tonight" Had that really been Héloïse de Valmy's phrase?
"Not to bother with him."
And he was "probably" in the nursery… I laid the petticoat gently in a drawer, then turned and walked out of my pretty bedroom, across the roses-and-ivory sitting-room, towards the schoolroom door. There I hesitated a moment, listening. I could hear nothing.

I tapped gently on the door and then turned the gilded handle. It opened smoothly.

I pushed it wide and walked in.

My first thought was that he was not an attractive little boy.

He was small for his age, with a thin little neck supporting a round dark head. His hair was black, and cut very short, and his skin was sallow, almost waxen. His eyes were black, and very large, his wrists and knees bony and somehow pathetic. He was dressed in navy shorts and a striped jersey, and was lying on his stomach, reading a large book. He looked small and a little drab on the big luxurious rug.

He looked round in inquiry and then got slowly to his feet.

I said, in English: "I'm Mademoiselle Martin. You must be Philippe."

He nodded, looking shy. Then his breeding asserted itself, and he took a short step forward, holding out his hand. "You are very welcome, Mademoiselle Martin." His voice was small and thin like himself, and without much expression. "I hope you will be happy at Valmy."

It came to me again, sharply, as I shook the hand, that this was the owner of Valmy. The thought made him, oddly enough, seem even smaller, less significant.

"I was told that you might be busy," I said, "but I thought I'd better come straight along and see you."

He considered this for a moment, taking me in with the frankly interested stare of a child. "Are you really going to teach me English?"

"Yes."

He said: "You do not look like a governess."

"Then I must try and look more like one, I suppose."

"No, I like it as you are. Do not change."

The de Valmys, it seemed, started young. I laughed.
"Merci du compliment, Monsieur le Comte.”

He gave me a swift look upwards. There was glimmer in the black eyes. But all he said was: "Do we have a lesson tomorrow?"

"I expect so. I don't know
.
I shall probably see your aunt tonight, and no doubt she'll tell me just what the programme is."

"Have you seen-my uncle?" Was there, or was there not,
the
faintest of changes in that monotonous little voice?

"Yes."

He was standing quite still, small hands dangling from their bony wrists in front of him. It came to me that he was in his own way as un-get-at-able as Héloïse de Valmy. My task here might not be a very easy one. His manners were beautiful; he was not, it was patent, going to be a "difficult" child in the sense of the word as usually used by governesses; but would I ever get to know him, ever get past that touch-me-not electric fence of reserve? That, and his unchildlike habit of stillness, I had already met in Madame de Valmy, but there the resemblance ended. Her stillness and remoteness was beautiful and poised; this child's was ungraceful and somehow disturbing.

I said: "I must go and unpack now, or I'll be late for dinner. Would you like to help?”

He looked up quickly
.
"Me?"

"Well, not help, exactly, but come and keep me company, and see what I've brought you from London."

"You mean a present?"

"Of course."

He flushed a slow and unbecoming scarlet. Without speaking, he walked sedately past me through my sitting-room towards my bedroom door, opened it for me, then followed me into the room. He stood at the foot of the bed, still in silence, staring at my case.

I stooped over it, lifted a few more things out onto the bed, then rummaged to find what I had brought.

"They're nothing very much," I said, "because I haven't much spare cash. But-well, here they are.”

I had brought him, from Woolworth's, a cardboard model of Windsor Castle-the kind that you cut out and assemble, together with a box, as big as I could afford, containing a collection of men in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards.

I looked a little uncertainly at the silent owner of the Chateau Valmy, and handed him the boxes.

He regarded the optimistic pictures on the lids.

"An English castle?" he said. "And English soldiers?"

"Yes: The kind they have at Buckingham Palace."

"With the fur hats, to guard the Queen. I know." He was still looking raptly at a picture of a full regiment of Guards, drilling in an improbable fashion.

"They're-they're not much," I said, "You see-"

But I saw he was not listening. He had opened the lids and was fingering the cheap toys inside. "A present from London," he said, touching one crudely-painted toy soldier. It came to me, suddenly, that it would not have mattered if they had been home-made paper dolls.

I said: "I brought you a game, too, called Peggitty. You play it with these pegs. Later, I'll show you how. It's a good game."

From the schoolroom a girl's voice called:
"Philippe?
Où es-tu, Philippe?"

He started. "It's Berthe. I have to go." He shut the boxes and stood up, holding them tightly to him. He said, very formally: "Thank you. Thank you, mademoiselle." Then he turned and ran to the door.
"Me voici, Berthe. Je viens."
On the threshold he stopped and swung round. His face was still flushed, and he clutched the presents hard.

"Mademoiselle."

"Yes, Philippe?"

"What is the name of the game with the pegs?"

"Peggitty."

"Peg-it-ee. You will show me how to play it?"

"Yes."

"You will play this Peg-it-ee when I have had my supper before I go to bed?"

"Yes."

"Tonight?"

"Yes."

He hesitated as if he were going to say something else. Then instead he went quickly out, and shut the door gently behind him.

However strange and luxurious my new surroundings, life at Valmy soon settled itself into a simple and orderly routine. Every morning Monsieur Bétemps, Philippe's tutor, arrived, and the two were closeted together till lunch-time. Once my various morning jobs about the schoolroom suite were finished I could count myself free, and for the first few days I occupied myself happily in exploring the gardens and the nearer woods, or in reading-hours and hours of reading, a luxury so long denied me at the Home that I still felt guilty whenever I indulged in it.

The library at the château almost certainly contained English books, but since it was Léon de Valmy's private study-cum-office, I could not-or would not-ask permission to use it. But I had brought as many of my own books as I could carry, and in the schoolroom there were shelves to the ceiling full of an excellent miscellany-children's books thrust cheek by jowl with English and French classics and a good deal of lighter reading, I wondered a little at the odd collection until I saw in some of the volumes the name
Deborah Bohun
or the message
, "To Debbie"
, and once I took down a battered old copy of
Treasure Island
to find it inscribed in a flamboyant young hand
Raoul Philippe St. Aubin de Valmy
… of course, Léon's son was half English and had used these very rooms. I found Buchan, too, and Conan Doyle, and a host of forgotten or never-known books that, gratefully, I devoured-forcing myself to ignore the irrational feeling drilled into me in the seven years at the Home that Reading was a Waste of Time.

On one occasion my guilty feeling was justified. When I read French, I read it in secrecy, and once I was nearly caught out over
Tristan et Iseut.
I was devouring it, rapt and oblivious in my bedroom, when Berthe knocked and, receiving no reply, came in to dust the room. She noticed nothing, but I cursed myself and vowed yet again to be careful and wished for the hundredth time that I had never embarked on the silly deception that had seemed at the time to matter so much, and became daily more difficult to confess.

I no longer imagined seriously that anyone would mind; Philippe and I got on well together, and Madame de Valmy, in her aloof way, seemed to like me; I was certainly very completely trusted with Philippe's well-being. But I didn't particularly want her to know that I had deceived her-systematically, as it were, schemed to deceive her. And, as with all deceptions, the thing grew bigger daily. I had to make myself understood to Berthe, the schoolroom maid, and did this in elementary schoolgirl French which amused her and even made Philippe smile. Luckily, I never had to do this with my employers; invariably in my presence they spoke in their flawless and seemingly effortless English. And so the days went by and I said nothing. I dared not risk their displeasure; I loved the place, I could easily cope with the job, and I liked Philippe.

He was a very quiet, self-controlled child, who never chattered. Every afternoon, unless it rained too hard, we went for a walk, and our "English conversation" mainly consisted of my comments on the country or the gardens where we took our walks. That electric fence of his was still up: it was not a consciously- erected barrier-the gift of the toys had won his alliance if not his heart-but it was there, the obstruction of a deep natural reserve. I imagined that his naturally undemonstrative nature had been made even more so by the sudden loss of his parents, to whom he had never referred. This was not a child one could readily "get to know". I soon stopped trying, and kept both his and my own attention on things outside ourselves. If I was ever to win his confidence, it would only be done by very gradual and natural degrees: by custom, as it were. And there was, indeed, no reason why I should push my way into his fenced and private world; I had suffered so much from lack of privacy in the Home that I deeply respected anybody's right to it, and would have looked on any attempt at intimacy with Philippe as a kind of mental violation.

His reserve showed itself not only towards me. Each evening, at half-past-five, I took him down for half an hour to the small salon where his aunt sat. She would politely put aside her book or writing-paper, pick up instead her exquisite and interminable
petit-point
and hold conversation with Philippe for the half-hour. I say "hold conversation" advisedly, because that phrase does perfectly imply the difficult and stilted communication that took place. Philippe was his usual quiet and withdrawn self, answering questions readily and with impeccable politeness, but asking none and volunteering nothing. Madame de Valmy was the one, it seemed to me, who had to violate her personality here: she, also naturally withdrawn, had to unbend, almost to chatter, I suppose, though, that it was I who loathed those half-hours most, and who suffered the most. Madame de Valmy and Philippe talked, naturally, in French, and this exchange I was supposed not to understand. But occasionally she would revert to English, either for my benefit or to test my pupil's knowledge of that tongue, and then I was drawn into the conversation, and had the awkward task of betraying no knowledge of the exchange in French to which I had just been listening. I don't remember if I made any mistakes; she certainly appeared to notice none, but then, she never gave the appearance of more than the most superficial attention to the whole routine; it was, for her, the discharge of a duty to a charge she hardly knew. Madame de Valmy, certainly, could not be accused of trying to violate anybody's confidence.

Her husband was never there. His only meetings with Philippe seemed to be the purely chance ones of encounters in corridors, on the terrace, or in the gardens. At first I found myself blaming Philippe's uncle for his lack of interest in a lonely and recently bereaved little boy, but soon I realised that it wasn't entirely Léon de Valmy's fault Philippe systematically avoided him. He would only go down the library corridor with me when we had seen the wheel-chair safely out beyond the ornamental ponds or at the far side of the rosery; he seemed to have the faculty for hearing the whisper of its wheels two corridors away, when he would invariably drag at my hand, persuading me with him to vanish out of his uncle's sight.

There seemed to be no good reason for this steady aversion; on the two or three occasions during my first week when we did, unavoidably, meet Monsieur de Valmy, he was very nice to Philippe. But Philippe was, if possible, more withdrawn than ever; in front of his uncle the child's reserve appeared to be little more than the sulks. This was natural enough in a way; in Léon de Valmy's overwhelming presence anyone as awkward and unattractive as Philippe was bound to be made to feel doubly so, and, consciously or not, to resent it. Moreover his uncle's tone towards him was kind with the semi-indifferent indulgence he might have accorded to a not-very-favourite puppy. I could never make out whether Philippe noticed or resented this; I know that on one or two occasions I found myself resenting it on his behalf. But I still liked Léon de Valmy; Philippe, on the other hand-and this I came only gradually to realise-disliked his uncle very much indeed.

That this was irrational I tried on one occasion to tell him.

"Philippe, why do you avoid your Uncle Léon?"

The stone-wall expression shut down on his face.
" ‘Ne comprends pas”

"English, please. And you do understand quite well. He's very good to you. You have everything you want, don't you?"

"Yes. Everything I want I have."

"Well, then-"

He gave me one of his quick, unreadable looks. "But he does not give it to me."

"Who then? Your Aunt Héloïse?"

He shook his head. "It is not theirs to give to me. It was my father's and it is mine."

I looked at him. This, then, was it. Valmy. I remembered the little gleam in the black eyes when I had laughingly addressed him as Comte de Valmy. This was another thing at which it seemed the de Valmys started young, "Your land?" I said. "Of course it's yours. He's keeping it for you. He's your trustee, isn't he?"

He looked puzzled. "Trustee? I do not know trustee."

"He takes care of Valmy till you are older. Then you have it."

"Yes, until I am fifteen. Is that trustee? Then my Uncle Hippolyte is also trustee."

"Is he? I didn't know that."

He nodded, with that solemn look that sat almost sullenly on his pale little face. "Yes
. Tous les deux
-
both. My Uncle Léon for the property and my Uncle Hippolyte for me."

"What do you mean?" I asked involuntarily.