Snare of Serpents (2 page)

My father seemed to like him. He said he had a way with horses, and he rather preferred the younger Vosper to the elder when it came to driving the carriage.

I loved those sessions when my mother and I were alone and we talked. She was fascinated by what she called the olden days
and talked of them constantly. Her eyes would glow with excitement when she discussed the conflicts with our enemy below the border. She grew passionate about the great William Wallace who had stood against the mighty Edward when he had wreaked such harm on our country that he was known in history as the Hammer of the Scots.

“Great Wallace was captured.” Her eyes would glow with anger and then with bitter sorrow. “They hanged and quartered him at Smithfield … like a common traitor.”

Then there was Bonnie Prince Charlie and the tragedy of Culloden; there was the triumph of Bannockburn; and, of course, the ill-fated and ever romantic Mary Queen of Scots.

Enchanted afternoons they were and I could not bear to think that they had gone forever.

How I loved our grey city—so austere and so beautiful when the sun shone on the grey stone buildings. Such a comfortable, cosy life that was. The affairs of the household ran smoothly, or if they did not it never reached our ears but was sorted out by the excellent Kirkwells. Meals were always on time. Prayers when my father was in residence, with everyone except my mother and the Vospers attending. The Vospers were excused, of course, because they did not live in the house. I was sure no prayer ritual was conducted in the mews rooms.

Until I was fourteen I had taken my meals with Miss Milne. After that I joined my parents. It was as I was beginning to grow up that I became such good friends with Lilias Milne. I learned a great deal about her, and it was through her that I understood something of the precarious and often humiliating life these ladies were forced to live. I was glad Lilias had come to us. So was she.

“Your mother is a lady in every sense of the word,” she said on one occasion. “She has never made me feel that I am a sort of servant. When I first came here she asked me questions about my family and I could see at once that she understood and cared. She took an interest in other people; she saw what their lives were like and could put herself in their places. She always tried not to hurt people in any way. That’s what I call a lady.”

“Oh, I am so glad you came, Lilias,” I said. I was calling her
Lilias then when we were alone. I reserved Miss Milne for when we were not. I was sure Mrs. Kirkwell would have objected to my use of the governess’s Christian name—my father, too. My mother would not have cared.

Lilias told me about her family who lived in England in the county of Devon.

“I was one of six,” she said. “All girls. It would have been better if some of us had been boys, although, of course, they would have had to be expensively educated. We were really very poor. We had the big house to keep up. It was always cold and draughty. How I love these warm fires here. You need them up here, of course, where it is so much colder. But in the house I’m warm. That’s what I like.”

“Tell me about the vicarage.”

“Big … draughty … right close to the church. The church is ancient, as so many of them are, and there is always something going wrong. Deathwatch beetle, woodworm and leaking roof. We have it all. It’s beautiful though. It’s in the heart of Lakemere, which is one of our English villages, with the old church, the cottages and the manor house. You don’t have them up here. You notice the difference as soon as you cross the border. I love the English villages.”

“And the draughty old vicarage? You must admit it’s warmer in our house.”

“I do. I do. I appreciate it. Then I say to myself, how long? That’s something I have to face, Davina. How much longer will you be needing a governess? I’ve been wondering that for a long time. They will send you away to school, I suppose.”

“They won’t now. Perhaps I’ll get married and you can be governess to my children.”

“That’s a little way ahead,” she said wryly.

She was ten years older than I and I had been eight when she came to us. I was her first pupil.

She told me about life before she came.

“Six girls,” she said. “We always knew we should have to earn a living if we did not get married. We couldn’t all stay at home. The two eldest, Grace and Emma, did marry. Grace to a clergyman and Emma to a solicitor. I was next and then there
were Alice, Mary and Jane. Mary became a missionary. She’s out in Africa somewhere. Alice and Jane stayed at home to help keep house, for my mother had died.”

“And you came here. I’m glad you did, Lilias.”

Our friendship was growing closer. I, too, was afraid that one day my father would decide that I was no longer in need of a governess. When would that be? When I was seventeen? That was not far-off.

Lilias had come near to marriage once. She talked of it sadly, nostalgically. But her lover had “never spoken.”

“I suppose it was all implication,” I said. “How did you know he might … speak?”

“He was fond of me. He was the son of the squire of Lakemere, the younger son. It would have been a good match for the vicar’s daughter. He had a fall when he was riding. It crippled him very badly. He lost the use of his legs.”

“Didn’t you go to him? Didn’t you tell him that you would look after him forevermore?”

She was silent, looking back into the past. “He hadn’t spoken. Nobody knew how it was, you see. There would have been opposition, I daresay. What could I do?”

“I would have gone to him. I would have done the speaking.”

She smiled at me indulgently. “A woman cannot do that.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Because … she has to wait to be asked. He wouldn’t ask me, would he … when he was in that state? It couldn’t be. It was ordained.”

“By whom?”

“By God. By Fate. By Destiny … whatever you like to call it.”

“I wouldn’t have allowed it. I would have gone to him and told him I would marry him.”

“You have much to learn, Davina,” she said, and I retorted: “Then teach me.”

“There are some things,” she said, “which people have to learn through experience.”

I thought a good deal about Lilias and I sometimes wondered whether it was the idea of being married, of not having to be a
governess, always wondering when she would be looking for another post in a strange household, that she had been in love with … rather than with the man.

I was growing very fond of her, and I knew she was of me and, during those weeks before my mother died, her fear of what the future held drew her close to me—and after my mother’s death we were more friendly than ever.

But I was growing up. I was facing facts and I knew that Lilias would not be in the house much longer.

Nanny Grant had left only a short time before. She had gone to live with a cousin in the country. Her departure had saddened me deeply. She had been my mother’s nurse and had stayed with her until her marriage and then she had come to this house and eventually nannied me. We had been very close in those early days. She was the one who had comforted me when I had my nightmares and fell and hurt myself. There would always be memories of those days. When the snow came she would take me out into the garden at the back between the mews and the house, patiently sitting on a seat while I made a snowman. I remembered her suddenly picking me up and crying: “That’ll do. Do you want to turn your old nanny into a snowman? Look at you now. Your eyes are dancing at the thought. Ye’re a wee villain, that’s what ye are.”

I remember those rainy days when we sat at the window waiting for it to clear up so that we could go out. We would sing together:

Rainy rainy rattle stanes

Dinna rain on me

Rain on John o
‘
Groaties’ hoose

Far across the sea.

And now Nanny Grant had gone, leaving those wonderful memories—all part of a life over which a shutter was drawn on that tragic day I had gone into my mother’s room and found her dead.

”
M
OURNING FOR A DAUGHTER
is a year,” announced Mrs. Kirkwell. “For us I reckon it should be from three to six
months. Six for Mr. Kirkwell and me. Three months will be enough for the maids.”

How I hated my black clothes. Every time I put them on I was reminded of my mother lying dead in her bed.

Nothing was the same. Sometimes I had a feeling that we were waiting for something to happen, waiting to emerge from our mourning. Lilias, I knew, was waiting for the summons to my father’s presence to be told that as I was growing up her services would no longer be needed.

As for my father, he was away more than ever. I was glad of this. I dreaded meals with him. We were both too conscious of that empty chair.

Not that he had ever been communicative. He had always seemed encased in a demeanour of formality. My mother, though, had been able to break through it. I thought of how his lips twitched when he felt amusement which he tried hard to suppress. I guessed he had cared for her deeply, which was strange because she was so different from him. She would have thrust aside the conventions to which he adhered so strongly. I remembered his gently reproaching voice when she said something which he considered rather outrageous. “My dear … my dear …” I had heard him murmur, smiling in spite of himself. If it had been left to her, our household would have been a merry one.

Once my mother said: “Your father is a man of high principles, a good man. He tries so hard to live up to his high standards. Sometimes I think it is more comfortable to set them slightly lower, so that one does not have to disappoint oneself.”

I did not quite understand what she meant and when I asked her to explain she just laughed and said: “My mind’s wandering. It’s nothing …” Then she shrugged her shoulders and murmured: “Poor David.”

I wondered why she should be pitying my father. But she would say no more on the subject.

Some three weeks after my mother’s death my father’s sister, Aunt Roberta, came to stay with us. She had been ill at the time of the funeral and unable to attend, but at this time she had recovered her good health.

She was quite unlike my father. He was a reserved man who kept aloof from us. Not so Aunt Roberta. Her voice could be heard all over the house, high-pitched and authoritative. She surveyed us all with the utmost disapproval.

She was unmarried. Mrs. Kirkwell, who greatly resented her presence in the house, said she was not surprised that Miss Glentyre had not been able to find a man bold enough to take her on.

Aunt Roberta announced that she had come to us because my father, having lost his wife, would need a woman to supervise his household. As my mother had never supervised anything this was unacceptable from the start. Moreover it sent shivers of apprehension through the house, for it implied that Aunt Roberta intended to make her stay a permanent one.

From the moment she arrived she began to disrupt the household. Resentment was brewing, and it occurred to me that the servants might soon be looking for new places.

“It’s a good thing that Mr. Kirkwell is a patient man,” Mrs. Kirkwell told Lilias, who imparted the information to me. Lilias added: “I really think that, comfortable as they have all been here, this might be too much for them.”

How I wished she would go.

My father, fortunately, was less patient than Mr. Kirkwell. There was an acid conversation between them one evening at dinner.

The conversation was about me.

“You should remember, David, that you have a daughter,” began Roberta, helping herself from the dish of parsnips which Kitty was offering.

“It is something I am not likely to forget,” retorted my father.

“She is growing up … fast.”

“At the same rate, I have always thought, as others of her age.”

“She needs looking after.”

“She has a perfectly adequate governess. That, I believe, will suffice for a while.”

“Governess!” snorted Aunt Roberta. “What do they know about launching a girl?”

“Launching?” I cried in dismay.

“I was not talking to you, Davina.”

I felt angry that she should consider I was still at the stage of being seen but not heard, yet not too young for launching.

“You were talking about me,” I retorted sharply.

“Oh dear me. What is the world coming to?”

“Roberta,” said my father calmly. “You are welcome to stay here, but I cannot have you attempting to rule my household. It has always been efficiently managed, and I do not care to have it changed.”

“I cannot understand you, David,” said Aunt Roberta. “I think you forget …”

“It is you who forget that you are no longer the elder sister. I know that you are two years older than I, and that may have had some significance when you were eight and I was six. But at this stage I do not need you to look after my household.”

She was taken aback. She shrugged her shoulders philosophically with an air of resignation, murmuring: “The ingratitude of some people is beyond all understanding.”