The Shifting Fog (6 page)

But they did not scold, or frown, or reprove. They did something far more unexpected. As if on cue, they started to laugh; raucously, easily, collapsing into one another so that they seemed somehow joined.

I stood, watching and waiting; their reaction more disquieting than the silence that preceded it. I could not help my lip from trembling.

Finally, the elder girl managed to speak. ‘I’m Hannah,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Have we met?’

I exhaled, curtseyed. My voice was tiny. ‘No m’lady. I’m Grace.’

Emmeline giggled. ‘She’s not your lady. She’s just miss.’

I curtseyed again. Avoided her gaze. ‘I’m Grace, miss.’

‘You look familiar,’ Hannah said. ‘Are you sure you weren’t here at Easter?’

‘Yes, miss. I just started. Going on for a month now.’

‘You don’t look old enough to be a maid,’ Emmeline said.

‘I’m fourteen, miss.’

‘Snap,’ Hannah said. ‘So am I. And Emmeline is ten and David is practically ancient—sixteen.’

David spoke then. ‘And do you always clean right over the top of sleeping persons, Grace?’ At this, Emmeline started to laugh again.

‘Oh, no. No, sir. Just this once, sir.’

‘Pity,’ David said. ‘It would be rather convenient never to have to bathe again.’

I was stricken; my cheeks filled with heat. I had never met a real gentleman before. Not one my age, not the sort who made my heart flutter against my rib cage with his talk of bathing. Strange. I am an old woman now, yet as I think of David, I find the echoes of those old feelings creeping back. I am not dead yet then.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Hannah said. ‘He thinks he’s a riot.’

‘Yes, miss.’

She looked at me quizzically, as if about to say something more. But before she could, there came the noise of quick, light footsteps rounding the stairs and beginning down the corridor. Drawing closer.
Clip
,
clip, clip, clip
. . . Emmeline ran to the door and peered through the keyhole.

‘It’s Miss Prince,’ she said, looking to Hannah. ‘Coming this way.’

‘Quick!’ Hannah said in a determined whisper. ‘Or suffer death by Tennyson.’

There was a scurry of footsteps and a flurry of skirts and before I realised what was happening all three had vanished. The door burst open and a gust of cold, damp air swept through. A prim figure stood across the doorway.

She surveyed the room, her gaze landing finally on me. ‘You,’ she said. ‘Have you seen the children? They’re late for their lessons. I’ve been waiting in the library ten minutes.’

I was not a liar, and I cannot say what made me do it. But in that instant, as Miss Prince stood peering over her glasses at me, I did not think twice.

‘No, Miss Prince,’ I said. ‘Not for a time.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, miss.’

She held my gaze. ‘I was sure I heard voices in here.’

‘Only my own, miss. I was singing.’

‘Singing?’

‘Yes, miss.’

The silence seemed to stretch forever, broken only when Miss Prince tapped her blackboard pointer three times against her open hand and stepped into the room; began to walk slowly around its perimeter.
Clip . . . Clip . . . Clip
. . .
Clip
. . . She reached the doll’s house and I noticed the tail of Emmeline’s sash ribbon protruding from its stand. I swallowed. ‘I . . . I might have seen them earlier, miss, now I think of it. Through the window. In the old boathouse. Down by the lake.’

‘Down by the lake,’ Miss Prince said. She had reached the French windows and stood gazing out into the fog, white light on her pale face. ‘Where willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver . . .’

I was unfamiliar with Tennyson at that time, thought only that she produced a rather pretty description of the lake. ‘Yes, miss,’ I said.

After a moment she turned. ‘I shall have the gardener retrieve them. What’s his name?’

‘Dudley, miss.’

‘I shall have Dudley retrieve them. We must not forget that punctuality is virtue without peer.’

‘No, miss,’ I said, curtseying.

And she clipped coldly across the floor, closing the door behind her.

The children emerged as if by magic from beneath dust cloths, under the doll’s house, behind the curtains. Hannah smiled at me, but I did not linger. I could not understand what I had done. Why I had done it. I was confused, ashamed, exhilarated.

I curtseyed and hurried past, cheeks burning as I flew along the corridor, anxious to find myself once more in the safety of the servants’ hall, away from these strange, exotic child-adults and the odd feelings they aroused in me.

Waiting for the Recital

I could hear Myra calling my name as I raced down the stairs into the shadowy servants’ hall. I paused at the bottom, letting my eyes adapt to the dimness, then hurried into the kitchen. A copper pot simmered on the huge stove and the air was salty with the sweat of boiled ham. Katie, the scullery maid, stood by the sink scrubbing pans, staring blindly at the steamy hint of a window. Mrs Townsend, I guessed, was having her afternoon lie-down before the Mistress rang for tea. I found Myra at the table in the servants’ dining room, surrounded by vases, candelabras, platters and goblets.

‘There you are, then,’ she said, frowning so that her eyes became two dark slits. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to come looking for you.’ She indicated the seat opposite. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, girl. Get yourself a cloth and help me polish.’

I sat down and selected a plump milk jug that hadn’t seen light of day since the previous summer. I rubbed at the flecked spots, but my mind lingered in the nursery upstairs. I could imagine them laughing together, teasing, playing. I felt as though I had opened the cover of a beautiful, glossy book and become lost in the magic of its story, only to be forced too soon to put the book aside. You see? Already I had attached some strange glamour to the Hartford children.

‘Steady on,’ Myra said, wresting the cloth from my hand. ‘That’s His Lordship’s best silver. You’d better hope Mr Hamilton don’t see you scratching it like that.’ She held aloft the vase she was cleaning and began to rub it in deliberate circular motions. ‘There now. See as how I’m doing it? Gentle like? All in the one direction?’

I nodded and set about the jug again. I had so many questions about the Hartfords: questions I felt sure Myra could answer. And yet I was reluctant to ask. It was in her power, I knew, and her nature, I suspected, to ensure my future duties took me far from the nursery if she supposed I was gaining pleasure beyond the satisfaction of a job well done.

Yet just as a new lover imbues ordinary objects with special meaning, I was greedy for the least information concerning them. I thought about my books, tucked away in their attic hideaway; the way Sherlock Holmes could make people say the last thing they expected through artful questioning. I took a deep breath.

‘Myra . . . ?’

‘Mmm?’

‘What is Lord Ashbury’s son like?’

Her dark eyes flashed. ‘Major James? Oh, he’s a fine—’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not Major James.’ I already knew about Major James. One couldn’t pass a day in Riverton without learning of Lord Ashbury’s elder son, most recent in a long line of Hartford males to attend Eton then Sandhurst. His portrait hung next to that of his father (and the string of fathers before him) at the top of the front staircase, surveying the hall below: head aloft, medals gleaming, blue eyes cold. He was the pride of Riverton, both upstairs and down. A Boer War hero. The next Lord Ashbury. No. I meant Frederick, the ‘Pa’ they spoke of in the nursery, who seemed to inspire in them a mix of affection and awe. Lord Ashbury’s second son, whose mere mention caused Lady Violet’s friends fondly to shake their heads and His Lordship to grumble into his sherry.

Myra opened her mouth and closed it again, like one of the fish the storms washed up on the lake bank. ‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,’ she said finally, holding her vase up to the light for inspection.

I finished the jug and moved on to a platter. This was how it was with Myra. She was capricious in her own way: unreservedly forthcoming at some times, absurdly secretive at others. Sure enough, for no other reason than the clock on the wall had ticked away five minutes, she acquiesced. ‘I suppose you’ve heard one of the footmen talking, have you? Alfred, I’ll warrant. Terrible gossips, footmen.’ She started on another vase. Eyed me suspiciously.

‘Your mother’s never told you about the family, then?’

I shook my head and Myra arched a thin eyebrow in disbelief, as if it were near impossible that people might find things to discuss that didn’t concern the family at Riverton. In fact, Mother had always been resolutely close-lipped about business at the house. When I was younger I had probed her, eager for stories about the grand old manor on the hill. There were enough tales about in the village as it was and I was hungry for my own titbits to trade with the other children. But she only ever shook her head and minded me that curiosity killed the cat. Finally, Myra spoke. ‘Mr Frederick . . . where to begin about Mr Frederick.’ She resumed polishing, speaking through a sigh. ‘He’s not a bad sort of fellow. Not at all like his brother, mind, not one for heroics, but not a bad sort. Truth be told, most of us downstairs have a fondness for him. To hear Mrs Townsend talk he was always a scamp of a lad, full of tall stories and funny ideas. Always very kindly to the servants.’

‘Is it true he was a goldminer?’ It seemed a suitably exciting profession. It was right somehow that the Hartford children should have an interesting father. My own had always been a disappointment: a faceless figure who vanished into thin air before I was born, rematerialising only in hot whispered exchanges between Mother and her sister.

‘For a time,’ Myra said. ‘He’s turned his hand to that many things I’ve all but lost count. Never been much of a one for settling, our Mister Frederick. Never one to take to other folks. First there was the tea planting in Ceylon, then the gold prospecting in Canada. Then he decided he was going to make his fortune printing newspapers. Now it’s motor cars, God love him.’

‘Does he sell motor cars?’

‘He makes them, or those that work for him do. He’s bought a factory over Ipswich way.’

‘Ipswich. Is that where he lives? Him and his family?’ I said, nudging the conversation in direction of the children. She didn’t take the bait: was concentrated on her own thoughts.

‘With any luck he’ll make a go of this one. Heaven knows His Lordship would look gladly on a return for his investment.’

I blinked, her meaning lost on me. Before I could ask what she meant, she had swept on. ‘Anyway, you’ll see him soon enough. He arrives next Tuesday, along with the Major and Lady Jemima.’ A rare smile, approval rather than pleasure. ‘There’s not an August bank holiday I can remember when the family didn’t all come together. There’s not one of them would dream of missing the midsummer dinner. It’s tradition for the folks in these parts.’

‘Like the recital,’ I said, daringly, avoiding her gaze.

‘So,’ Myra raised a brow, ‘someone’s already blathered to you about the recital, have they?’

I ignored her peevish note. Myra was unaccustomed to being pipped at the rumour post. ‘Alfred said the servants were invited to see the recital.’ I said.

‘Footmen!’ Myra shook her head haughtily. ‘Never listen to a footman if you want to hear the truth, my girl. Invited, indeed!

Servants are
permitted
to see the recital, and very kind of the Master it is too. He knows how much the family mean to all of us downstairs, how we enjoy seeing the young ones growing up.’ She returned her attention momentarily to the vase in her lap and I held my breath, willing her to continue. After a moment that seemed an age, she did. ‘This’ll be the fourth year they’ve put on theatricals. Ever since Miss Hannah was ten and took it into her head she wanted to be a theatre director.’ Myra nodded. ‘Aye, she’s a character is Miss Hannah. She and her father are as like as two eggs.’

‘How?’ I asked.

Myra paused, considering this. ‘There’s something of the wanderlust in each of them,’ she said finally. ‘Both full of wit and newfangled ideas, each as stubborn as the other.’ She spoke pointedly, accenting each description, a warning to me that such traits, while acceptable idiosyncrasies for them upstairs, would not be tolerated from the likes of me.

I’d had such lectures all my life from Mother. I nodded sagely as she continued. ‘They get on famously most of the time, but when they don’t there’s not a soul don’t know it. There’s no one can rile Mr Frederick quite like Miss Hannah. Even as a wee girl she knew just how to set him off. She was a fierce little thing, full of tempers. One time, I remember, she was awful dark at him for one reason or another and took it into her head to give him a nasty fright.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Now let me think . . . Master David was out having riding instruction. That’s what started it all. Miss Hannah were none too happy to have been left out so she bundled up Miss Emmeline and gave Nanny the slip. Found their way to the far estates, they did, right the way down where the farmers were harvesting apples.’

She shook her head. ‘Convinced Miss Emmeline to hide away in the barn, did our Miss Hannah. Wasn’t hard to do, I imagine; Miss Hannah can be very persuasive, and besides, Miss Emmeline was quite happy with all them fresh apples to feast on. Next minute, Miss Hannah arrived back at the house, puffing and panting like she’d run for her life, calling for Mr Frederick. I was laying for luncheon in the dining room at the time, and I heard Miss Hannah tell him that a couple of foreign men with dark skin had found them in the orchards. Said they’d commented on how pretty Miss Emmeline was and promised to take her on a long journey across the seas. Miss Hannah said she couldn’t be sure, but she believed them to be white slavers.’

I gasped, shocked by Hannah’s daring. ‘What happened then?’

Myra, portentous with secrets, warmed to the telling. ‘Well, Mr Frederick’s always been wary of the white slavers, and his face went first white, then all red, and before you could count to three he scooped Miss Hannah into his arms and set off toward the orchards. Bertie Timmins, who was picking apples that day, said Mr Frederick arrived in a terrible state. He started yelling orders to form a search party, that Miss Emmeline had been kidnapped by two dark-skinned men. They searched high and low, spreading out in all directions, but no one had seen two dark-skinned men and a golden-haired child.’