The Shifting Fog (6 page)

‘Anyway, Pa says Miss Prince is giving us all the education we need,’ said Emmeline.

‘Pa would say that. He’s hoping she’ll turn us into boring wives for boring fellows, speaking passable French, playing passable piano and politely losing the odd game of bridge. We’ll be less trouble that way.’

‘Pa says no one likes a woman who thinks too much,’ Emmeline said.

David rolled his eyes. ‘Like that Canadian woman who drove him home from the gold mines with her talk of politics. She did us all a disservice.’

‘I don’t
want
everyone to like me,’ Hannah said, setting her chin stubbornly. ‘I should think less of myself if no one disliked me.’

‘Then cheer up,’ David said. ‘I have it on good authority that a
number
of our friends don’t like you.’

Hannah frowned, its impact weakened by the involuntary beginnings of a smile. ‘Well I’m not going to do any of her stinking lessons today. I’m tired of reciting
The Lady of Shallot
while she snivels into her handkerchief.’

‘She’s crying for her own lost love,’ Emmeline said with a sigh.

Hannah rolled her eyes.

‘It’s true!’ Emmeline said. ‘I heard Grandmamma tell Lady Clem. Before she came to us, Miss Prince was engaged to be married.’

‘Came to his senses, I suppose,’ Hannah said.

‘He married her sister instead,’ Emmeline said.

This silenced Hannah, but only briefly. ‘She should have sued him for breach of promise.’

‘That’s what Lady Clem said—and worse—but Grandmamma said Miss Prince didn’t want to cause him trouble.’

‘Then she’s a fool,’ Hannah said. ‘She’s better off without him.’

‘What a romantic,’ David said archly. ‘The poor lady’s hopelessly in love with a man she can’t have and you begrudge reading her the occasional piece of sad poetry. Cruelty, thy name is Hannah.’

Hannah set her chin. ‘Not cruel, practical. Romance makes people forget themselves, do silly things.’

David was smiling: the amused smile of an elder brother who believed that time would change her.

‘It’s true,’ Hannah said, stubbornly. ‘Miss Prince would be better to stop pining and start filling her mind—and ours—with interesting things. Like the building of the pyramids, the lost city of Atlantis, the adventures of the Vikings …’

Emmeline yawned and David held up his hands in an attitude of surrender.

‘Anyway,’ Hannah said, frowning as she picked up her papers. ‘We’re wasting time. We’ll go from the bit where Miriam gets leprosy.’

‘We’ve done it a hundred times,’ Emmeline said. ‘Can’t we do something else?’

‘Like what?’

Emmeline shrugged uncertainly. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked from Hannah to David. ‘Couldn’t we play The Game?’

No. It wasn’t The Game then. It was just the game. A game. Emmeline may have been referring to conkers, or jacks, or marbles for all I knew that morning. It wasn’t for some time that The Game took on capital letters in my mind. That I came to associate the term with secrets and fancies and adventures unimagined. On that dull, wet morning, as the rain pattered against the nursery windowpanes, I barely gave it a thought.

Hidden behind the armchair sweeping up the dried and scattered petals, I was imagining what it might be like to have siblings. I had always longed for one. I had told Mother once, asked her whether I might have a sister. Someone with whom to gossip and plot, whisper and dream. How potent the mystique of sisterhood that I had even longed for someone with whom to quarrel. Mother had laughed, but not in a happy way, and said she wasn’t given to making the same mistake twice.

What must it feel like, I wondered, to belong somewhere, to face the world, a member of a tribe with ready-made allies? I was pondering this, brushing absently at the armchair, when something moved beneath my duster. A blanket flapped and a female voice croaked: ‘What? What’s all this? Hannah? David?’

She was as old as age itself. An ancient woman, recessed amongst the cushions, hidden from view. This, I knew, must be Nanny. I had heard her spoken of in hushed and reverent tones, both upstairs and down: she had nursed Lord Ashbury himself when he was a lad and was as much a family institution as the house itself.

I froze where I stood, duster in hand, under the gaze of three sets of pale blue eyes.

The old woman spoke again. ‘Hannah? What’s going on?’

‘Nothing, Nanny,’ Hannah said, finding her tongue. ‘We’re just rehearsing for the recital. We’ll be quieter from now on.’

‘You mind Raverley doesn’t get too frisky, cooped up inside,’ Nanny said.

‘No, Nanny,’ Hannah said, her voice revealing a sensitivity to match her fierceness. ‘We’ll make sure he’s nice and quiet.’ She came forward and tucked the blanket back around the old lady’s tiny form. ‘There, there, Nanny dear, you rest now.’

‘Well,’ Nanny said sleepily, ‘maybe just for a little while.’ Her eyes fluttered shut and after a moment her breathing grew deep and regular.

I held my own breath, waiting for one of the children to speak. They were still looking at me, eyes wide. A slow instant passed, during which I envisaged myself being hauled before Myra, or worse, Mr Hamilton; called to explain how I came to be dusting Nanny; the displeasure on Mother’s face as I returned home, released without references …

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.