The Captive

by Виктория Холт

  The Captive

  Виктория Холт

  Victoria Holt

  The Captive

  The House in Bloomsbury

  I was seventeen when I experienced one of the most extraordinary adventures which could ever have befallen a young woman, and which gave me a glimpse into a world which was alien to all that I had been brought up to expect; and from then on the whole course of my life was changed.

  I always had the impression that I must have been conceived in a moment of absentmindedness on the part of my parents. I could picture their amazement, consternation and acute dismay when signs of my impending arrival must have become apparent. I remember when I was very young, having temporarily escaped from the supervision of my nurse, encountering my father on the stairs. We met so rarely that on this occasion we regarded each other as strangers. His spectacles were pushed up on to his forehead and he pulled them down to look more closely at this strange creature who had strayed into his world, as though trying to remember what it was. Then my mother appeared; she apparently recognized me immediately for she said:

  “Oh, it’s the child. Where is the nurse?”

  I was quickly snatched up into a pair of familiar arms and hustled away, and when we were out of earshot I heard mutterings.

  “Unnatural lot. Never mind. You’ve got your dear old Nanny who loves you.”

  Indeed I had and I was content, for besides my dear old Nanny I had Mr. Dolland the butler, Mrs. Harlow the cook, the parlour maid Dot and the housemaid Meg, and Emily the twee ny And later Miss Felicity Wills.

  There were two distinct zones in our house and I knew to which one I belonged.

  It was a tall house in a London square in a district known as Bloomsbury. The reason it had been chosen as our residence was because of its proximity to the British Museum which was always referred to below stairs with such reverence that when I was first considered old enough to enter its sacred portals I expected to hear a voice from Heaven commanding me to take the shoes from off my feet for the place whereon I was standing was holy ground.

  My father was Professor Cranleigh, and he was attached to the Egyptian section of the Museum. He was an authority on Ancient Egypt and in particular Hieroglyphics. Nor did my mother live in his shadow. She shared in his work, accompanied him on his frequent lecture tours, and was the author of a sizeable tome entitled The Significance of the Rosetta Stone, which stood in a prominent place of honour, side by side with the half-dozen works by my father in the room next to his study which was called the library.

  They had named me Rosetta, which was a great honour. It linked me with their work which made me feel that at one time they must have had some regard for me. The first thing I wanted to see when Miss Felicity Wills took me to the Museum was this ancient stone. I gazed at it in wonder and listened enraptured while she told me that the strange characters supplied the key to deciphering the writings of ancient Egypt. I could not take my eyes from that basalt tablet which had been so important to my parents but what gave it real significance in my eyes was that it bore the same name as myself.

  When I was about five years old my parents became concerned about me.

  I must be educated and there was some trepidation in our zone at the prospect of a governess.

  “Governesses,” pronounced Mrs. Harlow, when we were all seated at the kitchen table, ‘is funny things. Neither fish nor fowl. “

  “No,” I put in, ‘they are ladies. “

  “That’s as may be,” went on Mrs. Harlow.

  “Too grand for us, not good enough for them.” She pointed to the ceiling, indicating the upper regions of the house.

  “They throw their weight about something shocking … and upstairs, well, they’re as mild as milk. Yes, funny things, governesses.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Mr. Dolland, ‘that it’s to be the niece of some professor or other. “

  Mr. Dolland picked up all the news. He was ‘sharp as a wagonload of monkeys’, according to Mrs. Harlow. Dot had her own sources, gathered when waiting at table.

  “It’s this Professor Wills,” she said.

  “They was at the University .. only he went on to something else … science or something. Well, he’s got this niece and they want a place for her. It looks certain we’re going to have this Professor Wills’s niece in our house.”

  “Will she be clever?” I asked in trepidation.

  “Too clever by half, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Harlow.

  “I’m not having her interfering in the nursery,” announced Nanny Pollock.

  “She’ll be too grand for that. It’ll be meals on trays. Up them stairs for you. Dot … or you, Meg. I can tell you we’re going to get a real madam.”

  “I don’t want her here,” I announced.

  “I can learn from you.”

  That made them laugh.

  “Say what you will, lovey,” said Mrs. Harlow.

  “We’re not what you’d call eddicated … except perhaps Mr. Dolland.”

  We all gazed fondly at Mr. Dolland. Not only did he uphold the dignity of our region, but he kept us amused and at times he could be persuaded to do one of his little ‘turns’. He was a man of many parts, which was not surprising because at one time he had been an actor. I had seen him preparing to go upstairs, formally dressed, the dignified butler, and at other times with his green baize apron round his rather ample waist, cleaning the silver and breaking into song. I would sit there listening and the others would creep up to share in the pleasure and enjoy this one of Mr. Dolland’s many talents.

  “Mind you,” he told us modestly, ‘singing’s not my line. I was never one for the halls. It was always the straight theatre for me. In the blood . from the moment I was born. “

  Some of my happiest memories of those days are of sitting at that big kitchen table. I remember evenings it must have been winter because it was dark and Mrs. Harlow would light the paraffin-filled lamp and set it in the centre of the table. The kitchen fire would be roaring away and, with my parents absent on some lecture tour, a wonderful sense of peace and security would settle upon us.

  Mr. Dolland would talk of the days of his youth when he was on the way to becoming a great actor. It hadn’t worked out as he had planned, otherwise we should not have had him with us, for which we must be grateful although it was a pity for Mr. Dolland. He had had several walk-on parts and had once played the ghost in Hamlet; he had actually worked in the same company as Henry Irving. He followed the progress of the great actor and some years before he had seen his hero’s much-acclaimed Mathias in The Bells.

  Sometimes he would beguile us with scenes from the play. A hushed silence would prevail. Seated beside Nanny Pollock, I would grip her hand to assure myself that she was close. It was most effective when the wind howled and we could hear the rain beating against the windows.

  “It was such a night as this that the Polish Jew was murdered …”

  Mr. Dolland would proclaim in hollow tones, recalling how Mathias had brought about the Jew’s death and been haunted ever after by the sound of the bells. We would sit there shivering, and I used to lie in bed afterwards, gazing fearfully at the shadows in the room and wondering whether they were going to form themselves into the murderer.

  Mr. Dolland was greatly respected throughout the house hold, which he would have been in any case, but his talent to amuse had made us love him and if the theatrical world had failed to appreciate him, that was not the case in the house in Bloomsbury.

  Happy memories they were. These were my family and I felt safe and happy with them.

  In those days the only times I ventured into the dining room were under the sheltering wing of Dot when she laid the table. I used to hold the cutlery for her while she placed it round t
he table. I would watch with admiration while she dexterously flicked the table napkins into fancy shapes and set them out.

  “Don’t it look lovely?” she would say, surveying her handiwork.

  “Not that they’ll notice. It’s just talk, talk, talk with them and you don’t have a blooming notion of what they’re talking about. Get quite aerated, some of them do. You’d think they was all going up in smoke all about things that happened long ago … places and people you’ve never heard of. They get so wild about them, too.”

  Then I would go round with Meg. We would make the beds together. When she stripped them I would take off my shoes and jump on the feather mattresses because I loved the way my feet sank into them.

  I used to help with the making of the beds.

  “First the heel and then the head.

  That’s the way to make a bed,” we would sing.

  “Here,” said Meg.

  “Tuck in a bit more. Don’t want their feet falling out, do you? They’d be as cold as that there stone what you was named after.”

  Yes, it was a good life and I felt in no sense deprived by a lack of parental interest. I was only grateful to my name sake and all those Egyptian Kings and Queens who took up so much of their attention so that they had none to spare for me. Happy days spent making beds, laying tables, watching Mrs. Harlow chop meat and stir puddings, getting the occasional titbit thrust into my mouth, listening to the dramatic scenes from Mr. Dolland’s frustrated past; and always there were the loving arms of Nanny Pollock, for those moments when comfort was needed.

  It was a happy childhood in which I could safely dispense with the attention of my parents.

  Then came the day when Miss Felicity Wills, niece of Professor Wills, was to come to the household to be governess to me and concern herself with the rudiments of my education until further plans were made for my future.

  I heard the cab draw up at the door. We were at the nursery window, myself, Nanny Pollock, Mrs. Harlow, Dot, Meg and Emily.

  I saw her alight and the cabby brought her bags to the door. She looked young and helpless and certainly not in the least terrifying.

  “Just a slip of a thing,” commented Nanny.

  “You wait,” said Mrs. Harlow, determined to be pessimistic.

  “As I’ve told you often, looks ain’t everything to go by.”

  The summons to the drawing-room which we were expecting came at length. Nanny had put me into a clean dress and combed my hair.

  “Remember to answer up sharp,” she told me.

  “And don’t be afraid of them. You’re all right, you are, and Nanny loves you.”

  I kissed her fervently and went to the drawing-room, where my parents were waiting for me with Miss Felicity Wills.

  “Ah, Rosetta,” said my mother, recognizing me, I supposed, because she was expecting me.

  “This is your governess, Miss Felicity Wills. Our daughter, Rosetta, Miss Wills.”

  She came towards me and I think I loved her from that moment. She was so dainty and pretty, like a picture I had seen somewhere. She took both my hands and smiled at me. I returned the smile.

  “I am afraid you will have to begin on virgin soil, Miss Wills,” said my mother.

  “Rosetta has had no tuition as yet.”

  “I am sure she has already learned quite a good deal,” said Miss Wills.

  My mother lifted her shoulders.

  “Rosetta could show you the schoolroom,” said my father.

  “That would be an excellent idea,” said Miss Wills. She turned to me, still smiling.

  The worst was over. We left the drawing-room together.

  “It’s right at the top of the house,” I said.

  “Yes. Schoolrooms often are. To leave us undisturbed, I suppose. I hope we shall get along together. So I am your first governess.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll tell you something,” she went on.

  “You’re my first pupil. So we are beginners … both of us.”

  It made an immediate bond between us. I felt a great deal happier than I had when I had awakened that morning and the first thing I had thought of was her arrival. I had imagined a fierce old woman and here was a pretty young girl. She could not have been more than seventeen; and she had already confessed that she had never taught before.

  It was a lovely surprise. I knew I was going to be all right.

  Life had taken on a new dimension. It was a great joy to me to discover that I was not as ignorant as I had feared.

  Somehow I had taught myself to read with the help of Mr. Dolland. I had studied the pictures in the Bible and had loved the stories told by him with dramatic emphasis. They had fascinated me, those pictures:

  Rachel at the Well; Adam and Eve being turned out of the Garden of Eden, looking back over their shoulders at the angel with a flaming sword;

  John the Baptist standing in the water and preaching. Then of course I had listened to Mr. Dolland’s rendering of Henry V’s speech before

  Harfleur and I could recite it, as well as some of “To be or not to be’. Mr. Dolland had greatly fancied himself as Hamlet.

  Miss Wills was delighted with me and we were friends from the start.

  It was true there was a certain amount of hostility to be overcome with my friends in the kitchen. But Felicity-I was soon calling her Felicity when we were alone was so gracious and by no means as arrogant as Mrs. Harlow had feared, that she soon broke through the barrier between the kitchen and those who, Mrs. Harlow said, thought themselves to be ‘a cut above’. Soon the meals on trays were no more and Felicity joined us at the kitchen table.

  Of course it was a state of affairs which would never have been accepted in a well ordered household, but one of the advantages of having parents who lived in a remote atmosphere of scholarship, apart from the mundane menage of a household, was that it gave us freedom.

  And how we revelled in it! When I look back on what many would call my neglected childhood, I can only rejoice in it, because it was one of the most wonderful and loving any child could have. But, of course, when one is living it, one does not realize how good it is. It is only when it is over that that becomes clear.

  Learning was fun with Felicity. We did our lessons every morning. She made it all so interesting. In fact, she gave the impression that we were finding out things together. She never pretended to know. If I asked a question she would say frankly: “I’ll have to look that up.”

  She told me about herself. Her father had died some years ago and they were very poor. She had two sisters of whom she was the eldest. She was fortunate to have her uncle. Professor Wills, her father’s brother, who had helped the family and found this post for her.

  She admitted that she had been terrified, expecting a very clever child who would know more than she did.

  We laughed about that.

  “Well,” she said, ‘the daughter of Professor Cranleigh. He’s a great authority, you know, and very highly respected in the academic world.”

  I wasn’t sure what the academic world was but I felt a glow of pride.

  After all, he was my father, and it was pleasant to know that he was highly thought of.

  “He and your mother have many demands made on them,” she explained.

  That was further good news. It would keep them out of our way.

  “I thought there would be a great deal of supervision and guidance and that sort of thing. So it has all turned out much better than I expected.”

  “I thought you’d be terrible … neither fish nor fowl.”

  That seemed very funny and we laughed. We were always laughing. So I was learning fast. History was about people some very odd, not just names and a string of dates. Geography was like an exciting tour round the world. We had a big globe which we turned round and round; we picked out places and imagined we were there.

  I was sure that my parents would not have approved of this method of teaching, but it worked well. They would never have engaged anyone
who looked like Felicity and who admitted that she had no qualifications and had never taught before if she had not been the niece of Professor Wills.

  So we had a great deal to be thankful for and we knew it.

  Then there were our walks. We learned what an interesting place Bloomsbury was. It became a game to us to find out how it had become as it was. It was exciting to discover that a century before it had been an isolated village called Lomesbury and between St. Pancras Church and the British Museum were fields and open country. We found the house where the painter Sir Godfrey Kneller had lived; then there

  were the rookeries, that area into which we could not venture a maze of streets in which the very poor lived side by side with the criminal classes, where the latter could rest in safety because no one would dare enter the place.

  Mr. Dolland, who had been born and bred in Bloomsbury, loved to talk about the old days and, as was to be expected, he knew a good deal about it. There were many interesting conversations on the subject during meals.

  We would sit there on winter evenings, the lamp shedding its light on the remains of Mrs. Harlow’s pies or puddings and empty vegetable dishes while Mr. Dolland talked of his early life in Bloomsbury.

  He had been born in Gray’s Inn Road and in his boyhood he had explored his surroundings and had many stories to tell of it.

  I remember details from those days so well. He really had dramatic powers and like most actors liked to enthral an audience. He certainly could not have had a more appreciative one even though it was smaller than he might have wished.

  “Shut your eyes,” he would say, ‘and think of it. Buildings make a difference. Think of this place . like a bit of the country. I was never one for the country myself. “

  “You’re like me, Mr. Dolland,” said Mrs. Harlow.

  “You like a bit of life.”

  “Don’t we all?” asked Dot.

  “I don’t know,” put in Nanny Pollock.

  “There’s some as swears by the country.”

  “I was born and bred in the country,” piped up the twee ny