by Dorothy Eden
‘You will go upstairs and change,’ Uncle Edgar was saying. ‘You have plenty of time. The carriage has been ordered for half past eleven. The train leaves at twelve. Now repeat to me again exactly what you have to do.’
‘Yes, Uncle Edgar, I’m to take a cab from the station to the shipping office to make enquiries as to whether the China Star has arrived, as expected, and which train the children will be on. I’m also to ask if an official has been sent to meet them and escort them to London, and later to suitably reimburse him.’
‘What is suitably?’
‘A guinea as you suggested, Uncle Edgar.’
‘Correct, my dear. What next?’
‘After we’ve been to the shipping office and ascertained our time-tables Hannah and I are to go to our hotel and wait.’
‘Correct again. You see, Louisa, Fanny is quite capable of taking charge of this business. It saves you a journey which I’m sure you don’t want, and it’s quite impossible for me to get away. I’m far too busy. I’m a man of many affairs.’
‘Too many,’ said Aunt Louisa tartly. ‘If you’d taken a little more interest in your brother when you were both young, we might never have been in this contretemps.’
‘I don’t think my influence would have stopped Oliver going to the bad,’ Uncle Edgar said seriously. ‘He was always uncontrollable, even as a small boy. Anyway, I wouldn’t refer to this matter as a contretemps. It merely means our family is a little larger. What of that? There are enough empty rooms in this house. It will keep the servants up to the mark.’
‘The children will have to be taught.’
‘Ah, yes. You mean the problem of a governess.’ Uncle Edgar’s eyes flicked to Fanny and away so quickly that she couldn’t be sure he had looked at her. ‘Well, we don’t need to take all our fences at once. And anyway, my dear, we’ve been over this matter often enough. Oliver has made the children my wards. I have no alternative, have I, even had I wanted one. Which naturally I don’t. I shall enjoy the little beggars.’
He gave his wide beaming smile. And Fanny knew that he didn’t want these strange children any more than, seventeen years ago, he had wanted her. But he was a man of principle and it worried him that he should have uncharitable thoughts. He was busily convincing himself and his wife that he hadn’t.
Aunt Louisa got up, in her fussy bossing manner.
‘I won’t have Amelia’s chances ruined.’
‘My dear, whatever do you mean?’
‘You’ve promised her a dowry of ten thousand.’
‘Did I suggest reducing it?’
‘No, but you frequently talk as if money is short, and now there will be extra expense. You can’t deny that. And the other thing is,’—Aunt Louisa hesitated, biting her lip—‘must we let it be known the children are coming until we see what they look like, I mean, supposing—’
Uncle Edgar threw back his head, guffawing heartily.
‘You mean, supposing the little beggars are yellow? There’s not a chance. Oliver was a fool, but not that much of a fool.’
‘How do you know?’ Aunt Louisa said tightly.
‘Why, the devil take it, because he was a Davenport.’
Uncle Edgar was feeling in his breast pocket. His expression had changed. His brother Oliver’s undisciplined life and inconvenient demise had been put out of his mind, and he was smiling with anticipatory pleasure.
‘Come here, Fanny. Your aunt and I thought we would like to make you a small gift. You’ve been with us a long time now and you’ve given us a great deal of help, not to say pleasure.’
Fanny looked swiftly from one to the other. Aunt Louisa’s expression had not changed. She was still thinking petulantly of the awkwardness and inconvenience of having to give a home to the strange children arriving from Shanghai—or was she thinking of the unsuitability of giving Fanny a gift?
But Uncle Edgar was smiling and waiting for Fanny’s response.
She bit her lips. Whatever the gift was, she wasn’t sure she could accept it gracefully.
‘Look,’ said Uncle Edgar, opening a small red morocco box.
The jewel gleamed on the red velvet. Fanny’s self-possession left her and she gasped.
‘But Uncle Edgar! Aunt Louisa! It’s too valuable!’
Uncle Edgar picked up the pendant and swung it from his plump forefinger. It was a dark blue sapphire set in diamonds and gold filigree.
‘It belonged to an aunt of mine,’ said Uncle Edgar. ‘A great-aunt of yours. So you’re entitled to it just as much as Amelia would be. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
Fanny looked again mutely at Aunt Louisa. Aunt Louisa said in her tart voice, ‘Don’t thank me. I personally think your uncle is spoiling you. Just because you’re going on a short journey which is no doubt a great excitement and pleasure to you.’
So she was expected to take charge of the children when they had settled down at Darkwater. Aunt Louisa could not have told her more plainly. She was full of indignation and confusion, for she didn’t mean to come back, anyway. So how could she accept so valuable a present?
Fanny had inherited from her Irish mother not only her luxuriant dark hair, but a mobile mouth whose lower lip protruded when she was hurt or angry. It was something she couldn’t control.
‘Why are you giving it to me, Uncle Edgar?’ she asked aggressively.
Uncle Edgar’s expression remained amused, benevolent, just a little unreadable.
‘Because it pleases me to. It’s as simple as that. Your aunt thought we should have waited until your twenty-first birthday. She didn’t agree that this was the right occasion on which to make you a gift of this kind. Why not, I said? Fanny’s like a daughter to us. We must do all we can for her. After all, she has only her looks to get her a husband. I’ve no doubt they’re more than sufficient, but a bauble or two may help. Come here, my dear. Let me put it on you.’
Some people, Fanny thought, were born to be givers and some takers. Neither appreciated the other. She must accept this gift gracefully, although it couldn’t have been made at a worse time. This was not the moment to begin feeling grateful, otherwise her strength of purpose would weaken. After all, she could leave the jewel behind. Amelia would eventually pounce on it greedily and claim it as her own.
Uncle Edgar’s plump hands, remarkably soft, on the back of her neck made her flesh prickle. Once before she had felt them there. It was a long time ago. She was dripping wet from her fall into the lake, and he was caressing her beneath her soaking hair, reassuring her. She remembered that she had been still trembling with fear and shock.
The sapphire lay like the touch of a cool finger-tip against her throat.
Aunt Louisa had thawed sufficiently to give a frosty smile and said, ‘It’s very becoming, Fanny. You must wear it at Amelia’s coming-out ball.’
‘Yes, Aunt Louisa. Thank you very much. Thank you, Uncle Edgar.’
(And people would say, Where did you get that magnificent pendant? Your uncle? Isn’t he the most generous person in the world!…) But she wouldn’t be there. She would be far far away in the Crimea, in a useful world she had found for herself. Fanny’s lashes fluttered, and Uncle Edgar cried joyously, ‘There! She’s looking delighted. Aren’t you, my love?’
He gave his throaty chuckle and patted his wife’s cheek.
‘I hope you will look as delighted the next time I give you a piece of jewellery. Eh, my dearest?’ He was using his playful tone, which meant he was in a high good humour. ‘But of course you will. You always do. That’s one of the most charmingly predictable characteristics of the fair sex. Now, Fanny,’ his voice changed to his brisk business-like one. ‘You have only fifteen minutes in which to change before Trumble will be waiting. So run along, and see that Hannah is ready, too.’
3
DARKWATER… THE NAME HAD come from the peculiarly dark colour of the water in the moat that had surrounded the house until the last century. The brown soil and the frequently lowering grey sky had
made the water look black. Now the moat had been drained and the sloping lawn was green and innocent, but the lake glittering beyond the yews and the chestnuts had the same tendency to turn into black marble on a dark day.
The drawbridge had gone, the Elizabethan façade of time-mellowed brick, diamond-paned windows, and rows of tortuously shaped chimneys, remained. Extensive restoration work had been done at the beginning of the century, but there were still the cavernous fireplaces, the winding stairways, the elaborately carved oak ceilings, darkened with time, and the tiny minstrels’ gallery hanging over the long dining room.
There were twenty bedrooms, as well as those of the servants in the attics. The house and parkland lay in a gentle fold of the hills. Only from the upstairs windows were the moors visible. The wind blew across them and into the house which was always full of draughts and ancient creaking noises.
It was only in the summer that the place was innocent. Then the tattered and writhing shapes of the oaks were concealed beneath green leaves, the yellow flag irises swayed on the edge of the lake, and the water reflected the passing clouds. Sun shone through the diamond-paned windows of the house, and the whining edge had gone out of the wind. In the downstairs rooms there was an old, old smell, impregnated in the walls, of pot pourri, beeswax, woodsmoke, and roses. The warmth of the sun brought it out.
In the summer Darkwater was beautiful. It was as if its happier ghosts—perhaps there were summertime ghosts—lived then.
But in winter the picture was entirely different. The gardens and parkland were desolate, leafless, and stricken. Clouds and mist hung close to the ground. The Chinese pavilion by the lake, built by the same Davenport who had restored the house, its red and gold paint flaked and faded with the years, looked barbaric and completely alien. The wind battered on the windows and the heavy draperies made slow deliberate movements. Logs smouldered in the great fireplace in the hall day and night and fires had to be maintained in the living rooms and bedrooms. With the curtains drawn and the lamps lit the rooms took on a cosiness that deceived all but the most sensitive. These might be nervous maids who spilt hot water or a scuttle of coals in the passage because a curtain billowed out, or a voice cried. Or it was more likely to be the children who didn’t care for the long passages at dusk and screamed if a draught blew out the candle. Amelia used to cling to Fanny’s skirts. Fanny remembered once taking a wrong turning and instead of opening her bedroom door finding herself in a completely strange room, with a fourposter, and the dark shape of a form in the bed.
She had been sobbing with fright when the maid found her.
‘It’s your own fault, Miss Fanny! Running ahead like that, thinking to be so clever.’
‘There’s s-someone in the bed!’ Fanny stuttered.
The maid held the candle high. Its flickering light fell on the plump coverlet and the long shape of the bolster. The bed was empty.
‘You see! There’s no one there. This room hasn’t been used for ages. Not since my time here, anyway. You’re a silly girl to be frightened.’
But the little maid, not much taller than Fanny, was frightened, too. Fanny knew that by the way the candlestick shook in her hand. They had scurried back down the passage, round the right turning, and safely to Fanny’s room, the little narrow one next to Amelia’s and the nursery.
That was when Fanny first began to hear sounds in the wind, voices, laughter, and sometimes footsteps.
But that was partly Lady Arabella’s fault for the unsuitable stories she had used to tell the children before their bedtime. She would begin an innocent fairy tale, and then, when the three children’s attention was completely engaged, the tale would become subtly and indescribably sinister, this somehow made worse by Lady Arabella’s own plump kindly and cosy appearance. Only her eyes showed a curious glee. They were the wolf’s eyes looking out of the amiable sheep’s head.
Amelia used to burst into sobs and have to be comforted with sugar plums. Fanny had never cried. Once she had put her fingers in her ears, and Lady Arabella had chuckled with what seemed to be gentle satisfaction. But mostly she had been driven to listening with a terrible fascination. She was not always able to eat her sugar plum afterwards, but put it in the pocket of her apron to be enjoyed in a calmer moment. George, of course the eldest and a boy, never showed any nervousness or fear, but it was significant that now, in his delicate state of health as a result of his war wound, he frequently had nightmares and cried out, not about the charging Cossacks, but about the human head beneath the innocent piecrust, or the clothes in the wardrobe that came out and walked about in the dusk.
George was too old now to be comforted with sugar plums. He kept a bottle of brandy beside his bed instead. It was on the doctor’s recommendation.
When Edgar Davenport had bought Darkwater some three years after his marriage, Lady Arabella had come to make her home there. She hadn’t been interested in sharing the young couple’s quite modest manor house in Dorset, she had bitterly opposed her daughter’s marriage to a young man whom she had considered a nobody. She was the daughter of an earl herself, and had thought that Louisa could have done a great deal better for herself. But Louisa hadn’t any great beauty and since Lady Arabella’s husband had squandered her own fortune, and then drunk himself to death, Louisa’s chances were considerably marred. At the age of twenty-three, she had been very glad to take Edgar, as perhaps her only chance. And anyway, if he was a quietish sort with no dashing looks, he was still a pleasant and amusing young man, with none of his young brother’s tendencies towards wildness. As it turned out, he was a very good catch, for when the ancient great uncle in Devon died, and Darkwater came on the market, it appeared that Edgar had more resources than he had divulged.
Darkwater, he said, must not be allowed to go out of the family. He would buy it himself, even if it meant economising for years to come. His wife demurred, it was late autumn when she saw Darkwater for the first time and it depressed and vaguely frightened her. The leaves were falling and the clouds hanging low. The house indoors had the shabbiness to be expected after the eighty year occupation of a bookish and solitary bachelor. It made Louisa shiver. Or perhaps this was only because she was at that time expecting Amelia, and pregnancies didn’t agree with her.
But Edgar had no intention of asking his wife’s opinion. He was the master and the decision was his. He had made up his mind the moment he had heard of his great uncle’s death.
So, just before Amelia’s birth, the family moved to Devon, and Lady Arabella accompanied them. It was necessary for a mother to be near her daughter at such a time, she said. Her innocent myopic eyes told nothing, but it was clear enough from the start that she considered Darkwater a fitting residence for herself, the descendant of a noble family. She meant to spend the rest of her life there.
She had no patience with Louisa’s fancies about the place. Anyway, Louisa’s blood had been considerably watered down by the unfortunate father she had had, and one wouldn’t expect her to fit so easily into this environment.
Edgar took immediately to the life of lord of the manor, with his stable well-stocked with good hunters and his house with servants, his tenants eagerly welcoming a landlord who was interested in their welfare, the village church no less, for it needed restoration and a vicar less old and doddering, and the sparse social life of the moors desperately wanted an infusion of new blood. Lady Arabella also took to the mingled charm and desolation of Darkwater. She found that it suited her temperament. The closing down of the mist filled her with excitement, she adored the wind-petrified shapes of the leafless trees, she simply put on another shawl if the draughts were too bad.
She selected two large rooms on the first floor and made them uniquely hers. As the years went by the rooms shrank, for they were so cluttered with her possessions. These included a life-size marble statue of her mother, the Countess of Dalston in Grecian robes which stood imposingly in a corner. At dusk, before the maids had brought in the lamps, it looked terrifyingly like anot
her person in the room. Even more so when Lady Arabella had negligently tossed one of her shawls, or perhaps her garden hat, on to it. But this was strictly her privilege. No servant or child was allowed to take such liberties.
For the rest, there were innumerable small tables, knick-knacks, paintings, low chairs with uncomfortably sloping backs, an astonishing edifice of seashells and fishes beneath a glass dome, an enormous globe on which she was wont to make the children trace all the countries of the British Empire, a birdcage empty and a little morbid since her parrot had died, heavy plush curtains heavily ornamented with bobbles, gilt-framed mirrors, cupboards filled to overflowing with a hotchpotch of stuff, and in the centre of the room the chaise-longue on which Lady Arabella spent a great deal of her time, doing her needlework or pursuing what she called her historical readings. She was deeply interested in history and folklore, particularly regarding the part of the country in which she lived.
Or she might simply sit idle with her cat Ludwig in her lap.
‘Do you know why he is called Ludwig?’ she used to ask the unwillingly enthralled children. ‘Because once I was in love with someone called Ludwig. Oh, yes, stare if you like, but it’s true. He was a German prince. He had moustaches, so!’ Lady Arabella puffed her cheeks and caressed imaginary moustaches. She was a born story-teller. ‘But he wasn’t permitted by his parents, or protocol, call it what you will, to return your Grandmamma’s love. And anyway I was only sixteen, which was much too young even in those days, when we were all wearing muslin dresses that looked like nightgowns and pretending to be afraid of Napoleon Buonaparte. So now I have only a cat to love me. Unless by some chance any of you children do.’
She stared at them so hard with her round short-sighted eyes that they murmured affirmatives, Amelia going so far as to cry, ‘I do, Grandmamma. I do.’
It was always George, her favourite, to whom Lady Arabella looked for a display of affection.
