Tyringham Park

by Rosemary McLoughlin

  Only three people on the estate knew the reason for the particular hatred: Manus, horse-breaker and trainer, and Teresa Kelly, seamstress – the only two employees from the locality – and the steward, a Tyrone man, who oversaw all the operations of the estate and collected the rents from the tenant farmers on Lord Waldron’s behalf.

  For more than a year, the steward had been expecting some kind of retaliation for what Waldron had done, so when the young boy burst into his office with the news about Victoria, his first thought was that the time for it had come. But when the boy added, “Manus fears that she is drownded and is searching the river,” he allowed himself to hope that the disaster he would be dealing with was domestic rather than political.

  When the steward came into the stable yard to find Lady Blackshaw he thought that, with her hair hanging loose about her face, she looked like the twenty-year-old innocent she had been when she first arrived from England as a bride nine years earlier.

  “Good man,” she said. “You take over here. I need to talk to Miss East and Nurse Dixon.”

  She turned and strode out the stables' doors, almost colliding with Miss East who was hurrying in.

  “There you are, Miss East. What kept you?”

  She took the housekeeper by the elbow, turned her around to face back towards the house and walked ahead, now full of purpose, forcing the older, smaller woman to do half-running and skipping steps to keep up.

  “You’re just the person I want to see. Tell me which servants weren’t in the walled garden this afternoon and everything you know about Teresa Kelly. And stop that snivelling.”

  Sid Cooper, the coachman, had been sent by Lady Blackshaw to look along the avenue in case the child had wandered in that direction. Rounding each tree-obscured bend, he expected to see Victoria, either on her own or in the care of a solicitous servant who had chanced upon her, but there was no one at all in view. Instead of returning to report, he used his initiative and carried on past the empty gate lodge and the stone pillars to the main road, turned left and continued a quarter mile to the village of Ballybrian. Best ask there. When he arrived in the main square his urgency and the pace of his over-excited pony prompted some villagers to call out to him, to ask if there was anything the matter. The youngest child from the Park was missing and had anyone seen her or anything suspicious? They would ask around immediately – and would they be of any help in a search? They would, and it would be much appreciated, he said, taking it upon himself to issue the invitation – now was not the time to be worrying about formalities. Would they have a look around the village first?

  Sid’s last place to check was the train station. With the part-time stationmaster not on duty, he looked into all the unlocked rooms himself and found them deserted.

  By the time he turned for home, the villagers were already on the move, some spread out along the main road but most already on the mile-long drive up to the house, some of the older youths cycling ahead and the younger boys running alongside, jostling and shoving one another. The sombre cathedral-like atmosphere created by the two-hundred-year-old beeches arching over the length of the avenue had the effect of heightening their spirits rather than dampening them.

  Nurse Dixon looked down through the front windows of the nursery and saw the beautiful Lady Blackshaw and the old witch Miss East walking quickly along the gravel drive towards the front entrance. No sign of Victoria. Just as she predicted. Fobbed off on to one of the maids, no doubt, after waking and needing attention. She knew that Lady Blackshaw, with her lack of interest in anything that happened in the nursery, wouldn’t know what to do with a child that wasn’t asleep.

  Crossing to the back windows, she saw that, unusually at this hour, no one was making use of the walled garden. Now that her only friend Teresa Kelly was gone, would she ever have the courage to go there to join the others of an afternoon? Probably not. Hardly worth worrying about, really, seeing as she would be leaving soon. No one liked her. Never had. All down to the old witch Lily East, the very one who should have smoothed her path or ‘let her in’ to the established circle, seeing they came from the same parish in Huddersfield in England, but Lily had done the opposite. To be reared on tales of Miss East’s success and arrive in awe of her and then find herself pushed out in the cold was an upset she didn’t intend to forget.

  She had slept fitfully the previous night, what with her sadness at Teresa’s departure and the disruptions of Victoria’s restlessness and Charlotte’s talking in her sleep. I need a catnap before Victoria is brought back, she concluded, fetching an eiderdown from her room. If Charlotte comes in, she’ll know better than to wake me – she’s been warned often enough.

  The steward’s plan was to search the estate so thoroughly that when Lord Waldron returned from London at the end of the war, there would be no miscalculations or oversights for him to pinpoint and criticise.

  Tyringham Park estate, the most impressive in County Cork, consisted of a fifty-two-roomed stone mansion, splendid enough with its single turreted tower to be referred to as a castle, and 19,000 acres of land. It wouldn’t be easy to organise a comprehensive search. He would concentrate for the present on everything inside its boundary walls, seeing that was his responsibility, with only a cursory survey of the village and its surroundings.

  The only crowd the steward thought he would ever see at the Park in his lifetime would be a hostile one, so he was doubly grateful for the scores of villagers who immediately came to help, and for the hundreds more people who, as the word spread, arrived later in the day from neighbouring Big Houses and from outlying villages.

  Lady Blackshaw, in a fit of pique years previously, had decided not to employ anyone to live in the lodge to open and close the gates and check the movements of people entering and leaving the estate. “Why bother when no one visits?” she had said, intimating that it was Lord Waldron’s fault, because of his long absences, that there was never any social activity at the Park. Why have someone sitting there doing nothing? she had argued. Let them plant barley on the land instead and make themselves useful.

  She must regret that directive now.

  Like Manus, the steward had concluded early on that Victoria had drowned, but felt it was his duty to issue instructions to exhaust all other alternatives in the hope the child was still alive.

  When Edwina was forced to ask about Teresa Kelly, she left Miss East standing and sat far enough away so she wouldn’t have to tilt her head to look up at her. To hear her husband Waldron constantly praise the housekeeper, one would think she was perfection personified, and to hear her speak and observe her attitude, one would think she considered herself the mistress of the house rather than the mere servant that she was, so Edwina didn’t like to lose an opportunity, even in circumstances such as these, to put her in her place.

  After a quick check on the servants who had been in the garden, Edwina said, “Tell me all you know about Teresa Kelly.” She didn’t mention Manus’s remark about Teresa’s attachment to Victoria and his belief that she would never leave the Park because of it. “And pull yourself together. Your blubbering is most unseemly.”

  Miss East was finding it difficult to concentrate when all she could think of was a lost and frightened Victoria, but she forced herself to speak.

  Teresa Kelly was a woman from the village who had run into trouble at home with a difficult sister-in-law. Miss East, who had been friends with her for years, gave her a live-in position after Victoria was born, with instructions to divide her time between sewing and assisting Nurse Dixon in the nursery.

  “Two grown women to look after two children?” Edwina interrupted. “Verging on the excessive, one would think.” She couldn’t very well say ‘Why didn’t you consult me?’ seeing she’d made it clear from the beginning that she wanted nothing to do with domestic matters, and Waldron had instructed Miss East accordingly, but she was still peeved that Miss East was able to exercise such authority. She also disliked the fact that Waldron insisted the woman be
addressed as Miss East, rather than just East, which, to Edwina’s way of thinking, would have been more in keeping with tradition.

  “The local parish priest arranged for Teresa to travel to New South Wales,” Miss East continued, “to marry a farmer and look after his aged mother. She has a friend living out there.”

  “Did she have a special attachment to Victoria?”

  “She was very fond of both girls. She was an affectionate, big-hearted person.”

  Lady Blackshaw raised her eyebrows as she said, “How very admirable.”

  “Yes, she was admirable,” Miss East agreed, pretending not to notice the sarcasm. “She made such an impression in the time she was here it was as if she had been here all her life.”

  “How charming. Most enlightening. Thank you, Miss East. That will be all. Now find Dixon and send her to me and make sure you clean yourself up and change your shoes by the time I catch sight of you again.”

  Away from the judgemental gaze of Miss East, she would ask Dixon about Teresa Kelly, who had lived in the Park for nearly two years and, for all Edwina knew about her, might as well have been invisible.

  On her way to the third floor, Miss East heard a raised voice as she passed in front of an open window on the ground floor of the west wing. She looked out to see eight-year-old Charlotte, in muddied dress and shoes, kneeling on the ground beside a small bridge she had constructed over pooled water that was blocked by mouldy leaves from entering the gully.

  She held a stone in her right hand and her face was turned up to Nurse Dixon who was looming over her hissing, “Well? Well? Say something. Go on, say something.” When Charlotte didn’t answer, Nurse Dixon drew her own hand back high over her head. Charlotte closed her eyes and scrunched up her face in readiness for a blow which, when it came, made her head swivel.

  Nurse Dixon then grabbed Charlotte’s arm and yanked her to her feet.

  “It’s a pity the gypsies didn’t steal you instead of sweet little Victoria,” she said. “No one would miss your ugly puss around the place.”

  Miss East found herself running in an undignified fashion along the corridor, out a side door, across flower-beds and a cobbled courtyard until she appeared, breathless, as if by chance, in front of the entangled pair.

  Nurse Dixon turned red, but promptly affected a defiant look. “What do you want?” she demanded, holding Charlotte tightly by the upper arm.

  Charlotte’s face was devoid of colour. She looked as if she was about to faint.

  “Lady Blackshaw wants to see you without delay.”

  “You’re the third person to tell me that.” She loosened her grip and Charlotte fell to the ground. “I don’t know what she wants to see me for when it was her who lost Victoria, not me. I bet you thought it was me.”

  “I didn’t think. I’ll look after Charlotte while you’re gone.”

  Miss East held out her hand. “No, you don’t, Lily.” Dixon made the name sound like a swear word. “Charlotte comes with me. Come on, Charlotte, get up. I haven’t got all day.”

  Charlotte didn’t move.

  “Get up, I tell you, or I’ll send word to the policeman. You know what that means.”

  Charlotte stood up slowly and gave her hand to Nurse Dixon, who looked triumphantly at Miss East.

  “Come on, then.” As she passed the older woman, she deliberately bumped into her, causing her to lose her balance for a moment. “Sorry,” Dixon said with a smirk.

  4

  It was young Constable Declan Doyle who had been on duty when the message from Lady Blackshaw arrived at the barracks in Bandon, the nearest sizeable town, informing them about the missing child, instructing that officers be dispatched to the Park and asking for the family history of Teresa Kelly and details of her final days in Ballybrian. As a young ‘blow-in’ he didn’t realise how important Lady Blackshaw was perceived to be in the district, and had never heard of Teresa Kelly. His older colleague Inspector Christy Barry, who was a native of Ballybrian, had to fill him in on the background of both women.

  Charlotte was sketching in a listless fashion. She hadn’t spoken since Dixon told her of Victoria’s disappearance. No one had noticed. At this time of day she would normally be taking Mandrake over the jumps.

  “Go outside and play. You’re getting on my nerves with all that scribbling.”

  Charlotte didn’t move.

  “Go on. Build another one of those bridges you’re so fond of, but stay out of the mud.”

  Charlotte looked at her sadly.

  “You was happy enough doing that with Teresa, Miss Street-Angel-House-Devil, wasn’t you?”

  Charlotte stayed silent.

  “You would try the patience of a saint. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know. How many times do I have to tell you?” Dixon strode over to the table, snatched up the five pages of horse drawings, crumpled them and threw them into the fire, then grabbed Charlotte by the arm and dragged her, a dead weight, to the open door and pushed her onto the landing, adding through habit, “And stay away from them banisters.”

  Dixon needed to think, and couldn’t with that sullen face looking at her.

  The last twenty months, since Teresa Kelly had come bounding up the stairs on her first day, had been the happiest of her life. The two of them had made a connection right from the start, despite their different backgrounds, religion, accents and age. Dixon felt as if she had climbed out of a damp dungeon into a summer garden by allowing herself to believe she had found a real friend for the first time in her life.

  Teresa, unwelcome in her family home in the village since the death of her father and the arrival of a hostile sister-in-law, spent her spare hours, even her monthly day off, in the nursery with Dixon. “Where else would I be going?” she used to say. “My brother’s wife would be glad never to see my face again, and him, too, seeing he takes her part – and I love being here.” She didn’t appear to be bitter even though she had wasted, to Dixon’s way of thinking, the fifteen best years of her life caring for her senile father, with nothing to show for it at the end. The brother had inherited everything.

  When Teresa left in the evenings to join the other servants for dinner in the downstairs dining hall, leaving Dixon to eat from a tray with only Charlotte and Victoria for company, she thought she might die of jealousy and loneliness. When she saw Teresa and Miss East setting out for the village for their weekly night of cards, she suffered an extra torture. What if Miss East transmitted her dislike of Dixon to Teresa, dripping poison into her ear during the long walk there and back? She watched each week for any sign of a negative change in Teresa’s attitude towards her but found none. In fact, if she didn’t think she was imagining it, she would swear Teresa’s kindness was increasing, if that were possible.

  Each morning, Dixon would wait to hear Teresa’s footsteps on the stairs, and when she did the day took on a brighter aspect. Even the doleful Charlotte would give a screech of joy and rush to wrap her arms around Teresa, and Victoria, as she grew older, would wriggle free from Dixon’s arms and follow her sister’s example. Dixon didn’t approve of the excessive show of emotion from the girls but let it go unpunished for her friend’s sake as she seemed to like it and, besides, there were plenty of other excuses she could use for chastising them.

  It was clear to anyone who had eyes to see that Teresa tried her best to treat the two girls equally but wasn’t able to disguise the fact that Victoria was her favourite.

  If only all interviews could be as pleasurable as this one, Constable Declan Doyle thought when the striking young woman settled herself down to be questioned – back straight, feet together, hands clasped, eyes so downcast they looked closed.

  “Tell me in your own words what happened here today, Nurse Dixon,” he said in a gentle voice. “Take as much time as you need.” May she take all evening, he thought.

  Nurse Dixon spoke with little hesitation, not once looking at either Declan Doyle or Inspector Christy Barry.

  “After the rai
n stopped, I thought I’d take little Victoria out for some fresh air as we was cooped up for two days with all that rain. She were in no humour for walking, even though she learnt to walk early and is a good little walker. She couldn’t hardly keep her eyes open because she woke early and had missed her morning nap, so I put her in the baby carriage even though she were too big for it. Had to turn her sideways and bend up her legs so she would fit. At least she’ll get the fresh air, even if she don’t get the exercise, I said to myself. Charlotte went off on her own – indoors she draws and paints non-stop and outdoors, when she isn’t riding, she builds things with bricks and stones and wood – she likes to do things that make a mess. I ran into Lady Blackshaw who stopped to admire Victoria, who were already asleep. After I told her Victoria would sleep for more than an hour, she said she would take her for a walk and bring her back after that. I were that surprised you could have knocked me over with a feather. Her Ladyship has never done nothing like that before, certainly not with Charlotte in all her eight years, and it made me feel right peculiar handing over the baby carriage, but then I asked myself what could go wrong, with Her Ladyship the child’s mother after all.”

  She paused to allow the men time to take in the dramatic implication of those words.

  “What time was this?” asked the constable, who was concentrating so much on the movement of Nurse Dixon’s mouth he was neglecting to write in his notebook.

  “About two o’clock.”

  “What do you personally think of the idea that Teresa Kelly took the little girl with her when she left?”

  Dixon blinked three times before answering. “Absolute rubbish. She weren’t even at the Park today. She said her goodbyes yesterday, and besides she would never do a thing like –”