Tyringham Park

by Rosemary McLoughlin

  She thought she might faint when she first saw Manus in the village. Her belief that he was hers by right was as strong now as it had been during those eight years of waiting for him to declare himself. Standing at her window, hidden behind lace curtains, she stared and stared, willing him to cross the street so she could have a good look at him, but he stayed on the other side. He was walking home after Sunday Mass when she spotted him. There was a female imposter walking beside him and four children accompanying them. Two boys, two girls. How perfect. The eldest, a boy of about twenty, looked the dead spit of how she remembered Manus looking when she first met him.

  The unfairness of it. Those four children should have been hers.

  The younger daughter said something and Manus and his wife laughed. The wife had no dress sense and was on the plump side, the typical shape of someone who had let herself go. After Manus met Dixon again, would he regret turning her down when he saw how well she had preserved her looks and kept her figure?

  She wondered what description Jim had given the bank to ferret out her Beth Hall identity. ‘Outstanding-looking woman, middle-aged but looking thirty, fashionably dressed, impressive manner, air of authority’? Yes, something along those lines.

  She straightened the seams of her stockings, pulled the veil down over her face and smoothed on her gloves. It was one o’clock. Making her way down the main street of the village, and walking the half mile to the Park gates, past the shell of the lodge, and then along the beech-lined avenue, was an experience she wanted to savour, every second of it. As she passed by she expected to dazzle the locals with her finery. It was the first time she had put herself on display since her arrival. Would they be able to judge, simply by looking at her, that she would have been wasted if she’d stayed in this backwater? And when they heard her speak, if they dared speak to her, would they be surprised to find she could now outshine Lily East in the use of long words and correct grammar, though she stopped short of the la-di-da accent Lily affected as it tended to put people off?

  It gave her pleasure to hear from the current servants that Miss East had given up her position of head housekeeper to become ordinary Mrs Sid Cooper, living in Sid’s small cottage (from which she was soon to be evicted), rearing his daughter Catherine until the young girl was old enough to leave for Dublin to become a nurse, all the time doing good works, making ends meet and leading an uneventful life.

  That last bit was about to change.

  The stables came up on Dixon’s left. The double doors were open, but there was no sign of Manus, which suited her as she didn't want to see him face to face until the following day. Best get Lily East and Charlotte out of the way first so she could give Manus her full and undivided attention when the time came.

  She stared at the spot where Lady Blackshaw had left the baby carriage, and at the corner where Teresa had glimpsed the two little girls for the last time, not understanding the significance of what she’d seen. Dixon wouldn’t be the only one looking at those areas with heightened interest when her story was told.

  As the huge stone house came into view, snippets of the optimistic, romantic notions she held when she first arrived here at the age of eighteen and gazed up at it as if it were a magic castle, made her cringe at the naïvety of her misconceptions, almost as naïve as the belief when she was in the orphanage that one day her mother, whoever she was, would call by to reclaim her.

  The vicar of her Huddersfield parish in England had told her she would be nanny to a very grand family on a very grand estate. Her mind had filled with images of beautiful women with tall hair in exquisite clothes and men in embroidered coats with buckles on their shoes – she had seen pictures of such people in the few books of fairy tales at the orphanage. What a disappointment the life at Tyringham Park had been. Lady Blackshaw never dressed for dinner when Lord Waldron was abroad, which was most of the time, staying in her male riding clothes all day and evening. No parties, no balls, no visitors, no occasions. The last hunt that Lord Waldron had hosted on his way back from India before he joined the War Office in London was so thrilling she knew what she was missing. After seeing all those stylish people dressed for the dinner and the dance, she had become more dissatisfied than usual, sitting in the dark, wearing flat, mannish, lace-up shoes, dressed in her uniform that she wore seven days a week, entertaining sour thoughts in a cold nursery with a whining child for company.

  At the back of the house she passed the door that led to the nursery wing and it took all her strength of purpose not to open it and go straight up the three flights of stairs to confront Charlotte who would already be there waiting, expecting to be saved, unaware of the sharpness of the axe that was about to fall, splitting her life apart, separating her from her daughter, and serve her right the little tattle-tale and liar who had told Lily East that Dixon had hurt Victoria. As if she would have hurt a pretty little thing like that. Dixon had tripped, that’s all, and accidentally dropped Victoria against the slats of the cot. It could happen to anyone. And as a result of Charlotte’s lie, Dixon had been cast out, deprived of Manus, the only love she had ever wanted.

  Let Charlotte wait and stew.

  First, the former Miss Lily East had to be enlightened.

  The rowan trees in front of Sid’s cottage had grown so thick she couldn’t see the building, but she remembered where it was and followed the path.

  One thought persisted. If Miss East hadn’t taken it upon herself to get rid of her, she would have made Charlotte speak that time and, who knows, might have forced the truth out of her. She estimated she was only two days away from starving her into submission. But the old witch had come along with her jealousy disguised as concern and, with her friend to back her up, had cast Charlotte as the innocent victim rather than the child murderer that she was.

  She saw a bent figure kneeling on the ground digging holes and separating seedlings. Moving closer, she stood to take in the scene and deliberately let her shadow fall across the woman and the flowerbed.

  What a comedown, she thought. Instead of the neat, spotless figure with her set of keys jingling with each brisk step she took along shining corridors as she inspected her domain and gave orders, here was a dumpy old widow with clay on her hands, wearing shabby clothes and not a servant in sight to do her bidding.

  Lily Cooper couldn’t turn her stiff neck to see who was casting the shadow behind her and struggled to get to her feet. Dixon took her arm and with a strong grip pulled her to a standing position. The old woman looked up at her helper.

  “Well, Lily East,” said Dixon. “I can’t think of you as Mrs Cooper, so I’ll stick to Lily East if you don’t mind.” She paused, pleased with her cool delivery. “You may call me Elizabeth, my proper name. I’d be upset if you didn’t remember me. And what are you doing putting in flowers that you won’t be around to see blooming?”

  Recognition flared in Lily Cooper’s eyes. She stepped back, treading on the seedlings she had just planted and held on tightly to the picket fence behind her for support.

  “There’s no need to back off like that. I’m not going to bite you.”

  She held out her hand.

  Lily kept clutching the fence and ignored the outstretched arm.

  “Have it your own way, then. I think what you need right now is a nice cup of tea. Or perhaps something stronger after you hear what I’ve come twelve thousand miles to tell you.”

  81

  Tyringham Park

  1943

  Charlotte’s shoes clattered on the wooden stairs. She could feel a heaviness bearing down on her head. Around the return and up the second flight she found it difficult to lift her feet as more weight seemed to press on them. Her mind told her she was moving upwards but her perception was that she was sinking into a basement.

  At the top of the third flight she stood on the landing and looked over the banister into the dark stairwell, hearing Nurse Dixon’s voice shouting: “Come away from there! It’s dangerous. If you fall over and break your le
gs, don’t think you can come running to me to complain!” cackling each time at her tired joke as if she had just thought of it and was saying it for the first time.

  Charlotte was eight years old again, standing in trepidation outside the nursery door, wishing she didn’t have to enter. Wishing she could go back to the kitchen and stay there all day with Cook. Or sleep on a bench in the tack room with a horse blanket over her for warmth, waiting for Manus to arrive in the morning. Or in the servants’ quarters with Miss East who always looked at her with a kind face, but to whom she wasn’t allowed to speak as Nurse Dixon said she was a witch. Charlotte knew that she wasn’t as she didn’t have a lump on her nose or a pointy hat or chin but she stayed away from her all the same to avoid Nurse Dixon’s wrath.

  Looking back it seemed as if she had spent hours wishing she were anywhere else but here, on this landing, delaying for as long as possible having to face Nurse Dixon, but knowing in the end she had no option as there was no one at the Park willing or in a position to take her part.

  She turned the handle of the nursery door. It was a surprise to see the light coming through the windows dazzling her when she looked in, as in her memory the nursery was always dark. She had to remind herself she was now an adult, tall and strong, and had nothing to fear, but the eight-year-old inside her was full of apprehension, waiting for a punishment that could fall on her at any moment for no reason at all except to satisfy a whim of Nurse Dixon’s.

  Victoria’s cot and her own bed were still in their original positions, unused for twenty-six years and covered in dust. There beside the window was the rocking chair that Dixon slept in for most of the day while Charlotte was forced to keep quiet or, as she grew older, go off and amuse herself. Charlotte, who until recently had been able to block out all memories associated with this place, could now see Victoria sitting in her small chair beside the low table, as clearly as if no time had passed.

  With anguish borne of her new sensibility as a mother, she remembered the day Dixon’s indulgence towards Victoria changed to anger when Victoria refused to eat a portion of particularly disgusting-looking steamed liver. It pained her to picture Dixon forcing open the child’s mouth and pushing in a spoonful. Victoria spat it on the floor and ran away laughing, thinking it was all a game. “You won’t make a fool of me, young lady,” Dixon growled, seizing her and yanking her back to the table with an action strong enough to stretch a ligament in the child’s shoulder. Victoria looked towards Charlotte, bewildered and frightened into silence by the pain of the rough handling. Closing her mouth and twisting her head from side to side was futile after Dixon scraped up the liver and forced it back into Victoria’s mouth. Victoria spat it all out. Dixon slapped her and repeated the procedure. Victoria gagged. Dixon slapped her again and screamed: “Open your mouth.” Victoria refused. Dixon used force to shove in three pieces. Victoria panicked and made choking noises and the three pieces flew out. “Don’t think you’ll get the better of me,” growled Dixon, picking up the wet liver.

  How powerless Charlotte had felt, and how well she knew without being told that none of this was to be mentioned to Teresa Kelly when she returned from the village where she had gone to pick up a length of lace. Worst of all, though, was her shameful reaction, a quivering gladness that it was Victoria rather than herself who, for a change, was being attacked.

  After Dixon failed to impose her will, she lifted Victoria high in the air and threw her from a distance into the cot, ignoring the loud crack the child’s head made against the side and, not checking to see if the impact had done any damage, left the room. Charlotte, now flooded with genuine sympathy for Victoria who had blood pouring from a gash on her scalp, ignored one of Dixon’s rules and climbed in beside her sister who turned and put the unhurt arm around her in a tight clasp, and quietened her hiccupping sobs. Charlotte pressed the red blanket against the cut and cuddled Victoria until the little one stopped quivering and fell asleep. It was one of the sweetest memories of her life. After Dixon came back and found the two of them in each other’s arms, it turned into one of the bitterest.

  That episode which occurred a month before she disappeared marked the end of Victoria’s babyhood. Every day after that the two little girls held themselves suspended, listening for the sound of Teresa Kelly’s footsteps, knowing that Dixon’s manner would change at the sound, after which time she would pretend to be as good-natured as Teresa herself. A reprieve would be won for only as long as Teresa was present.

  “I’m sorry, Victoria. I wish I’d known what to do,” said the adult Charlotte to the memory of her sister. “I did tell Mother but it got worse after that. She told Dixon what I’d said and Dixon called me a sneak and a tattle-tale and said if I ever told anyone anything again, worms would grow inside me and they would eat my tongue and heart and grow so big my tummy would explode all over the room and I would die, and I believed her and I never said another word about her.”

  When Dixon told them Teresa Kelly was leaving for good because they had become too wicked for her to tolerate any longer, Charlotte could see only bleakness in the future. Worse for Victoria than for herself, as Victoria would have seven more years to endure, whereas Charlotte would be escaping to boarding school in September, only three months away – or so she thought at the time.

  When Teresa came to say goodbye, she and Victoria clung to her, weeping, begging her not to go. Teresa joined in the tears. Dixon stood by, grim-faced, and later punished them for being so undisciplined. At her orphanage no one was allowed to show any sadness when any of the girls left, either for adoption or employment, and she didn’t see any reason why that rule shouldn’t be applied to this nursery.

  The day she saw Teresa descend the nursery stairs for the last time before heading off to Australia, Charlotte remembered, was the day she completely lost hope.

  Before Dixon arrived, there was something she must do.

  She entered the room beside Dixon’s that had been permanently out of bounds for as long as she could remember. It was filled with hundreds of years of accumulated broken and discarded items – toys, books, clothes, lamps, shoes – such small shoes – cribs, baby carriages, sporting gear for cricket, swimming, tennis, rugby, and football, burst and perished balls: heaven for a bored child on a rainy day, but a place deemed dangerous by Dixon. The smell of damp was stronger than she remembered. All the objects to the right were covered by thick mould, the cause of which was easy to see – a missing slate from the roof that had let in years of rain. It crossed her mind that she should tell someone about it before the whole room and the two rooms below it were destroyed. She should but she wouldn’t.

  She lifted up objects and stacked them to the side as she made her way to the back corner, which looked relatively dry. As a child, she was able to crawl under or over, but that wasn’t an option now. No one had been there since then, she could tell by the uniformity of the thickness of the dust and the uninterrupted pattern of the widespread mildew.

  Reaching under a small wicker chair, she pulled out an object wrapped in an embroidered cushion cover, cold to the touch, but not damp. She let the light from the hole in the roof shine on the cover as she partially unwrapped it to reveal a doll’s red hair. Breathing deeply to control her nerves – she didn’t want to have another attack – she pushed the doll in its cushion cover into the bottom of her bag, where she covered it with her cardigan, scarf and gloves. Halfway across the Irish Sea, on her way to London after she received the summons bound to come from Colonel Turncastle, she would drop it over the side of the mail boat and never have to think of it again.

  Closing the door of the storeroom behind her, she returned to the nursery to wait for Nurse Dixon’s arrival, expecting to stay only as long as it took to tell her how much she hated her. What she really wanted to do was give her a hard slap on her face. Better still, eight hard slaps, one for every year Dixon had made her life a misery. But she wouldn’t do that, lowering herself to Dixon’s level. She would control her outrage
and keep her dignity.

  Then over to the cottage to see Lily East at last. To apologise for not coming down to see her, to ask forgiveness for throwing the brooch at her, to thank her for saving her from Dixon, to beg her to come and live with her in Dublin, where she would live in luxury with the family, being treated like royalty, until they all returned to Tyringham Park together.

  After that, down to the stables to see Manus and tell him about Harcourt’s heroic end. Presumably her mother hadn’t bothered to write to tell him the details he would be so avid to hear.

  But first she had to endure this meeting with Dixon. She had nothing to fear, so why did she feel so afraid?

  It wasn’t as if anyone had forced her to come. She had come of her own free will to face her old tormentor. After today she would never think of her again.

  82

  Lily sat slumped at the kitchen table as if winded. She had seen pure joy on Sid’s face when his first grandchild had been placed in his arms, on Sinéad Quirke’s face the day she married Manus, hardly able to credit she had finally secured the man she had been in love with for years, and on Manus’s face when Charlotte completed her first clear round on Mandrake, vindicating his method of training to Lady Blackshaw. Now she saw a look of joy in a distorted form on Dixon’s face as she headed off to ruin Charlotte’s life.