Miss Mary’s Daughter

by Diney Costeloe

  ‘No, I think not,’ returned Charles. ‘If we wait he should be able to pay his arrears in the spring, or the summer at the latest. After all, it wasn’t his fault that the storm laid waste his crop.’

  Thomas opened his mouth to argue, but Sophie, hoping to avert an argument, spoke first. ‘I saw you riding out earlier today, Charles,’ she said. ‘What a beautiful horse you have.’

  Louisa glanced across at her father to see how he would react to being interrupted. Surely, her eyes said, he’ll slap her down for such rudeness, but Thomas did not. He looked over at Charles and said, ‘What did you do about finding a horse for Sophie, Charles?’

  ‘Nothing as yet, sir,’ Charles replied. ‘I’ll look into it tomorrow. Perhaps Will Shaw has a suitable mount at the farm that we can borrow.’

  Thomas sniffed. ‘Don’t want Sophie on any old nag,’ he said. ‘And you must ride out with her until she gets to know her way around. Make sure she’s safe on the horse and knows where she’s going.’ He gave Charles a meaningful look, but only Charles knew its true significance and his lips tightened.

  ‘I could bring Millie over,’ suggested Matty. ‘Millie’s my horse, Sophie. She’s a brave little mare,’ she went on, ‘but I hardly ride her any more, and she could do with the exercise.’

  ‘Don’t know why you keep her at all,’ sniffed Louisa.

  ‘Because I’m fond of her,’ replied Matty. ‘She’ll do very well for Sophie while she’s here and if she needs a better mount later on, well, that will be the time to worry about it.’

  ‘She’ll do for now,’ conceded Thomas.

  ‘What do you think, Charles?’ Matty asked. ‘Shall I bring her over in the next couple of days?’

  ‘If you have the time, Aunt, I think it would be an excellent idea,’ Charles replied, though in fact he was less than delighted. He recognized his grandfather’s ulterior motive in suggesting that he should ride with Sophie, realizing that this was a way to throw them together. After the old man’s revelation of his plans for the two of them last night, Charles had already decided his own course of action. He was determined to stay well away from Sophie whilst she was in Cornwall, and could only hope that she would remain true to her original plan of returning to London after a short visit to Trescadinnick. The sooner she left, the happier he would be. He glanced across at his mother and saw from her pinched expression that she was unhappy with the idea too, but there was nothing either of them could do.

  ‘That’s settled then.’ Matty smiled across at Charles. ‘I’ll bring her over in the next couple of days.’

  Everything seemed to have been decided without reference to Sophie, but Sophie was delighted with the outcome. She longed to ride again. There had been no opportunity since her father’s death. How exhilarating it would be, she thought, as she imagined herself cantering across the cliff top, the wind in her hair, the sun on her face. She didn’t like the idea of Charles having to keep an eye on her, as if she were a child, but once everyone realized that she knew how to handle a horse, she would surely be allowed to ride out on her own.

  Charles had not told Louisa what Thomas had said the night before. He didn’t know how she would react; if she would also see it as the answer to the inheritance question, or whether she would consider it another example of Sophie’s intrusion into the Penvarrow family. Whichever it was, she would put him under pressure. Charles felt sure that Thomas had not yet broached his plan for their marriage to Sophie herself. Looking at her across the table, her auburn hair gleaming in the candlelight, her eyes alight as she talked with Aunt Matty, he recognized the Penvarrow strength of character and knew that she would not simply accept the old man’s dictates.

  At the end of the meal Thomas announced that he was tired and was going straight to bed, whereupon Louisa and Charles also excused themselves, leaving Matty and Sophie to return to the fire in the drawing room and wait for Mrs Paxton to bring tea and sweetmeats.

  ‘Thank you, Aunt, for the offer of your horse,’ Sophie said when they were comfortably seated before the fire. ‘It’s so long since I’ve had the chance to ride.’

  ‘I’m only too happy to bring her over,’ Matty assured her. ‘But your grandfather’s right, you shouldn’t ride out alone until you’re comfortable on her.’ She smiled, adding, ‘Though I’m sure you’ll love her.’

  A companionable silence fell between them and then Sophie said, ‘Aunt, may I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course, my dear,’ replied Matty cheerfully. ‘Anything you like.’ She looked at Sophie expectantly. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Now the time had come, Sophie wasn’t quite sure how to ask questions about Jocelyn; but, she reasoned, he was her uncle after all, so why shouldn’t she ask? It was natural that she should wonder what had happened to him, and she was intrigued by the locked room. So she drew a deep breath and took the plunge. ‘Aunt, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what really happened to your brother, Jocelyn, and why is his room locked?’

  For a moment Matty didn’t answer. She seemed disconcerted by the question. It clearly wasn’t one she’d been anticipating. Sophie watched the emotions fleeing across her aunt’s face as she waited for her to answer.

  At last Matty sighed. ‘Jocelyn? After your mother left Trescadinnick my brother, Jocelyn, was the light of my father’s life. He was an only son and heir since our elder brother died as a baby. We don’t know exactly what happened the night Joss died. For some reason he’d gone to the village one winter’s evening, though we never really knew why. Possibly to meet someone? The weather can change very quickly here, you know, and while he was out, a sea mist rolled in. It happens from time to time and when it does it can be very thick. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Joss was coming home from the village along the cliff path and he must have been caught in the mist.’

  ‘But surely he knew his way home, even if it was foggy,’ said Sophie.

  ‘In a mist like that you can get very disorientated; a sea mist, it alters everything. It’s thick and swirling and you can lose your sense of direction. Landmarks disappear, pathways become invisible. If you get caught in a mist like that, well, you could wander for hours, sometimes simply going round in circles, often going in completely the wrong direction.’ She paused, a distant look in her eyes. ‘That must have happened to Jocelyn that night. He must have become disorientated... must have walked too close to the cliff edge.’

  ‘And he fell?’ whispered Sophie.

  ‘And he fell. The most dreadful, dreadful accident. My father became an old man overnight.’

  Sophie shuddered, thinking how close she had gone to the edge of the cliff that very afternoon. Of course it had been a sunny afternoon; she had been in no danger as she’d stood at the top of the steep path that twisted its way to the tiny beach she could see below.

  Had that been where Joss had fallen, she wondered, and the thought made her feel slightly sick. How terrifying to feel yourself slip, to clutch at grass, gorse, thin air, as you tumbled through the darkness to be smashed on the rocks below.

  ‘It was a terrible day,’ Matty continued. ‘Poor Joss. He wasn’t missed until next day when Annie the maid brought up the hot water and found that his bed hadn’t been slept in. Search parties went out, but they only found his body later in the day. It was still lying where he’d fallen, caught among the rocks. It was a miracle that it was above the tideline and hadn’t been washed away.’

  Poor Joss! Sophie closed her eyes as if to blot out the imagined sight of a young man lying broken upon the rocks.

  Silence fell round them and when it was clear that her aunt would say no more, Sophie said gently, ‘How awful it must have been for all of you.’ A thought struck her. ‘You said my mother came to his funeral.’

  ‘Yes, I still had an address for her then, and I wrote and told her.’ There was a break in Matty’s voice as she went on. ‘That was the last time I saw her, at Joss’s funeral. The last time any of us saw her.’

&nbs
p; ‘His room was next to yours, wasn’t it? The room I’m in now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now it’s all locked up. AliceAnne told me it’s never opened. Why’s that, Aunt?’

  For the first time Sophie saw a flash of hostility in her aunt’s eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Sophie,’ Matty said. ‘But if you must know, my father had it sealed off the day Jocelyn was... found. No one has entered it since.’ She gave Sophie a sharp look, adding, ‘And nobody will.’

  ‘No, Aunt Matty,’ Sophie said hastily. ‘Thank you for telling me. I just...’ She paused to find the right words. ‘I just wanted to know, so that I didn’t say the wrong thing to my grandfather.’

  Matty’s face softened and she smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it, Sophie. What happened to Jocelyn, happened twenty-five years ago. We miss him, of course, but he’s never, never,’ she fixed Sophie with a penetrating look as she repeated the word ‘never’, ‘mentioned in front of your grandfather.’

  Sophie returned her look and replied, ‘I understand, Aunt.’

  Matty smiled at her and said, ‘Of course you do, my dear.’ Making it clear that the conversation was over, Matty got to her feet and said, ‘Well, I’m off to my bed. Sleep tight, my dear, and don’t dwell on the past. It’s all so long ago. It’s the future that matters now.’

  Carrying her candle up to bed, Sophie paused for a moment outside the door of the room next to hers. Twenty-five years, she thought. That door has not been opened for twenty-five years, and the memories of poor Jocelyn are locked away behind it. Shut away and forgotten. When will someone open that door and let him out? Who will look at his things and remember him with love? Poor Jocelyn.

  Sophie got ready for bed and then lay watching the candle alight on the dresser, its flickering flame reflected in the mirror. What a day it’s been, Sophie thought. How much I’ve seen and done in such a short time.

  She considered each of her new family. Grandfather Thomas, still its autocratic head, trying to deny his advancing years. She could see how much it frustrated him occasionally to accept help from other people. Next, there was Aunt Louisa, who clearly resented her arrival at Trescadinnick, though Sophie wasn’t quite sure why she should. Had she disliked her mother? Or envied her? And then there was Charles, reserved and cold. He treated her with punctilious courtesy, but there had certainly been no warmth in his welcome either. None of the adults seemed to have any time for poor little AliceAnne. What a lonely life the child must lead. True, Charles had been up to say goodnight to her this evening, but was that usual? Sophie wondered. And last was Aunt Matty, seemingly always bright and cheerful. She didn’t live in the house, of course, but she came and went as she always had. Was that why there was obvious resentment between her and Louisa?

  Ah well, Sophie thought as she snuffed the candle and climbed back into bed, I suppose I’ll get to know them all better in the next few days.

  Warmed by the fire that Hannah had banked up before she left the room, Sophie drew the bedclothes up to her chin and with a sigh, drifted off into sleep.

  10

  The next morning, when Sophie awoke, the view from her window could not have been more different from that of the previous day. She threw back the curtains to be greeted with a blanket of white. Gone was the walled garden, the spreading cliff top and the polished gleam of the sea. All was shrouded in dense, grey, shifting mist, smothering the land, the sea and the sky in thick, drifting fog. Sophie stared out at the colourless day beyond the window and with a jolt, realized that this was the mist Matty had been describing the night before. It must have been a mist like this that had descended on Joss the night he died. Until this instant, Sophie had not been able to accept that someone who’d lived here all his life, and knew the countryside like the back of his hand, could have got lost simply because it was foggy. But now she realized it would have been all too easy to become disorientated, as Matty had suggested. Sophie shuddered at the thought and having poked the fire back into life, she went back to the warmth of her bed and waited for Hannah to bring her morning tea.

  Moments later Hannah was coming in with a tea tray, saying, ‘This is a gloomy place, Miss Sophie, and no mistake.’

  ‘It certainly is grey outside, Hannah,’ Sophie agreed. ‘But it’s no worse than a London fog really, is it? So,’ she went on, ‘unless it suddenly clears, it’ll be an indoors day today. Still, I’m sure there’ll be plenty to do.’ She sipped her tea and smiled at Hannah’s long face. ‘Cheer up, Hannah, it won’t be long before we go back to our own London fog, and you can feel more comfortable.’

  ‘Now then, Miss Sophie, there’s no call for such talk as that,’ Hannah replied placidly. ‘It might be a day when you could help Miss AliceAnne with her schooling.’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea, Hannah,’ Sophie cried. She set down her teacup and swung her legs out of bed. ‘Can you bring my hot water, please, and then I’ll get dressed. I was late for breakfast yesterday; I’d better not be so again today.’

  It was only half an hour later that Sophie went downstairs to start her day. As she reached the hall, Charles was leaving the morning room and walking across the hall to his study.

  ‘Good morning, Charles,’ smiled Sophie. ‘Am I late again?’

  ‘Not at all, Sophie,’ he replied. ‘Aunt Matty and my mother are still at table with AliceAnne.’ Then, with a brief nod, he went into the room that AliceAnne had told Sophie was his study, and closed the door behind him. Sophie shrugged. He hadn’t been rude, but there was no warmth in his greeting.

  Oh well, she thought, if that’s how he feels, there’s nothing I can do about it. When she opened the morning-room door, she found AliceAnne about to leave the table. Louisa and Matty looked up as she came in.

  ‘Good morning, Aunt Louisa, Aunt Matty,’ Sophie said. ‘Good morning, AliceAnne.’

  ‘Good morning, Sophie,’ said Aunt Matty with a smile. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Sophie replied, but before she could say more Louisa got to her feet and said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to see Mrs Paxton. AliceAnne, go up to the schoolroom and make a start on the sums I’ve left written out for you there. I’ll be up in a little while to see how you’re getting on.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmama,’ whispered AliceAnne and scurried out of the room.

  As Louisa moved to follow her, Sophie said, ‘Would it be useful, Aunt, if I went up to the schoolroom and helped AliceAnne?’

  Louisa looked at her in surprise. ‘Do you want to? The child is perfectly able to get on by herself, and you’ll have your grandfather to consider. He should be your priority.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about him this morning,’ Matty said, suddenly joining in the conversation. ‘I’ll go to him this morning.’

  ‘Won’t you be going home?’ said Louisa pointedly. ‘I thought you were leaving this morning.’

  ‘My dear Louisa, anxious as you are to get rid of me, even you can’t expect me to get Paxton to drive me home in weather like this.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I shan’t go home until this lifts, so I’m quite happy to spend the morning with my father, and that’ll give Sophie a chance to get to know AliceAnne.’

  Louisa compressed her lips and with a sharp ‘As you will!’ left the room.

  ‘I think it will do AliceAnne good to have someone to take an interest in what she’s doing,’ Matty said. ‘She gets little enough attention in this house. Why don’t you go up and see her when you’ve had your breakfast?’

  Sophie did as Matty suggested, climbing the stairs to the day nursery as soon as she’d finished eating. AliceAnne was sitting at the table in the window with a sheet of paper in front of her. She was sucking the end of a pencil and looked up anxiously when Sophie came in. When she saw who it was, her whole body relaxed, though she still looked anxious.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Sophie. ‘I thought I’d come and see how you were getting on. Your grandmama is busy with Mrs Paxton ju
st now, but I expect she’ll be up later.’ She crossed the room and sat down at the table opposite the little girl. One glance at the paper showed that she had done none of the sums that had been set out for her.

  ‘What sums are you doing?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Take away,’ AliceAnne whispered.

  ‘Are you stuck?’

  ‘A bit. I know how to do take away, but these ones are all wrong. You can’t take eight from nothing, can you? So how do you do it?’

  ‘Let me help,’ Sophie said, and moved round to sit next to her. ‘Now, the sum says ninety take away seventy-eight. Which is bigger?’

  ‘Ninety, of course,’ said AliceAnne.

  ‘Right, so you know that you can take seventy-eight away from ninety and have something over. I mean, if you had ninety bullseyes, you could eat seventy-eight and still have some over.’

  ‘I’d be sick,’ AliceAnne said solemnly and they both laughed.

  ‘You certainly would,’ said Sophie. ‘But if you want to know how many you’d have over, you can set it out as a sum, like these,’ she pointed to the sums Louisa had written on the paper, ‘and work it out. Let me show you how.’

  Together they worked through the sums that had been set and by the time they reached the end of the page, AliceAnne was able to work them out on her own. Sophie watched her as she completed the page. Hadn’t Louisa shown AliceAnne how to do subtraction when it required borrowing?

  When the little girl had finished, Sophie checked that she’d got them right and then said, ‘What would you like to do now?’

  AliceAnne gave the question some thought and then said, ‘Reading.’ She chose a book from the bookshelf. ‘It’s a bit difficult to read,’ she said, ‘but I like the pictures.’

  ‘How about if we read it together?’ suggested Sophie. ‘I’ll read a page and then you read one.’

  ‘Not all by myself?’

  ‘More fun to do it together, don’t you think?’

  AliceAnne nodded enthusiastically. ‘You start,’ she said.