Another Heartbeat in the House (10 page)

‘Where are you going?' she asked anxiously. ‘Why are you not coming with us?'

‘I am to join the family who have engaged me as governess,' I told her.

‘What family?'

‘The little girl and her brother that I have told you about.'

‘Are not you to be my governess too?'

‘Annie, you are too little yet to have a governess.'

‘I am not. Papa says I am cleverer than a monkey and can learn anything.'

‘But you are on holiday. Learning is hard work, and nobody works while they are on holiday.'

‘Papa works. He works all the time. He worked when we were on holiday in Margate, and when he is not working he is too busy to teach me anything because he is always worrying after Mama because Mama is mad.'

She said it in quite a matter-of-fact way, as one might say, ‘Mama is tired' or ‘Mama is cold.'

I looked back at the family group with whom I had become so intimately involved during our arduous three-day voyage. Mr Thackeray was haggling with a carman, Isabella remained locked in her private Bedlam, while Brodie was trying ineffectually to drive off a seagull that had advanced upon Minnie's bassinet. And then I looked down at Annie's worried expression and said, ‘I shall visit you. I promise.'

‘When?'

‘I can't tell. Why not ask those horses? They know everything.'

‘Very well.'

Annie approached the pair and stood on tiptoe, looking up at their blinkered faces. I smiled at the driver to acknowledge his forbearance, but he narrowed his eyes and allowed them to roam over my figure in so insolent a fashion that I resolved to punish him by travelling with my back to him.

‘The horses say “tomorrow”,' Annie reported, having finished conferring with her advisors.

‘Hm. They may not mean our tomorrow. “Tomorrow” in Horse can mean “the day after tomorrow”, and sometimes even the day after that. But horses never lie. So you may depend upon a visit from me before the week is out.'

‘Huzzah!' said Annie. ‘Those horses are wiser than Bucephalus. Goodbye, Miss Eliza.'

She dropped me a curtsey, and as I watched her go it struck me that a child of not yet four who knew who Bucephalus was hardly needed a governess to teach her anything.

EDIE STOOD UP
and eased herself into a stretch, then meandered through into the kitchen, where Milo's collar and lead were hanging by the door. The only way, she decided, that she could make sense of the thoughts that were crowding through her head like some Joycean stream of consciousness was to babble them out loud to her doggie.

‘So,' she said to Milo, ‘here they are in Ireland … Eliza and Mr Thackeray, and his two daughters and his mad wife. Poor lady! Three babies in as many years – I'm not surprised she was deranged. My mother could barely cope with one. Come on, sweetie-pie. I'd better take you for your evening pee.'

She allowed him to sniff about the courtyard for five minutes, then took him around to the front of the house. The wind was up, the moon riding high above the swaying branches in the woods; below her it threw a lambent path across the lake. On the far shore, a heron cried – a spooky, lonely sound.

Together they walked halfway down the slope, to where a garden bench (wrought iron, patterned with ferns, noted Edie, thinking of her inventory) invited her to sit and admire the moonlight. But it was cold and blustery, and Edie was not inclined to idle. She performed little dance-steps on the spot, hugging herself to keep warm, and turned to look up at the house.

‘Would I want to live here, Milo? No. Who would want to buy such a place? Uncle Jack and Aunt Letty enjoyed it while their children were young. But nobody in their right mind would want to spend time travelling all this way from London when they could be sunbathing in Biarritz or skiing in Kitzbühel or gambling in Monte Carlo, like Ian. The house is a white elephant, Milo – lovely and useless, and it will go for a song. Remember what Ian said about Victorian architecture and how ugly he found it? 1841. That's the date carved on the shutter in the drawing room, and Victoria had only been queen for four years. Maybe the Zeitgeist hadn't taken hold by then. Maybe all the buildings were beautiful, still …'

But Edie had had a sneak preview of the next page of Eliza's manuscript, and she knew that the house in Cork, where Miss Drury had been engaged as governess, was anything but beautiful. Already, she was looking forward to the following evening when she could divest herself of pinafore and headscarf and allow herself to be invited into that monstrous edifice.

Mr O'Dowd's was an overbearing potentate of a residence. It stood in its own elevated grounds, overlooking the River Lee. A neo-Palladian mansion, it had the appearance of being pieced together from a pattern in
The Architect and Builders' Miscellany
: it was pilastered and pedimented, its imposing entrance flanked with a pair of hideous caryatids and supported by Corinthian columns.

I had expected to be driven past the turning circle to the rear of the house, and was surprised when the conveyance drew to a halt under the porte-cochère. Pether, the driver, who was clearly nettled by my indifference to his charms, unloaded my things, but did not offer to hand me down. I followed him up the steps, surprised that I had been delivered to the front door.

‘You are to be treated as one of the family,' he huffed, dumping my luggage by the boot scraper. ‘Or so I heard Cook say. Except on company days, when you are to sup with the children – so you may not think yourself so very high and mighty then.'

I gave him a scornful look and told him in French to go to the devil, whereupon he called me
bitseach
, which I think in Irish means a termagant. And so we parted company, like a dog and cat that have crossed paths by chance and presume never to have to do so again.

A maidservant came to the door. She kept her eyes on my face with an effort, for she was clearly aching to see what fashions from London I might be sporting under my pelisse. I was sorry to disappoint her when I handed it over, for I was wearing a plain travelling dress of grey wool, with no ornament other than a mother-of-pearl brooch. ‘Please walk this way, Miss,' she said. ‘The mistress is in the morning room.'

She led me across a high-ceilinged hallway hung with portraits, one of which depicted a pair of simpering piglets who, I supposed, were the children I had come here to instruct. It had been clumsily executed in the style of George Romney. (My father having been an artist, I knew more than a little about painting.)

In the morning room, a plump, pretty woman of twenty-five or -six was sitting at a Pembroke table. She wore a tea gown of silk jacquard, patterned with roses and oriental lilies; her hair under a dainty cap was ringleted and beribboned.

‘Miss Drury! How do you do,' she said, rising to her feet. ‘Come, join me for refreshment: Katy, do you go and fetch a cup for Miss Drury, and bread-and-butter and some rout cakes and two or three of those little macaroons – and some Madeira. A glass of Madeira would be most welcome, don't you think, Miss Drury, when you have come so far?'

She resumed her seat, invited me to take the one opposite, and gave me such an open, artless smile that I felt a pang of pity for her. Isolated in this monstrous mansion, she was a young woman clearly in need of a confidante.

‘When I said to Mr O'Dowd that I must have a governess for Theodore and Mercy, he proposed placing an advertisement in the
Morning Register
, but I would have a young lady from a London establishment, and I know Miss Pinkerton's to be one of the finest. I was a parlour boarder there myself, a little before your time, Miss Drury, at that illustrious Academy for the Daughters of Gentlemen!' She affected a little trill of laughter. ‘My father is a baron, you know, though he has no coronet, being Irish. Now, acquaint me, do, with all the gossip from London. I must have it!'

I was loath to disappoint my employer, so while she busied herself with the tea things and poured Madeira into glasses etched with a dainty grape motif, I entertained her with stories (many of them of my own invention) of the heiresses who had boarded at the academy. After we had prattled on for some time, I ventured to ask the whereabouts of the children who were to be my charges.

‘Oh – they will be here presently,' Mrs O'Dowd told me, waving an airy hand. ‘There are some kittens arrived, and they must decide which to drown and which to keep. Will you have more Madeira, Miss Drury?' She poured with a liberal hand. ‘Are you quite at home? I told Mr O'Dowd that if we were to have a governess we must have someone with whom I could feel quite at ease, and la! here you are, as companionable a creature as I could have hoped for.'

Raising her glass, she squinted at it before putting it to her lips, and I was intrigued, when she set it down, to observe that more than half the contents were gone.

‘I find the pale Moscatel helps calm my nerves, you know,' she explained, ‘for I suffer from neurasthenia. Now, tell me, do, about dear Miss Georgina Barnes, for I understand she eloped with an Italian diplomat. And is it true that Miss Saltshire has married a fortune?'

On and on she questioned me, and lower and lower went the level of the Madeira in the decanter until – as I was acquainting her with the details of the new
casaques
favoured by fashionable London theatregoers – she said abruptly, ‘Oh! Oh, I cannot bear it! I cannot bear to hear more!' and rising, left the room in a flounder of silk, taking the decanter with her.

At a loss, I remained seated, expecting her to return at any minute. However, when I heard the clock chime the hour and there was still no sign of her, I amused myself by embarking upon a tour of the morning room and the drawing room beyond.

It appeared that a great deal of money had been spent on appointing both rooms. And yet, on closer observation, they had an incomplete look. The gilt and lustres glittered, but the wallpaper had been spread thinly, and did not reach the cornices. The furniture was new, and a handsome piano stood by the drawing-room window, but there was no sheet music upon the stand or in the impressive canterbury; there were no flowers in the vases, and no fruit in the epergnes.

Eventually, I found the children in the garden, and saw at once that their portraits flattered them. Brother and sister were staging a trial of kittens on the parterre, in a dock improvised from a trug. They had gone to some trouble, having dressed the unfortunate creatures in dolls' clothes, and bound their paws with manacles fashioned from lengths of embroidery silk. Forcing the corners of my mouth upwards, I introduced myself as the new governess, whereupon the youngsters turned sullen eyes upon me.

‘What are you going to learn us?' asked Theodore.

‘What would you like to learn?'

‘Nothing.'

‘I want to learn Indian,' supplied his sister.

‘I can teach you Indian geography.'

‘I've no use for geography. I want to learn how to speak Indian.'

‘I am not conversant in it,' I told her, ‘for there are many varieties of the Indian language. But I can teach you French.'

At this the girl twisted her face into an expression so hideous that I feared she was going to be sick. ‘A pox on French!' she exclaimed.

‘Yes, a pox on French,' echoed her brother. ‘I can speak Chinese. Chin chong ching ching chang chun chin.'

I decided to humour him. ‘How clever! What does it mean?'

‘It means you are stupider than a donkey.'

One of the kittens mewed, and Mercy turned upon it. ‘Silence in court!' she snorted, plucking it from the trug and shaking it until its bonnet fell off. ‘You will be punished for – for …'

‘Insubordination,' I volunteered.

‘No! For cheeking me! Jail for you and no supper, and ten thousand Hail Marys.'

As Mercy lugged the kitten off in a small wheeled cart, its siblings set up a clamour of protest, while Theodore set about restoring order to the proceedings.