Autumn Softly Fell (11 page)

Dorothea struggled to put this feeling into words. ‘Aunt Eloise is … is beautiful!’ she breathed.

‘Mrs Somersby is beautifuller,’ said Roderick at her side, mulish.

‘Mrs Somersby is
not
beautifuller! She looks like a … like a
Christmas tree,
with all those jewels stuck on her!’

Turning her back on Roderick, she looked through the chink once more, saw Tomlin the footman clearing the plates. As he did so, a moth came fluttering in through the half-open window and began circling round and round his head.

‘—those, those
people
, those sympathisers, those
traitors
! Lloyd George!’ Colonel Harding seemed to be running out of steam at last. ‘And that Hobhouse woman….’ He trailed to a stop, as if words failed him, as if nothing he could say would serve to describe
that Hobhouse woman.

In the silence, Mrs Somersby said, ‘For myself, I shall simply be glad when it is all over and my son … my son—’

Even as she was speaking, the moth made a sudden dive towards the candelabra. There was a spark as it met the candle flame – then nothing. The moth had gone. Dorothea caught her breath. No one in the room seemed to have noticed. No one remarked on it. And yet it was horrible – ominous.

Roderick gave her a hearty push. She pushed back. They tussled in the doorway, fighting to get at the chink.

‘
What
do you think you are
doing
?’

The sudden voice was like the crack of a whip. It made Dorothea jump out of her skin. The terrifying figure of Mrs Bourne was bearing down on them, eyes blazing. Even Roderick cowered.

‘Should you not both be in
bed
? What
is
Nanny
thinking
of? This is bad, too bad!’

She swept them up as if they nothing more than moths themselves and drove them towards the stairs. They fled up them, pursued by Mrs Bourne’s voice. ‘This is bad, too bad!’

But once in bed, Dorothea found it impossible to settle, tossing
and turning, her head full to bursting and everything jumbled up: her new frock; the ribbons in her hair; Jem’s imminent wedding, like a glittering ball just out of reach; Nibs Carter in the Orchard; Stepnall Street like a faded picture in a frame; Roderick, hard, brittle, discomfiting; the tin soldiers; the grown-ups sitting
resplendent
at dinner. Half asleep and half awake, she floundered in the bed, murmuring to herself, her mind weighed down with it all like the branches of a tree overburdened with plump ripe plums.

Plums
, she muttered, grappling with the bedclothes:
apples and plums.
Richard’s apples, Richard’s plums. Because everything belonged to Richard.

No
, she said, her eyes suddenly opening wide.
Things are things, not plums on a tree
.
Everything is what it is, it is not something else too. Mrs Somersby is not a Christmas tree. Why did I say it? How could I be so cruel – when her son is in danger, abroad, fighting the Boers?

The Boer, the Boer
…. She sank back into the mire of sleep, hearing Colonel Harding’s voice booming, thinking of the moth, the poor moth, burnt up in the candle flame.

So shall it be at the end of the world!
Colonel Harding’s voice had changed into that of the sour-faced vicar who she saw in the pulpit each Sunday.
So shall it be. The angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from the just, and shall cast them into the furnaces of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth…

God, she thought, as she felt herself sinking deeper, deeper, her eyelids flickering. But which was the real God? Was it Mlle Lacroix’s God who held your hand to guide you? Or was it the vicar’s God with the fiery furnaces, the God who let moths burn? How was one to know? How was one to know anything? How, how….

Her eyelids stopped fluttering. She finally lay still. Sleep lapped over her.

‘Dorossea, you are not paying attention, I think?’

‘I … I’m sorry, mam’zelle.’

Mlle Lacroix closed her book. ‘
Bon
. I think we will take our walk now, yes?’

‘Our walk? But it’s not time!’

‘Ah, but if we go now,
ma petite,
we shall be able to see the bride and groom as they leave the church!’

‘Oh! May we really go? Oh, mam’zelle, thank you, thank you!’

Dorothea jumped up, astonished that the governess seemed to know that the wedding was the very thing occupying her thoughts. It was the reason for Nora’s absence today. Now that the harvest was over, Jem was to marry the inn-keeper’s daughter. Not that Jem had been involved in the harvest. He had given up his job on the farm to work in a shoe factory in Lawham, walking three miles there and three miles back every day. Nora had shaken her head at such folly – not the six miles, which she seemed to think was nothing – but the factory. Working in a factory, she said, was only one step above the workhouse, which meant it must be bad indeed, for in Stepnall Street not even the fiery furnaces had held more terror than the workhouse.

Dorothea buttoned her boots in a rush, grabbed her hat. She was to visit the village, to see the wedding. She could barely contain herself!

The sun was golden. The fields, stripped of corn, were bristly and pale brown. The footpath stretched like a ribbon from stile to stile. They were taking a short cut from the house to the village, not going round by the road. Dorothea had never been this way before. She pressed ahead, her heart brimming with happiness. A crow took flight, swept into the air with ragged black wings.
Crow
, she said to herself,
la corneille
in French.

It was quite extraordinary, the things she knew, the names of things in French and English, the names that Nora used too. And did she not read from great big books and do sums in her head at a whim? Who would ever have guessed she would become so wise! Astonishing!

She waited for Mlle Lacroix in the shade of some elms. The governess was serene, smiling, her skirts trailing, her dress plain but oh-so-elegant. She came to the stile, balanced her parasol, lifted her legs, eased herself over, effortless. When Dorothea tried to do the same, she wobbled and lost her balance, went sliding and
tumbling – laughing – landing with a bump in the grass. This field – Row Meadow, Nora called it – was where the rabbits had their burrows and yellow ragwort grew, goatsbeard, too, which Nora called Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon. The church was nearby, just the other side of the meadow, the grey crenulations of its squat tower etched against the sky. It was the only place in the village that Dorothea knew first hand, the place where the sour-faced vicar held forth about the fiery furnaces, where the seats were hard and uncomfortable, where the daylight came dim through stained glass. It was always cold in the church, no matter what the weather outside. But Mlle Lacroix knew nothing of it, because she went to her own church in Lawham.

They were just in time. Standing on the Green, hand-in-hand, they watched the bride and groom emerge from the church and walk slowly – meekly – down the path. So that was Nora’s brother, thought Dorothea – the famous Jem in his Sunday best with a smart new waistcoat, a burly-looking fellow with a plain round face all scrubbed and glowing, colour flaring in his cheeks. And the bride – her name was (had been) Pippa Cheeseman. She had a smile as bright as the sunshine. Her frock was the one that her mother had been married in, exquisite, but Nora had said it was out-of-date with its big bustle and all that hand-worked lace. Pippa, Nora said, had no idea when it came to clothes, had no idea about anything. All she knew was how to pour beer in her father’s pub. You had to wonder, Nora said, if she was quite the girl for Jem, but – and here Nora had sighed – Jem had made his choice and there was nothing more to be said.

There was a wagon waiting in the road festooned with flowers and bits of bunting (left over from the Jubilee, according to Nora). Jem and Pippa climbed aboard. The wagon rolled away. A concourse of people followed on foot, chatting, smiling, laughing, Nora was amongst them. Dorothea waved and Nora waved back, pointing her out to a woman walking at her side – a woman who could only be Nora’s mother, they were so much alike. Walking with them was an old man with white whiskers and a weather-beaten face. His eyes, dark as a crow’s, cast a keen glance in Dorothea’s direction. Noah
Lee, thought Dorothea, Nora’s grandfather. She shivered, for the glance did not seem entirely friendly.

‘So lovely,’ murmured Mlle Lacroix as the people dwindled away along the street.
‘Très beau. Très hereux.’
She sighed. ‘But now—’ She stirred, closing her parasol. ‘I am going to the shop, Dorossea. Will you come?’

But Dorothea said no, she would wait outside on the Green and as Mlle Lacroix walked towards the shop, Dorothea took a seat on an old bench (a plank nailed to two sawn pieces of tree trunk) under the twisted boughs of a sycamore.

So that was a wedding, she said to herself: lovely, as the governess had said. But, sitting there, Dorothea found all her excitement and happiness slipping through her fingers, dribbling away. She found herself thinking of the mother she had never known. What sort of frock had
she
worn on her wedding day? And Papa. How had he looked? Perhaps in those far-off days he too had owned a Sunday suit like Jem. If so, it was long gone. She remembered once – many, many years ago – coming across a little wooden box. Her tiny fingers had grappled with the lid. Inside there had been lots of pieces of paper which had delighted her infant mind. She realized now that those pieces of paper had been pawn tickets. What had they
represented
, all those tickets? What cherished possessions had been lost forever, sacrificed to a greater need? Who now was wearing Papa’s Sunday suit? And the little box, what had become of that? Her papa had taken it off her, prised it out of her grasping fingers. She had never seen it again.

She had been lost in her thoughts but now suddenly looked up, startled to find that she was no longer alone. Five boys were standing in a row, staring at her. The midmost boy, the one who was scowling most ferociously, was Nibs Carter.

Her heart was thumping as she got to her feet. She was
outnumbered
, alone.

Nibs Carter stepped forward. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I—’

‘What are you doing in
our
village?’

‘I—’

‘You don’t belong here, a toff like you. You belong up at the big house with all the other toffs.’

‘But … but I haven’t done anything!’ cried Dorothea desperately.

‘I haven’t done anything!’
Nibs sneered. The other boys laughed. They closed in around her, jostling her, plucking at her frock the way Cook plucked a chicken. It only made it all the more terrible that this was happening here, on the peaceful Green, beneath the heavy green boughs of the sycamore.

‘Putting on airs. Swaggering about as if you owned the place.’ Nibs’s face was up close to hers. She could see the streaks of dirt on his cheeks, smell his sour breath. ‘Well, you’d best not come here again – or it’ll be the worst for you!’

Dorothea felt giddy but just then a bell jangled. On the far side of the Green, the door of the shop opened. Mlle Lacroix came out with her parasol and a parcel in brown paper. She looked around, espied the little group by the bench.

‘Dorossea! It is time to go now!’

The boys stepped back as the governess glided across the grass towards them. Nibs Carter turned to face her, squaring his shoulders but Mlle Lacroix was not perturbed, her expression unchanged, her eyes bright and inquiring as always, as if, at any moment, she expected to make some great discovery – under a stone or round the next corner or upon opening the pages of some old, old book.

‘What friends are these, Dorossea?’

Dorothea could not speak but her terror was subsiding. Soon she would be under the protection of the governess’s broad-brimmed hat.

The governess advanced and abruptly the boys broke rank,
scattering
like dry leaves before the breeze. As he ran, Nibs shouted over his shoulder, ‘Remember what I said, posh girl! Just remember!’ Then they were gone. The Green was empty and peaceful once more.

‘Who were they, those boys,
ma petite
?’

‘They were … nobody, they were nobody. Shall I carry your parcel, mam’zelle?’

‘Ah,
merci
. And now we must go back, yes?’

They crossed the street, hand-in-hand, and took the little path
that slipped between the vicarage and the churchyard, leading towards Row Meadow. The sun had gone in. Grey clouds were churning in the sky behind Rookery Hill. The world seemed suddenly colourless and flat.

Looking back as she climbed the stile into the meadow, Dorothea could see one corner of the Green glimmering remote behind her. There was no place for her here, she thought. There was no cottage where she might have lived with her papa and a mother who hadn’t died and unknown brothers and sisters. She did not belong in the village any more than she belonged up at the house.

Where, then, did she belong?

After tea Dorothea could not settle. The day room seemed as dull and dreary and confining as it had done in the old days. The day outside had turned overcast. Standing at the barred window, she suddenly remembered the flowers that she had picked on the way back from the village. She had left them on the table in the hall. Dared she go and fetch them?

She looked round. Nanny was snoozing, the governess deep in her book. Creeping quietly out of the room, Dorothea slipped past the green baize door and ran helter-skelter down the stairs with her heart in her mouth. But the house was unusually quiet and
somnolent
, almost as if it was deserted.

The flowers were on the little table where she’d left them. They looked small and wilted compared to the vast blooms in the tall vase and yet in the meadow they’d seemed so bright and happy! She felt a reluctance to touch them, hesitated, glancing around the hall, as if she wanted to find something.

She sighed. She was not sure what she wanted to find. The clock ticked ponderously, remorselessly. The front door was ajar. She could just imagine what her uncle would say, frowning and shaking his head. ‘A house full of servants and still the front door is left open!’ He thought it profligate, having so many servants. ‘We had none in Seton Street when I was a boy; even when we moved to Forest Road we had just one maid and a cook.’ When he spoke like that Dorothea felt as if a curtain was being lifted, giving her a
glimpse into his past; she felt almost as if she was beginning to get to know him. But she understood the house, too, whereas he did not. The house required attendants, acolytes. If it was to be placated, if it was not to be roused from its eternal sleep, the
time-honoured
rites had to be performed – grates must be blacked, fires lit, meals carried up in procession. But the attendants were only human, individuals, beneath their smart uniforms. So the front door was left ajar – by Tomlin, perhaps, who could be slapdash, or Bessie Downs, lazy.