Autumn Softly Fell (27 page)

As the scratchy sound of Caruso’s voice seeped from the
gramophone
, Dorothea felt that she had never seen Aunt Eloise quite like this before, enthroned on the settee, smiling, dazzling – like sunlight sparking on ice.
My aunt,
thought Dorothea,
my aunt
.

Henry stepped up, held out his hand. ‘The birthday girl must dance.’

‘Oh, no, Henry….’

But, yes, yes, they all said, and the table was pushed aside and she had no choice in the matter. She felt her cheeks burning as Henry took her in his arms, and then they were whirling away across the room in time to the music, to Caruso’s ethereal voice – as if he was singing to them from the far end of a long metal pipe. There was a smell of soap and hair oil, and a smell of Henry. His bow tie was askew, there was a speck – gravy? wine? – on his collar. She could see the tiny shaven bristles on his jaw; she watched the colour flush up into his cheeks, and all the time his eyes were shining at her.

‘I shall never forget,’ he said in an undertone, ‘the night I first saw you, a little girl dressed in rags, crying. Your curls were all tangled.’ He reached up, stroked her hair, the light in his eyes burned brighter.
‘And then there was that morning when I rescued you on the Welby Road—’

‘When you rescued me?’ She repeated the words.

The smudges of colour in his cheeks darkened, like the reds and purples of a deepening sunset. ‘That … that is how I always put it to myself: that I rescued you.’ He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing above his collar.

For a moment then, pressed up against him, she felt stifled, was at a loss to explain it until she remembered that the windows were shut, that there was no air in the room. She leant away from him, breathed freely again, felt his arm across her back, guiding her in the dance. She began to giggle softly. He was driving her, she thought, the way he drove his motors. This was how Bernadette must have felt with his careful hands on her wheel all those years – his long thin fingers.

What a girl she must seem to him, giggling and stumbling around the room. What a girl she must seem to a man of his age,
twenty-eight
, so very grown up. He would see through the touch of glamour – the new frock, the careful coiffure: he would see instead the girl in rags who’d sat on his knee all those years ago, or the waif he’d rescued on the Welby Road with a tam o’shanter that kept falling over her eyes.

As they swung past the settee, she overheard Lady Fitzwilliam talking to Aunt Eloise. ‘Such a pity about Julia Somersby….’ She knew that Henry had heard too by the furrows that appeared on his brow.

‘Is it absolutely out of the question?’ Aunt Eloise murmured.

‘I rather think Giles Milton has wrapped things up there.’ Lady Fitzwilliam sighed. ‘One is fond of Giles, naturally, but a sixth son only, a boy with a lisp and Henry, with all his advantages. To have one’s hopes dashed again….’

She felt Henry’s body tense up but at that moment the dance came to an abrupt halt. Roderick was blocking their path.

‘It is my turn now,’ he said curtly, setting his jaw.

Dorothea was inclined to laugh. What did Roderick know about dancing? But he looked very ferocious and determined,
elbowing Henry aside and the laughter died on her lips as she realized that Roderick was almost as tall as Henry already. What an extraordinary boy he was, so gruff and gangling – and now he wanted to dance when he seemed to have been avoiding her all evening!

‘Henry,’ he muttered as they began to move, his lips tickling her ear. ‘That goose, that pudding head.’

He was always the same, she thought. He never had a good word for anybody. She tried to tear her hands away, but he held on tight and swung her round and he whispered fiercely into her ear, ‘I suppose you think you’re all grown up now, don’t you, Miss Ryan – Miss Dorothea Ryan!’ And he scowled so hard his eyebrows met in the middle.

She had been right about his dancing. He held her like a sack of potatoes, trod on her toes, stomped round the room like an angry bull. But if he wasn’t exactly a grown man, you couldn’t call him a child either. Who was he, she wondered, would anyone ever know? Did he even
like
her, deep down? Sometimes she doubted it. Sometimes she felt that they had got no further than the first day, watching each other with suspicion in the day room.

‘Don’t they make a lovely couple,’ said Lady Fitzwilliam, sotto voce. ‘One could almost take them for brother and sister. They are really quite alike and so devoted to one another.’

Roderick was scowling again and flushing with annoyance (why did he get so angry all the time?), and she half expected him to push her away, to prove that she meant nothing, to belie Lady Fitzwilliam’s words. But instead he gritted his teeth and gripped her tighter and they went twirling and twirling as the gramophone began to slow, Caruso’s voice stretching out and out along the metal pipe.

‘Dear Dorothea,’ Lady Fitzwilliam said. ‘One has grown so fond of her over the years. One feels one has known her forever.’

‘I was thinking the same myself,’ said Aunt Eloise, her voice stiff with gravitas. ‘One must admit, one can’t imagine the place without her anymore. It is as if she
belongs
here, somehow.’

And Dorothea, laying her cheek against Roderick’s chest, felt her
heart swelling inside her, for no one in all her life had ever paid her such a compliment before.

She was too keyed up to sleep, brimming over with so many different feelings, music still playing in her head along with the sound of voices and sparks of laughter. But the drawing room
downstairs
was not dark and empty. The evening was at an end.

It was not just the evening that had come to an end, she thought as she walked round and round the day room in the dim light from the lamp on the corner table, humming to herself, watched only by the fading eyes of the rocking horse and by Polly in her cage. The evening was over – and so was life as she’d known it at Clifton. First Richard had gone, then Nora, and now Mlle Lacroix, the last of her original friends and the one who’d made the most difference, her wisdom and inner strength giving her a mastery which made the world look a sunnier place, had drawn its sting.

‘Oh Polly! How will I ever manage without her?’

But Polly, inscrutable as ever, kept her thoughts to herself.

The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The morning sun was hot and bright. As the motor swept along the road – the canopy down, the engine humming contentedly – the world seemed to open up around them, corn ripening, haymaking underway, flowers bursting from the tangled hedgerows, birds in profusion busy with their own affairs. Six and a half years ago, this road had been dark and cold and lonely as she was dragged and carried by her papa from the station to meet an uncle she had never heard of. She had today the same sense of travelling to an uncertain end, for today was the day when the governess was leaving.

Mlle Lacroix sat beside her in the motor, buttoned into her jacket, gloves in her lap, wide-brimmed hat pinned in place. But Dorothea felt as if there was already a gap opening up between them, as if – in spirit – the Frenchwoman was already on the train, was halfway across the Channel, was making her way down the familiar byways of her home. She was travelling alone, as if it was nothing, as if she was merely taking a walk in the gardens. But the gardens would miss
her after today. It was all wrong, thought Dorothea, this bright morning with the birds singing. Rain ought to be lashing, the wind should be wailing, thunder should be booming like the drums of doom. She remembered what the nursery had been like before the governess came, the feelings of loneliness, of being in gaol. She
shuddered
despite the warm sunshine.

All too soon, the station hived into view. The motor pulled up into the forecourt. Mlle Lacroix got down, was handed her little case by the old chauffeur (her trunk was being sent on). Dorothea followed her up the steps to the platform. There was no one else waiting. The platform was empty, the benches still wet from the dew, tubs of flowers bright and effusive, the black and white sign bold and official: WELBY.

‘So now, Dorossea, it is time to say
au revoir.
’

‘Not yet, mam’zelle. The train isn’t here yet.’

‘Very well,
ma petite.
A few minutes more.’

‘Oh, mam’zelle, why must you go?’

‘I have explained why, I have told you.
Maman
is poorly. She needs me. And – if I speak the truth – I have already stayed far longer than ever I intended.’

‘Will we … will we
ever
meet again?’

‘But of course! Perhaps I will not come to England again, but you will – you must – visit me! I shall be expecting you!’

Go to France? Impossible! One might as well wish to visit the mountains of the moon.

A whistle tooted in the distance, piercing her heart. The train must have emerged from the tunnel beneath Duncan’s Hill. It would be here in a matter of moments. Already she could see the smoke of it, puffs of grey against the cloudless sky. Time was running out, the last seconds trickling away, never to return.

Was there anything she had forgotten to say?

Only everything! Every day would bring a thousand things more, but Mlle Lacroix would not be there to hear them.

The governess took Dorothea’s face between her hands as the train came thundering into the station, kissed her on both cheeks.

‘
Au revoir, ma petite!
You must be brave now! Remember all I
have taught and all that we have learned together. What an
adventure
it has been! Remember, too, to put your trust in God. He will not let you down.’ But even God had been a gift from the governess.

Mlle Lacroix had turned the brass handle, had opened the door, had stepped up into the carriage. Now she looked back, half in and half out. Her eyes searched Dorothea’s face, then she smiled. ‘
Alors
! You do not need me anymore, Dorossea! My work here is done! You are a young lady now!’

The door slammed shut. A whistle blew. The train moved,
uncertain
at first but soon gathering speed. Mlle Lacroix waved, framed in the window. Dorothea ran after her, her booted feet striking on the wood of the platform. A mist descended – tears perhaps, or the billowing steam of the engine. Chuffing greedily, belching and hissing, heavy wheels trundling faster and faster, the train sped away. The last of the carriages flowed round a bend in the line and was gone. The noise and the steam slowly dissipated. The empty rails glinted in the golden June sunshine, curving away into the blue. A deep silence descended.

Dorothea stood on the end of the platform.

She had been left behind, abandoned once more, just like before, six-and-a-half years ago, the last time she had seen her papa. Richard had gone, then Nora, and now the governess. What was left? For a moment, Dorothea was taken back to that first evening, looking out from the nursery window at the alien landscape, utterly alone.

You do not need me anymore
…
you are a young lady now
… Mlle Lacroix’s last words echoed in her head. It seemed impossible to believe them. And yet when had the governess ever been known to be wrong?

Faces began to crowd into Dorothea’s head, more and more of them, all of the people she knew, Roderick and Henry and Uncle Albert, Nibs and Becket and Mrs Turner, even little Dicky smiling and sucking his thumb. The names went on and on, too, for had Aunt Eloise not said,
One can’t imagine the place without her
…
it is as if she belongs here
.…

Was it possible? Had Aunt Eloise come to accept her at last?

But it wasn’t quite that, thought Dorothea as she turned and made her way slowly back along the platform. It was more as if the
house
had accepted her – had claimed her for its own. And Eloise had merely acquiesced to the fait accompli.

The stationmaster, dead-heading the flowers in the boxes, nodded to her as she passed and she quickened her pace, for the chauffeur would be waiting to take her back to Clifton Park.

No, she said to herself: not Clifton Park. Home. It was time to go home.

Gathering her skirts, she skipped down the steps in the June sunshine whilst from above, cascading out of the high blue sky, came the liquid song of a lark.

Aunt Letitia

Snake in the Grass