The Visitors (37 page)

‘I do, Wheeler. You can learn a lot from it. And I find it takes me back there.’

‘That must be a comfort.’ She lifted out a stack of work and exercise books. ‘And whatever’s this lot?’ she enquired, dumping them on a table by the window.

‘It’s my homework, Wheeler. Miss Dunsire has set exercises for the whole month. I have to do some every day. She doesn’t want me to fall behind.’

‘You could do with a rest from all that. You’re looking peaky. It’s not for me to say, but I will: is she here, this Miss Dunsire of yours? Here to check up on you and your homework, is she? Turning up – this week, next week? Not to
my
knowledge.’

‘No, Wheeler. She’s going to France for a month. At least, that’s what she said. Only, when we were in the car coming here, just something Rose said… I thought maybe she
wasn’t
going there, and she might have lied. She does lie – sometimes.’

Wheeler considered this information. I could tell her mind was working it over. ‘If she has told an untruth,’ she asked, ‘and she’s
elsewhere
, this Miss Dunsire of yours, where might that be?’

‘I don’t know. London… or I thought – it crossed my mind, she might stay in Cambridge.’

Wheeler considered the paltry evidence I then gave.
‘
What nonsense,’ she said eventually. ‘Stay in some stuffy old town in England, when she could be free as a bird in France with her friends? Doesn’t sound likely to me. You come up with some funny ideas, you do. As for that address – it’s obvious: she’ll write from France and send it…

‘Right, let’s get the rest of this unpacked,’ she went on, ‘then you can go and read Peter a bedtime story. Stick to treasure hunts or knights, avoid witches: I don’t want him having nightmares. You remember how he was, in Egypt? I’m not having
that
starting up again. He’s over the nightmares now, thanks to this house – it has curative powers, this place, as I expect you’ve seen because you’re quick that way.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘He’s healing, and Rose too. He turned four back in April, and that makes a big difference. You can see how he’s come on. But I still have to stay on my guard, and so do you. Don’t mention his mother – not unless he does.’

We unpacked the rest of my things. We hung up my cotton dresses and blouses; put jumpers and underwear into a chest of drawers. ‘Well,
someone
knows how to pack,’ Wheeler remarked, unfolding tissue paper. ‘Couldn’t have done it better myself. Suffering saints – what’s this?’

‘It’s my birthday present, from Miss Dunsire. She saw it in a window in Bond Street and she thought – I’d like it.’

Wheeler shook the dress out and inspected it. I thought of those exquisite clothes of Mrs d’Erlanger’s that Wheeler had looked after, of the decades she’d spent as a lady’s maid, her deep knowledge of the mysteries of dresses. I wanted her to approve my own dress, wanted it passionately, with an eagerness and trepidation I couldn’t have explained. I suffered as, like a scholar inspecting a rare book or some precious artefact, she silently examined the hand-sewn seams, the construction of the lining, the set of the sleeves, the alignment of the bodice darts, the fall of the skirt and the pure geometry of the neckline.

‘Now
that
is a treasure.’ She was trying to hide it, but I could see she was moved. ‘That is a lovely, lovely thing. Someone’s
cared
, when they made that – and they knew what they were doing too. Look at those stitches, all done by hand – see how tiny they are? And the material – there’s silk and then there’s
silk
, I always say. This is pure – you won’t find better than this, not even in China… Did you know, the secret of silk was so precious that anyone caught trying to smuggle the cocoons out of China was executed on the spot? Take a strand of steel, Miss Lucy, and a strand of silk the same thickness – and the silk is the stronger of the two: think of that! So when you write to your Miss Dunsire,
which
you’ll be doing in due course, you tell her from me: Wheeler approves! You can tell her this too: when a dress passes muster with
me
, that means something.’

I blushed with delight. ‘I know it’s a party dress, Wheeler, so it probably won’t be needed here. But I couldn’t tell Miss Dunsire that. I didn’t want to disappoint her.’

‘There might be a call for it. There’s Rose’s birthday coming up, towards the end of the month, just before you leave.’

This caused immediate consternation. Rose had never mentioned this birthday, I had no present for her… ’What a worrier you are!’ Wheeler interrupted. ‘If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I’ll manage something. I always do. Now run off and read that story.’

I read Peter a story about Galahad, sundry other knights and the powers of Excalibur. There were enchantments in it – but no witches. Outside, darkness was falling, and an owl – ‘That’s a
tawny
,
Lucy,’ he said sleepily – had begun to call from the beechwoods. Next morning, when the sun – or the larks – woke me, Peter came padding into my room with the presents he’d forgotten to give me in the rush of my arrival.

There was the newt, in a jam jar, to be admired for a short while and then returned to the pond: a fine creature he was, with pads on his hands and a dinosaur crest – watery first cousin to the lizards I’d seen in Egypt.

‘And I done this. For you. All by my own,’ Peter said, scarlet with pride, handing me the rainbow drawing Rose had mentioned.

I have that drawing still. At the top, in careering purple crayon, it said
weLcOm lUcY.
At the bottom, in red, it said,
LOvE froMm PeTeY.
The rainbow, an elaborate one, with many kinks in it, made a jagged arch over a house. This house, bright orange, with a green roof, a path to it like a ladder, and next to it something that might have been a tree or possibly a chicken, was extremely small; it had one window and no discernible door; a flock of tick-marks flew over its roof, and below it flowed a powerful navy-blue squiggle. It was blessed by the protective rainbow; also by a red sun, a blue moon, and two bright stars, made of gold foil. ‘It’s
our
house, Lucy,’ Peter explained anxiously.

I could read the drawing’s marvellous perspective, and hadn’t doubted it for one second, so I said: ‘Peter, I can see that. I knew it
at once.
’

His face lit up; he gave me a bear-hug, and I kissed him.

We spent my first week at the farm outside – at least, in my remembrance we did; but then in my remembrance, the sun shone every day, rain and clouds were banished and I was inhabiting a place without shadows. Sometimes, on the rare occasions when I was alone, a hint of a shadow might fall, and I’d start to fret at the fact that Miss Dunsire had failed to write from her Loire chateau. Or I’d dwell on Rose’s birthday and the necessity of a gift. But Wheeler had developed a sixth sense for these anxieties – and always had a cure for them. Sometimes she’d take them on directly and say, ‘Do you
know
how long a letter from France takes? Those Frenchies don’t hurry themselves – I’ve heard it can take weeks – more! And that’s if they don’t lose it this end,’ she’d add darkly.

Sometimes she’d divert me – at which she was expert: and that was an easy enough task, in this place where, every day, there was somewhere or something new to discover. Sometimes Eve’s maid Marcelle would come over to see Wheeler and bring us news of events at Castle Carnarvon. Sometimes we’d be dispatched to the farmer along the valley for freshly churned butter and cream, or sent to find field mushrooms, or pick apples and blackberries for a pie – or, since Wheeler had discovered Miss Dunsire’s lessons left yawning gaps in my education, I’d be whisked off to the kitchen with Rose and Peter and taught to cook: cakes, and gingerbread men, and tarts with home-made jam in them. When the anxiety as to Rose’s birthday present was noted, I was taught to sew. ‘Something you’ve made yourself,’ Wheeler said. ‘That always makes a suitable present.’

I doubted this. The sewing did not go well: I hadn’t inherited my mother’s needle skills. ‘Maybe we’ll try knitting,’ Wheeler announced, showing rare signs of uncertainty. ‘We’ll have a practice run first.’

The practice session could take place in public, she felt, so an old jumper was found; Rose, Peter and I unpicked and then rewound it. ‘No point in wasting new wool, not for the first attempt,’ Wheeler said thriftily, producing fat knitting needles for all three of us. She cast on the stitches, showed us how to do plain and purl, and then sat back and watched. Peter couldn’t master it at all and ran out in search of a hen’s nest. Rose got into a tangle two rows down, tossed it aside as the most annoying thing ever and ran out to join him. I laboured on, frowning and fretting, dropping stitches, picking them up: first the tension was too tight, then too loose: I had ambitions for it, but it grew very slowly. It started life as a scarf, then shrank to a pot-holder; after a week of intermittent toil Wheeler inspected it and said she thought it might make an egg cosy.

Fortunately, I was able to abandon it the very next day, when the two last problems afflicting me were resolved, by the arrival of the post, and by the advent of Eve, who had been away in London with friends, but had now returned to Highclere Castle. It was Eve who arrived first, at the wheel of her own car, a dashing open-topped marvel in British racing green, with a leather belt around its bonnet. It was a Lagonda 11.9 coupé, she explained airily, and her favourite little runabout. ‘Rosebud, my best beloved – how
brown
you are!’ she cried, stooping to kiss her. ‘And who are these two little savages?’ she enquired, as Peter and I ran out to greet her.

‘We’re
pirates
,’
Peter corrected, and Eve said: ‘Darlings, of
course
you are. What an idiot I am – I hadn’t noticed the cutlasses.’

She was looking very pretty, I thought, in her floating dress, with her nut-brown hair and nut-brown eyes; at first I was shy of her, but that wore off as she stayed all morning and chattered away. Wheeler had tipped her the wink, I suspect, because when she was readying herself to leave, she drew me apart from the others, and taking my hand in a solemn way, said: ‘Lucy, shall you mind if I ask you a
huge
favour? I need to trot over to the shops one day and find a gift for Rose’s birthday – and I need help choosing it. I’m so bad at making up my mind, and bound to pick the wrong thing. I get
frantic
with indecision… You wouldn’t be an absolute angel, and come with me and advise me?’

I said I would like that very much, and asked if I might buy a present for Rose at the same time. ‘Daddy gave me pocket money for the month before I left,’ I explained. ‘Sixpence a week, so I have a florin. Do you think that will be enough, Eve?’

‘
Enough?
Lucy, it’s munificent! What fun! We’ll make a day of it, shall we? We have so much to catch up on – I want to hear all about Frances and her island. You
must
tell me about Cambridge… I’ll fix it all with Wheeler – maybe next week?
I
know, I’ll pick you up in the morning, and we’ll buzz off in my little car to Alresford, and shop like mad things, and have a slap-up lunch. Then I’ll take you over to see Highclere, and our Egyptian treasures – the others can meet us there and we’ll have tea. Howard Carter will have arrived by then, and he’ll love to see you all. Right, that’s our secret plan, Lucy.’

I was still reeling at this prospect hours later, when the young boy who delivered our letters arrived with the second post of the day. I watched him come toiling down the steep hill with his leather satchel, and while he was being tended to by Wheeler, given lemonade and cake, fuel to propel him back up the hot hill and on the further two hot miles to the next farm, Rose, Peter and I sorted the offerings he’d brought with him. They included items for me, the first mail I’d received since arriving. There was a postcard from my father in Cambridge, the flowing copperplate informing me that the weather was changeable there and Euripides was progressing. And there was a letter – a fat letter – from Nicola Dunsire.

I inspected its envelope closely: French postage stamps and – no doubt about it, no possible ambiguities – a legible French postmark. The last lingering shadows that had threatened disappeared in a mirror-flash. Now I had the envelope in my hand, I found I wasn’t that eager to read its contents; I went fishing with Rose and Peter instead. But when I went to bed that night, the letter reproached me – it was kind of her to write, after all; so I opened it and read it by the flicker of candlelight.

Description of Loire and chateau; address of said chateau, which she’d clean forgotten to give me… account of trains, drains, weather, local beauty spots. Books being read by their party: Nicola Dunsire discovering the world of someone called Marcel Proust. Dorothy doing this, Meta saying that, Evadne in charge of meals, Edith deep in Hume, Clair bicycling off to paint landscapes… Thirteen earnest, industrious, high-minded and, I felt, rather boring bluestockings… I yawned and skimmed to the last page; the poet from our Cambridge lunch party had turned up – out of the blue apparently: Eddie-something double-barrelled, surname unreadable in candlelight. Eddie sent on his way…
The most beautiful evening, such a view from my room. Back to Monsieur Swann’s tomorrow,
she wrote, and with that the letter ended abruptly.

Amusing in places but a plod through predictable territory, I thought. She had signed off:
Voila! Ecrivez-moi, ma chère Lucy. Je vous embrace, Nicola.
There was a postscript:
How are your Egyptologists? Have you worn my dress yet?

I tried on her dress the next morning: I was reminded of it by that postscript, and I wanted to be sure it would fit me for Rose’s birthday. At the end of July, it had fitted perfectly; only six weeks ago, but since coming to the farm I felt as if I’d grown – my body felt different. I blamed Wheeler’s excellent cooking, the sharpened appetite that came from running about all day; those cakes and pies and biscuits we consumed, the eggs and bacon breakfasts, the pints of milk we drank. I locked the door, removed my nightdress, and peered down at my own nakedness. I was taller, but my legs and arms were still thin, my hip and collarbones stuck out; you could count my ribs. Wheeler said both Peter and I were too skinny, and I was built like a boy – since I’d have liked to
be
a boy, I took that as a compliment. No change, no change, I thought with relief, and eased the silk over my head. The twenty tiny buttons ran up the side of the dress; the ten lower ones fastened easily; the ten above did not.