Anna (57 page)

It was cold on the packet boat and the grey mist that hung about it swathed and drenched her. Three times already on the trip she had come up on deck, and each time it had been the same—the opaque, shifting curtain that surrounded them, the wash and mutter of the sea, the faint breeze blown along the deck by their own slow passage.

But now it was different. There were men standing along the rails with half-coiled ropes in their hands, and the engines had stopped. Out there in front of her, hidden somewhere behind the vagueness of the mist, there was the sound of men's voices and a train shunting. It was England.

But the cold soon drove her below again. She went down into the small varnished saloon that smelt so strongly of the reek of oil lamps, and sat down on the hard couch that ran along the wall, reading the notices about life-belts, and pickpockets and the Female Vigilance Society. It was an English boat, and she was travelling second-class.

Then the saloon trembled slightly and heavy feet began running across the deck. They had berthed.

The mist still hung over everything, obscuring and distorting outlines. As she went down the steep gangway, the figures that came towards her loomed suddenly like characters in a dim, too sleepy dream. Inside the customs shed the lights were burning with a pleasant golden glow that lit nothing.

The porter who had seized her bag was already disappearing into the darkness, and she followed, not altogether trusting him. But he seemed honest enough. He led her through a doorway and there was a train waiting.

It was its smallness that surprised her. A squat bulbous engine stood at the head of a row of low box-like coaches. The whole thing had the air of something from the nursery cupboard.

“This cannot be the train,” she told herself. “It is impossible that this should be the train for London.”

She was the only visitor, the only stranger, in the compartment. The others were all English, and so had a right to make themselves at home. The big man in the enormous red ulster and the flat tweed
cap with the big ear-flaps buttoned on top, kept bending right across her to drop his fusees one by one into the brass ash-tray that was beside her. He was smoking a fat silver-banded pipe and kept complaining that the mist had got into his tobacco. The woman who was with him was tall and lean-faced; she had wrapped herself into a plaid travelling rug as soon as she had got into the carriage, and already her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping.

Anna looked down at the thick shapeless ankle that jutted out from the fancy fringe of the rug. It was obvious that the woman had put on two pairs of stockings to survive the ordeal of the Channel crossing.

There was a bubbling, trickling sound that made Anna turn round, and she saw that the large gentleman was pouring something out of a morocco-covered flask. When he had filled the small silver cup that he had unscrewed, he stirred his companion by pressing his foot against hers and offered her the cup. She refused it. Neither of them had said a single word.

Then the train began to move off. It moved much more easily and gently than French trains, and passed over a multitude of points, softly as though the springs were cushioned. Once out of the region of the dock the squat engine began to hurry; like a real train, a
rapide,
it raced along, the window-straps flapping.

The journey, when they had reached London, seemed absurdly short; absurdly short, but taken in a big way. Inside that hot stuffy compartment it was impossible to believe that the train was not careering across continents. And Charing Cross Station had the same air of attempted size about it. As she stood there waiting for a porter, she saw that it was small, really; very small. But the porters and the crowds waiting gave it an air of importance. It was the sight of these other people all with someone to meet them that brought Anna's own loneliness back to her. She was the one un-met, unwelcomed soul on the whole platform.

In her hand she was holding the slip of paper with the Reverend Mother's precise handwriting on it. “
The train for Chislehurst runs from the same station
” it said, “
Ask the Station-master to tell you from which platform. You should inquire also for the waiting-room reserved for ladies. If the boat train should be punctual there will be one hour to wait.”

But it was not of Chislehurst, or of the Reverend Mother, or even of her own loneliness, that she was thinking. It was of Annette. The picture of her in her striped uniform that was too big for her had come suddenly before her eyes, and remained there. The small face was wrinkled and puzzled as it had been when the Reverend Mother had been questioning her.

“You're so far away,” Anna began saying. “And it will be so long before I see you. Don't forget me altogether. Try to remember how much I love you.”

And because she couldn't stand there in front of all those people and let them see that she was crying, she picked up her bag herself and began to walk towards the barrier.

At Chislehurst there was a brougham outside the station waiting for her. The pair of horses were big, high-stepping creatures, and the groom had a cockade upon his hat.

Anna did not know the misgivings and indecisions that had passed through Lady Yarde's heart in the matter of the brougham. At first she had been overcome with pity for the poor girl who had been travelling for nearly three days to get there and had ordered the big carriage to be sent for her so that the last portion of the journey could be made in comfort. Then she had come to her senses and remembered that she was, after all, only a governess, a person. All the other governesses whom she had engaged and sent away again, had been met only with a dog-cart; it was the proper thing. But dear Veronica, writing from that convent of hers, had said that the Karlin girl came of a good family; and a dog-cart in the circumstances did not seem to be sufficient. So in the end the brougham had been sent.

The horses took the climb slowly. The country was hilly, and it was beautifully wooded; but scarcely “a miniature Switzerland” as the guide-book that Anna had been reading said it was. She wondered if the man who had written that had ever been to Switzerland, and there seemed something oddly pathetic in the way in which the English at home had to take all their pleasures so much in little.

But there was certainly nothing little about Tilliards; it was a big house, by any standards; a mansion. For a moment she caught a glimpse of it as the groom waited at the lodge for a woman in a white apron to open the gates for them. Then, as the driver turned, all that she could see was the long drive stretching ahead of them, winding upwards through the trees.

Because it was autumn, the leaves were everywhere; the ground blossomed with them. They covered the gravel and had been driven by the wind into little pools in all the hollows. The park was big. At the foot of the hill was a small river, and a lake. On the farther side of the lake there was a fine, ornamental boat-house like a Swiss
chalet, newly painted, and on the wide sloping lawn a herd of deer was grazing.

Then the drive straightened out again and she could see the house once more—the colonnade and the big stone clock-tower, the many gables and the endless outbuildings.

The brougham drew up and the groom dismounted. Anna found herself opposite a long portico; a pack of dogs—some spaniels, some setters—came bounding up, barking, and the doorway of the mansion was opened for her.

The housekeeper was there waiting for her in the wide hall. She was a thin, bloodless woman, dressed all in black, with a small jet brooch set in the centre of her flat bosom. Her grey thinning hair was drawn tightly back, revealing the shape of the skull underneath; and her hands in their black mittens were held clasped in front of her.

She greeted Anna in a faint, flat voice and nodded to one of the maids to take her bag from the coachman. She never did anything herself beyond arranging a few flowers sometimes, and she knew exactly how to behave towards governesses. Small bags they carried themselves; larger ones, the maids carried.

The staircase up which she led Anna was high and spacious. It was crowded with portraits—round, red-cheeked English faces with protruding eyes that stared down at her. There were more portraits along the corridor down which Anna was now taken. But after she had passed through a doorway at the far end of the corridor the pictures stopped abruptly. She was now in a rather cold expressionless little passageway with plain varnished doors.

The housekeeper threw open one of the doors.

“This is your bedroom,” she said.

And Anna caught sight of a tall iron bedstead, a glossy picture of the Queen and the Prince Consort, and three pieces of heavy ebony furniture.

“And this,” said the housekeeper, “will be your sitting-room.”

She opened a door leading off the bedroom and disclosed a small room with blue walls and a fringed red plush tablecloth which clashed with them. There was an easy-chair, once luxurious and now a little worn. The idea of a visitor did not appear to have crossed the mind of whoever it was who had arranged the room.

“But perhaps governesses do not have visitors,” Anna thought. “Perhaps they are not allowed.”

What was chiefly remarkable about the room, however, were the photographs: they were everywhere. They stood on the mantel-piece,
on the revolving bookcase, on the occasional table, along the window-sill. They were all of young women between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Their vague, bird-like faces peeped timidly out from the thin silver frames.

But the housekeeper was speaking again.

“Her ladyship will wish to see you,” she said, “when you've rested. Lunch will be brought up to you.”

It was nearly three o'clock before Lady Yarde was ready to see the new governess. The postman had just brought her a letter from her son that had disturbed her. The poor boy was in the Hussars and he was short of money again. The Hussars seemed so terribly expensive that she was quite worried about him. It was obvious that Gervase could not make both ends meet and his father didn't really seem to understand him.

She was lying back with her face covered by her hand wondering what to do, when Anna entered. The other hand was holding a bottle of smelling-salts. She started, and caught sight of the new governess.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

She could tell immediately that the girl was unsuitable: it needed only a glance to perceive it. Obviously her sister-in-law's judgment was unreliable. She simply did not dare to imagine what Lord Yarde's comment would be when he saw her. She was so—so unorthodox-looking. Lady Yarde wished now that she had engaged the little mousey one that the agency had sent her, the one whose two brothers were both missionaries.

Because Lady Yarde gave no sign of speaking, Anna addressed her.

“I am Anna Karlin,” she said.

Lady Yarde raised her eyebrows. She was a big, heavily boned woman with a lot of pale hair piled high on top of her head. On her face was an expression of consternation and surprise; not temporary surprise, but rather a kind of permanent astonishment. It was like the face of a big, bewildered school girl.

“Anna Karlin,” she said hurriedly. “Yes, yes, of course, Anna Karlin.”

She paused long enough to get command of the situation again.

“Have you any experience of children?” she asked suddenly.

“I have a little girl of my own,” Anna answered.

Lady Yarde started. “Then you're married!”

She regretted the sentence as soon as she had uttered it. But it was too late then: the harm was done.

“Yes,” Anna told her. “But my husband is dead now. He died in Paris just after the siege.”

“The siege?” Lady Yarde grasped gratefully at something that would help her to cover up her confusion. “How terrible that must have been,” she went on. “And those horrible Germans. I'm told that they were very cruel. But your little girl—she came through the siege all right?”

“We both went into a convent,” Anna told her.

Lady Yarde lifted the smelling bottle to her nostrils again.

“How nice for you,” she said lightly. “To be together, I mean.”

She hesitated once more before continuing. She remembered now that Sister Veronica, or dear Caroline as she still thought of her, had said that the girl had German blood in her and she realised at the same moment that she was separated from her child.

“You don't think, do you,” she asked hopefully, “that your child will take your mind off your work? You don't think you'll miss her too much?”

If only Anna would say “yes,” she could give her the return fare at once and that would be an end of it. But Anna did not say “yes.”

“No, your ladyship,” she answered. “You can rely on me.”

There was a note of assurance in her voice that made Lady Yarde feel uncomfortable.

“Doesn't she know that she oughtn't to stare so?” she asked herself. “All the other governesses Delia ever had kept their eyes to the ground when speaking to me. But I suppose I can't ask her not to look at me.”

So she changed the subject.

“What a peculiar accent you have,” she said. “Where did you acquire it?”

“In France, your ladyship,” Anna replied. “I had so few opportunities of speaking English.”

“I only hope that my daughter doesn't catch it from you,” Lady Yarde replied. “It would sound very strange.”

The creature was still staring at her and she decided that she must do something to assert her authority. So she picked up her lorgnette and surveyed Anna critically.

“Is that the only dress you've brought?” she asked. “It's really most unsuitable.”

“I'm afraid so, your ladyship,” Anna answered. “I gave away most of my clothes when I went into the convent.”

“I'll speak to the housekeeper and see what she can suggest,” Lady Yarde continued. “It ought to be something dark with a white edging. We dress very plainly in England, remember.”