Autumn Softly Fell (25 page)

As she gulped back a sob – thinking of Richard still made her cry – Dorothea heard a scraping, sliding sound, and a puffing of breath. She realized that the earl must be getting ready to go, struggling to his feet.

‘I will take my leave, Mr Brannan. Oh, and one last thing. Congratulations on your success today. Well deserved, I do not doubt it. Hard work brings its own rewards – something my son has never been able to grasp. I wish you all the best with your project. I hope you have a speedy recovery.’

Dorothea shrank behind a potted palm as the earl came shuffling out of the room, tap-tapping with his stick. Bent over, wrinkled, his hair thinning and completely white, his face was nonetheless set and determined, his eyes steely – as if it was the strength of his will that kept him going in his fading years, knitting his very sinews together. A terrible man, she thought, hiding her face behind the waxy leaves. A good man perhaps, deep down, but terrible even so. Watching as a liveried attendant came running from a side door to help the old man, Dorothea shuddered, glad of her uncle – of Aunt Eloise, too, cold and aloof but with a heart beating inside her. She was only human, had made mistakes. Had she really fallen in love with
Jonathan Huntley? Would one ever know, or was it now lost in the mists of the past? Her mistakes were long ago and she had learned her lesson. She had chosen wisely since then. She had chosen Uncle Albert.

Poor, poor Richard! Such a terrifying grandfather, such an unscrupulous uncle, such a short little life!
God’s will,
Mlle Lacroix called it; God would look after him now. But as she stood there in the empty hallway, Dorothea had the strangest feeling that Richard was there, just out of reach, behind one of the statues, perhaps, or concealed by the foliage. She smiled, thinking of how he would have enjoyed today if he’d been well enough to come, how much she would have had to tell him if he’d stayed at home. What a day it had been!

It was coming to an end at last. The stalls and attractions were
shutting
down, the marquees were being dismantled. A stream of people, of bicycles, carts, carriages and motors, was dwindling away up the drive. All that was left was the trampled grass and patches of mud. The two BFS motors departed, Uncle Albert and Henry in one, the other heading for Coventry with Mr Simcox, Mr Smith, Arnie Carter and Young, the second mechanic. Uncle Albert looked completely recovered. A heart murmur, the doctor had said. It couldn’t be very serious, thought Dorothea, a mere
murmur
.

Walking back to their own motor, Dorothea lagged behind her aunt, Nora beside her talking nineteen to the dozen. She’d never known such excitement, she’d had a wonderful time, she would never forget it until the end of her days. And Arnie— Oh, wasn’t he a hero, and so handsome too – even with oil on his face and grubby wet overalls and one too many beers inside him.

‘Oh, but miss! Miss! If I keep it to myself any longer I shall burst! You’ll never
guess
what has happened – you’ll never
guess
! He has asked me to marry him!
Me
, marry
him
! Can you credit it? Oh, miss, I’m that happy I could—’

But at that moment Aunt Eloise called on them to hurry and there was no time for further talk.

Rolling slowly homewards through the dusky lanes, Dorothea
leant out of the window, the wind whirling in her face, blowing her thoughts every which way. The leafy hedgerows spun past, vanished behind them into the gloom. There were spots of rain in the air again.

‘Shut the window, now, Dorothea,’ said Aunt Eloise. ‘It is getting draughty.’

With the window closed, the evening countryside suddenly seemed dim and distant. Dorothea sat cocooned in the motor as it jolted and jerked over the ruts in the road. The journey back seemed to be taking an eternity. Her eyelids began to droop.

And Nora, she said to herself, picking up the threads of her thoughts, Nora was getting married. Arnie Carter had asked her at last. But did that mean Nora would go away? She would have to leave the nursery, whatever happened. She would not be able to keep her situation once she was married. But would she move to Coventry – all the way to Coventry?

Dorothea’s heart lurched at the idea of losing Nora. Nora had always been there, from the very first morning. Dear Nora. Why, when wonderful things happened – the BFS motor winning first prize, Nora getting married – did unpleasant things have to happen too like Uncle Albert’s illness, Nora leaving Clifton?

I wish,
thought Dorothea,
oh how I wish
—

But the thought was too vast and nebulous for her tired head to encompass and she never completed it. Instead her eyes closed, her head lolled, and she slept.

TAKING A DEEP
breath, Dorothea opened the drawing room door and walked in – only to find it empty. She was the first one down. She let out her breath, a sigh of relief; it would have been agonizing to have made an entrance, to have all eyes upon her. Not that she didn’t think her frock – white cotton gauze with stitched mauve decoration – the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, but somehow it seemed almost
too
beautiful, as if she had a cheek to even
think
of wearing it, plain old Dorothea. There had been no question, however, of
not
wearing it. It was a gift from Aunt Eloise, made especially. It had taken an age to put on, with so many buttons and hooks-and-eyes, and the new nursery maid all fingers-and-thumbs, not a patch on Nora. Finding good staff was quite impossible these days, Aunt Eloise had said pointedly as she kept a watchful eye on proceedings. The poor maid! Anyone would be ham-fisted in Aunt Eloise’s punctilious presence. And no one could ever fill Nora’s shoes.

Dorothea crossed the drawing room, aware of every rustle of material, every swirl of her skirts, feeling every inch a young lady. It was a feeling that would take some getting used to. The french windows were open. She stepped out onto the terrace. The heat of the day was lingering – though the air felt cool on her neck, unused as she was to having her hair up. The sun was low in the sky away to the right; shadows were lengthening; dusk already lay in wait beneath the distant trees of Ingleby Wood. But evening sunshine lay thick and golden on the verdant fields and hedgerows, and it glinted on the half-hidden canal. Dorothea breathed deeply. The air was scented with grass and clover.

A perfect day, she said to herself:
her
day, her birthday – the seventh birthday she had celebrated at Clifton. It was scarcely believable. She’d never envisaged spending one birthday here, let alone seven. The day was to conclude with a dinner party in her honour, a dinner at which she was to be present – Roderick, too – unlike that dinner for Roderick’s birthday long ago which he’d been so disgusted to be excluded from. Dorothea smiled, remembering how they had sneaked downstairs and spied on the grown-ups and how, without warning, Mrs Bourne had come swooping upon them, driving them back to their rightful place in the nursery. In those days the green baize door had been a frontier one only dared cross at one’s peril but now the whole house was open to her. Aunt Eloise still perhaps frowned on her habit of spending too much time in the servants’ areas but nowhere these days was strictly
forbidden
.

As for Roderick, he was at home by special dispensation. She had pleaded his case to her aunt. ‘We can’t have a special dinner without him, Aunt,’ she had insisted, watching as Aunt Eloise drew up a tentative guest list (a line had been drawn at asking any of the Turners). ‘He simply
has
to be here!’ Aunt Eloise had seemed pleased by her entreaty, had agreed at once, had written to the school and arranged for Roderick to take time off. But, as always, Roderick’s presence was a mixed blessing, Dorothea acknowledged, as she shielded her eyes to look at distant Hambury Hill which reared like a dark massing wave against the bright horizon. She sighed, for Roderick did not engender soothing thoughts. He had never been the easiest to get on with. Half the time one wondered if he was worth bothering with at all.

Arriving yesterday evening, Roderick had brought with him – uninvited – a friend from school named Harrington-Shaw, a rather podgy boy who went bright red whenever anyone spoke to him. It was this high-handedness – the way Roderick did things to suit himself – which irritated Dorothea most of all. And so she had not been in a conciliatory mood when they had quarrelled that morning. The quarrel, as it so often was, had been about Nibs.

Dorothea sighed again. Not quite a
perfect
day, then. But what day ever was?

Leaning over the parapet, Dorothea heard faint sounds on the still air. One of the basement windows must be open – the kitchen, by the sound of it. She could hear a clatter of dishes and Cook’s voice, harassed. ‘Mind my bread sauce. And what in heaven’s name have you done with that watercress?’

Dorothea smiled, remembering Cook’s ‘particular breakfast’ which had been brought up to the nursery that morning with a flourish and which she had shared with Eliza who had been feeling left out. The day had started on the right note. The sense of occasion had been heightened when Mlle Lacroix had announced that there would be no lessons that day and then Uncle Albert had put in an appearance to wish her happy birthday. He was not going to Coventry today, he’d said, as it was a red letter day. What did she say to a little walk later, just the two of them?

It was later, when Dorothea had gone down to the kitchen to thank Cook, that the first hint of trouble had presented itself. The kitchen maid, Milly Carter, had been in floods of tears, inconsolable. Nibs had been caught stealing vegetables from the garden and had been dismissed outright.

‘But he wouldn’t, miss,’ Milly had sobbed. ‘He wouldn’t do a thing like that!’

Dorothea had been inclined to agree, had felt even more dubious about the whole affair when she learned that Roderick was involved.

‘I saw him with my own eyes, Doro. He was caught in the act.’

‘Are you sure? You’re not just making this up to get back at him?’

‘Are you calling me a
liar
?’ Roderick had got on his high horse. ‘All right then, don’t believe me, see if I care.’

‘Why must you be such a
child
!’ she shouted after him as he stomped off. But afterwards she’d felt remorse, wondering if this time she’d got it wrong. After all, on the very first occasion she’d met Nibs Carter, he’d been stealing apples from the orchard. Perhaps he hadn’t changed.

Directly after luncheon, she’d set off on the walk with Uncle Albert. It had seemed inevitable that their steps should take them to the village. They had stopped briefly at Richard’s grave, turfed over
now, slightly sunken, adorned with only a simple headstone – but a simple headstone seemed fitting, somehow. He had not been an ostentatious sort of boy. Starlings had been chattering on the church roof; the sun had been veiled by high clouds; her eyes had filled with tears. But only a single, solitary tear had run down her cheek as she stood there, realizing that she was now older than Richard would ever be. Uncle Albert had taken her hand without a word and they had left the churchyard, crossed the Green, walked slowly down School Street. After four years, the jagged walls of the burned-out cottages had been rubbed smooth at the edges by the wind and the rain and the sun. The black stains were slowly fading into the sandstone. Ivy wreathed them; grass lapped them. They seemed indeed to be slowly sinking into the greenery. Down in Wilmot’s yard, smart new stables had appeared, but there was no hay rick yet this year.

Strolling up Back Lane, Uncle Albert had taken a detour down the footpath towards Manor Farm to call on Noah Lee in his little cottage. ‘I have a new kind of ointment for his rheumatics which I want to drop off.’ But Dorothea had known that this was just an excuse. Once they got going, the two men would chunter away for half an hour at least, ‘putting the world to rights’, as Uncle Albert said. Dorothea, leaving her uncle to his talk, had taken the
opportunity
to hurry on up Back Lane. She had not been sure what good she could do even if she dared knock on the Carters’ door but she hadn’t had to knock, for Nibs had been at work in the garden.

He had been at his most exasperatingly obtuse. ‘Well, miss, if they say I took the vegetables, then I suppose I must have done.’

‘Did you or didn’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say, miss.’

‘Robin Carter! You’re sixteen years old! I thought you’d have grown out of these childish ways by now! And stop calling me
miss
, there’s absolutely no need, if you aren’t working at the big house any longer.’

He’d looked at her in his deadpan way and said, ‘
You’re
alright, miss, as I’ve said before. And I don’t call you
miss
because I have to,
but because I want to. But there’s others I could mention who think they’re God Almighty and who’ll need to watch their step in future.’

‘Roddy, you mean?’

But he wouldn’t say, just repeated over and over that he’d been taken for a muggings and he wouldn’t fall for that sort of trick in the future.

Standing now on the terrace with the evening sun giving a golden sheen to the world, Dorothea sighed, wondering if she would ever get to the bottom of this latest run-in between Roderick and Nibs – or indeed any of their other arguments over the years. What was it all for? Did they even know themselves? She had never been given any satisfactory explanation as to how and why the feud had started. It was lost in the mists of time. Perhaps there
was
no explanation. Perhaps boys couldn’t help being pig-headed and silly. Nibs went out of his way to make life difficult for himself, that was certain.

Unable to make any headway that afternoon, she had left Nibs to his own devices and loitered in the street, waiting for Uncle Albert and feeling that the afternoon had been spoiled. But then Mrs Turner had come out of her cottage wiping her hands on her apron and had called Dorothea over to her gate, wishing her many happy returns and offering her a choice of flowers from the garden to make into a bouquet or corsage.

‘You may have as many as you like, miss, with my blessing, only I won’t cut them now. I’ll send them up later so they stay fresh and you can wear them to this dinner which our Nora says is to be given in your honour.’

Hours later, on the terrace, Dorothea fingered her corsage with a sense of pride, for Mrs Turner did not give her flowers to just anybody. Billy Turner had conveyed them from the village, had come right up to the nursery, a bunch of pinks, wallflowers and forget-
me-nots
in his fist.

‘Mother made me promise to give them to you personal. And see, I’ve not crushed a one.’ And in that he’d confounded his mother’s expectations – for
cack-handed
wasn’t the word, she’d said, when it came to their Billy. ‘Seventeen, he is. A lubbery great lad. But he has a heart of gold for all that.’

Dorothea had always found him rather dour but was willing to take the heart of gold on trust. He was, after all, a Turner.

The day room had been busy by then, Dorothea resplendent in her new frock, all the buttons and hooks-and-eyes finally fastened. Mlle Lacroix, Nora, Nanny, little Eliza had all exclaimed at the vision she made; Aunt Eloise had stood silent to one side with a contented look on her face. It had been rather an odd moment, thought Dorothea now as she strolled up and down the terrace, a strangely satisfying moment, to have Billy Turner in the nursery with his clodhopping boots and his cap in his hand and his cheeks on fire whilst Aunt Eloise stood there regally, not a hair out of place. Such a clash of opposites! And yet … and yet….

Dorothea paused in her perambulations, unable to frame her thoughts, unable to explain why it should make her heart beat so fast to be wearing Aunt Eloise’s dress and Mrs Turner’s flowers at the same time. Looking out from the terrace, watching the ponderous flight of a heron as it skimmed in the distance along the invisible line of the canal, it suddenly struck her that in all the hustle and bustle of the nursery earlier one had barely given a thought to Nanny sitting in a corner as quiet as a mouse – if one could
legitimately
compare such a plump and solid-looking woman to a mouse. Thinking back in history to her first days and months at Clifton, it seemed to Dorothea scarcely credible that she had held Nanny in such dread. Over time, Nanny’s potency had diminished. Even little Eliza was not browbeaten by her these days.

Was this what it meant to grow up, Dorothea asked herself, this ability to see people in a different light – then and now, house and village, two different vantage points?

The heron dwindled, was lost in the distance, and Dorothea turned away, went back inside. The room was empty and expectant. She couldn’t sit still. She walked round and round, trailing her hand over the piano, peering at the delft vase on the sideboard, keeping half an eye on the door, wanting it to open, dreading it. But at least she could await Roderick’s appearance with a bit less anxiety now that she had made her peace with him.

She had gone looking for him after her return from the village,
conscious that Nibs’s vagueness over the vegetable affair would allow her to sidestep the question of who was in the right and who wrong: the woolly thinking of a goody-goody, as Roderick would say.

She had found him in the library, smoking.

‘Smoking! You’ll be in the dog house, Roddy, if Aunt Eloise catches you!’

‘I’m quite safe. Mother
never
comes in here.’ He’d been blasé about it, sitting with his feet propped on the desk. ‘Odd, really, about Mother never coming here. I’ve not considered it before.’ He’d blown out smoke, his eyes coming to rest on her speculatively – trying to pass himself off as older than he was, she’d thought; trying to make out he was grown up and worldly-wise. The vexing thing was, it worked. One had to remind oneself that he wasn’t yet
fourteen
.

As if he could read her mind, he’d said with a mocking smile, ‘And how does it feel to be the ripe old age of fifteen?’

‘Why must you be so … so
horrible
?’

‘What did I say?’ All innocence. ‘I only asked what it’s like being fifteen. I wouldn’t know, as I’m such a
child
. That was the word you used, wasn’t it, earlier?’

‘Well, you
are
a child. You
are
. You’re horrible, too – sometimes.’

‘I can’t help that. It’s in my nature. Slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.’

‘That’s what you’d like people to think, but it’s not true. Underneath, you’re … you’re nice.’

‘
Nice
!’ He’d been affronted. His voice had cracked, seesawing from baritone to treble and back again as he spoke. ‘I am
not
nice at all!
Nice
people get walked on. I’d have thought you’d have learned that by now – at your age.’