Her interest was forgiveable. Fanny never received letters. There had been no one from whom to receive them. And the London postmark was highly intriguing.
Fanny’s own fingers trembled as she tore open the envelope. The thin delicate writing didn’t look like a man’s. Mr Barlow didn’t come to her mind. She had no clue to the writer, only again this unreasonable disquiet.
The thick sheet of notepaper was open in her hand. She read,
My dear Miss Davenport, You will not perhaps recognise my name since I have been retired for some years, and am now a very old man. But as your late father’s attorney and friend, I would like to extend to you my very best wishes on your coming of age. Indeed, since I have not seen you since you were virtually a baby, I have an old man’s whim that you might, when you next make the journey to London, call on me at my house in Hanover Square. I have no doubt that under your uncle’s excellent guardianship you have bloomed. It would please me to see this with my own eyes. Would you be so kind as to bear the thought in mind? Your obedient servant, Timothy J. Craike.
It was like a hand reaching out from the past. Someone who had known her father, and perhaps her mother. Fanny had to read the letter twice to assimilate its contents, and then, forgetting all propriety, she went flying into the library.
‘Uncle Edgar! Oh, I am so glad to find you here!’
‘I scarcely had time to disappear, since you gave me no warning,’ said her uncle dryly.
‘I’m sorry. I should have knocked. I was so excited. Look, Uncle Edgar! I have a letter. Read it!’
She thrust the sheet of notepaper at Uncle Edgar, wondering for the first time as she waited impatiently for him to read the thin careful writing, why he had never mentioned Mr Craike to her.
But in a moment he had unwittingly explained her doubt,
‘God bless my soul, I thought the old man dead long ago.’
‘Then you know him, Uncle Edgar?’
‘Certainly. He attended to your father’s affairs after his death. But it’s years now since I had occasion to see him, and as he was an old man then I’d no idea he was still alive. Let me see, he must be as near ninety as anything.’
‘Then how wonderful of him to remember me. Oh, I should like to meet him.’
‘For a young woman who seems to show a remarkable scorn for males of her own age, I find this deep interest in a gentleman approaching his century very strange.’
‘Uncle, please be serious!’ Fanny begged. ‘It isn’t Mr Craike I’m interested in. He remembers my father, and perhaps my mother. I should dearly like to talk about them to him.’
Uncle Edgar clasped his hands on his stomach, leaning back in his chair. His eyes were inscrutable.
‘So you want to make another journey to London?’
‘Oh, I do, please! I know it’s a tremendous favour to ask, but if you would try to understand how I have felt with no memory of my parents, and now here is an opportunity of getting one.’
‘And supposing you hear something you wouldn’t care to know?’
‘What do you mean? There is nothing like that about my parents. What could there be that I shouldn’t know?’
Uncle Edgar was chuckling gently.
‘Be a little calmer, my dear. If I know anything at all, Mr Craike will tell you you are your mother over again, wilful, turbulent, a proper handful, eh? That’s how he’ll describe you.’ He was patting her hand in his familiar reassuring way. ‘Don’t look so anxious. You shall go to London and see this gentleman. We shall both go.’
‘You mean you will come with me!’
‘I will certainly come with you. Looking as you do at this moment you could certainly not be trusted to travel alone.’
He submitted to Fanny’s impulsive hug with amused tolerance.
‘Perhaps you’ll even have a good word to say for your uncle when we get to London.’
‘But of course, Uncle Edgar. When can we go? Tomorrow?’
‘One day next week, perhaps.’
‘Oh, but, Uncle—’
Uncle Edgar made a sudden impatient movement, as if his goodwill were only superficial. Fanny had a cold feeling that he already regretted his promise.
‘Am I to cancel all my appointments, no matter how important, for a sentimental old man who has already waited almost twenty-one years to see you? Come, my dear, be reasonable.’
‘Yes, of course. It must be at your convenience. I didn’t think.’
‘Never mind thinking.’ He reached in his pocket for his snuff-box. ‘Pretty women shouldn’t think.’ As he opened the box some of the snuff was spilt. How strange. Uncle Edgar’s plump fingers were never clumsy. But he was laughing softly again. ‘And a man should never allow himself to be upset by a pretty woman.’
‘Have I upset you, Uncle Edgar?’ Fanny asked bewilderedly.
‘Yes, you have. The hunting season begins in ten days. I shall have to miss the first meet. The devil take old Craike who should have been in his grave ten years ago.’
Amelia had found the little Chinese camel. She was holding it in her hands when Fanny came into the room. She started guiltily at Fanny’s entrance, and Fanny exclaimed, ‘Amelia, how dare you! Going through my things!’
‘I was only looking for some cotton in your work box. Why did Adam give you this? Did you ask him for it?’
‘
Ask
him for it!’ Fanny snatched the camel from Amelia in high indignation. ‘No, I did not. He merely saw that I admired it.’
‘And so, as if you were the Queen, he had to give it to you!’ Amelia’s face was flushed, her voice sneering. ‘Why is it that you have to get everything these days, even another trip to London to see a silly old man in his dotage. I don’t know what has come over Papa. But now, all the time, it’s Fanny must do this, Fanny must have that, as if—I don’t know. Why didn’t you marry Mr Barlow and go away?’
‘Amelia!’
‘You needn’t think Adam cares for you just because he’s given you that ugly old camel. To tell the truth, he’s just sorry for you. He told me so.’
‘And why is he sorry for me?’ Fanny asked in a low voice.
‘Good gracious, how could he not be? Everyone’s sorry for poor relations.’
‘I think you’re just being spiteful.’
‘No. I’m speaking the truth. Mamma says it should be me getting the trip to London. It’s time I went to operas and theatres. But I don’t really grudge it to you. You’ll have little enough.’
‘Will I?’ Fanny asked dreamily. The little camel cradled in her hands felt like the whole world.
‘Don’t look like that!’ Amelia cried, stamping her foot. ‘You look lovesick and silly. Adam isn’t going to marry you. He’s going to marry me.’
‘Has he—told you so?’
‘I’m not blind!’ said Amelia and suddenly burst into tears and ran out of the room.
In his own way George made a worse scene than that. He had got it into his head that Fanny was going to meet Hamish Barlow in London. It was useless to tell him that she wasn’t, that Hamish Barlow had long ago sailed for the East, ‘Then who is it you’re going to meet? It must be a man. You wouldn’t look excited like that for a woman.’
‘Yes, it is a man, but a very old man. Nearly ninety. Does that satisfy you?’
‘It would if I believed you,’ said George. His eyes were sulky and smouldering. ‘Are you going to come back?’
‘Of course I’m going to come back!’ Fanny said exasperatedly. ‘Though sometimes, the way you behave, I’d like to stay away.’
‘If you do, I’ll follow you. I’ll follow you and kill you both.’
One day George would do something like that—if he hadn’t done so already. Fanny’s thoughts inevitably went back to Ching Mei and the riddle of that tragic evening. Then he would have to be put away, either in a mental hospital, or behind the grim grey walls of Dartmoor prison. How terrible to ride past the prison and know that Cousin George was there. And yet what a relief it would be. Neither his parents nor his besotted grandmother recognised his potential danger. She had loyally tried not to recognise it herself, but the time was coming when she couldn’t endure his persecution any longer, when something would have to happen.
Aunt Louisa was the other person who thought the trip to London a piece of extravagant folly.
‘Why can’t Fanny write to Mr Craike?’ she asked her husband.
‘Because she wants to see him and talk to him. It’s very understandable.’
‘Then why don’t you have the old man come here?’
‘Because he is quite beyond travelling. I gather he has only a short time to live. One can’t refuse a dying man’s whim, my dear.’
Aunt Louisa tossed her head impatiently.
‘Oh, you and your sense of duty! Do you ever stop to consider the inconvenience caused to others by it? Fanny has already spoiled those children until the servants can scarcely manage them. There’ll be trouble the moment she’s gone, and the brunt of it will fall on me. Really, Edgar, I seem to have spent the whole of my married life coping with your obligations. What other woman would have done it—no less than three strange children—the house practically an orphanage—’
Uncle Edgar bent to press his lips against his wife’s plump neck.
‘You have been an angel, my love. Angels are sometimes rewarded.’ He gave his throaty gurgle at her face suddenly full of anticipation. ‘Not another word at the moment. But you haven’t the worst husband in the world’—his fingers found her breast—‘I assure you…’
Once again Fanny packed her neat carpet bag with the essentials for a journey. But this time she could leave out her most precious possessions, for she very definitely was coming back. She would have liked to have had the opportunity to tell Adam about her journey. She fancied he would have been pleased for her. But he had not called lately, and it hardly seemed sufficient reason to write to him since she would be back within three days. Two days for travelling, and one to visit Mr Craike. Yet it would have been a wonderfully satisfying thing to write a note to Mr Marsh. Even forming his name on paper would have made her lips curve with pleasure. So he was to marry Amelia was he! She would see about that!
‘Cousin Fanny, why are you always smiling? Is it because you are leaving us?’
Nolly’s eyes were black with hatred.
Fanny began to laugh, and shook the child gently by the shoulders.
‘If you continue to look like that I will be very glad to leave you.’
‘Marcus says you won’t come back.’
‘Marcus says nothing of the kind. And you are to be good children while I’m away. If Dora tells me you haven’t been, there will be no gifts in my bag.’
Marcus immediately began to clamour for a toy trumpet.
‘I need one to blow for my soldiers. Cousin George says there must be a trumpeter to sound the alarm. What does alarm mean, Cousin Fanny?’
‘It means when the enemy is in sight.’
‘Then you mustn’t blow it, Marcus! You mustn’t!’ Nolly cried, in agitation.
Marcus, five years old, was at last beginning to realise his superiority over a mere girl. He strutted about saying derisively, ‘You’re scared. Cousin Fanny, Nolly’s always getting scared of something.’
Nolly made a wild dash at him, to tug at his hair.
‘I am not scared! I am not scared!’
‘Lawks!’ cried Dora, running to separate the screaming children. ‘Miss Nolly, you’ll be going to bed without your supper.’
Nolly stood glowering.
‘I am not scared at all. I am only over-sensitive. Great-aunt Arabella says so. She says I must be treated gently and not frightened. She says this house is enough to frighten any child.’
‘And now that speech is over,’ said Fanny, ‘what is there about the house to frighten a child?’
There was a red spot in each of Nolly’s cheeks. Otherwise her face was paper white and looked alarmingly delicate. She was a bunchy little figure in her starched petticoats and her wide-skirted gingham dress, but Fanny knew that when the clothes were stripped off her she was far too thin and light. And her flat little chest was the storing place for too many conflicting emotions.
‘Nolly,’ Fanny said, ‘I will be back for my birthday. You know that, don’t you?’
This was suddenly, to Nolly, an irrefutable argument. Her face lit up, showing its infrequent dazzling prettiness.
‘You will have to be, Cousin Fanny. Because I am making you a present. You wouldn’t be too stupid not to come back for your presents.’
In spite of that victory, Fanny was still not entirely easy about leaving the children. It was only that she wanted so badly to go and see Mr Craike, and besides Hannah had assured her that she was wrong to let the children possess her too much.
‘You’re only making a rod for your back, Miss Fanny,’ she said. She looked round quickly to see that no one else was within hearing, and added, ‘You know what it’s been, running errands for Miss Amelia all your life, and now being tied to the nursery when you should be living your own life. All this nonsense about not getting a husband. You had only to see how that gentleman from China was turned silly about you, so why shouldn’t others be. You ought to be thinking of children of your own, Miss Fanny.’
‘Bless you, Hannah. I don’t know why I worry about Nolly when you’re here. It’s only if she gets one of her frights—’
‘And them all imagination!’ Hannah said briskly. ‘It’s a pity she ever heard that old story about the bird in the chimney. I know it can be scary for a child. You found it scary yourself when you were a little one. But if you ask me, half Miss Nolly’s frights are invented.’ Hannah shook her grey head wisely. ‘She sees she gets plenty of attention from them.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, Hannah. Anyway, she’s convinced, for some reason, that I’m stupid. Perhaps that’s the reason.’
Fanny wanted so much to be convinced that she allowed herself to be. The children could come to no harm in three days. Dora would sleep in the nursery with them. Hannah would be within call.
But in the late afternoon of the day before her departure everything changed. Nolly and Marcus went to Lady Arabella’s room as usual, Nolly to work on the mysterious birthday present, and Marcus to amuse himself with whatever new fascinating object Lady Arabella might produce.
A few minutes later there were piercing screams.
When Fanny rushed into the room it was difficult to get a coherent story from anybody. Lady Arabella was just shuffling on her sticks from her bedroom, the lamps had not been lit, and the living room with its claustrophobic collection of furniture and knick-knacks was in gloom. Nolly was standing in the middle of the room screaming with terrifying regularity. Her figure was rigid. As that other day by the lake, she obviously was in no condition to say what had happened, and it was left for Marcus, beginning to sob with infectious fear, to stutter that Nolly had touched the bird.