Where Earth Meets Sky (42 page)

She allowed herself, now, to remember the horror of the home, and to think of Victoria. Supposing she worked hard and earned herself enough means to try and get Victoria back . . . ? Abruptly she stopped this fantasy, leaning against the edge of the bath, shaken by racking sobs. It was far too late. Victoria had been taken away for adoption. They had told her this and at the time Lily had been pleased at the chance of a home for her instead of knowing that she would just be handed over to the orphanage. But that meant Victoria was even more completely lost to her. She couldn’t go snatching her from her home even if she could find her. There was no use in thinking about it. Victoria was better off with a family who could give her a proper life. She must think no more about it and look to the future.

She let herself weep for a time, then dried her eyes, back in the present with the drip-drip of the tap. What on earth am I reduced to? she thought. Spending my evening hiding in the bathroom from Harold Arkwright? This was madness. She got up, resolved to find another post where she could feel safe.

Such a haven presented itself with a Mrs Jessop and her two little girls, whom Lily had cared for all through the war in a house in Surbiton. Mr Jessop was away for most of the war and Lily found a female household in which to pass the shortages and endless bad news of those years. Daisy Jessop was a kindly, timid, rather dull woman who, unlike some, did not flourish when her husband was away but came to rely more and more on Lily. She became very fond of the two girls, Cissy and Margaret, and Mrs Jessop kept her on longer really than her help was required and after Mr Jessop had returned, looking ill, but otherwise unharmed. But Lily started to feel as if her life was slipping past in this quiet, suburban life, and that there must be more on offer, even for someone like her.

The Larstonburys’ house in Hampstead, an imposing brick mansion of four storeys close to the heath, impressed Lily immediately.

When she arrived in June 1921 the walled garden behind was a feast of colour with pots of tobacco plants and daisies and geraniums, the white pom-poms of guelder roses and mauve clusters of wisteria blossoms hanging from the back wall of the house.

Inside, the big, light rooms were richly furnished to exotic taste, with large mirrors giving a sense of space and light, the rich colours of Persian rugs and elegant furniture gleaming with care and smelling of beeswax.

Lily, loving children as she did, became very quickly fond of the two Larstonbury infants, Hubert, aged five, and little Christabel, who was two. Virginia Larstonbury, a willowy, intellectual redhead who spent much of her day buried in books, had named her daughter after the suffragette Christabel Pankhurst. Virginia had also come from a moneyed family. She had a taste for hangings and drapes in rich, eastern colours and Lily felt at home with the silken touches of India, the echoes of Benares and Rajasthan that she saw about the house.

She did not dislike Virginia Larstonbury exactly, but she found her intimidating. Virginia was a woman of ‘interests’, the chief one apparently being ‘theosophy’, and she attended a great many meetings, some of them held in the front parlour of the house in the evenings, when a strangely dressed, intense collection of people arrived and sat talking for hours on end. Virginia was twenty-nine, and, as Lily discovered, fifteen years younger than her husband. She was also not his first wife. Piers Larstonbury had been married and widowed before the war, leaving him with his first two children, Elspeth, now seventeen, and Guy, fifteen, who only appeared from their boarding schools in the holidays. Guy, Lily gathered from the servants, was a sensitive, artistic soul rather like his father. Elspeth, on the other hand, was a firebrand who resented Virginia and had an explosive relationship with her.

Hubert was pale, with Virginia’s colouring and wide, rabbity blue eyes. He was very delicate and sweet-natured, prone to being set upon by other more robust boys, and Lily felt protective towards him. Though he was not as heart-meltingly beautiful as Cosmo had been, she found him easy to deal with, a child who responded easily to affection. Christabel was more solid, dark-haired like her father, but with a much more temperamental nature than her brother. She was, however, a particular favourite of Virginia’s mother, Lady Marston, who adored girls and had very little time for boys, so on the day Lily took Hubert to Brooklands, Christabel was with her grandmother in South Kensington.

Virginia Larstonbury, beautiful in a languid way, with her tresses of straight red hair and pale, freckled skin, was a woman of moods and strong tempers.

‘I don’t believe in the difference between human beings,’ she proclaimed one day from the couch, looking up from her book. Lily caught sight of the book’s title:
Married Love
by someone called Marie Stopes. ‘We are all equals, no matter what our state in life, and should be treated as such. Do you not agree, Lily?’

Do you mean we
are
, or we
ought to be
? Lily wanted to ask. But she usually found it better to appear to agree with people, so just said quietly, ‘Oh yes, I’m sure you’re right.’

However, Virginia Larstonbury’s ideals of equality did not seem to extend as far as her servants, some of whom she treated arrogantly. And she was sure she was right about almost everything, which was one of the things that made Lily begin to pity Major Larstonbury, wondering why he allowed his wife to speak to him so contemptuously. After all, he was an architect with a successful practice in town, but because he did not share her lofty notions she sometimes treated him as if he never had a thought in his head.

‘Oh, it’s no good talking to
you
, Piers,’ Lily sometimes heard her say. Yet she seemed to like Lily, who was nine years older than her, and who was genuinely fond of the children.

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Virginia often said, on her rare visits to the nursery. She would throw herself languidly into the cane chair and pick up Christabel to swamp her with a cuddle.

‘Hubert never behaves as well as that for me. Oh, but I just couldn’t spend all day with them, much as I adore the little darlings. It would drive me quite frantic! One must have a place for learning, for cultivation of the inner life. Or perhaps it’s not necessary for everyone. Some of us are very sensitive to
life
. Are you sensitive to life, would you say, Lily? After all – you’re very
pretty
,’ she finished, rather inconsistently.

‘I don’t really know,’ Lily said, blushing because she really did not know how to conduct such a conversation. ‘Not like you, I don’t suppose.’ Although in some ways she thought Virginia Larstonbury was very
in
sensitive, especially when it came to her husband and children. Almost anything else seemed to matter more, most of the time.

Piers Larstonbury had not behaved to Lily the way most men in her life had – far from it. Months of her employment in his household went by before he did more than pass the time of day with her. He worked a great deal and was not much in the house, but when he was at home, he was always very well-mannered to his wife, however irritable and impatient she could be with him.

For the first five months of Lily’s time in Hampstead she scarcely saw the master of the house, except during those after-tea visits each evening with Hubert and Christabel into the cosy drawing room, and even then her task was only to take the children down, well cleaned and dressed for their parents, and to fetch them away again at the appointed time. Her main exchanges with Piers Larstonbury consisted of ‘Good evening’, ‘Goodnight’, and little more. He seemed to her a pleasant man, very good mannered, in particular to Virginia, a man who treated his servants with respect and his children with affection during the brief times he was with them. Other than that she had little impression of him, except from some of the servants like Lottie, the tweeny, who always said he was ‘ever so nice. Much nicer than
her
.’

That winter, though, Lily had an unexpected visit from Piers Larstonbury in the nursery. It was a miserable November night, bitter outside, with drizzling rain and the wind whipping meanly along the London streets. The children were not well. As the afternoon darkened early into evening, first Christabel and then Hubert began to complain of sore throats and to run a high temperature. It was not long before they both obviously needed to be put to bed and to miss the evening visit to their parents. Lily sent a message down with Lottie to say that the children were ill.

‘Lor’,’ Lottie said, with a frightened face. ‘I hope it ain’t that influenza! Any rate,
she’s
not in, for a start, so I don’t know as anyone’ll come.’

The thought of the Spanish influenza made Lily even more worried. So many people had died from it and there seemed to be no cure. The fever took a grip on both children quickly. Lily only managed to snatch a quick bite to eat and spent the evening wiping the two feverish infants down with a cool flannel, as she had done for Cosmo when he was poorly in India.

At eight o’clock or so, when she was sitting on Christabel’s bed, stroking the child’s forehead and worrying about whether they should call the doctor, there came a discreet tap on the door.

‘Come in!’ Lily called softly. Startled, she saw the master of the house in the dim light of the doorway.

‘May I come in?’ He spoke softly, thinking the children were asleep.

Hubert was lying in a twitching slumber, but Christabel cried ‘Daddy!’ and immediately tried to sit up.

‘No, Christabel – lie down!’ Lily quietened her.

Piers Larstonbury came over to his daughter’s bed and stood looking down as she lay with her teddy bear beside her. Lily was touched by the look of tenderness on his face.

‘I thought I’d pop up and see my little dears. I don’t like to think of them being ill and Virginia’s gone out. I hope I am not causing a disruption?’

‘Of course not,’ Lily said shyly. She felt a little overwhelmed by his presence so close to her but glad of someone to share her worries with. ‘I was wondering whether we need to call the doctor. I’m worried it might be influenza.’

Piers Larstonbury adjusted the tails of his jacket out of the way and sat down on the edge of the bed, opposite Lily.

‘Hello, Chrissie. How’re you feeling, dear?’

‘Feel poorly,’ Christabel said.

‘Oh dear, well we can’t have that, can we? Do we need a special fairy to come and make you feel better?’

He laid his hand across the little girl’s head and gently felt around her neck and throat with his long fingers. Christabel winced as he touched her throat.

‘Is it sore, darling? Perhaps you’re right, Miss Waters. Don’t you worry. I’ll drive round and ask for Dr Marchant.’

He returned within the hour with the doctor, a very small, serious man who decreed that the children needed to be kept cool and for the fever to ‘come to a head’.

‘They’re two fine, strong children – they’ll be right as rain in a few days,’ he said, looking at his fob watch as if in a great hurry. Lily thought he could have taken a little bit more trouble, but of course you wouldn’t dream of arguing with a doctor.

The two men disappeared and Lily was about to ready herself for bed, when to her astonishment, Piers Larstonbury came back into the nursery.

‘I just thought I’d pop up again and say goodnight,’ he said softly. Once again he sat himself down, this time on Hubert’s bed. Hubert stirred and gave a miserable little moan. ‘Poor little things. I thought Dr Marchant was a bit short with us, didn’t you?’

‘Well, yes,’ Lily agreed shyly. She thought how kind Major Larstonbury was. ‘He did seem to have other things on his mind.’

Piers Larstonbury looked across at her and smiled suddenly. She had the impression that he had suddenly seen her really as a person, not just a servant.

‘How long have you been here now, Miss Waters?’

‘Almost six months, sir.’

‘And where were you before?’

‘Not too far away.’ She told him about her post with Mrs Jessop through the war, but did not mention the Arkwrights. ‘Before that, I worked in India.’

‘Did you, by jove!’ He turned fully to look at her. ‘Well, you’ve seen more of the world than I have. I must say, it’s a country I’d be most interested to visit. Did you like it there?’

‘Very much.’ As she sat down on the chair close to the bed, memories flashed across her mind, lovely ones of the Fairfords, Cosmo and the horses. And then followed the wave of pain and longing which came with thoughts of India: Mussoorie and Sam. ‘But I thought really I should return to this country at some stage. I did notice that people who had been there for a very long time found it terribly difficult to come back.’

‘Yes – I’m sure you’re right,’ Piers Larstonbury said. ‘How very wise.’

There was a pause, during which he looked into her face in a somehow troubled way and she realized that she liked him. She had seen him in a new light that night, realized how much he loved his children, and that he had also come back up here because he was lonely. He lingered, talking of this and that, asking her things about the children, about herself. Soon he had been there almost an hour, seeming to forget the time. At last he stretched and looked round at the clock.

‘Goodness me!’ He leaped up. ‘It’s almost half past ten! I suppose Virginia will be home from her meeting any moment. I’m so sorry to have kept you.’