Darkwater (19 page)

Amelia giggled. ‘The most I do at present is stand and be poked and prodded and pinned by Miss Egham. Really, you have no idea what it is like to be a woman.’

Amelia’s light chattering voice went on, but Fanny no longer heard what she was saying. For her own first overwhelming feeling of pleasure at Adam’s news had died. Why was he merely taking a lease of Heronshall? His reason, to be sure, sounded plausible enough. But was the true reason the fact that he hadn’t the capital to put down, that first he must marry to advantage? And was his Aunt Martha, so respectably sounding, a willing conspirator to this end?

Amelia, with her feather brain, would be the last person to recognise this. But would it matter, if she married someone she ardently loved? Miserably, Fanny knew that it wouldn’t. She would do the same herself. Only she would never never have the chance.

As Trumble took the pony trap away and they went into the house, George appeared and took Fanny’s arm. He didn’t say anything, but just welcomed her in this possessive manner, as if she were already his wife.

Fanny shook herself free, trying not to be irritated.

‘I must take the children up.’

‘I wouldn’t go up there just yet. The doctor’s there.’

‘Doctor?’

‘Doctor!’ echoed Amelia. ‘Who’s ill?’

‘Grandmamma had a fall. It’s nothing serious, I believe.’

‘But how did she fall?’ Fanny asked.

‘She tripped over Ludwig. Poor Ludwig.’ George gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘It’s a wonder he survived.’

Amelia and Fanny hurried upstairs. They met Aunt Louisa coming out of Lady Arabella’s room. She looked harassed and worried.

‘Oh, there you are at last. Grandmamma’s had a fall. Doctor Bates is going to bleed her.’

‘Then it is serious!’ Fanny exclaimed.

‘He doesn’t think so, but at present she’s dazed and he can’t be sure’—Aunt Louisa lowered her voice—‘that it isn’t a slight apoplexy. She says she fell over a cushion on the floor, but it must have been the cat, of course. Poor Mamma sees so badly.

‘She broke her spectacles,’ Aunt Louisa went on, ‘so now she can’t see at all. Oh dear, this is very vexing, just at this time. We can only hope she won’t be an invalid for long. And Amelia, Miss Egham has been wanting you. She can’t get on with the tarlatan until she has had another fitting. I did think you might be back a little earlier. Let me see your face, child!’ Aunt Louisa’s voice reached a new pitch of anxiety. ‘Oh, I do declare you’ve got your nose sunburnt! Really, how could you be so careless?’

Fanny felt a rubbing against her skirts, and looked down to see Ludwig, the fat tabby, ingratiating himself. He had missed his tea, no doubt, with Lady Arabella in bed. He usually had a small dish of cream, and a sardine. He showed no sign of having been stumbled over by a very heavy person.

‘Why is Great-aunt Arabella so unkind?’ Nolly asked.

‘Unkind?’

‘To step on poor Ludwig like that. Like on a beetle.’ She stamped noisily on the floor to establish her point.

‘It was an accident. She didn’t do it on purpose.’

‘Ludwig doesn’t let me step on him. He runs away too quickly.’

It was uncanny that the child had had the same thoughts as herself. Fanny said sharply, ‘Stop making so much noise. You can be heard all through the house.’

Nolly ignored her defiantly.

‘Come on, Marcus. Stamp on beetles. Like this.’

Marcus needed little encouragement to join in such an original game. Fanny had to seize them both and hold them firmly.

‘Such behaviour!’

‘Ching Mei would let us play that game.’

‘Ching Mei would,’ Marcus echoed.

It was the first time Ching Mei’s name had been mentioned for days.

Nolly’s eyes were flat and hard and bright.

‘Is Great-aunt Arabella going to die?’

‘No, she isn’t, foolish little one. Kiss me, and be good.’

Hannah was sitting with Lady Arabella when Fanny tapped and asked if she might come in.

‘Go and get some rest, Hannah,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll stay here.’

‘But what about your dinner, Miss Fanny?’

‘Lizzie can bring me something on a tray later.’

‘Bless your kind heart,’ said Hannah. ‘Miss Amelia, I suppose, is too concerned about her fripperies to have time to come and see her old grandmother.’

Hannah, for all her long service, was getting too outspoken. Ever since the journey to London and the arrival of the children who had touched a chord in her soft heart, she had been an ally of Fanny’s.

‘Never mind Miss Amelia, Hannah. How is Lady Arabella?’

‘Very hazy, Miss Fanny, but it’s from the doctor’s medicine to quieten her more than the fall.’

‘Who found her?’

‘Lizzie, when she brought up her tea tray. She let out such a squawk, you’d have thought the peacocks had got indoors. And then the master and Barker had to get her on to the bed. It was quite a task.’

Fanny looked down at the inert form in the big fourposter. Sunk into the feather bed Lady Arabella looked unexpectedly small. Her frizzed grey hair stuck out from under her nightcap, her cheeks were pink and white like a child’s. Her eyes, too, when she opened them, had a surprising childlike innocence. It was because they were without the customary spectacles, of course, and so short-sighted as to be almost blind.

She stared up at what must be a very hazy form at her bedside, and said testily, ‘Who is it? Come nearer, can’t you?’

‘It’s me, Great-aunt Arabella. Fanny.’

‘Bend closer. Let me see.’

As Fanny obeyed, the old lady grasped her shoulders with unexpected strength and pulled her so close that the pale round myopic eyes were a few inches from Fanny’s. Her breath was on Fanny’s cheek.

‘Have to be sure,’ she muttered. ‘Can’t trust anyone. They said I tripped over Ludwig. Stuff and nonsense. Who tells such lies? It was a cushion, put there purposely to trip me. They picked it up, of course.’

‘Who is they?’

‘Now how would I know?’ the old lady said in her husky irritable voice. ‘Someone with a tidy mind, I expect. There are tidy minds in this house. But my poor Ludwig. He never got in the way of my clumsy feet. Bring him in to me, Fanny. My prince.’

Fanny did as she was bid, because Lady Arabella didn’t seem in a mood to be crossed. She was definitely wandering a little in her mind, and very petulant.

The elderly cat settled down comfortably on the bed, and the fat ringed hand caressed his head.

‘My prince. He wore a sky-blue uniform. He had such elegant moustaches. And his manners. He would click his heels and bow and kiss my hand and say I was adorable. I was too,’ Lady Arabella added sharply. ‘You may look disbelieving, as I know you are. My skin, my eyes—ah well—and I had such a figure. Louisa has all my husband’s worst features. That was why she had to marry a plain man like Edgar Davenport. Still’—a sly smile lay on the curved pussy-cat mouth—‘he has proved quite a man. Fanny, bring me my needlework.’

‘Now, Great-aunt Arabella? But you’re ill.’

‘Stuff and nonsense. I’m only in this condition because that ridiculous doctor had leeches clamped to my neck while I was still unconscious. Said there was probably neither cushion nor cat, but that I had had a seizure. Oh, yes, I heard him. I heard a great deal while they thought I was still beyond listening. But bring my work basket, as I told you. My scissors, my tapestry, everything.’

Fanny obeyed, knowing that without her spectacles Lady Arabella wouldn’t be able to see a stitch.

‘And my pincushion,’ the autocratic voice followed her. ‘Bring all those things and put them at my bedside.’

When Fanny had done so, the old lady groped to feel the shape of the objects, satisfying herself that the wicker work basket, overflowing with coloured wools, the fat round pincushion, and the half-finished tapestry were there.

Then she subsided with an odd sigh of relief.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me that a new pair of spectacles won’t cure,’ she said in her hoarse husky voice. ‘But I may find being an invalid quite amusing.’ Her eyelids were closing. Doctor Bates’ soothing dose was beginning to take effect. ‘Send George to me,’ she murmured. But she was already asleep.

When Hannah came back some hours later Fanny had been almost asleep herself. She felt in a dream that was half nightmare. She knew that both Aunt Louisa and Uncle Edgar had tiptoed to the bedside, satisfying themselves that the invalid would do until the morning, but that now seemed so long ago. The wind was blowing softly, and the slightly moving curtains, the shadow of the fourposter wavering across the ceiling in the moving candlelight, and the gentle snoring of Lady Arabella were all somnolent. She had had to struggle to keep awake, welcoming the familiar and sometimes unfamiliar creakings and murmurings of the old house. Even a sudden flurry in the chimney, and then a fall of soot, stirred by a wayward breeze, had been not so much startling as another means of keeping her heavy eyes open.

‘What time is it, Hannah?’

‘Midnight, Miss Fanny, and you must get some sleep.’

Hannah was bundled up in a crimson flannel dressing gown. She, too, looked another person, a friendly succourer in the alien world of the night and the sick.

‘She hasn’t moved since eight o’clock. I don’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about.’

Fanny took the candle Hannah held out to her. She stumbled a little from weariness as she went into Lady Arabella’s sitting room. She noticed that Ludwig was back in his favourite place on the rocking chair. The couch was littered with cushions and it seemed very possible that Lady Arabella, stirring from her afternoon nap, had dislodged one without noticing, and then had stumbled over it. In the flurry of finding her prostrate, someone must have picked it up without remembering doing so.

Did it matter what she had fallen over, if anything at all, since her fall had been an accident? So why was Ludwig being blamed so strenuously?

L
ADY ARABELLA RECOVERED TO
a certain extent. She maintained, however, that her legs gave way, and that she couldn’t walk without assistance. She refused to be a prisoner indoors, and said that she must have a wheelchair. When this contraption arrived, Dora was ordered to push it. Lady Arabella chose Dora for the reason that the girl was timid and wouldn’t be tempted to go too fast down slopes, or push her chair, occupant and all, into the lake.

Within the family, it was decided that poor Grandmamma had grown a little weak in her mind. Uncle Edgar said the persecution complex was a common one. All this talk about dangerous cushions, for instance (Lady Arabella refused to have any in her room now), and not allowing anyone she didn’t trust near her. Also, there was her insistence that she must have her embroidery, her wools, her work box, and paraphernalia with her all the time, although her plump idle fingers never touched it. The whim to work might come on her, she said. So she sat cosily in the chair, cashmere shawls round her shoulders, a jet-trimmed bonnet nodding on her head, a fringed parasol erected above her, for all the world, Amelia giggled, like some eastern potentate taking the air.

Presently she became expert with the mechanism of the chair, and indoors was able to operate it herself, taking pleasure in coming up silently behind people and waiting for them to discover her. Fanny had the suspicion that the wheelchair was nothing but a pretence, that Lady Arabella could walk very well if she tried, but she kept this thought to herself because the old lady was kind to the children, and occasionally let them ride with her, the three of them whooping with delight as they negotiated slopes or startled the gardeners at their work.

Sometimes George took time from his riding or his billiards to wheel his grandmother. He was the only other person permitted to push the chair.

Summer moved on, the roses were over and the dahlias and michaelmas daisies out. A haze of heat lay over the moors. The dabchicks’ family on the lake had grown to full size, the strawberries were finished and the blackbirds had had their fill of sun-reddened cherries. The carriage, coming round the curve of the long drive, raised a trail of reddish dust. It was a hot summer, and Amelia prayed that the weather would last until the night of her ball. It would be so much more romantic if couples could take the air on the terrace, or even wander daringly across the lawns beyond the illumination from the ballroom.

‘Have you ever been kissed?’ she asked Fanny. She didn’t expect an answer. She was quite sure it would be in the negative. For only a serious suitor would kiss a girl, and only a flighty girl would allow herself to be kissed under any other conditions. Amelia pursed her red lips and determined that she would be kissed on the night of her ball. She also knew who would kiss her. She spent a great deal of time in front of her mirror nowadays, studying her reflection from different angles. She was growing vain. She could never forget the words of that wild and hunted man, ‘I have never seen anyone so beautiful,’ and sometimes, by candlelight, when her face looked older, more fragile and shadowy, she saw exactly what he meant.

She intended Adam to see her that way, in the half-light near the fountain, on the night of the ball.

But when he bent over her, would she see that other face beyond him, ruthless, half-starved, desperate…Amelia pressed her hands to her own face, afraid to look any more, afraid of the unknown within herself…

A stranger, a Mr Solomon, short, heavily-built, with small sparkling black eyes, came to spend a night. He had business to do with Uncle Edgar. It was obvious Aunt Louisa didn’t think much of him. She was cool and distant with him at dinner, and afterwards, when Uncle Edgar took him to the library she sighed with relief and said to Amelia and Fanny, ‘There will be no need for you girls to wait up to entertain Mr Solomon. Papa has affairs to discuss with him.’

Mr Solomon departed immediately after breakfast in the morning. The business must have been concluded satisfactorily, for he and Uncle Edgar exchanged a cordial handshake.

‘Remember, Mr Davenport, I will be happy to be at your service at any time.’

He had scarcely noticed the women of the household. Fanny, who had often preferred to be overlooked, and Amelia, who had discovered the pleasures of male admiration, found it strange to meet a man who was much more deeply interested in something other than them.