Too Close to the Sun (23 page)

‘Oh, it’s a wonderful room to teach in,’ Grace said. ‘And we shan’t need much. We have all the books we could possibly want – not to mention space and comfort. And Sophie will be bringing her own slate and chalks, she tells me.’ She looked at some spare sheets of paper that had been placed on one corner of the desk. ‘And Mr Spencer’s given us paper for writing and drawing. Oh, we shall be very well provided for.’

‘Good. I’m glad you’re pleased. And if Mr Spencer should wish to be busy in here, why then you could always use my sewing room.’ She moved over to where a card table had been folded and leaned against the side of a bookcase. ‘You could use this,’ she said. She pulled out the table, unfolded it and moved it into place, adjusting its position. ‘There – what do you think? Sophie will have her own little table.’

‘It’s ideal.’

‘What time is your pupil due to arrive?’

Grace looked at the clock over the fireplace. It showed the hands at 9.40.

‘At ten o’clock.’

‘And what time is she leaving?’

‘I thought – two o’clock. That’ll give us a little break for some refreshment at midday. It’ll be a long enough day to start with. After all, she’s only seven – we can’t go on too long.’

‘Of course not. What are the precise arrangements you’ve made as to the teaching hours?’

‘Well, I suggested that I teach Sophie Mondays to Fridays from ten until two – except on those days when you would like me to work with you or accompany you out somewhere. And I thought that if something should come up unexpectedly – such as a decision to visit a gallery or something – we could send a note over the day before. Mr Fairman understands that I have my duties concerning my employment with you.’

‘What about lunch? Have you arranged things with Mrs Sandiston?’

‘Yes. She’s going to send up a tray for us. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Absolutely.’ She cast her eyes around the room. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look much like a classroom, does it? It would be so nice if we had a little blackboard, don’t you think?’

Grace nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, but it’s really not necessary. We shall manage perfectly well.’ She pointed to the globe on its stand. ‘We’ve even got a globe for our geography.’

Mrs Spencer smiled. ‘I shall be fascinated to hear how it all goes. You say she’s due to go at two – well, in that case come and have some dinner with me this evening, and tell
me how it all went. It’ll be a very simple meal with Mr Spencer away from the house. And don’t get all dressed up. You know I don’t stand on ceremony – particularly when I’m here on my own. Come down at 7.15. I shall look forward to hearing all about your time with the child.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Just think – children in the house. We already have Billy here, and now there’s this little child. I never thought to see such a thing in my time.’

Sophie arrived ten minutes early. Grace had expected her to be brought by hired cab, but she appeared with her father who came no further into the house than the hall. He and Grace hardly exchanged more than a few polite words of greeting, and then he was saying that he had appointments to keep and would be back for his daughter at two.

‘Now,’ he said to Grace, taking her to one side and keeping his voice low, ‘you’re absolutely certain about doing this?’

‘The teaching? Oh, of course.’

‘Good. I can’t tell you how pleased I was to receive your note telling me you’d be willing to give Sophie some lessons.’ He smiled, showing his even white teeth. ‘I mean, I know you were somewhat pressed to it.’

Grace shook her head. ‘Please, Mr Fairman, I’m more than happy to do it. I’m looking forward to it.’ She turned and looked over at Sophie where she sat on the stairs, head back, looking up at the circular rail, the figures in the niches and the cupola high above. ‘I hope Sophie is too. So don’t worry about it. We have our lessons to get on with, and you have your appointments to keep.’

‘Thank you. I shall be for ever grateful to you.’ He gave a little inclination of his head to her and moved across to his daughter. She got up as he approached and reached to him as he bent to her. ‘You’ll be my good girl, won’t you?’

‘I will, Papa.’

He kissed her on the cheek, gave her another embrace, straightened and then moved to Grace’s side. Bending a little to her, he said, ‘We haven’t spoken about your fee, Miss Harper. We have to make some arrangement for that.’

‘No, really, sir,’ Grace said. ‘It isn’t a subject I wish to say much about, but let me just say that I already receive wages from Mrs Spencer, so no other fee is due to me.’

He stood in silence for a second. ‘Are you sure about that?’ he said.

‘Absolutely, sir. And if I may say so, I would prefer it to be left at that.’

‘Very well.’ He nodded, twice, then waved his hand in a salute to Sophie, turned and left the house.

‘Well,’ Grace said, turning to the child, ‘now it’s just you and me, Sophie.’

Sophie nodded her head, her shoulders nodding also. ‘Yes,’ she said absently, still looking upwards. Then before Grace could say anything further she added, ‘I’ve never been in a house so big.’

‘It is large, isn’t it?’

Still concentrating on the sights around her, Sophie said, ‘Is this where you live, miss?’

‘Yes – for the time being.’

‘Won’t you live here always?’

‘Well – no. At some time my brother and I – we’ll have to move on and find another home for ourselves.’

‘If it were my house I’d want to live in it for ever.’

The girl continued to look in awe about her for a moment or two longer then turned and looked at Grace. ‘We must begin our lessons, mustn’t we?’

‘We must indeed. Come – let me show you upstairs to the library.’

A minute or two after they had entered the library and Sophie had taken off her hat and cape, Mrs Spencer came and tapped on the slightly open door and stepped inside
the room. ‘I just came,’ she said, ‘to welcome our guest and see that everything is all right.’

Grace made the introductions and the child gave a little curtsey while looking up at the woman and shyly biting her lower lip. A few moments of light chatter and Mrs Spencer said she would leave them to get on with the lesson, and made her departure.

On their own again, Grace and Sophie talked together. Grace already knew that the girl was bright and alert, and the further conversation between them only served to endorse such a view. Sophie had brought two of her own storybooks with her, and after she had read aloud from some of the familiar pages, Grace got that day’s copy of the
Morning Post
. Choosing an anodyne item from it, she had the child read it to her. At the end of the exercise she gave a nod of satisfaction: teaching the little girl was going to be an enjoyable business.

After the pair had spent upwards of an hour with reading and vocabulary, Grace turned the subject to English history. In this also the girl continued to prove herself a willing and earnest pupil. Grace decided that she must make a visit to a Corster bookshop at the first opportunity and find some suitable primers for the child.

Sophie did a little drawing towards the end of the morning, using her pencils and crayons to make a picture of the baby Moses in his little nest of bullrushes. And then, at noon, they put on their capes and hats and walked out into the gardens at the rear of the house, first through the part where the gardens were neat and carefully tended and then on into the park, a wider area which had been allowed to grow wild, and nature had control. There was a small copse in one part and as they wandered through it Grace took pleasure in pointing out some of the many items of interest, the different plants and the great variety of wildlife. To
Sophie, who had known only London’s gardens and public parks, it was like walking in a new world. Back in the house they found that a tray had been left for them in the library, and soon they were eating soup followed by bread and ham with pickles and glasses of milk.

As they sat eating, facing one another across the card table, Grace said, ‘Well, Miss Sophie Fairman, and what do you think of it all so far?’

The girl looked at Grace over the rim of her milk glass. ‘Do you mean my lessons, miss?’

‘Yes, your lessons and – well, everything. Everything is new to you today, isn’t it?’

The child’s upper lip was lightly glazed with milk, and she put down her glass and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. Giving a nod of agreement she gazed around the room. ‘Everything.’

‘And do you think you’ll want to come back for more lessons?’

‘Oh, yes.’ A vigorous nod here, and for a moment a fleeting look of uncertainty as if the thought had suddenly occurred that the lessons might end, and end too soon. ‘Oh, yes, indeed I shall. And please, you must tell Papa that I do.’

Grace could see that it was important to the child, and found herself wondering at the girl’s life; after all, here she was, living in an unfamiliar place, far away from her old friends, while her father, her only relative, was preoccupied with the business of trying to forge a new life for them. And what, Grace found herself silently asking, could be the reason for a man to uproot himself and his child and come to live in a strange place?

‘Well,’ Grace said, ‘if your father asks me, I shall tell him that you’ve worked very hard at your lessons today. And I shall tell him that you produced really excellent work.’

‘Will you?’

‘I will.’

‘And I shall give him the picture I drew for him of the little baby Moses.’

‘I’m sure he’ll love it.’

A little silence. Sophie ate some of her bread and cheese, took a sip from her milk glass, then gave a sigh. ‘I hope the other days are just like this,’ she said.

Grace was touched by the child’s sentiment. ‘Do you mean with your lessons?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be. But we’re only just starting. We must try to make them even better.’

‘Miss Lewin used to hear me read at times.’

‘Miss Lewin? Who is Miss Lewin?’

‘She’s a friend of Papa’s. We knew her in London. She used to come to the house sometimes. She’s very nice. And very pretty.’

‘And she used to listen to you read?’

‘Yes. Only my storybooks, though. We didn’t read newspapers together. Papa says she’s coming down to see us soon. He had a letter from her. She’ll get the train, as we did. Miss Lewin has the most beautiful little dog – he’s a King Charles spaniel. I don’t know whether he’ll be travelling down to Corster with her. I hope so, but – we’ll have to see. I asked Papa if we could have a dog, but he said the time wasn’t right.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘Perhaps someday it will be. Miss Lewin said to Papa that one has to be very careful when choosing a dog as a pet, for she said with some breeds the dog’s hair comes out and gets over all the furniture and one’s clothes. She has the nicest clothes, Miss Lewin does. Some of her dresses have all this lace, all these ribbons. She looks so beautiful. I shall have nice clothes when I’m grown up.’ She sighed again. ‘I wonder how long it takes.’

‘How long what takes?’ Grace asked.

‘To be grown up.’

‘Oh, believe me, Sophie, you’ll get there in good enough time.’ Grace smiled. ‘And that will be very nice for you if Miss Lewin comes down to Corster to visit, won’t it?’

‘Yes. But I wish I could see some of my old friends also. Susannah, Georgie, Abigail. I miss them.’

‘Ah.’ Grace’s tone was sympathetic. ‘I’m sure you do. But you’ll make new friends here. Just give it time.’

‘Well, we’ve been here a month and I haven’t met anyone. And Papa’s so busy most of the day, I don’t see so much of him either. I spend so much time with Nancy, my nurse. Oh, she’s very nice, but sometimes I’d like to meet other people, talk to other people. And that’s one reason it’s so nice to come here today.’ She looked around her at the room. ‘I like it here in this house.’

‘Well, soon you’ll be moving into a nice house of your own.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Papa says he thinks he’s found something that’s really very nice. A house just outside of the town – a house with a nice garden. That’s where he’s gone this afternoon. Oh, I do hope he can buy it. I don’t care to keep living in furnished rooms. I like our own furniture, our own rooms. It’s not the same.’

‘Did your nurse, Nancy, come down with you from London?’

‘Yes. She’s been with me for over a year now. I’m glad she could come with us. If not, I wouldn’t have known anyone. My governess, Miss Cheadle, couldn’t come.’ She paused, concentrated on her food for a few moments, then said, ‘When we’ve eaten we’ll get on with our lessons, shall we? I want Papa to know that I’ve worked well.’

Grace and Sophie spent the last hour studying geography in a rather informal way. With the help of the globe, they traced out where Sophie’s father had been on his travels: to
France and Italy. And then they tracked Mr Spencer’s travels, looking at the routes to Brazil and America. After some discussion on the topic, Grace took her charge down to the conservatory and showed her some of the wonderful, exotic vegetation there that had come from overseas. Going by the copperplate legends on the wooden nameplates there were plants from India and Kashmir and Brazil, and others from African and Arabian countries. One day soon, Grace went on to suggest, they could bring their sketchbooks into the conservatory and render some nice pencil drawings of some of the plants.

Back in the library there was only time for Sophie to gather her things together and then the maid was there saying that Mr Fairman had arrived to fetch his daughter.

With Sophie in her hat and cape once more and carrying her drawing, they went downstairs to find Mr Fairman standing in the hall. He too, as Sophie had done earlier, was looking up at the domed glass ceiling high above.

‘I’ve had a chance to have a real look this time,’ he said as Grace and the child went down the stairs towards him. ‘It’s quite magnificent. One would never guess that such monumental treasures are hidden away like this in some little insignificant English village.’ He nodded in affirmation of his words, then turned to Sophie as she skipped towards him. ‘Well,’ he said, crouching before her and kissing her cheek, ‘have you been a good pupil?’