The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog Page 5

  ‘Quick!’ Hannah said in a determined whisper. ‘Or suffer death by Tennyson.’

  There was a scurry of footsteps and a flurry of skirts and before I realised what was happening all three had vanished. The door burst open and a gust of cold, damp air swept through. A prim figure stood across the doorway.

  She surveyed the room, her gaze landing finally on me. ‘You,’ she said. ‘Have you seen the children? They’re late for their lessons. I’ve been waiting in the library ten minutes.’

  I was not a liar, and I cannot say what made me do it. But in that instant, as Miss Prince stood peering over her glasses at me, I did not think twice.

  ‘No, Miss Prince,’ I said. ‘Not for a time.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  She held my gaze. ‘I was sure I heard voices in here.’

  ‘Only my own, miss. I was singing.’

  ‘Singing?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  The silence seemed to stretch forever, broken only when Miss Prince tapped her blackboard pointer three times against her open hand and stepped into the room; began to walk slowly around its perimeter. Clip… Clip… Clip… Clip…

  She reached the doll’s house and I noticed the tail of Emmeline’s sash ribbon protruding from its stand. I swallowed. ‘I… I might have seen them earlier, miss, now I think of it. Through the window. In the old boathouse. Down by the lake.’

  ‘Down by the lake,’ Miss Prince said. She had reached the French windows and stood gazing out into the fog, white light on her pale face. ‘Where willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver…’

  I was unfamiliar with Tennyson at that time, thought only that she produced a rather pretty description of the lake. ‘Yes, miss,’ I said.

  After a moment she turned. ‘I shall have the gardener retrieve them. What’s his name?’

  ‘Dudley, miss.’

  ‘I shall have Dudley retrieve them. We must not forget that punctuality is virtue without peer.’

  ‘No, miss,’ I said, curtseying.

  And she clipped coldly across the floor, closing the door behind her.

  The children emerged as if by magic from beneath dust cloths, under the doll’s house, behind the curtains.

  Hannah smiled at me, but I did not linger. I could not understand what I had done. Why I had done it. I was confused, ashamed, exhilarated.

  I curtseyed and hurried past, cheeks burning as I flew along the corridor, anxious to find myself once more in the safety of the servants’ hall, away from these strange, exotic child-adults and the odd feelings they aroused in me.

  WAITING FOR THE RECITAL

  I could hear Myra calling my name as I raced down the stairs into the shadowy servants’ hall. I paused at the bottom, letting my eyes adapt to the dimness, then hurried into the kitchen. A copper pot simmered on the huge stove and the air was salty with the sweat of boiled ham. Katie, the scullery maid, stood by the sink scrubbing pans, staring blindly at the steamy hint of a window. Mrs Townsend, I guessed, was having her afternoon lie-down before the Mistress rang for tea. I found Myra at the table in the servants’ dining room, surrounded by vases, candelabras, platters and goblets.

  ‘There you are, then,’ she said, frowning so that her eyes became two dark slits. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to come looking for you.’ She indicated the seat opposite. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, girl. Get yourself a cloth and help me polish.’

  I sat down and selected a plump milk jug that hadn’t seen light of day since the previous summer. I rubbed at the flecked spots, but my mind lingered in the nursery upstairs. I could imagine them laughing together, teasing, playing. I felt as though I had opened the cover of a beautiful, glossy book and become lost in the magic of its story, only to be forced too soon to put the book aside. You see? Already I had attached some strange glamour to the Hartford children.

  ‘Steady on,’ Myra said, wresting the cloth from my hand. ‘That’s His Lordship’s best silver. You’d better hope Mr Hamilton don’t see you scratching it like that.’ She held aloft the vase she was cleaning and began to rub it in deliberate circular motions. ‘There now. See as how I’m doing it? Gentle like? All in the one direction?’

  I nodded and set about the jug again. I had so many questions about the Hartfords: questions I felt sure Myra could answer. And yet I was reluctant to ask. It was in her power, I knew, and her nature, I suspected, to ensure my future duties took me far from the nursery if she supposed I was gaining pleasure beyond the satisfaction of a job well done.

  Yet just as a new lover imbues ordinary objects with special meaning, I was greedy for the least information concerning them. I thought about my books, tucked away in their attic hideaway; the way Sherlock Holmes could make people say the last thing they expected through artful questioning. I took a deep breath. ‘Myra…?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘What is Lord Ashbury’s son like?’

  Her dark eyes flashed. ‘Major James? Oh, he’s a fine-’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not Major James.’ I already knew about Major James. One couldn’t pass a day in Riverton without learning of Lord Ashbury’s elder son, most recent in a long line of Hartford males to attend Eton then Sandhurst. His portrait hung next to that of his father (and the string of fathers before him) at the top of the front staircase, surveying the hall below: head aloft, medals gleaming, blue eyes cold. He was the pride of Riverton, both upstairs and down. A Boer War hero. The next Lord Ashbury.

  No. I meant Frederick, the ‘Pa’ they spoke of in the nursery, who seemed to inspire in them a mix of affection and awe. Lord Ashbury’s second son, whose mere mention caused Lady Violet’s friends fondly to shake their heads and His Lordship to grumble into his sherry.

  Myra opened her mouth and closed it again, like one of the fish the storms washed up on the lake bank. ‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,’ she said finally, holding her vase up to the light for inspection.

  I finished the jug and moved on to a platter. This was how it was with Myra. She was capricious in her own way: unreservedly forthcoming at some times, absurdly secretive at others.

  Sure enough, for no other reason than the clock on the wall had ticked away five minutes, she acquiesced. ‘I suppose you’ve heard one of the footmen talking, have you? Alfred, I’ll warrant. Terrible gossips, footmen.’ She started on another vase. Eyed me suspiciously. ‘Your mother’s never told you about the family, then?’

  I shook my head and Myra arched a thin eyebrow in disbelief, as if it were near impossible that people might find things to discuss that didn’t concern the family at Riverton.

  In fact, Mother had always been resolutely close-lipped about business at the house. When I was younger I had probed her, eager for stories about the grand old manor on the hill. There were enough tales about in the village as it was and I was hungry for my own titbits to trade with the other children. But she only ever shook her head and minded me that curiosity killed the cat.

  Finally, Myra spoke. ‘Mr Frederick… where to begin about Mr Frederick.’ She resumed polishing, speaking through a sigh. ‘He’s not a bad sort of fellow. Not at all like his brother, mind, not one for heroics, but not a bad sort. Truth be told, most of us downstairs have a fondness for him. To hear Mrs Townsend talk he was always a scamp of a lad, full of tall stories and funny ideas. Always very kindly to the servants.’

  ‘Is it true he was a goldminer?’ It seemed a suitably exciting profession. It was right somehow that the Hartford children should have an interesting father. My own had always been a disappointment: a faceless figure who vanished into thin air before I was born, rematerialising only in hot whispered exchanges between Mother and her sister.

  ‘For a time,’ Myra said. ‘He’s turned his hand to that many things I’ve all but lost count. Never been much of a one for settling, our Mister Frederick. Never one to take to other folks. First there was the tea planting in Ceylon, then the gold prospecting
in Canada. Then he decided he was going to make his fortune printing newspapers. Now it’s motor cars, God love him.’

  ‘Does he sell motor cars?’

  ‘He makes them, or those that work for him do. He’s bought a factory over Ipswich way.’

  ‘Ipswich. Is that where he lives? Him and his family?’ I said, nudging the conversation in direction of the children.

  She didn’t take the bait: was concentrated on her own thoughts. ‘With any luck he’ll make a go of this one. Heaven knows His Lordship would look gladly on a return for his investment.’

  I blinked, her meaning lost on me. Before I could ask what she meant, she had swept on. ‘Anyway, you’ll see him soon enough. He arrives next Tuesday, along with the Major and Lady Jemima.’ A rare smile, approval rather than pleasure. ‘There’s not an August bank holiday I can remember when the family didn’t all come together. There’s not one of them would dream of missing the midsummer dinner. It’s tradition for the folks in these parts.’

  ‘Like the recital,’ I said, daringly, avoiding her gaze.

  ‘So,’ Myra raised a brow, ‘someone’s already blathered to you about the recital, have they?’

  I ignored her peevish note. Myra was unaccustomed to being pipped at the rumour post. ‘Alfred said the servants were invited to see the recital.’ I said.

  ‘Footmen!’ Myra shook her head haughtily. ‘Never listen to a footman if you want to hear the truth, my girl. Invited, indeed! Servants are permitted to see the recital, and very kind of the Master it is too. He knows how much the family mean to all of us downstairs, how we enjoy seeing the young ones growing up.’ She returned her attention momentarily to the vase in her lap and I held my breath, willing her to continue. After a moment that seemed an age, she did. ‘This’ll be the fourth year they’ve put on theatricals. Ever since Miss Hannah was ten and took it into her head she wanted to be a theatre director.’ Myra nodded. ‘Aye, she’s a character is Miss Hannah. She and her father are as like as two eggs.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  Myra paused, considering this. ‘There’s something of the wanderlust in each of them,’ she said finally. ‘Both full of wit and newfangled ideas, each as stubborn as the other.’ She spoke pointedly, accenting each description, a warning to me that such traits, while acceptable idiosyncrasies for them upstairs, would not be tolerated from the likes of me.

  I’d had such lectures all my life from Mother. I nodded sagely as she continued. ‘They get on famously most of the time, but when they don’t there’s not a soul don’t know it. There’s no one can rile Mr Frederick quite like Miss Hannah. Even as a wee girl she knew just how to set him off. She was a fierce little thing, full of tempers. One time, I remember, she was awful dark at him for one reason or another and took it into her head to give him a nasty fright.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Now let me think… Master David was out having riding instruction. That’s what started it all. Miss Hannah were none too happy to have been left out so she bundled up Miss Emmeline and gave Nanny the slip. Found their way to the far estates, they did, right the way down where the farmers were harvesting apples.’ She shook her head. ‘Convinced Miss Emmeline to hide away in the barn, did our Miss Hannah. Wasn’t hard to do, I imagine; Miss Hannah can be very persuasive, and besides, Miss Emmeline was quite happy with all them fresh apples to feast on. Next minute, Miss Hannah arrived back at the house, puffing and panting like she’d run for her life, calling for Mr Frederick. I was laying for luncheon in the dining room at the time, and I heard Miss Hannah tell him that a couple of foreign men with dark skin had found them in the orchards. Said they’d commented on how pretty Miss Emmeline was and promised to take her on a long journey across the seas. Miss Hannah said she couldn’t be sure, but she believed them to be white slavers.’

  I gasped, shocked by Hannah’s daring. ‘What happened then?’

  Myra, portentous with secrets, warmed to the telling. ‘Well, Mr Frederick’s always been wary of the white slavers, and his face went first white, then all red, and before you could count to three he scooped Miss Hannah into his arms and set off toward the orchards. Bertie Timmins, who was picking apples that day, said Mr Frederick arrived in a terrible state. He started yelling orders to form a search party, that Miss Emmeline had been kidnapped by two dark-skinned men. They searched high and low, spreading out in all directions, but no one had seen two dark-skinned men and a golden-haired child.’

  ‘How did they find her?’

  ‘They didn’t. In the end she found them. After an hour or so, Miss Emmeline, bored with hiding and sick from apples, came strolling from the barn wondering about all the fuss. Why Miss Hannah hadn’t come to get her…’

  ‘Was Mr Frederick very cross?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Myra said matter-of-factly, polishing fiercely. ‘Though not for long: never could stay dark with her for long. They’ve a bond, those two. She’d have to do more’n that to set him against her.’ She held aloft the glistening vase then placed it with the other polished items. Laid her cloth on the table and tilted her head, giving her thin neck a rub. ‘Anyways, as I hear it Mr Frederick was just getting a bit of his own medicine.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What did he do?’

  Myra glanced toward the kitchen, satisfying herself that Katie was without earshot. There was a well-worn pecking order downstairs at Riverton, refined and ingrained by centuries of service. I may have been the lowest housemaid, subject to regular dressing-downs, worthy of only the lesser duties, but Katie, as scullery maid, was beneath contempt. I would like to be able to say this groundless inequity riled me; that I was, if not incensed, at least alert to its injustice. But to do so would be crediting my young self with empathy I did not possess. Rather, I relished what little privilege my place afforded me-Lord knows there were enough above me.

  ‘Gave his parents quite a time when he was a lad, did our Mr Frederick,’ she said through tight lips. ‘He was such a livewire Lord Ashbury sent him to Radley just so he couldn’t give his brother a bad name at Eton. Wouldn’t let him try for Sandhurst neither, when the time came, even though he was that set on joining the navy.’

  I digested this information as Myra continued. ‘Understandable, of course, with Major James doing so well in the forces. It doesn’t take much to stain a family’s good name. Wasn’t worth the risk.’ She left off rubbing her neck and seized a tarnished salt dish. ‘Anyway. All’s well that end’s well. He’s got his motor cars, and he’s got himself three fine children. You’ll see for yourself at the play.’

  ‘Will Major James’s children be performing in the play with Mr Frederick’s?’

  Myra’s expression darkened and her voice lowered. ‘Whatever can you be thinking, girl?’

  The air bristled. I had said something wrong. Myra glowered at me, forcing me to look away. The platter in my hands had been polished till it shone and in its surface I saw my cheeks growing redder.

  Myra hissed, ‘The Major doesn’t have any children. Not any more.’ She snatched my cloth from me, long thin fingers brushing mine. ‘Now, get on with you. I’m getting nought done with all your talk.’

  One of the most challenging aspects of starting below stairs at Riverton was this assumption that I should be automatically and intimately au fait with the comings and goings, ins and outs, of the house and family. This, I knew, was partly due to Mother having worked there before I was born. Mr Hamilton, Mrs Townsend and Myra presumed (groundlessly) that she must already have imparted to me all knowledge of Riverton and the Hartfords, and they had the ability to make me feel stupid if I dared suggest otherwise. Myra, in particular (when it didn’t suit her purpose to explain), would become quite scornful, insisting that of course I knew the Mistress required a warming pan no matter the season; I must simply have forgotten or, worse, was being deliberately obtuse.

  Myra expected me to know what had happened to the Major’s children and there was nothing I could say or do to convince her that this was
n’t the case. Thus, over the next couple of weeks I avoided her as best one person can avoid another with whom they live and work. At night, as Myra prepared for bed, I lay very still facing the wall, feigning sleep. It was a relief when Myra blew out the candle and the picture of the dying deer disappeared into the darkness. In the daytime, when we passed in the hall, Myra would lift her nose disdainfully and I would study the ground, suitably chastened.

  Blessedly, there was plenty to keep us occupied preparing to receive Lord Ashbury’s adult guests. The east-wing guestrooms had to be opened and aired, the dust sheets removed and the furniture polished. The best linen had to be retrieved from enormous storage boxes in the attic, mended where the moths had been, then laundered in great copper pots. The rain had set in and the clothes lines behind the house were of no use, so the linen had to be hung in the winter drying room: high up in the attic near the female servants’ bedrooms, where the kitchen chimney, always warm, ran up the wall, through the ceiling and onto the roof.

  And that is where I learned more of The Game. For as the rain held, and Miss Prince determined to educate them on the finer points of Tennyson, the Hartford children sought hiding spots deeper and deeper within the house’s heart. The drying-room closet, tucked behind the chimney, was about as far from the library schoolroom as they could find. And thus they took up quarters.

  I never saw them play it, mind. Rule number one: The Game is secret. But I listened, and I watched and, once or twice when temptation drove me and the coast was clear, I peeked inside the box. This is what I learned.

  The Game was old. They’d been playing it for years. No, not playing. That is the wrong verb. Living; they had been living The Game for years. For The Game was more than its name suggested. It was a complex fantasy, an alternate world into which they escaped.

  There were no costumes, no swords, no feathered headdresses. Nothing that would have marked it as a game. For that was its nature. It was secret. Its only accoutrement was the box. A black lacquered case brought back from China by one of their ancestors; one of the spoils from a spree of exploration and plunder. It was the size of a square hatbox-not too big and not too small-and its lid was inlaid with semiprecious gems to form a scene: a river with a bridge across it, a small temple on one bank, a willow weeping from the sloping shore. Three figures stood atop the bridge and above them a lone bird circled.