The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog Page 6

  The box they guarded jealously, filled as it was with everything material to The Game. For although The Game demanded a good deal of running and hiding and wrestling, its real pleasure was enjoyed elsewhere. Rule number two: all journeys, adventures, explorations and sightings must be recorded. They would rush inside, flushed with danger, to record their recent adventures: maps and diagrams, codes and drawings, plays and books.

  The books were miniature, bound with thread, writing so small and neat that one had to hold them close to decipher them. They had titles: Escape From Koshchei the Deathless; Encounter with Balam and his Bear; Journey to the Land of White Slavers. Some were written in code I couldn’t understand, though the legend, had I the time to look, would no doubt have been printed on parchment and filed within the box.

  The Game itself was simple. It was Hannah and David’s invention really, and as the oldest they were the chief instigators of adventure. They decided which location was ripe for exploration. The two of them had assembled a ministry of nine advisors-an eclectic group mingling eminent Victorians with ancient Egyptian kings. There were only ever nine advisors at any one time, and when history supplied a new figure too appealing to be denied inclusion an original member would die or be deposed. (Death was always in the line of duty, reported solemnly in one of the tiny books kept inside the box.)

  Alongside the advisors, each had their own character. Hannah was Nefertiti and David became Charles Darwin. Emmeline, only four when the governing laws were drawn up, had chosen Queen Victoria. A dull choice, Hannah and David agreed, understandable given Emmeline’s limited years but certainly not a suitable adventure mate. Victoria was nonetheless accommodated into The Game, most often cast as a kidnap victim whose capture was precipitant of a daring rescue. While the other two were writing up their accounts, Emmeline was allowed to decorate the diagrams and shade the maps: blue for the ocean, purple for the deep, green and yellow for land.

  Occasionally, David wasn’t available-the rain would subside for an hour and he would sneak out to play marbles with the other estate lads, or else he would occupy himself practising piano. Then Hannah would realign her loyalties with Emmeline. The pair would hide away in the linen closet with a store of sugar cubes from Mrs Townsend’s dry store, and would invent special names in secret languages to describe the traitorous absconder. But no matter how much they wanted to, they never played The Game without him. To do so would have been unthinkable.

  Rule number three: only three may play. No more, no less. Three. A number favoured as much by art as by science: primary colours, points required to locate an object in space, notes to form a musical chord. Three points of a triangle, the first geometrical figure. Incontrovertible fact: two straight lines cannot enclose a space. The points of a triangle may move, shift allegiance, the distance between two disappear as they draw away from the third, but together they always define a triangle. Self-contained, real, complete.

  The Game’s rules I learned because I read them. Written in neat but childish handwriting on yellowing paper, stuck beneath the lid of the box. I will remember them forever. To these rules, each had put their name. By general agreement, this third day of April, 1908. David Hartford, Hannah Hartford, and finally, in larger, more abstract print, the initials EH. Rules are a serious business for children, and The Game required a sense of duty adults wouldn’t understand. Unless of course they were servants, in which case duty was something they knew a lot about.

  So there it is. It was just a children’s game. And not the only one they played. Eventually they outgrew it, forgot it, left it behind. Or thought they did. By the time I met them, it was already on its last legs. History was about to intervene: real adventure, real escape, adulthood, was lurking, laughing, round the corner.

  Just a children’s game and yet… What happened in the end would surely not have come about without it?

  The day of the guests’ arrival dawned and I was given special permission, on condition my duties were complete, to watch from the first-floor balcony. As outside evening fell, I huddled by the banister, face pressed between two rails, eagerly awaiting the crunch of motor-car tyres on the gravel out front.

  First to arrive was Lady Clementine de Welton, a family friend with the grandeur and gloom of the late Queen, and her charge Miss Frances Dawkins (universally known as Fanny): a skinny, garrulous girl, whose parents had gone down with the Titanic and who, at seventeen, was rumoured to be in energetic pursuit of a husband. According to Myra, it was Lady Violet’s dearest wish that Fanny should make a match with the widowed Mr Frederick, though the latter remained entirely unconvinced.

  Mr Hamilton led them to the drawing room where Lord and Lady Ashbury were waiting, and announced their arrival with a flourish. I watched from behind as they disappeared into the room-Lady Clementine first, Fanny close behind-and was put in mind of Mr Hamilton’s salver of cocktail glasses on which the brandy balloons and champagne flutes jostled for space.

  Mr Hamilton returned to the entrance hall and was straightening his cuffs-a gesture that was habit with him-when the Major and his wife arrived. She was a small, plump, brown-haired woman whose face, though kindly, bore the cruel etchings of grief. It is hindsight, of course, that makes me describe her thus, though even at the time I supposed her the victim of some misfortune. Myra may not have been prepared to divulge the mystery of the Major’s children, but my young imagination, fed as it was on Gothic novels, was a fertile place. Besides, the nuances of attraction between a man and a woman were foreign to me then and I reasoned only tragedy could account for such a tall, handsome man as the Major being married to so plain a woman. She must once have been lovely, I supposed, until some fiendish hardship befell them and seized from her whatever youth or beauty she had once possessed.

  The Major, even sterner than his portrait allowed, asked customarily after Mr Hamilton’s health, cast a proprietorial glance over the entrance hall, and led Jemima to the drawing room. As they disappeared behind the door I saw that his hand rested tenderly at the base of her spine, a gesture that somehow belied his severe physical bearing, and which I have never quite forgotten.

  My legs had grown stiff from crouching when finally Mr Frederick’s motor car crunched along the gravel of the driveway. Mr Hamilton glanced reprovingly at the hall clock then pulled open the front door.

  Mr Frederick was shorter than I expected, certainly not so tall as his brother, and I could make out no more of his features than the rim of a pair of glasses. For even when his hat was taken he did not raise his head. Merely ran his hand tentatively over the top to smooth his fair hair.

  Only when Mr Hamilton opened the drawing-room door and announced his arrival did Mr Frederick’s attention flicker from his purpose. His gaze skittered about the room, taking in the marble, the portraits, the home of his youth, before alighting finally on my balcony. And in the brief moment before he was swallowed by the noisy room, his face paled as if he’d seen a ghost.

  The week passed quickly. With so many extra people in the house I was kept busy making up rooms, carrying tea trays, laying out luncheons. This pleased me well as I was not shy of hard work-Mother had made sure of that. Besides, I longed for the weekend to arrive and with it the bank holiday play recital. For while the rest of the staff was focused on the midsummer dinner, all I could think of was the recital. I had barely seen the children since the adults arrived. The fog blew away as suddenly as it came, leaving in its place warm, clear skies, too beautiful to waste indoors. Each day, as I rounded the corridor toward the nursery, I held my breath hopefully, but the fine weather was to hold and they were not to use the room again that year. They took their noise and their mischief and their Game outside.

  And with them went the room’s enchantment. Stillness became emptiness and the small flame of pleasure I had nurtured was extinguished. I hurried my duties now, straightened the bookshelves without so much as a glance at their contents, no longer caught the horse’s eye; thought only of what they might be doing. A
nd when I was finished, I didn’t linger, but moved on swiftly to complete my duties. Occasionally, when I was clearing the breakfast tray from a second-floor guestroom or disposing of the night-waters, a squeal of distant laughter would draw my eyes to the window and I would see them, far off in the distance, heading toward the lake, disappearing down the driveway, duelling with long straight sticks.

  Downstairs, Mr Hamilton had stirred the servants into a frenzy of activity. It was the test of a good staff, he said, not to mention the proof of a butler’s mettle, to serve a household of guests. No request was to prove too much. We were to work as a finely oiled locomotion, rising to meet each challenge, exceeding the Master’s every expectation. It was to be a week of small triumphs, culminating in the midsummer dinner.

  Mr Hamilton’s fervour was infectious; even Myra suffered an elevation of spirits and called a truce of sorts, offering, grudgingly, that I might help her clean the drawing room. It wasn’t ordinarily my place, she reminded me, to be cleaning the main rooms, but with the Master’s family visiting I was to be allowed the privilege-under strict observation-to practise these advanced duties. So it was I added this dubious opportunity to my already inflated duty load and accompanied Myra daily to the drawing room where the adults sipped tea and discussed things that interested me little: weekend country parties, European politics, and some unfortunate Austrian fellow who’d been shot in a faraway place.

  The day of the recital (Sunday 2 August 1914-I remember the date, though not for the recital as much as what came after) coincided with my afternoon off and my first visit to Mother since I’d started at Riverton. When I’d finished my morning duties, I exchanged my uniform for regular clothes, strangely stiff and unfamiliar on my body. I brushed my hair out-pale and kinky where it had been wrapped in its plait-then set about rebraiding, coiling a bun at the nape of my neck. Did I look any different, I wondered? Would Mother think so? It had only been five weeks and yet I felt inexplicably changed.

  As I came down the servants’ stairs and into the kitchen, I was met by Mrs Townsend who thrust a bundle into my hands. ‘Go on then, take it. Just a little something for your mother’s tea,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘Some of my lemon-curd tart and a couple of slices of Victoria sponge.’

  I looked at her, taken aback by the uncharacteristic gesture. Mrs Townsend was as proud of her shipshape home economics as she was of her towering soufflé.

  I glanced toward the staircase, dropped my own voice to a whisper. ‘But are you sure the Mistress-’

  ‘You never mind about the Mistress. She and Lady Clementine won’t be left wanting.’ She dusted down her apron, pulled her round shoulders to full height so that her chest seemed even more expansive than usual. ‘You just be sure an’ tell your mother we’re looking out for you up here.’ She shook her head. ‘Fine girl, your mother. Guilty of nothing that aint been done a thousand times before.’

  Then she turned and bustled back to the kitchen as suddenly as she’d appeared. Leaving me alone in the darkened hallway, wondering what she’d meant.

  I turned it over in my mind all the way to the village. It was not the first time Mrs Townsend had perplexed me with an expression of fondness for my mother. My own puzzlement left me feeling disloyal, but there was little in her reminiscences of good humour that could be accorded with the Mother I knew. Mother with her moods and silences.

  She was waiting for me on the doorstep. Stood as she caught sight of me. ‘I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.’

  ‘Sorry, Mother,’ I said. ‘I was caught up with my duties.’

  ‘Hope you made time for church this morning.’

  ‘Yes, Mother. The staff go to service at the Riverton church.’

  ‘I know that, my girl. I attended service at that church long before you came along.’ She nodded at my hands. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

  I handed over the bundle. ‘From Mrs Townsend. She was asking after you.’

  Mother peeked within the bundle, bit the inside of her cheek. ‘I’ll be sure and have heartburn tonight.’ She rewrapped it, said grudgingly: ‘Still. It’s good of her.’ She stood aside, pushed back the door. ‘Come on in, then. You can make me up a pot of tea and tell me what’s been happening.’

  I cannot remember much of which we spoke, for I was an unconscientious conversationalist that afternoon. My mind was not with Mother in her tiny, cheerless kitchen, but up in the ballroom on the hill where earlier I had helped Myra arrange chairs into rows and hang gold curtains around the proscenium arch.

  All the while Mother had me performing chores, I kept an eye on the kitchen clock, mindful of the rigid hands, marching their way closer and closer toward five o’clock, the hour of the recital.

  I was already late when we said our goodbyes. By the time I reached the Riverton gates, the sun was low in the sky. I wove along the narrow road toward the house. Magnificent trees, the legacy of Lord Ashbury’s distant ancestors, lined the way, their highest boughs arching to meet, outermost branches lacing so that the road became a dark, whispering tunnel.

  As I burst into the light that afternoon, the sun had just slipped behind the roofline, giving the house a mauve and orange afterglow. I cut across the grounds, past the Eros and Psyche fountain, through Lady Violet’s garden of pink cabbage roses, and down into the rear entrance. The servants’ hall was empty and my shoes echoed as I broke Mr Hamilton’s golden rule and ran along the stone corridor. Through the kitchen I went, past Mrs Townsend’s workbench covered with a panoply of sweetbreads and cakes, and up the stairs.

  The house was eerily quiet, everyone already in attendance at the recital. When I reached the gilded ballroom door I smoothed my hair, straightened my skirt and slipped inside the darkened room; took my place on the side wall with the other servants.

  ALL GOOD THINGS

  I hadn’t realised the room would be so dark. It was the first recital I had ever attended, though I had once seen part of a Punch and Judy show when Mother took me to visit her sister, Dee, in Brighton. Black curtains had been draped across the windows and the room’s only brightness came from four limelights retrieved from the attic. They glowed yellow along the front of stage, casting light upwards, glazing the performers in a ghostly shimmer.

  Fanny was onstage singing the final bars of ‘The Wedding Glide’, batting her eyelids and trilling her notes. She hit the final G with a strident F, and the audience broke into a round of polite applause. She smiled and curtseyed coyly, her coquetry undermined somewhat by the curtain behind bulging excitedly with elbows and props belonging to the next act.

  As Fanny exited stage right, Emmeline and David-draped with togas-entered stage left. They brought with them three long timber poles and a sheet, which were quickly arranged to form a serviceable-though lopsided-tent. They knelt beneath, holding their positions as a hush fell over the audience.

  A voice came from beyond: ‘Ladies and gentlemen. A scene from the Book of Numbers.’

  A murmur of approval.

  The voice: ‘Imagine if you will, in ancient times, a family camped on a mountainside. A sister and brother gather in private to discuss the recent marriage of their brother.’

  A round of light applause.

  Then Emmeline spoke, voice buzzing with self-importance. ‘But brother, what has Moses done?’

  ‘He has taken a wife,’ said David, rather drolly.

  ‘But she is not one of us,’ said Emmeline, eyeing the audience.

  ‘No,’ said David. ‘You are right, sister. For she is an Ethiopian.’

  Emmeline shook her head; adopted an expression of exaggerated concern. ‘He has married outside the clan. Whatever will become of him?’

  Suddenly a loud, clear voice from behind the curtain, amplified as if travelling through space (more likely a rolled-up piece of cardboard), ‘Aaron! Miriam!’

  Emmeline gave her best performance of fearful attention.

  ‘This is God. Your father. Come out ye two unto the tabernacle of the congr
egation.’

  Emmeline and David did as they were told, shuffling from beneath the teepee to the front of stage. Flickering limelights threw an army of shadows onto the sheet behind.

  My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I was able to identify certain members of the audience by their familiar shapes. In the front row of finely dressed ladies, Lady Clementine’s tumbling jowls and Lady Violet’s feathered hat. A couple of rows behind, the Major and his wife. Closer to me, Mr Frederick, head high, legs crossed, eyes focused sharply ahead. I studied his profile. He looked different somehow. The flickering half-light gave his high cheekbones a cadaverous appearance and his eyes the look of glass. His eyes. He wasn’t wearing glasses. I had never seen him without.

  The Lord began to deliver his judgement, and I returned my attention to the stage. ‘Miriam and Aaron. Wherefore were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?’

  ‘We’re sorry, Father,’ said Emmeline. ‘We were just-’

  ‘Enough! My anger is kindled against thee!’

  There was a burst of thunder (a drum, I think) and the audience jumped. A cloud of smoke plumed from behind the curtain, spilling over onto the stage.

  Lady Violet exclaimed and David said, in a stage whisper, ‘It’s all right, Grandmamma, it’s part of the show.’

  A ripple of amused laughter.

  ‘My anger is kindled against thee!’ Hannah’s voice was fierce, bringing the audience to silence. ‘Daughter,’ she said, and Emmeline turned away from the audience to gaze into the dissipating cloud. ‘Thou! Art! Leprous!’

  Emmeline’s hands flew to her face. ‘No!’ she cried. She held a dramatic pose before turning to the audience to reveal her condition.