Autumn Softly Fell (14 page)

Dorothea’s heart shrank within her. Here was another emergency when it was all she could manage to stay on her feet. She felt that she could have lain in the road and gone to sleep right there and then. Why was Nora so concerned for Pippa now, when she’d always said that Pippa wasn’t right for Jem and had no idea about anything?

Dorothea rubbed her eyes. It must be the smoke in her head, making her so ill-tempered. Now was not the time to fall short, when Nora needed her, not to mention Pippa, who’d been so concerned about Mother Franklin. With a great effort, Dorothea got to her feet.

‘I knew I could rely on you, Miss Dorothea! Now, if you go round by the Green, and I’ll go the other way, and we’ll….’

Nora’s words were lost in the hustle and bustle of the street as she sped away. Dorothea hesitated a moment, loathe to leave Nibs in the state he was in, not to mention poor Mother Franklin with the tears rolling down her cheeks. There were only the children to fall back on, Nibs’s little brother and sister. She impressed on them that they must look after their brother and the old lady. We will, they said. She was not sure that they really understood, but it was the best she could do.

She set off, hurrying up School Street, following the fire engine’s hose pipe towards the village green where it disappeared down the well. Deep night closed round her. Pausing to look back, she saw the fire as a lurid orange stain in the sky.

‘Pippa! Pippa!’

She stumbled onwards, calling repeatedly. There was no reply. The village was still and silent, for all the world as if it was deserted. Even the wind had dropped now. Not a leaf stirred.

‘Pippa!’

She went along the High Street as far as Tumbledown Cottage where the houses came to an end. Turning left, she hurried down Back Lane. She had never been this way before, but – dazed as she was – she still felt a burning curiosity to see where Nora lived. The Turners’ cottage, she knew, was first on the left. It was smaller than she’d imagined, what she could see of it in the gloom, squat and
lifeless
, the windows blank. And the garden – full of wonderful flowers, Nora said, all the colours of the rainbow – looked grey and desolate in the moonless dark. An unexpected feeling of disappointment swept over her; the whole world seemed dreary and diminished just now. The empty night was all around her, and she was alone. She longed for the safety and comfort of the nursery. That was her place, if anywhere was. She did not belong here in the village. Nibs had been right.

She shook herself. This was no time for moping. Trying to decide what to do next, she guessed that Nora would be coming up Back Lane from the other direction, so there would be no point in going that way herself. Wasn’t there a footpath to the left of the Turners’ cottage? It ran across a meadow, Seed Meadow Nora called it,
where she had played as a little girl: ‘The grass was taller than me, miss….’

With a little searching, Dorothea found a gap in the hedge, and there was the path, like a thin dark ribbon across the grey meadow. She began walking. The sound of her skirts brushing through the grass was like a sinister hissing voice. All else was quiet, except for the thumping of her heart. She pressed on, not calling out now – she wouldn’t have dared, in that dark silence – but stopping every so often to listen. All was still. The air was heavy and breathless.

Halfway across the meadow a feeling of fear seized her. She forced it back. It was not as if she was lost – not really. She knew these places so well from listening to Nora’s talk that it was as if she had lived here all her life. Just ahead now was the hedgerow and beyond it a patch of tangled trees and shrubs known as the Wilderness. She could just make it out in the gloom – but it looked very dark in there. Did she dare to go in?

Her steps slowed, stopped. She could see above the leaf-laden boughs of the trees an orange glow in the sky, the fire, raging on and on like a ravenous beast. Very faintly she could hear the din coming from School Street.

Without warning, something or someone touched her nose. She jumped a foot in the air but was too terrified even to scream. Her chest heaving, she reached up with one finger and felt the place on her nose where she’d been touched. The finger came away wet. Water. How odd! Where could it have come from?

She looked up – and a second drop of water hit her right in the eye. It was followed by a third, a fourth…. More and more drops were falling, faster and faster. She could hear them pattering on the grass all around.

It took her dazed brain some time to work out what was happening.

It was raining.

Rain! Her heart leapt. Now surely they stood a chance! The village might not burn after all! She wanted to get back as quickly as possible to see what was happening. The shortest way was
straight on, the path through the Wilderness. She ran towards the hedgerow, Pippa for the moment forgotten.

The rain was falling harder and harder. It was pouring down as she squeezed through a gap in the hedge. Leaves brushed against her face. Brambles snatched at her. For a moment she was trapped – then she was through and plunged into the Wilderness.

Here, the darkness was as thick as cobwebs. The wind had come back, too, and was gusting in the tree tops. Rain hammered. She moved forward, one step, then another, eyes searching the blackness. Suddenly, in the distance, a clap of thunder rolled across the sky. Nearer at hand, and mixed with the sound of the thunder, came a blood-curdling scream. Dorothea stopped dead, frozen in terror.

The thunder died away. The scream too was cut off. Dorothea breathed again, listening to the wind and the rain and the rustling leaves.

Then the scream came again. Not the evil howl of some terrible lurking monster, she realized. It sounded more like a desperate cry of pain and fear. If there was somebody nearby who needed help, she couldn’t just run away and leave them.

‘Hello? Is there somebody there?’ She didn’t allow herself time to ask if her courage was up to the task, but all the same her voice sounded terribly thin and feeble, and was quickly swallowed up by the dark. She listened.

A faint reply, away to her left. ‘Help! Please help me!’

It was no monster or ghost. It wasn’t even a stranger. It was a voice she recognized. In a rush she remembered her quest and
realized
she had completed it. She had found Pippa Turner.

She felt her way in the dark, inching towards the place where Pippa’s voice had come from. Every so often, a single rain drop, working its way through the tangled canopy above, landed on her with a splat.

After a time, the darkness drew aside a little. She had come to a clearing. On the far side, splayed on the ground between the roots of an old, gnarled tree, was the washed-out figure of a woman,
glimmering
like a ghost.

‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ Pippa’s voice was thin and brittle. ‘Oh
miss! Oh miss, it’s you! Thank goodness! I thought no one would ever come! I tripped in the dark – tripped over these old roots. I’ve hurt my ankle. I can’t walk on it. I should never have come this way, but I got frightened waiting at home and when I couldn’t find Jem or— Oh miss! Miss!’

‘What is it, Pippa? What’s wrong?’

‘It’s the baby, miss. The baby’s coming.’

Dorothea backed away. ‘I’ll … I’ll fetch someone. Nora. Jem.’

‘Please don’t go, miss! Please don’t leave me on my own again! I couldn’t bear it!’ Pippa stretched out a hand and Dorothea let herself be drawn closer, kneeling as Pippa reached up to grip her arm. ‘It’s too late, anyhow, miss. I think … I think … oh miss, it hurts! It hurts! It’s—oh, ah, oh….’

Pippa’s voice swooped up into the same howl of pain that had curdled Dorothea’s blood in the dark just now. Up close, the sound made her dizzy and she swayed on her knees. This was just how she’d felt long ago, walking the streets with her papa, walking with an empty tummy in the cold and the dark.

The memory was so unexpected and yet so vivid that it was like a dose of salts. The mist in her head cleared. Her eyes focused on Pippa writhing between the tree roots. Pippa’s skirt had rucked up, one leg was stretched out, the swollen ankle clearly visible inside her stockings. Her screams faded, subsided to a low moan. Her eyes
fluttered
and closed. She looked done in, as if she had run out of energy and was now fading away – as if, thought Dorothea with a sudden chill of fear, as if the baby inside was slowly killing her, just as Dorothea’s own mother had been killed all those years ago. Bessie Downs, who never shied away from anything, had once explained exactly what it meant to die in childbirth. Dorothea, knowing that you had to take Bessie Downs with a pinch of salt, had not believed the half of it. Out here in the Wilderness – with Pippa’s groans fading to nothing, Pippa’s grip on her arm loosening, Pippa’s hand slipping to the ground – it seemed to Dorothea that Bessie Downs had not been half macabre enough.

Dorothea knew about babies. In Stepnall Street it had been impossible not to know. There were no nurseries, no nannies
standing guard in Stepnall Street. The grown-ups didn’t watch their words when the children were around; they hardly noticed if
children
were there at all. It seemed sensible, therefore – wise as she was – to loosen some of Pippa’s clothes. With shaking hands, Dorothea groped and fumbled, pushing up Pippa’s skirt, pulling down her drawers. All the time the deluge continued, more and more drips sliding off the leaves as the wind tossed the branches. Far off, thunder growled like an angry giant.

When she got a peek of the baby’s head, half-in and half-out, the shock nearly bowled her over. She gripped Pippa’s hand. ‘It’s here, Pippa! It’s here! I can see it!’

Pippa stirred, mumbling, but she wasn’t making any sense, and she didn’t squeeze Dorothea’s hand in return.

Without warning, and in a way which turned Dorothea’s stomach, the baby came slithering and squelching out onto last year’s leaves, a scrap of flesh, just skin and bone, sticky, slimy, messy. Pippa groaned, then was silent. The baby was silent too, half dead by the look of it – perhaps completely dead. Dorothea wished she could feel sorry for it but she couldn’t. She couldn’t feel anything. The darkness seemed to be closing in, too – washing over her,
blotting
it all out, the wind, the rain, the baby, Pippa, everything. She felt as if she was falling – or was it that she was floating, floating away…?

As if in a dream, she suddenly heard voices all round her, saw a swinging lantern. Women were giving orders, speaking soothingly to Pippa, questioning each other anxiously. And then came a most peculiar noise: a sort of grizzling and whining rising rapidly to a high, angry wail. How odd, thought Dorothea vaguely, it sounded almost like a baby….

But of course! It
was
a baby! It was Pippa’s baby! Was it alive after all? And Pippa?

Dorothea tried to scramble to her feet but couldn’t quite manage it. She swayed, felt herself falling again, but before that could happen, a strong arm encircled her waist, a big jacket was thrown round her shoulders.

‘Don’t worry, Dorothea. I’ve got you. You’re quite safe now.’

It was Henry. Henry had come. He was beside her, holding her. He had come to her rescue again.

She was only half aware of walking through the pouring rain back to School Street (she wouldn’t let him carry her, she still had enough about her to remember the prestige and responsibility of being eleven). Uncle Albert was waiting in Bernadette, red-faced and wheezing, holding the umbrella that Nora had packed with the picnic that morning, ‘just in case’. Only that morning!

‘Home, I think, Fitzwilliam,’ said Uncle Albert once Dorothea was safely aboard.

‘Right away, sir.’

Henry, in sodden shirt sleeves, hatless, his hair plastered on his head, started the engine. As they drove away, Dorothea had a confused impression of the gaunt, roofless shells of the cottages looming up in the dark, of people laden with goods and chattels trudging through burnt straw and puddles of water, of low murmuring voices and the sobbing of children. Then the village fell away and they were whirling through the night. It felt like flying on the back of an eagle.

It was only when Bernadette had come to a stop and the big house was suddenly there, waiting, lights in all the windows and the front door wide open, only as Dorothea was being helped out of the motor and went stumbling up the steps, that she remembered she had forgotten to pick up her hat.

DOROTHEA WOKE UP
coughing.

Once the fit had passed, she lay back, exhausted. At least her room was calm and peaceful after the dreams of flames and
darkness
from which she had just surfaced.

After a while, she got out of bed, crossed to the window, pulled back the curtains, opened the sash. She breathed in, tentative, but the air was cool and fresh with no smell of burning, no hint of soot. She didn’t know what the time was, but it had to be very early. The morning was bright and golden, the sky a deep, clean blue. A thin white mist lay on the fields. Spiders’ webs glistened like strands of silver.

Resting her elbows on the sill, she listened to the distant church bell striking the half-hour and, remote, the
chuff-chuff
of a
locomotive
, hardly more than a ripple in the air. The sound of crunching gravel was loud in comparison. Down below, the governess came walking out from the stable yard. She must have let herself out of the side door and was crossing now to the entrance in the red brick wall that led to the gardens. She was hatless, with her hair up. Her hips swayed. Her skirt trailed. Serene, solitary, she passed out of sight.

Dorothea took a last breath, then drew back, shutting the window quietly. The dregs of her fiery dreams had been tipped away and she got back into bed, pulled the covers up, and slipped into peaceful sleep.

A most unexpected visitor arrived just before luncheon.

‘I’ve brought your hat, miss, which you left behind, seemingly.’

Nibs Carter hesitated before taking a step forward. He placed the hat on the nursery table. Her poor hat! She had been so proud of it yesterday when getting ready for the great expedition. Now it was a sorry looking thing, smudged with soot, stained by the rain, ruined. Nibs too looked different: smaller somehow, even more scrawny than usual. He cradled his bandaged hand. His clothes hung off him like rags. He was not cocksure today. Dorothea wondered that she’d ever been afraid of him.

Nora had been full of news that morning. The fire had been terrible, the worst disaster ever to be visited on the village but – mercifully – no one had been seriously hurt. Pippa and her newborn son were both doing well. Mother Franklin – together with her ‘bits and pieces’ – had been taken in by her married daughter who had room to spare down Back Lane now so many of her children had left home. The Carters, Nora had added with a sorry shake of her head, had not been so lucky. Their little cottage had been gutted and they had been split up, taking refuge where they could round the village.

‘What will you all do now?’ Dorothea asked Nibs.

‘I don’t know, miss. Our Arnie says we’ll end up in the workhouse but he always looks on the black side, our Arnie.’

Poor Nibs! He looked so trampled down – so much so, that she almost regretted that the old Nibs had gone, nasty though he’d been. But who was the
real
Nibs Carter? She didn’t even know his proper name.

‘It’s Robin, miss. But I hate Robin. I’d sooner be called Nibs – even if it is a joke at my expense. It’s what my dad used to call me –
his nibs
– on account of my getting above myself when I was a kid.’

The dad who was dead, thought Dorothea, remembering everything that she had learned from Nora about the Carters. Their mother had died too, and now their home was gone. The fire had left behind such a wretched muddle, as tawdry as her hat.

‘Don’t you worry about us, miss,’ said Nibs, scowling at her as if he could read her mind. ‘We’ll be all right. But I just wanted to….
Well, to thank you, for all you did, and for helping out and that, and for binding my hand. It was … was good of you.’

‘You’re very welcome—’ Dorothea began fervently, but she had barely got the first words out before Nibs had gone.

A moment later Roderick came nosing into the day room,
suspicious
. ‘Who was here? I heard voices.’

‘No one,’ said Dorothea. And it felt almost like the truth, for Nibs had looked – and sounded – like a ghost of his former self. Or had there been, perhaps, a hint, a spark, something of his old touchiness? It seemed almost appealing now.

‘You’re lying,’ Roderick accused her. ‘It wasn’t no one. It was Nibs Carter. I’d know his stupid voice anywhere. What do you want with Nibs Carter?’

‘Nothing. It’s none of your business.’

‘You shouldn’t talk to him. He’s a rat.’

‘Why don’t you leave him alone? What’s he ever done to you?’

‘What’s he done? I’ll tell you what he’s done! He spooked my pony, for a start, so that I fell off and cracked my head open. And then, after I’d caught him by the canal and knocked him down for the swine that he is, he got his ratty friends together and they ambushed me in the Spinney and beat me black and blue. So after that I—’

‘You’re as bad as each other!’ cried Dorothea. ‘You want your heads knocking together!’

‘Well, I like that!
Me
, as bad as Nibs Carter! Of all the cheek! You’ve changed your tune, I must say. You used to say he was—’

‘Oh, stop it, Roddy, just stop it!’ She couldn’t explain why her feelings had changed towards Nibs – why her feelings had changed altogether since yesterday; nor would Roderick have listen if she had tried. ‘You’re
worse
than Nibs, Roderick Brannan, because you ought to know better, only you don’t!’

She ran out of the day room and into her own room, slamming the door. As she threw herself onto the bed she found she was sobbing. All of the peace she had discovered earlier that morning was gone. All the horrors of her dreams were back. And worse, too, because even her dreams hadn’t been as bad as the real thing, the
raging fire, the suffocating smoke – not to mention Pippa’s unearthly screams as she writhed in agony in the dirt and the dark and the wet. There was the baby, too – that slimy little bundle. Dorothea felt sorry for it and repelled by it at the same time – the way it had been disgorged onto the rotting leaves as casually as one would empty the lees from a tea pot. A baby was nothing, tipped out into the world to live or die as chance decreed. And at any moment its parents might be snatched away or its house might burn down or it might be left – abandoned – at some stranger’s home, unwanted, alone.

‘Now then, miss, what’s all this?’ Nora was suddenly there,
gathering
her up, and Dorothea put her arms round her and sobbed into her pinafore, and never mind the responsibility and prestige of being eleven. ‘There, there! Don’t take on so! It can’t be as bad as all that, surely? Master Roderick said as I should come and find you, he said you might be upset, but I never expected you to be in a state like this! Come on now. Dry your eyes. The doctor’s here to see you – to look you over after yesterday. I’ll just put the brush through your hair and straighten your frock, and then we’ll let him in, shall we?’

Dorothea nodded glumly but nothing seemed to matter just then, not even a visit from Dr Camborne. But as Nora made her
presentable
before going to fetch the doctor, Dorothea suddenly thought of Nibs Carter coming all the way from the village to bring her hat. And fancy Roderick noticing that she was upset, let alone sending Nora to look for her! How strange, she thought. How odd. Could it be that Nora was right? Could it be that things weren’t quite a black as she’d imagined?

Uncle Albert came to see her once the doctor had gone.

‘Ah, here you are, child. In bed, I see.’

‘Dr Camborne said I should rest.’

‘Quite right, quite right. He said the same to me. We had quite an experience yesterday, didn’t we, eh?’ The mattress sagged as Uncle Albert sat down. ‘I’m to stay home for a week, no work allowed. Lot of nonsense, if you ask me, but Ellie insists I do as I’m told. Anyone would think I’d been ill! I was a bit short of breath, that was all! Ah
well. You know what doctors are like. They know best. They
think
they know best.’ He gave a snort, as if he didn’t hold a high opinion of doctors. ‘I’m sure I’ll find lots to keep me occupied while I’m on leave. Thought I might write to that chap on the train, the one who’s designed a new sort of autocar. Chaps like that – the go-getters – should be given every encouragement. It’s good to have ambition. It was the making of me. Where’d I be now if I’d simply stuck with my father’s watch-making business? When I took up bicycles they said I’d never make a go of it, said I was barking up the wrong tree. Proved them wrong there, didn’t I, eh? It’s all bicycles in Coventry now. Watches have gone by the board.’ He glanced down at her, smoothing his moustache. ‘You’re very quiet today, child. That fire took the wind out of both our sails, eh? But you showed a lot of pluck, a lot of pluck. Take after your mother, I daresay. But tell me … what are you worrying about in that pretty little head of yours, eh, eh?’

Greatly daring, Dorothea reached out and took his hand as it lay on the coverlet. Her fingers seemed very small and thin compared to his but he squeezed her hand and smiled at her from behind his moustache, and she felt at that moment that she could tell him anything.

‘Uncle…?’

‘Yes child? What is it?’

But there was too much in her head to tell him even half of it. All she could find words for was the fate of the Carters, who’d lost their home and were scattered across the village.

Uncle Albert didn’t hum and haw as she might have expected. He didn’t change the subject or say that the Carters ought to pull
themselves
up by their bootstraps. The fire had changed Uncle Albert too, it seemed.

‘Don’t go upsetting yourself, child. These things have a habit of working out for the best. You’ll see.’

‘But I
won’t
see, Uncle, because I never go to the village,
never
, and I’d so like to! Nora said I can go to tea with her anytime, but Nanny says—’

‘Oh, well, Nanny.’ Uncle Albert snorted again as if he had a
similar opinion of Nanny to that he had of doctors. ‘Nanny is not your keeper, child. You go to the village if you want. I don’t hold with all this mollycoddling and wrapping in cotton wool. I used to play in the street all the time when I was your age.’ He stood up, stretched, caught sight of her hat as he did so. ‘What’s this? Not much good for anything now, is it, eh? We’ll have to see about getting you a new one. Oh, and before I forget, you left this in Fitzwilliam’s motor contraption yesterday.’ He handed her a box, smiled, nodded – nodded as if, unlike Nanny and doctors, she was someone of whom he
did
approve.

When he’d gone she looked at the box he had given her and
realized
it was the toy soldiers she’d bought in Lawham the day before. It seemed an age ago now. She thought of the money she’d spent on them and the money she had left and wished she could give it all to the Carters who needed it – who deserved it. But would Nibs have taken it if she’d offered? Or would he have turned up his nose and called it
charity
, the way some people did? She rather thought that he would have.

She sighed, remembering how she’d come by her riches, her
half-sovereign
. It had been entirely out of the blue. She’d been on her way back from her afternoon walk with the governess. An ancient man, wrinkled and bent over, had been descending the front steps
shadowed
by two tall attendants in splendid livery. The old man’s watery eyes had fixed on her, he had beckoned her over.

‘You must be the girl my grandson was speaking of.’ He’d laid a wasted hand on her head, then clicked his fingers. One of the
attendants
had jumped to it, handing the old man a little bag. ‘Here. A small token. On behalf of my grandson. For your kindness.’ He had taken something from the bag, passed it to her.

She had only remembered her manners at the last moment, stammering a
thank you
as the old man was helped into his magnificent carriage. She had realized who he must be: Richard’s grandfather – his mother’s father, the earl whom Becket had told her about. To meet a real live earl had made her head swim. She could not have been more in awe if an angel had come down from heaven.

But Richard had not been in the best of moods when she rushed up to tell of her remarkable encounter. His grandfather’s visit had made him peevish and irritable. ‘All he ever talks about is the weather and if his horse will win the Derby. He cares more about horses than he does about people. He doesn’t care about me at all. He only comes because he thinks he owns me, and he likes to look at all his possessions.’

Sitting now in bed with the box of soldiers on her lap, Dorothea thought of the shiny half-sovereign the earl had given her and wished that she hadn’t accepted it.
For your kindness
, he’d said. But she wasn’t kind to Richard out of duty or in hope of some reward (unlike Nurse, according to Nanny). She was kind to Richard because she liked him –
loved
him.

Was Richard’s grandfather really as bad as all that, liking horses better than people? Or was it just Richard being Richard? She did feel that the earl was not someone one could
love
, unlike Uncle Albert, for instance, who— Well, it seemed odd now that she had ever been afraid of him and that, three years ago, she hadn’t even known he existed. She felt now as if she’d known him forever. To have him sit on her bed and hold her hand buoyed her up, as if nothing could touch her, as if no harm would ever come to her again. How glad she was to have an uncle like that!

‘Are you ready, Miss Dorothea? It’s time!’

‘Coming, Nora. Coming.’ Dorothea took one last look out of the window. She’d been watching Uncle Albert and Henry in their shirt sleeves tinkering with Bernadette on the gravel below. If, by ordering Uncle Albert to stay at home, Dr Camborne had expected his patient to rest, then he ought to have known better. Uncle Albert had been busy all week – not just in writing to the mysterious man on the train, but in repairing Dorothea’s puncture, replacing the brake pads on Mlle Lacroix’s bicycle, and embarking on a thorough overhaul of Roderick’s rather battered machine. ‘Don’t know what the boy does to it. Look at the state it’s in!’ he’d said. Today Henry had called to see how they all were after the drama of the fire and Uncle Albert had decided to inspect Bernadette. Henry was beaming with pleasure, of course.