Dorothy Eden (20 page)

Children, Florence had discovered, were never consulted about major upheavals in their lives. They just had to suffer them, and use bad language occasionally, like ‘ignorant lout’ (which she had heard Cook call the butcher’s boy). Even though one was slapped for it, it was a more satisfactory way of easing one’s sorrow than by crying.

She suspected Papa was doing the same. He must miss Mamma very much. Once, when he had been ill for a few days, he had looked very lonely in his narrow bed in the blue room all by himself. “Like a monk,” she had heard Annie murmuring under her breath.

However, in spite of his loneliness, he hadn’t seemed too overjoyed when Mamma’s letter had come saying they had a new baby daughter, and would he come and fetch them both home.

“Crossing the Channel in this weather,” he had grumbled. “Why couldn’t the child arrive at a more seasonable time?”

No one had said why Miss Medway couldn’t help Mamma home with the new baby. Nor, indeed, why this poor little foreign baby seemed so unwelcome.

“When I come home to you,” Mamma had written to Florence and Edwin, “we will all be happy together again. I hope that you have been good children and kept Papa company while I have been away.”

Almost as an afterthought, the letter had finished, “I will be bringing a new little sister for you, whom you must learn to love.”

Why
learn
, Florence had wondered pedantically. One just naturally loved a baby.

Papa had left for Italy a week ago. Travelling by steamer and train, he and Mamma and the baby were due at Victoria station at three-thirty this afternoon. Dixon was meeting them. They would be home an hour or so later, Dixon said. With those fast greys Papa had bought (because he was so miserable while Mamma was away, he had had to find something to amuse him), the journey might take less than an hour, providing there wasn’t too much traffic on the roads, and that the mistress didn’t want to stop at Bonnington’s on the way home.

She would hardly want to do that with a new baby, and tired after the long journey, Cook said. But Dixon said you could never tell with the mistress. After three months away she would want to see the shop just as much as she would want to see her children.

“If there’s one thing wrong in one of the windows she’ll notice it. And she’ll have me trying to hold the horses quiet while she goes in to raise hell. That’s the whole trouble, if you ask me,” he added darkly. (What trouble? Florence wondered miserably.) “And another thing, she’ll have the accounts sent up this evening, come hell or high water. Can’t blame her, can you? These pair of nags has to be paid for, for one thing.”

“Seems unnatural, a woman at business all the time,” muttered Cook. “But if the master—if things were other than what they seem to be—now get on with you, Dixon, gossiping here. It isn’t safe. That Miss Florence has ears that can hear through a six foot wall.”

It wasn’t a six foot wall, it was an open window, Florence thought contemptuously, and anyone could hear through that. She intended to slip away before Lizzie found her, but she was too late. Lizzie pounced on her, scolding that her sash was untied and her fingers black with soot from the window sill.

“Listening
again
, Miss Florence. You are Miss Inquisitive, and no mistake. You’ll hear all the news soon enough without trying to hear what Cook and Dixon have to say.”

But that was just the trouble. She wouldn’t hear. No one told her anything. They just passed her scraps of information that she had to try to fit together and make sense of. The object of all her listening had been to discover whether her dear Miss Medway was coming back. It was a question to which she still had no answer.

At half past four, almost on the second, the carriage rolled up. Florence, who had been at her habitual place at the nursery window, shouted, “They’re here! They’re here!” and was down the stairs like a thunderbolt, Miss Sloane calling vainly to her to behave like a little lady. Edwin was only slower by virtue of his shorter legs, but both children were at the front door when it opened and Mamma came in, followed by a strange woman carrying the baby swathed in shawls. Papa slowly, and somehow reluctantly, brought up the rear.

Mamma was dressed in her familiar bottle-green travelling cloak, her round rosy cheerful face framed by her sensible black bonnet. It was possible that her face was a little less rosy and cheerful than usual, but Florence scarcely noticed this since she was so disappointedly aware that the woman carrying the baby was not Miss Medway.

“Well, children,” Mamma said, “how well you are looking. Florence, you’ve grown quite two inches. And Edwin, my baby. Are you happy to have Mamma home? Laurette, show the children the new baby.”

The young woman obediently parted the swathing of shawl, and displayed the little face, squeezed up in sleep.

It didn’t look much of anything, Florence decided. Not even as interesting as one of her dolls. By the brisk way Mamma had spoken to the woman called Laurette, Florence suspected she felt much the same, as if babies were more of a nuisance than anything.

But, to her surprise, she realised Papa felt quite differently. For he was looking down at the little face with a dreamy expression on his own face, as if he already loved this pale pink crumpled little thing. Had he looked like that when she and Edwin had been as small as this, Florence wondered? She wished she could remember. Because now he never took much notice of them.

“Oh, the children, of course,” she used to hear him saying to Miss Medway. “I suppose they must come.”

He thought they ran about too noisily, and disturbed the particular butterfly he might be stalking, Miss Medway had once explained. But even when they sat down in some quiet part of the Heath to have a picnic, he would say, “Can’t you two find something to amuse yourselves with? Go and look for birds’ nests, Edwin. Florence, can’t you pick some flowers for your mother?”

He wasn’t a man who cared much for children, Cook had said once, when Florence had confided in her. Some men were like that. Wait until she was a young lady. Then her Papa would take the greatest pride in her.

Even if she wasn’t pretty? Florence had wondered agonisedly.

This new baby wasn’t pretty, to her way of thinking, but somehow Papa looked as if he was going to have far more patience with it.

Of course it might cry a lot, and then he would lock himself in his study out of hearing. “He’s a very selfish man, the master. Charming as he is, and all.” That was another of Cook’s remarks.

“And what’s going on in that head?” said Papa to Florence, now, in his joking voice. He had once said Florence had a head like a dictionary. She quite clearly knew more than he did. That remark had been made when she was in one of her frowning thinking spells, which was often enough. He was probably hoping the new baby would never think at all.

“Isn’t the baby jolly?” he went on, as if he thought someone ought to be talking. “She’s like a little kitten. Now Bea, wouldn’t that be a better name for her? Kitty.”

“She already has a name,” said Mamma.

“What is it, Mamma?” Florence asked eagerly.

“It’s Daisy. Papa thought it a little too simple, but I don’t agree. There are some very beautiful women called Daisy. The Princess of Pless. The Countess of Warwick. It’s by no means a servant’s name, as Papa seemed to think.”

Then something strange happened. Papa’s eyes horrifyingly filled with tears. He turned away quickly, saying in a stiff voice, “You must be tired after your journey, Bea. Why don’t you go up?”

Then the baby began to cry, and Mademoiselle Laurette exclaimed in very strange English, “She is ’ongry, madame. And tired. Where is meelk, and her bed?”

“The cradle! The cradle!” shouted Florence. “We got it out.”

Mamma opened her mouth, then closed it, without saying anything. It seemed she had been about to object to the baby being put in the cradle, but Papa said firmly, “That means the family cradle, Laurette. I believe four generations of my family have slept in it. Florence, show Laurette the way to the night nursery.”

Florence was delighted to charge up the stairs, leading Mademoiselle Laurette to the nursery and the cradle, complete with its sparkling white mattress and pillows, which Lizzie had prepared. It gave her something to do, and made her temporarily forget Mamma’s strange behaviour, and dear Miss Medway’s absence.

Mademoiselle Laurette had a plain sallow face, and a most unbecoming hat. She looked tired and harassed, but not too tired to stare inquisitively at Florence and comment that she had expected a daughter of M’sieu Overton to be more petite, more ravishing, if Florence understood what she meant.

Florence understood all too well. She pushed her long limp hair behind her ears, and said, defiantly, that the baby wasn’t very pretty either.

“Ah, but that is all you know of babies, Mademoiselle. She is going to be a beauty, that one. That Mademoiselle Keety!” Mademoiselle Laurette, who obviously already much preferred Papa to Mamma, went into a strange whicker of laughter.

“Are you going to stay here?” Florence asked apprehensively.

“Stay! Mon Dieu, no! I came only to assist on the journey. I will leave Mademoiselle Bébé in your care, Mademoiselle Florence. How is that, eh?”

Florence looked at the baby lying quietly in the cradle, and something did begin to stir in her heart. Something grown-up and motherly. This was her little sister. It was her duty to look after her and protect her. Edwin, for instance, a great rough boy, should not be allowed near her. And it would be fun to dress her in pretty clothes. Mamma would take her to Bonnington’s, and all the staff would gather round, reverently to admire her. Miss Brown would bring out the most exquisite baby clothes. Florence would push the perambulator. She believed she was going to enjoy having a sister, after all.

“Will her name be Kitty?” Florence asked Mademoiselle Laurette, and Mamma, unexpectedly behind her, answered in a cool firm voice, “No, Florence, it will be Daisy. That’s already settled.”

“And will Miss Medway come back to help me look after her?” Florence asked impulsively, mentioning that dear name at last.

But it was a mistake, because Mamma’s face went stiff and she said coldly, “No, Florence, she won’t be back. And I think I asked you once before to put her entirely out of your mind. She has other children to look after now, and you have Miss Sloane. I will be wanting a report on your lessons later.”

“But, Mamma—”

“Silence, miss! You heard what I said.”

T
HE JOURNEY HOME HAD
been sufficient for Beatrice to discover that William was already daft about the baby.

He had never shown much more than a polite paternal interest in Florence and Edwin. But with this new child he was as fussy as a woman. Beatrice found the sight irritating beyond endurance. She realised that there were all too many difficulties ahead.

But she would overcome them. She had the patience and, she hoped, the wisdom. Eventually William must realise that she was the kind of woman who would wear much better than that governess whose name she was now determined to forget.

The immediate crisis was past. All in all, it had gone very well, considering its stupendous problems.

It was wonderful to be home again. Running her hand over the glossy stair rail as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, Beatrice paused to look down into the hall with its black and white tiled floor, its bowls of glowing autumn leaves and chrysanthemums, its well-polished furniture, and the good paintings on the panelled walls. She allowed herself a moment of possessive pleasure.

She had come such a long successful way since her first visit to this house. She had proved that what one wanted enough one could get. Though at a price, and it was a little disconcerting to find that the price kept increasing. One thought it paid and the future secure, then a crisis such as this one occurred and the bill mounted. But she would never be bankrupt. She knew the resilience of her own nature, and her total refusal to be defeated.

She would not discourage the pleasure the baby gave William. It was even possible she would join in the baby worship herself. Though unlikely.

Her immediate object was to have a husband again, and none of this nonsense of separate rooms.

But that much-desired state of affairs might take a little time and tact to achieve. In the meantime there was a great deal to do and to discuss at the shop. On her visit this afternoon (travel-stained and weary, and with William fidgeting in the carriage), she had only hurried in and out. But even in those brief moments she had seen that the displays were a little tired and unimaginative, two elderly well-dressed customers had not been offered chairs, a young assistant at the glove counter had extremely untidy hair, the moss green carpet was surely more dusty and foot-marked than it should be by mid-afternoon.

After her long absence her eye may have been too critical. But it was clearly time she was back. Tomorrow morning Adam Cope would meet her in her office with a complete set of figures for the last quarter’s trading, and later she would call a general meeting of buyers. She wanted some of that Italian silk unpacked and displayed well in advance of Christmas. She hoped young Mr Brush had some clever suggestions for Christmas window dressing. And no doubt there were numerous staff problems.

It was good to be home. Soon she and William would find a great deal more to talk about than they had done on the journey. Anyway, she was much too busy to be lonely. It occasionally occurred to her that where other women of her age had many friends she had none. This, however, did not unduly concern her. She had her family, her loyal staff at Bonnington’s, Hawkins who would have laid her broomstick body across the threshold of her bedroom, if necessary. What did she want with idle gossiping friends? The life of desperate boredom her mother lived convinced her of that.

“That baby doesn’t take after you, Bea,” Mamma had said in her outspoken way. “She’s going to be a beauty.”

“Yes, she looks like William,” Beatrice answered calmly.

It was true that the little thing did. The sparkling brown eyes were a replica of William’s. And the charm. Even at ten weeks of age Baby’s face lit up with smiles when an admirer bent over her cradle. And there were too many admirers. She was already well on the way to being shockingly spoiled.