The Captive (2 page)

And how we revelled in it! When I look back on what many would call my neglected childhood, I can only rejoice in it, because it was one of the most wonderful and loving any child could have. But, of course, when one is living it, one does not realize how good it is. It is only when it is over that that becomes clear.

Learning was fun with Felicity. We did our lessons every morning. She made it all so interesting. In fact, she gave the impression that we were finding out things together. She never pretended to know. If I asked a question she would say frankly: “I’ll have to look that up.”

She told me about herself. Her father had died some years ago and they were very poor. She had two sisters of whom she was the eldest. She was fortunate to have her uncle. Professor Wills, her father’s brother, who had helped the family and found this post for her.

She admitted that she had been terrified, expecting a very clever child who would know more than she did.

We laughed about that.

“Well,” she said, ‘the daughter of Professor Cranleigh. He’s a great authority, you know, and very highly respected in the academic world.

”

I wasn’t sure what the academic world was but I felt a glow of pride.

After all, he was my father, and it was pleasant to know that he was highly thought of.

“He and your mother have many demands made on them,” she explained.

That was further good news. It would keep them out of our way.

“I thought there would be a great deal of supervision and guidance and that sort of thing. So it has all turned out much better than I expected.”

“I thought you’d be terrible … neither fish nor fowl.”

That seemed very funny and we laughed. We were always laughing. So I was learning fast. History was about people some very odd, not just names and a string of dates. Geography was like an exciting tour round the world. We had a big globe which we turned round and round; we picked out places and imagined we were there.

I was sure that my parents would not have approved of this method of teaching, but it worked well. They would never have engaged anyone who looked like Felicity and who admitted that she had no qualifications and had never taught before if she had not been the niece of Professor Wills.

So we had a great deal to be thankful for and we knew it.

Then there were our walks. We learned what an interesting place Bloomsbury was. It became a game to us to find out how it had become as it was. It was exciting to discover that a century before it had been an isolated village called Lomesbury and between St. Pancras Church and the British Museum were fields and open country. We found the house where the painter Sir Godfrey Kneller had lived; then there

were the rookeries, that area into which we could not venture a maze of streets in which the very poor lived side by side with the criminal classes, where the latter could rest in safety because no one would dare enter the place.

Mr. Dolland, who had been born and bred in Bloomsbury, loved to talk about the old days and, as was to be expected, he knew a good deal about it. There were many interesting conversations on the subject during meals.

We would sit there on winter evenings, the lamp shedding its light on the remains of Mrs. Harlow’s pies or puddings and empty vegetable dishes while Mr. Dolland talked of his early life in Bloomsbury.

He had been born in Gray’s Inn Road and in his boyhood he had explored his surroundings and had many stories to tell of it.

I remember details from those days so well. He really had dramatic powers and like most actors liked to enthral an audience. He certainly could not have had a more appreciative one even though it was smaller than he might have wished.

“Shut your eyes,” he would say, ‘and think of it. Buildings make a difference. Think of this place . like a bit of the country. I was never one for the country myself. “

“You’re like me, Mr. Dolland,” said Mrs. Harlow.

“You like a bit of life.”

“Don’t we all?” asked Dot.

“I don’t know,” put in Nanny Pollock.

“There’s some as swears by the country.”

“I was born and bred in the country,” piped up the twee ny

“I like it here,” I said, ‘with all of us. “

Nanny nodded her approval of that sentiment.

I could see Mr. Dolland was in the mood to entertain us and I was wondering whether to ask for “Once more unto the breach’ or The Bells.

“Ah,” he said.

“There’s been a lot going on round here. If you could only see back to years ago.”

“It’s a pity we have to rely on hearsay,” said Felicity.

“I think it’s fascinating to hear people talk of the past.”

“Mind you,” said Mr. Dolland, “I can’t go back all that way, but I’ve had stories from my granny. She was here before they put up all these buildings. She used to talk about a farm that used to be just about where the top of Russell Street is now. She remembered the Miss Cappers who lived there.”

I settled happily in my chair, hoping for a story about the Miss Cappers. Mr. Dolland saw this. He smiled at me and said: “You want to hear what she told me about them, don’t you. Miss Rosetta?”

I nodded and he began: “They were two old maids, the Misses Capper.

One was crossed in love and the other never had a chance to be. It made them sort of bitter against all men. Well-to-do, they were. They had the farm left to them by their father. Ran it themselves, they did. Wouldn’t have a man about the place. They managed with a dairymaid or two. It was this dislike of the opposite sex. “

“Because one was crossed in love,” said Emily.

“And the other never had a chance to be,” I added.

“Shh,” admonished Nanny.

“Let Mr. Dolland go on.”

“A queer pair they were. Used to ride out on old grey mares. They didn’t like the male sex but they dressed just as though they belonged to it … in top hats and riding breeches. They looked like a couple of old witches. They were known all round as the Mad Cappers.”

I thought that was a good joke and laughed heartily, only to receive another reproving shake of the head from Nanny I should know better.

One should never interrupt Mr. Dolland when he was in full flow.

“It was not that they did anything that was really wicked. It was just that they liked to do a bit of harm here and there. It was a place where boys used to like to fly their kites … it being all open to the sky. One of the Miss Cappers used to ride round with a pair of shears. She’d gallop after the boys with the kites and cut the strings so that

the little boys were standing there … the string in their hands, watching their kites flying off to Kingdom Come.”

“Oh, poor little boys. What a shame,” said Felicity.

“That was the Miss Cappers for you. There was a little stream nearby where the boys used to bathe. There was nothing they liked more on a hot summer’s day than a dip in the water. They’d leave their clothes behind a bush while they went in. This other Miss Capper used to watch them. Then she’d swoop down and steal their clothes.”

“What a nasty old woman,” said Dot.

“She said the boys were trespassing on her land and trespassers should be punished.”

“Surely a little warning would have done?” said Felicity.

“That wasn’t the Miss Cappers’ way. They caused a bit of gossip, those two. I wish I’d been around when they were alive. I’d like to have seen them.”

“You would never have let them cut your kite and send it to Kingdom Come, Mr. Dolland,” I said.

“They were pretty sharp, those two. Then, of course, there were the forty steps.”

We all settled back in our seats to hear the story of the forty steps.

“Is it a ghost story?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, sort of.”

“Perhaps we’d better have it in the morning,” said Nanny, her eyes on me.

“Miss gets a bit excited about ghost stories at the end of the day. I don’t want ” 1her awake half the night fancying she hears things. “

“Oh, Mr. Dolland,” I begged.

“Please tell us now. I can’t wait. I want to hear about the forty steps.”

Felicity was smiling at me.

“She’ll be all right,” she said, wanting to hear as much as I did, and, having whetted our appetites, Mr. Dolland saw that he must go on.

Nanny looked a little displeased. She was not as fond of Felicity as the rest of us were. I believed it was because she knew of my

affection for her and was afraid it detracted from what I had for her. She need have had no qualms. I was able to love them both.

Mr. Dolland cleared his throat and put on the expression which he must have worn when he was waiting in the wings to go on the stage and do his part.

He began dramatically: “There were two brothers. This was a long time ago when King Charles was on the throne. Well, the King died and his son, the Duke of Monmouth, thought he would make a better king than Charles’s brother James, and there was a battle between them. One of the brothers was for Monmouth and the other for James, so they were enemies fighting on different sides. But what was more important to them was their admiration for a certain young lady. Yes, the two brothers loved the same woman and it got to such a state that they made up their minds to fight it out between them, for this young lady was the Beauty of Bloomsbury and she thought quite a lot of herself, as such young ladies do. She was proud because they were going to fight over her. They were to fight with swords, which was how they did it in those days. It was what they called a duel. There was a patch of ground close to Cappers’ farm. It was waste land and it always had had a bad reputation. It was the haunt of highwaymen and no one with any sense walked there after dark. It seemed a good place for a duel.”

Mr. Dolland picked up the large carving knife from the table and brandished it deftly, stepping back and forth as he battled with an invisible opponent. Gracefully he held the knife but with such realism that I could almost see the two men fighting together.

He paused for a moment and, pointing to the kitchen stove, said:

“There on a bank … enjoying every minute, seeing each brother prepared to kill the other for her sake, sat the cause of the trouble.”

The kitchen stove became a bank. I could see the girl, looking a little like Felicity, only Felicity was too good and i9

kind to want anyone to die for her. It was all so vivid; and that was how it always was with Mr. Dolland’s turns.

He made a dramatic thrust and went on in hollow tones:

“Just as one brother caught the other in the neck, severing a vein, the other struck his brother through the heart. So … both brothers died on Long Fields as it was called then, though afterwards the name was changed to Southampton Fields.”

“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Harlow.

“The things people do for love.”

“Which one haunted her?” I asked.

“You and your ghosts,” said Nanny disapprovingly.

“There always has to be a ghost for this one.”

“Listen to this,” said Mr. Dolland.

“While they were going back and forth’ he did a little more swordplay to illustrate his meaning ‘they made forty steps on that bloodstained patch and where those brothers had trod nothing would ever grow again. People used to go out and look at them. According to my granny, they could see the footsteps clearly and the earth was red as though stained with blood. Nobody ever went there after dark.”

“They didn’t before,” I reminded him.

“But the highwaymen didn’t go there either … and still nobody went.”

“Did they see anything?” asked Dot.

“No. There was just this brooding feeling of something not quite natural. They said that when it rained and the ground was soggy you could still see the footsteps and they were tinged with red. Things were planted but nothing would grow. The footsteps remained.”

“What happened to the girl for whom they fought?” asked Felicity.

“She fades out of the story.”

“I hope they haunted her,” I said.

“They shouldn’t have been such fools,” said Nanny.

“I’ve no patience with fools. Never have had, never will have.”

“It’s rather sad, I think, that they both died,” I commented.

“It would have been better if one of them had remained to suffer remorse . and the girl wasn’t worth all that trouble anyway.”

“You have to accept what is,” Felicity told me.

“You can’t change life to make a neat ending.”

Mr. Dolland went on: “There was a play written about it. It was called The Field of the Forty Steps.”

“Were you in it, Mr. Dolland?” asked Dot.

“No. A bit before my day. I heard of it though, and it made me interested in the story of the brothers. Somebody called Mayhew wrote it with his brother, which was a nice touch … brothers writing about brothers, so to speak. They played it at the theatre in Tottenham Street. It ran for quite a while.”

“Fancy all that happening round here,” said Emily.

“Well, we never know what’s going to happen to any of us at any time,” commented Felicity seriously.

So the time passed, weeks merging into months and months into years.

Happy, unruffled days with little to disturb our serenity. I was approaching my twelfth birthday. I suppose Felicity would have been about twenty-four then. Mr. Dolland was greying at the temples which we declared made him look very distinguished and that added a certain grandeur to his turns. Nanny complained more of her rheumatics and Dot left to get married. We missed her, but Meg took her place and Emily Meg’s and it was thought unnecessary to engage a new twee ny In time Dot produced a beautiful fat baby whom she proudly brought round for us all to see.

There were many happy memories in those days; but I should have realized that they could not go on for ever.

I was growing out of childhood and Felicity had become a beautiful young woman.

zi

Change comes about in the most insidious way.

There had been the odd occasion since Felicity had come to us when she had been invited to join one of the dinner parties given by my parents. Of course, Felicity explained to me, it was because they needed another female to balance the sexes, and as she was the niece of Professor Wills she was a suitable guest, although only the governess. She did not look forward to these occasions. I remember the one dinner dress she had. It was made of black lace and she looked very pretty in it, but it hung in her wardrobe a depressing reminder of the dinner parties which were the only occasions when she wore it.