The Love Child (3 page)

“I hope it is comfortable,” I said.

She turned to me and replied: “It’s luxurious compared with the rectory.” Her eyes went to the fire in the grate, which my mother had ordered should be lighted. “It was so cold hi the rectory, I used to dread the winter.”

I thought then: I believe I’m going to like her.

I left her to unpack and wash, telling her that in an hour’s time I would come up and show her the schoolroom, where we could look at some of my books and I could explain to her what I had been doing. I would show her the house and gardens if she would care to see them.

She thanked me and she smiled at me rather shyly. “I think I am going to be very glad I came here,” she said.

I went down to my parents. As was to be expected they were talking about the new governess.

“A very self-possessed woman,” said my mother.

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“She has a certain poise without doubt,” replied my father.

My mother smiled at me. “Here’s Priscilla. Well, my dear, what do you think of her?”

“It’s too soon to say,” I parried.

“Since when have you become so cautious?” My mother continued to smile at me. “I think she will be very good.”

“She is clearly well brought up,” added my father. “I think, Bella, she should join us for meals.”

“Join us for meals! The governess!”

“Oh, come now, you can see she is different from old Philpots.”

“Undoubtedly different,” agreed my mother. “But to join us at table! What if there are guests?”

“She’ll mingle, I don’t doubt. She seems articulate enough.”

“What when the boys come home?”

“Well…what?”

“Do you think…”

“I certainly think you cannot condemn a young woman of her breeding to lonely trays in her room. Obviously she can’t be with the servants.”

“It is always like that with governesses. How I should hate it!”

“What do you think, Priscilla?” said my father, and so astonishing me by asking my opinion for the first time in my life-I certainly never remembered its happening before-that I stammered and could find no ready reply. “Let her join us,” he went on, “and we’ll see how it works.”

The servants would think it very strange that one who was only slightly higher in the social scale than they were should sit with the family at dinner. I knew that there would be a great deal of gossip in the Nullens-Philpots combine.

I couldn’t help thinking that it was rather mysterious that my father should concern himself first with the state of my education and then the comfort of my governess.

So there was mystery. I should not have been myself if I did not wonder what it was all about. Christabel Connalt would bring change, I knew. I could feel it in the air.

For the next few days she was the centre of attention in the house. Sally Nullens and Emily Philpots discussed her endlessly and the rest of the servants only slightly less so. Naturally I spent more time with her than anyone and I felt I was gradually getting to know her. She was not easy to know; I changed my opinion of her from hour to hour. There were times when I thought her completely self-sufficient 23

and at others I seemed to sense a certain vulnerability. It was that telltale mouth which would turn down at the corners when it expressed all sorts of emotions. There were times when I fancied she harboured some sort of resentment.

There was no doubt of her erudition and ability to teach. The Reverend William Connalt had determined to send her into the world equipped to earn a living. She had taken lessons with the sons of the local squire, and I fancied that she had made an attempt to keep up with them if not surpass them. There was something I quickly learned about Christabel; she wanted to be not only as good as everyone else but better. I presumed that came from being poor.

At first there was a certain amount of restraint between us, but I determined to break that down and I did succeed quite well-largely because she found me somewhat ignorant. It appeared that my father really had been right and that if I had been left any longer to the mercies of Emily Philpots I should have emerged into the world of adults as a somewhat ignorant young lady.

All that was going to be changed.

We studied Latin, Greek, French and arithmetic, at all of which I Scarcely shone.

At English literature I was not so bad. Visits to Aunt Harriet (as I called her, though she was not my real aunt) had made me interested in plays and I could quote passages of Shakespeare. Aunt Harriet, though long retired from the stage, was still fond of arranging little entertainments and we all had to become players when we were there. I enjoyed it and it had the effect of arousing my interest.

I noticed that during our English literature sessions Christabel was less pleased than during others. It was then that I realized she was happy only when she could show me how much cleverer she was than I. She did not have to stress that. She had come to teach me, hadn’t she? Moreover she was about ten years older than I so she ought to have learned more.

It was very odd. When I made stupid errors, although she would speak gravely, her mouth told me that she felt rather pleased; and when I shone-as I did with literature-although she would say, “That was excellent, Priscilla,” her mouth would form itself into that tight little line, so I knew she wasn’t pleased.

I had always been greatly interested in people. I remembered the things they said which taught me something about them. My mother used to laugh at me, and Emily Philpots said: “If you could only remember the things that mattered, you’d be more credit to me.” The longest rivers, the highest mountains, I simply could not care about 24

them. But I was completely intrigued by the way people thought and what was going on in their minds.

That was why I quickly discovered that there was some resentment in Christabel; and if it had not seemed so absurd, I should have thought it was directed against me.

My father had said that Christabel should take one of the horses from the stables which suited her and ride with me. She was very pleased about this. She was a fair horsewoman and told me that she had been allowed to exercise the Westerings’ horses.

We would often stop at an inn when we went riding together, and drink cider and eat cheese with clapbread, which was made entirely of oats, or eat crusty bread straight from the oven.

Sometimes we rode down to the sea and galloped along the shore. I discovered that if I suggested a race and let her beat me, she was overcome with a sort of secret joy.

I believed this was because she had had a very unhappy childhood and that she was vaguely envious of mine, which had been so cornfortable and secure that I had never thought about it until now.

Carl had taken a fancy to her. He used to come in sometimes and share a lesson, which was strange, for when he went to the rectory, he had always reminded me of the schoolboy creeping like the snail unwillingly to school. He asked what her favourite tune was and tried to play it-with distressing results to all within earshot.

She did not seem to want to talk about herself at first, but I set myself to lure her into confidences, and once she started to tell me she seemed as though she wanted to talk. It was rather like opening the floodgates.

Soon she had made me see that loveless household: the rectory which was always cold and damp, with the graveyard close by so that on looking out of her windows she could see tombstones, and when she was a child had been told by the washerwoman that at night the dead came out of their tombs and danced, and if anyone saw them, they themselves would be dead before the year was out.

“I used to lie in bed shivering,” she said, “while I was overcome by the temptation to get out of bed and go to the window to see if they were dancing. I remember the cold boards and the wind that used to rattle the windows. I would stand there at the window terrified, freezing, yet unable to go back to bed.”

“I should have done the same,” I told her.

“You have no idea what my childhood was like. They thought they were so good, and they thought that to be good one had to be miserable. They thought there was some virtue hi suffering.”

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“We have someone here like that. There is old Jasper, the gardener. He’s a Puritan, you know. He was here during the war when my father was pretending to be a supporter of Cromwell.”

“Tell me,” she cried, and I told her all I knew. She sat listening, entranced, with her mouth curved and rather beautiful then-so different from when she had talked of that cold humourless rectory.

Sometimes I thought she hated her father and mother.

I said once: “I believe you are glad you have left home.”

Her lips tightened. “It was never like a home … as this is. How lucky you are, Priscilla, to have been born here … to your mother.”

I thought that was a strange thing to say, but she did say strange things sometimes.

I liked very much hearing about the rectory and the things they did there. How the rabbit stew was watered down to make it last longer until it tasted of nothing at all; how they had to thank God for it; how their underclothes were patched and darned until there was little of the original left; how they had to kneel for what seemed like hours in the cold drawing room for morning prayers which went on interminably; how she had to stitch garments for the poor who, she was sure, were better off than she was. Then there were the lessons in the drawing room-so cold in winter, so hot in summer. How she used to study all the time because it was the only way in which she could thank God for being so good to her.

How her mouth betrayed her bitterness! Poor, poor Christabel! I recognized at once that what was wrong with that rectory was not so much the poor quality of food or the scarcity of it, nor the knees sore from too much kneeling in prayer, nor the long hours of study-no, it was none of these things. It was the lovelessness of the home. That was what came over to me. Poor Christabel, she wanted so much to be loved.

I could understand well, because in a way I had felt the same about my father. My mother had lavished care on me and I did not forget that. And then there was Aunt Harriet. I was a special favourite of hers and she made no secret of it. I could not say I was not loved. Even my father was not unkind; he was just indifferent, shrugging me aside because I had failed to be the boy men of his kind always cared so much to have. I had developed an obsession about him. I yearned to win his approval, to attract his attention.

Human beings were very much alike, so I could understand Christabel’s feelings.

Her mood changed when she talked of the Westerings. She made 26

me see that Sussex village-after all there were such places all over England and our own community was very similar. There was the church with its draughty, cheerless rectory and graveyard of tottering tombstones imbued with an uncanny atmosphere through the folklore and legends attached to it; the small cottages, the big house dominating the village-the home of Sir Edward Westering and Lady Letty, a lady in her own right, being the daughter of an earl. Lady Letty cropped up rather frequently hi Christabel’s conversation. She was what Harriet would have called a character. I could picture her sailing into church at the head of the Westering family-Sir Edward walking a pace or two behind, followed by the Westering boys, who before they went away to be educated had taken lessons at the rectory with Christabel. I could imagine Christabel, in a blue serge dress shiny at the elbows, and her patched underwear, watching with those dark-rimmed eyes which betrayed nothing and that mouth which would be quirking with mixed emotions. I guessed she would be wishing with all her heart that she was a Westering and could walk into church with that important family and take her place in that special pew.

Now and then Lady Letty would glance her way. Christabel would drop a curtsy to denote appreciation of the notice of such an exalted being. Lady Letty would say: “Ah, the rector’s girl. Christabel, is it?” For she would not be expected to remember the name of such an underling; and informed that it was, would give her a sharp look and a nod or even a smile, and pass on.

It was Lady Letty who had said that the rector’s girl should be taught to ride and then she could exercise a horse from the Westering stables. “Good exercise for the horses,” she had added. “In case,” said Christabel, “I might think it was for my benefit.”

The Westerings were the universal benefactors of the village. Blankets and geese for Christmas were distributed from the rectory by Mrs. Connalt with the help of Christabel. Lady Letty intimated that the rectory might also have its blanket and goose, but taken unostentatiously, of course. “We picked out the biggest goose,”

said Christabel with her wry smile, “and the largest of the blankets.”

At Easter and Harvest Festival she would go to the Westering estate to select flowers and produce from the kitchen gardens, which the gardeners would then bring over to the church. Lady Letty would often be there and would talk to her and ask her about education. It was rather embarrassing, and she wondered why Lady Letty now and then asked her to the house, for when she was there, her ladyship’s one thought seemed to be to get rid of her as quickly as possible.

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I gathered that Lady Letty was something of an enigma. It appeared strange that she should interest herself in the life of the village because she was more often than not at Court. Sometimes there was entertaining at Westering Manor when the fashionable arrived from London. Once the King himself had come. That had been a very grand occasion.

I certainly enjoyed hearing about her life.

“It seemed as though it would go on and on and never change,” she said. “I saw myself growing older and becoming exactly like Mrs. Connalt … dried up, shrivelled like a walking corpse who is really finished with life and somehow continues to make the motions of living. Joyless, seeing sin in pleasure… .”

I thought how strange it was that she should refer to her mother as Mrs. Connalt-as though she rejected the close relationship between them.

I was beginning to understand her. She was attractive in appearance in an unusual way and more than normally clever; she had yearnings for a more interesting life and she felt frustrated. She hated being patronized by the Westerings; she was a lonely person because there was no one to love her, no one to whom she could explain her feelings.