Darkwater

Dorothy Eden

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A Biography of Dorothy Eden

1

AS THE SWIRLING SMOKE of the engine cleared, the little group was etched forever in Fanny’s brain—the outlandish figure of the Chinese woman in her black trousers and high-collared smock, and the two children in their quaintly old-fashioned clothes, the girl with black hair, stick legs emerging from her pantaloons, and tense eyes staring unwinkingly, the boy smaller, unexpectedly fair, his eyes dreamy and lost.

And the smoke clouding over, then clearing again to show the tall dark figure of the man.

She had known at once that the man belonged, although he stood a little distance away. He was watching her too hard, seeing the effect that the sad wrinkled alien face of the amah and the two waif-like children had on a young lady of obvious wealth and fashion.

In her mind, for a moment, like a view enclosed inside a bubble, bright and impermanent, was a picture of Darkwater, the faded rose many-chimneyed house, the lawns, the trees heavy with summer, the strutting peacocks, the distant flicker of the lake. Nowhere into the picture came this little trio. Instinctively she knew that they would be forever strange and unwelcome.

Yet her immediate impulse was to sweep the children into her arms and say, ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re safe with me.’

Safe…It was true that the chilly grey summer day, the hissing of steam, the shouting and bustle of a busy London railway terminal, and the constantly belching smoke, did constitute a menacing atmosphere to such new arrivals from another world.

She couldn’t be sure whether the watching man was part of the menace.

She only knew, with frustrated anger and bitter grievance, that from this moment her life had to be changed, that it must follow a very different course than the one she had planned so hopefully when she had packed her bag at Darkwater.

2

AT THE BOTTOM OF her bag Fanny laid her modest pieces of jewellery, the silver locket which sprang open to hold a miniature or a lock of cherished hair—it was empty, and Fanny scarcely knew why she kept it since it was unlikely ever to contain anything—the seed pearl necklace, the ring set with garnets and seed pearls, the gold brooch that had been her mother’s. She had never known what had happened to the rest of her mother’s jewellery, unless, more than likely, she had been too poor to have any.

She had come from Ireland, and the Irish were not renowned for their wealth. She had been beautiful, they said, but it had been a foolish marriage for Papa to make. He should have married an heiress. Not only had she been poor, but also too delicate to survive childbirth. Her name had been Francesco. That had been given to Fanny—that and her deep blue eyes and black hair. And her life. So great a gift as the last was the main reason for Fanny’s secret plans at this moment. She must make the most of something so dearly given.

Over the shabby morocco jewel box in her travelling bag she laid her underclothing, two sets of everything.

Dora would have done her packing for her. Fanny was not encouraged to give the servants orders. This was a tacit understanding between Aunt Louisa and herself. But Dora, recently promoted to the upstairs, adored Miss Fanny and would even have risked Hannah’s disapproval to do her behests.

As it happened, Fanny preferred to do this task alone. She couldn’t let even loyal Dora see that for one night in London she was taking two of everything, and her summer as well as her winter gowns.

She was on fire with excitement. Ever since her cousin George had come home wounded from the Crimea she had been waiting for this opportunity. She had made and rejected a dozen plans, but this chance had been handed to her out of the blue. It was meant to be taken.

The only way she could explain her suppressed excitement, at breakfast that morning when she could eat nothing, and it was left for the rest of the family to eat heartily from the array of dishes on the sideboard, was to say that the train journey and the visit to London were such an adventure. Not to mention meeting the new cousins, poor babies, who had travelled so far.

Uncle Edgar had smiled indulgently, but Aunt Louisa had compressed her lips, not with scorn for Fanny’s naïve excitement, but with the thought of the new arrivals. Aunt Louisa had never cared for children who were not her own. At the tender and vulnerable age of three Fanny herself had made that discovery.

It was left for George to say to the table at large, ‘Fanny looks deuced pretty when she’s excited. Doesn’t she? Deuced pretty.’

His eyes, ever so slightly vacant, rested for an embarrassingly long time on her face.

Aunt Louisa said sharply, ‘Don’t forget the time, George. Mr Maggs comes to give you your treatment at nine.’

‘Yes, Mamma,’ said George mildly. He still stared at Fanny. The doctors said he would eventually recover from the head wound he had received at Balaclava—perhaps they didn’t care to tell his parents otherwise. All Fanny knew was that the lofty scorn and small sadistic cruelties with which her cousin George had been accustomed to treat her had been metamorphosed into this distressing and embarrassing affection. Where once she had defied him, she was now ever so slightly frightened of him.

It was one more reason for her desire to escape. Long ago she had begged Uncle Edgar to let her take some employment, she was young and active, she hadn’t Amelia’s chances of making a good marriage, if indeed she made any at all, and above all, she was bored. She refused to be content with a life full of trivialities and invented occupations.

Uncle Edgar was shocked and adamant. A Davenport to go into service! Besides, above all, she was his ward, a sacred trust to him from his poor cousin Edward. He would carry out that trust to his dying day.

‘There are plenty of ways of occupying yourself in this house,’ he had said repressively.

Fanny knew all about that. Running errands for Aunt Louisa and Amelia, stitching at the household linen with Hannah, because she sewed so neatly, reading to old Lady Arabella, feeding the screeching peacocks, playing and singing to Uncle Edgar in the evening when he was in the mood for a little music. She was a puppet pulled this way and that. A puppet everlastingly dependent, everlastingly grateful…

Gratitude could turn sour, Fanny thought, as she folded her last garment. Indeed, she was unnatural enough to feel none at all. It hadn’t been her fault that her mother had died at her birth nor that her father had contracted a consumption that carried him off before she was three. And Uncle Edgar and Aunt Louisa had so much. This enormous house, the gardens, the lake and the parkland, the little village where the villagers doffed their caps deferentially, the church and even the parson.

One small bewildered child, arriving from the hot sun of the Italian Riviera where her father had gone to die, should not have had to feel gratitude.

Perhaps it was her look of defiant independence that most antagonised Aunt Louisa. Fanny looked at herself in the tilted mirror on her dressing table. At this moment excitement had heightened her colour and her dark blue eyes were brilliant. In spite of the drabness of her grey poplin gown she looked very pretty. She had a long slender neck and a waist that Amelia bitterly envied. Her blue-black hair, smooth and luxuriant, made her look foreign, Amelia said. English men like fair-haired women. And Aunt Louisa considered that Fanny had too bold and direct a way of looking at them. Amelia knew how to lay her thick fair lashes prettily on her cheeks. Not that Fanny hadn’t long lashes, too. She must remember to use them modestly. She must remember her position…

While she stayed at Darkwater, she could never forget her position. But she would go on looking directly at people, too. It had never amused her to flirt. She ran rings round giggling Amelia when it pleased her to do so, but in the end the young men discovered that it was Amelia who was the heiress, and the slow significant coolness came into their manner.

Fanny despised all of them. Some day she would meet a man to whom money was of minor importance. But not, intuition told her, while she stayed at Darkwater…

There was a knock at her door, and before she could speak Amelia came bursting in.

‘I say, Fanny, have you packed? Papa wants to see you in the library when you’re ready. I really do think he could have let me come with you.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to go instead of me?’ Fanny said coolly.

Amelia flung herself into a chair, pouting.

‘What, and be a nursemaid to two children!’

‘That’s what I’m to be.’

Amelia’s round pink and white face, too plump and already uncannily like her Father’s, remained unconcerned. She never saw any point of view but her own.

‘Oh well, that’s different, isn’t it? But we could have gone shopping. Will you bring me some French ribbon, anyway. To match my pink bonnet?’

‘If I have time, and you give me the money.’

‘Oh dear! I’ve overspent my allowance. I shall have to ask Papa.’

‘He won’t refuse you.’

‘Well, after all, he is my Papa,’ Amelia pointed out. ‘If yours had remained alive, I expect he’d have been glad to buy French ribbons for you, and seen that you had a respectable dowry. Fanny, who do you think will marry you?’

The question stung.

‘Someone who loves me,’ Fanny replied calmly.

‘But who will that be? I mean, without a dowry—’

‘I don’t intend to sell myself.’

Amelia sprang up, her cheeks pink.

‘What a revolting thing to say. You mean that men prefer me to you just because I’m rich. In other words, that I’m selling myself.’

Fanny gave her direct gaze, without speaking. Amelia’s eyes glinted with anger and hurt pride.

‘Very well, you have an eighteen inch waist, but Mamma says men prefer women not to be too thin.’ Her eyes went to the lovely curve of Fanny’s bosom, and fell. She stamped her foot childishly.

‘Fanny, you are exasperating. All right, I’m sorry I asked who would marry you. It must be a question that hurts. You can’t change customs, and it is important to have a dowry, whatever you say. But I’m sure you’ll find someone suitable. Only there isn’t that much time, is there?’

Amelia was referring to the fact that Fanny was in her twenty-first year. Fanny chose to misunderstand her.

‘No, there isn’t, and if I’m to see Uncle Edgar in the library before I leave—’

‘I didn’t mean that sort of time, but never mind.’ Amelia had recovered her good nature. ‘Do you think having these children in the house is going to make much difference? Mamma says it will, but Papa says if they’re kept out of sight we’ll hardly know they’re there. And anyway how could he refuse to have his own brother’s children. It’s awfully lucky Papa’s so generous, isn’t it? First having you as a ward, and now these two. And coming all the way from China. Mamma’s afraid—’

‘Afraid of what?’ Fanny asked, as Amelia hesitated.

‘We just don’t know who Uncle Oliver married in Shanghai. Wouldn’t it be terrible—’

‘If the children were Chinese?’

Amelia’s eyes were round and shocked.

‘They couldn’t be completely because Uncle Oliver wasn’t. But they could be—sort of half—and even if they are Mamma says Papa will insist on their coming to church with us on Sundays. Imagine us with ivory-coloured cousins!’

Amelia began to giggle, but she was still anxious. It was easy enough to read her thoughts. She was wondering if even a substantial dowry would tide her over that sort of scandal.

‘Mamma thinks it was awfully inconvenient of both Uncle Oliver and his wife to die in that typhus epidemic,’ Amelia went on. ‘But Uncle Oliver always was in trouble, and I suppose this was his climax, so to speak.’

‘Your father must have been glad when he decided to go out to the East twenty years ago, and didn’t come back.’

‘He must have,’ Amelia said in a heartfelt voice. ‘Dear Papa, who’s so respectable. I believe it wasn’t only money with Uncle Oliver, but’—she lowered her voice—‘women! That’s why Mamma says these children could be anybody.’

Fanny tried to remember the distant day when she, a mere baby, had made the long terrifying journey to Darkwater. She remembered the dark muffling folds of a blanket, and much later the strange strident noise which sent her into floods of tears, but which proved to be only the elegant and haughty peacocks on the lawn. She could have been anybody, too.

‘They’re your own flesh and blood, Amelia,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Your father sees that. He’s the only one, it seems to me, who does see it.’

Amelia flounced across the room. She had still to learn to move gracefully.

‘Oh, Fanny, Don’t be so righteous. I know what one’s duty is, as well as Papa, and as well as you. But it’s an awful bore having to explain about infant cousins all the way from China. And if they should have slant eyes—well, I don’t care, I’m not going to let them interfere with my life.’

Poor babies, Fanny was thinking. No one wanted them. Not even Uncle Edgar, really. And she was callously planning to run away, and let Hannah, who would accompany her to London, bring them home.

But she had to seize this opportunity! If she didn’t do it now, the war in the Crimea would be over, Miss Nightingale wouldn’t require any more volunteers, she would have no alternative but to apply for a position as a governess or a companion, both impossible without references, and both nauseating to think about. At least, in the Crimea, one would be doing a worthwhile task, and probably meeting at last a man to whom integrity, a warm heart, and a little beauty, too, meant more than landed property or stocks and shares.

The children were travelling with their Chinese amah who would remain with them. They would be adequately cared for.

‘Fanny, you’re not even listening to me!’ Amelia said peevishly.

‘Yes, I was. I was thinking how we all try to protect our own lives.’

Amelia’s pale blue eyes, a little prominent, like her father’s, widened.

‘But what have you to protect?’

‘My heart beats, the same as yours,’ Fanny said dryly. Then, because she was fond enough of Amelia, who was selfish and undiscerning and remarkably empty-headed, but who did not, at least, have her brother’s sadistic qualities, she said reassuringly, ‘I’m sure you’re worrying unnecessarily. The children will stay upstairs in the nursery and the schoolroom, and you’ll hardly see them.’

Amelia shrugged. ‘Yes, I expect so. After all, what are servants for? But don’t stay in London a minute longer than you need to. I shall have to read to Grandmamma while you’re away. You know I can’t endure that.’

Both Aunt Louisa and Uncle Edgar were in the library. Aunt Louisa was walking up and down as if this were the end of an argument, and one which, as usual, she had lost, for her lips were compressed, and the tip of her large nose flushed. Uncle Edgar was watching her with benevolence. Arguments seemed to amuse rather than anger him. He rarely lost his temper, a fact which drove his wife to fury. She could have coped with a hot temper, she couldn’t cope with the unbendable unbreakable iron beneath her husband’s soft, plump, pleasant, facetious, and good-natured exterior.

When Fanny came in they both turned.

Uncle Edgar said at once, in surprise, ‘My dear child, why are you looking so shabby? You’re not proposing to travel in those clothes?’

Fanny had meant to scrupulously leave behind her fur-trimmed coat, her striped silk gown, and her dark blue bonnet with the velvet ribbons. They were her best clothes and as good as anything that Amelia or Aunt Louisa wore. She considered that they still belonged to Uncle Edgar, and anyway, in her new circumstances, she would have no use for them.

‘I thought, for a train journey, with the dust and smuts—’

‘Which is very sensible and prudent,’ said Aunt Louisa.

Uncle Edgar shook his head.

‘On the contrary, Louisa my dear, that’s quite wrong. Fanny is representing me. She must look her best, in any case, we always like her to look her best.’

When he noticed her, Fanny thought privately. For he had a curious trick of seeing her, and probably his own family, too, only through the eyes of outsiders. She could wear a faded and shabby house gown the entire week, without comment, but as soon as visitors were expected, or, more particularly, when she followed the family procession into church on Sunday mornings, she had to be expensively and fashionably dressed so as to do him credit. So that people could say that Edgar Davenport was remarkably generous to his penniless niece?

It was only in her darker moments that Fanny believed that last assumption. Uncle Edgar was a fair and kindly man. He was absent-minded at home. He truly didn’t notice what his family was doing or wearing unless they drew attention to themselves. He spent a great part of the day in the library with his stamp collection, his erudite books, his correspondence on charitable affairs which he meticulously looked after himself, and his committees. He looked just a little eccentric, with his high domed balding head with its ruff of hair that would one day be saintly shining silver, his prominent mild blue eyes, his full-lipped mouth. In the house he liked to wear a shabby wine-coloured velvet smoking jacket, and was given to extravagantly-coloured waistcoats. A heavy gold watch chain lay across his chest. The watch concealed in his pocket was a chiming one. He had used to make it chime for the children when he was in a jovial mood. It had often stopped tears and tantrums. Fanny wondered if its magic would be called upon for the new children. She hoped it would, for if Uncle Edgar were not kind to them, who would be?

‘You will go upstairs and change,’ Uncle Edgar was saying. ‘You have plenty of time. The carriage has been ordered for half past eleven. The train leaves at twelve. Now repeat to me again exactly what you have to do.’

‘Yes, Uncle Edgar, I’m to take a cab from the station to the shipping office to make enquiries as to whether the China Star has arrived, as expected, and which train the children will be on. I’m also to ask if an official has been sent to meet them and escort them to London, and later to suitably reimburse him.’

‘What is suitably?’

‘A guinea as you suggested, Uncle Edgar.’

‘Correct, my dear. What next?’

‘After we’ve been to the shipping office and ascertained our time-tables Hannah and I are to go to our hotel and wait.’

‘Correct again. You see, Louisa, Fanny is quite capable of taking charge of this business. It saves you a journey which I’m sure you don’t want, and it’s quite impossible for me to get away. I’m far too busy. I’m a man of many affairs.’

‘Too many,’ said Aunt Louisa tartly. ‘If you’d taken a little more interest in your brother when you were both young, we might never have been in this contretemps.’

‘I don’t think my influence would have stopped Oliver going to the bad,’ Uncle Edgar said seriously. ‘He was always uncontrollable, even as a small boy. Anyway, I wouldn’t refer to this matter as a contretemps. It merely means our family is a little larger. What of that? There are enough empty rooms in this house. It will keep the servants up to the mark.’

‘The children will have to be taught.’

‘Ah, yes. You mean the problem of a governess.’ Uncle Edgar’s eyes flicked to Fanny and away so quickly that she couldn’t be sure he had looked at her. ‘Well, we don’t need to take all our fences at once. And anyway, my dear, we’ve been over this matter often enough. Oliver has made the children my wards. I have no alternative, have I, even had I wanted one. Which naturally I don’t. I shall enjoy the little beggars.’

He gave his wide beaming smile. And Fanny knew that he didn’t want these strange children any more than, seventeen years ago, he had wanted her. But he was a man of principle and it worried him that he should have uncharitable thoughts. He was busily convincing himself and his wife that he hadn’t.

Aunt Louisa got up, in her fussy bossing manner.

‘I won’t have Amelia’s chances ruined.’

‘My dear, whatever do you mean?’

‘You’ve promised her a dowry of ten thousand.’

‘Did I suggest reducing it?’

‘No, but you frequently talk as if money is short, and now there will be extra expense. You can’t deny that. And the other thing is,’—Aunt Louisa hesitated, biting her lip—‘must we let it be known the children are coming until we see what they look like, I mean, supposing—’

Uncle Edgar threw back his head, guffawing heartily.

‘You mean, supposing the little beggars are yellow? There’s not a chance. Oliver was a fool, but not that much of a fool.’

‘How do you know?’ Aunt Louisa said tightly.

‘Why, the devil take it, because he was a Davenport.’

Uncle Edgar was feeling in his breast pocket. His expression had changed. His brother Oliver’s undisciplined life and inconvenient demise had been put out of his mind, and he was smiling with anticipatory pleasure.

‘Come here, Fanny. Your aunt and I thought we would like to make you a small gift. You’ve been with us a long time now and you’ve given us a great deal of help, not to say pleasure.’

Fanny looked swiftly from one to the other. Aunt Louisa’s expression had not changed. She was still thinking petulantly of the awkwardness and inconvenience of having to give a home to the strange children arriving from Shanghai—or was she thinking of the unsuitability of giving Fanny a gift?

But Uncle Edgar was smiling and waiting for Fanny’s response.

She bit her lips. Whatever the gift was, she wasn’t sure she could accept it gracefully.

‘Look,’ said Uncle Edgar, opening a small red morocco box.

The jewel gleamed on the red velvet. Fanny’s self-possession left her and she gasped.

‘But Uncle Edgar! Aunt Louisa! It’s too valuable!’

Uncle Edgar picked up the pendant and swung it from his plump forefinger. It was a dark blue sapphire set in diamonds and gold filigree.

‘It belonged to an aunt of mine,’ said Uncle Edgar. ‘A great-aunt of yours. So you’re entitled to it just as much as Amelia would be. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

Fanny looked again mutely at Aunt Louisa. Aunt Louisa said in her tart voice, ‘Don’t thank me. I personally think your uncle is spoiling you. Just because you’re going on a short journey which is no doubt a great excitement and pleasure to you.’

So she was expected to take charge of the children when they had settled down at Darkwater. Aunt Louisa could not have told her more plainly. She was full of indignation and confusion, for she didn’t mean to come back, anyway. So how could she accept so valuable a present?

Fanny had inherited from her Irish mother not only her luxuriant dark hair, but a mobile mouth whose lower lip protruded when she was hurt or angry. It was something she couldn’t control.

‘Why are you giving it to me, Uncle Edgar?’ she asked aggressively.

Uncle Edgar’s expression remained amused, benevolent, just a little unreadable.

‘Because it pleases me to. It’s as simple as that. Your aunt thought we should have waited until your twenty-first birthday. She didn’t agree that this was the right occasion on which to make you a gift of this kind. Why not, I said? Fanny’s like a daughter to us. We must do all we can for her. After all, she has only her looks to get her a husband. I’ve no doubt they’re more than sufficient, but a bauble or two may help. Come here, my dear. Let me put it on you.’

Some people, Fanny thought, were born to be givers and some takers. Neither appreciated the other. She must accept this gift gracefully, although it couldn’t have been made at a worse time. This was not the moment to begin feeling grateful, otherwise her strength of purpose would weaken. After all, she could leave the jewel behind. Amelia would eventually pounce on it greedily and claim it as her own.

Uncle Edgar’s plump hands, remarkably soft, on the back of her neck made her flesh prickle. Once before she had felt them there. It was a long time ago. She was dripping wet from her fall into the lake, and he was caressing her beneath her soaking hair, reassuring her. She remembered that she had been still trembling with fear and shock.

The sapphire lay like the touch of a cool finger-tip against her throat.

Aunt Louisa had thawed sufficiently to give a frosty smile and said, ‘It’s very becoming, Fanny. You must wear it at Amelia’s coming-out ball.’

‘Yes, Aunt Louisa. Thank you very much. Thank you, Uncle Edgar.’

(And people would say, Where did you get that magnificent pendant? Your uncle? Isn’t he the most generous person in the world!…) But she wouldn’t be there. She would be far far away in the Crimea, in a useful world she had found for herself. Fanny’s lashes fluttered, and Uncle Edgar cried joyously, ‘There! She’s looking delighted. Aren’t you, my love?’

He gave his throaty chuckle and patted his wife’s cheek.

‘I hope you will look as delighted the next time I give you a piece of jewellery. Eh, my dearest?’ He was using his playful tone, which meant he was in a high good humour. ‘But of course you will. You always do. That’s one of the most charmingly predictable characteristics of the fair sex. Now, Fanny,’ his voice changed to his brisk business-like one. ‘You have only fifteen minutes in which to change before Trumble will be waiting. So run along, and see that Hannah is ready, too.’

3

DARKWATER… THE NAME HAD come from the peculiarly dark colour of the water in the moat that had surrounded the house until the last century. The brown soil and the frequently lowering grey sky had made the water look black. Now the moat had been drained and the sloping lawn was green and innocent, but the lake glittering beyond the yews and the chestnuts had the same tendency to turn into black marble on a dark day.

The drawbridge had gone, the Elizabethan façade of time-mellowed brick, diamond-paned windows, and rows of tortuously shaped chimneys, remained. Extensive restoration work had been done at the beginning of the century, but there were still the cavernous fireplaces, the winding stairways, the elaborately carved oak ceilings, darkened with time, and the tiny minstrels’ gallery hanging over the long dining room.

There were twenty bedrooms, as well as those of the servants in the attics. The house and parkland lay in a gentle fold of the hills. Only from the upstairs windows were the moors visible. The wind blew across them and into the house which was always full of draughts and ancient creaking noises.

It was only in the summer that the place was innocent. Then the tattered and writhing shapes of the oaks were concealed beneath green leaves, the yellow flag irises swayed on the edge of the lake, and the water reflected the passing clouds. Sun shone through the diamond-paned windows of the house, and the whining edge had gone out of the wind. In the downstairs rooms there was an old, old smell, impregnated in the walls, of pot pourri, beeswax, woodsmoke, and roses. The warmth of the sun brought it out.

In the summer Darkwater was beautiful. It was as if its happier ghosts—perhaps there were summertime ghosts—lived then.

But in winter the picture was entirely different. The gardens and parkland were desolate, leafless, and stricken. Clouds and mist hung close to the ground. The Chinese pavilion by the lake, built by the same Davenport who had restored the house, its red and gold paint flaked and faded with the years, looked barbaric and completely alien. The wind battered on the windows and the heavy draperies made slow deliberate movements. Logs smouldered in the great fireplace in the hall day and night and fires had to be maintained in the living rooms and bedrooms. With the curtains drawn and the lamps lit the rooms took on a cosiness that deceived all but the most sensitive. These might be nervous maids who spilt hot water or a scuttle of coals in the passage because a curtain billowed out, or a voice cried. Or it was more likely to be the children who didn’t care for the long passages at dusk and screamed if a draught blew out the candle. Amelia used to cling to Fanny’s skirts. Fanny remembered once taking a wrong turning and instead of opening her bedroom door finding herself in a completely strange room, with a fourposter, and the dark shape of a form in the bed.

She had been sobbing with fright when the maid found her.

‘It’s your own fault, Miss Fanny! Running ahead like that, thinking to be so clever.’

‘There’s s-someone in the bed!’ Fanny stuttered.

The maid held the candle high. Its flickering light fell on the plump coverlet and the long shape of the bolster. The bed was empty.

‘You see! There’s no one there. This room hasn’t been used for ages. Not since my time here, anyway. You’re a silly girl to be frightened.’

But the little maid, not much taller than Fanny, was frightened, too. Fanny knew that by the way the candlestick shook in her hand. They had scurried back down the passage, round the right turning, and safely to Fanny’s room, the little narrow one next to Amelia’s and the nursery.

That was when Fanny first began to hear sounds in the wind, voices, laughter, and sometimes footsteps.

But that was partly Lady Arabella’s fault for the unsuitable stories she had used to tell the children before their bedtime. She would begin an innocent fairy tale, and then, when the three children’s attention was completely engaged, the tale would become subtly and indescribably sinister, this somehow made worse by Lady Arabella’s own plump kindly and cosy appearance. Only her eyes showed a curious glee. They were the wolf’s eyes looking out of the amiable sheep’s head.

Amelia used to burst into sobs and have to be comforted with sugar plums. Fanny had never cried. Once she had put her fingers in her ears, and Lady Arabella had chuckled with what seemed to be gentle satisfaction. But mostly she had been driven to listening with a terrible fascination. She was not always able to eat her sugar plum afterwards, but put it in the pocket of her apron to be enjoyed in a calmer moment. George, of course the eldest and a boy, never showed any nervousness or fear, but it was significant that now, in his delicate state of health as a result of his war wound, he frequently had nightmares and cried out, not about the charging Cossacks, but about the human head beneath the innocent piecrust, or the clothes in the wardrobe that came out and walked about in the dusk.

George was too old now to be comforted with sugar plums. He kept a bottle of brandy beside his bed instead. It was on the doctor’s recommendation.

When Edgar Davenport had bought Darkwater some three years after his marriage, Lady Arabella had come to make her home there. She hadn’t been interested in sharing the young couple’s quite modest manor house in Dorset, she had bitterly opposed her daughter’s marriage to a young man whom she had considered a nobody. She was the daughter of an earl herself, and had thought that Louisa could have done a great deal better for herself. But Louisa hadn’t any great beauty and since Lady Arabella’s husband had squandered her own fortune, and then drunk himself to death, Louisa’s chances were considerably marred. At the age of twenty-three, she had been very glad to take Edgar, as perhaps her only chance. And anyway, if he was a quietish sort with no dashing looks, he was still a pleasant and amusing young man, with none of his young brother’s tendencies towards wildness. As it turned out, he was a very good catch, for when the ancient great uncle in Devon died, and Darkwater came on the market, it appeared that Edgar had more resources than he had divulged.

Darkwater, he said, must not be allowed to go out of the family. He would buy it himself, even if it meant economising for years to come. His wife demurred, it was late autumn when she saw Darkwater for the first time and it depressed and vaguely frightened her. The leaves were falling and the clouds hanging low. The house indoors had the shabbiness to be expected after the eighty year occupation of a bookish and solitary bachelor. It made Louisa shiver. Or perhaps this was only because she was at that time expecting Amelia, and pregnancies didn’t agree with her.

But Edgar had no intention of asking his wife’s opinion. He was the master and the decision was his. He had made up his mind the moment he had heard of his great uncle’s death.

So, just before Amelia’s birth, the family moved to Devon, and Lady Arabella accompanied them. It was necessary for a mother to be near her daughter at such a time, she said. Her innocent myopic eyes told nothing, but it was clear enough from the start that she considered Darkwater a fitting residence for herself, the descendant of a noble family. She meant to spend the rest of her life there.

She had no patience with Louisa’s fancies about the place. Anyway, Louisa’s blood had been considerably watered down by the unfortunate father she had had, and one wouldn’t expect her to fit so easily into this environment.

Edgar took immediately to the life of lord of the manor, with his stable well-stocked with good hunters and his house with servants, his tenants eagerly welcoming a landlord who was interested in their welfare, the village church no less, for it needed restoration and a vicar less old and doddering, and the sparse social life of the moors desperately wanted an infusion of new blood. Lady Arabella also took to the mingled charm and desolation of Darkwater. She found that it suited her temperament. The closing down of the mist filled her with excitement, she adored the wind-petrified shapes of the leafless trees, she simply put on another shawl if the draughts were too bad.

She selected two large rooms on the first floor and made them uniquely hers. As the years went by the rooms shrank, for they were so cluttered with her possessions. These included a life-size marble statue of her mother, the Countess of Dalston in Grecian robes which stood imposingly in a corner. At dusk, before the maids had brought in the lamps, it looked terrifyingly like another person in the room. Even more so when Lady Arabella had negligently tossed one of her shawls, or perhaps her garden hat, on to it. But this was strictly her privilege. No servant or child was allowed to take such liberties.

For the rest, there were innumerable small tables, knick-knacks, paintings, low chairs with uncomfortably sloping backs, an astonishing edifice of seashells and fishes beneath a glass dome, an enormous globe on which she was wont to make the children trace all the countries of the British Empire, a birdcage empty and a little morbid since her parrot had died, heavy plush curtains heavily ornamented with bobbles, gilt-framed mirrors, cupboards filled to overflowing with a hotchpotch of stuff, and in the centre of the room the chaise-longue on which Lady Arabella spent a great deal of her time, doing her needlework or pursuing what she called her historical readings. She was deeply interested in history and folklore, particularly regarding the part of the country in which she lived.

Or she might simply sit idle with her cat Ludwig in her lap.

‘Do you know why he is called Ludwig?’ she used to ask the unwillingly enthralled children. ‘Because once I was in love with someone called Ludwig. Oh, yes, stare if you like, but it’s true. He was a German prince. He had moustaches, so!’ Lady Arabella puffed her cheeks and caressed imaginary moustaches. She was a born story-teller. ‘But he wasn’t permitted by his parents, or protocol, call it what you will, to return your Grandmamma’s love. And anyway I was only sixteen, which was much too young even in those days, when we were all wearing muslin dresses that looked like nightgowns and pretending to be afraid of Napoleon Buonaparte. So now I have only a cat to love me. Unless by some chance any of you children do.’

She stared at them so hard with her round short-sighted eyes that they murmured affirmatives, Amelia going so far as to cry, ‘I do, Grandmamma. I do.’

It was always George, her favourite, to whom Lady Arabella looked for a display of affection.

But it was only Ludwig, the big dark tabby with the flat supercilious face who sat on her lap and rubbed his head insinuatingly against her. Fanny was sure he was the German prince reincarnated.

Those two rooms were a small world within a world. As a child Fanny had felt as if she had been on a nerve-wracking journey when she had had to visit Lady Arabella. It was only when she was grown-up and read to Lady Arabella daily that she lost her fear of the old lady. Or thought she did.

Louisa had grumbled continuously after the move to Darkwater. Finally her husband, in spite of his constant talk of economy, found enough money to buy her an elegant sable cape and muff. So Louisa made the discovery that an expensive gift could do a great deal towards mending hurt feelings. She never let her husband forget that again.

When Fanny, the difficult precocious three year old, who already showed that she was going to have more looks man Amelia, arrived, Louisa found that a diamond brooch made her more tolerant towards the child. During the years, various crises were suitably marked by trinkets, a new bonnet, silk for a gown. Edgar Davenport was an indulgent husband. Or perhaps he just liked peace.

Needless to say, Louisa was already debating the price of the orphans from Shanghai. This could be a high one, because the situation was getting ridiculous. Edgar’s relatives seemed to have a habit of dying like flies and leaving their offspring in his devoted care. To have three penniless children foisted on one was not amusing during the course of one’s marriage. Not to say that Fanny wasn’t quite useful now, so long as she kept her place. But with the worry of George’s health and the launching of Amelia into society, there was just no time or place in Louisa Davenport’s life for small foreign children.

George was waiting at the turn of the stairs when Fanny, dressed now in her best, came down. He sprang out at her and seized her hand. She started violently. She hadn’t seen him there in the shadows. He was always doing this sort of thing now, lying in wait for her, and then laughing immoderately, especially if she screamed.

He wasn’t laughing today. Instead he put her hand to his lips, pressing a passionate kiss on it.

Fanny tried to snatch it away. She couldn’t until he chose to let it go. He had a frighteningly strong grasp.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, George. It’s absurd, and I don’t like it.’

‘Absurd?’ The word faltered. He was hurt, his confidence ebbing. He was such a good-looking young man, tall, broad-shouldered, a high glow in his cheeks. When he had joined the 27th Lancers he had looked so proud and arrogant in his uniform. But now, although he had suffered no physical disfigurement, his long body had that vaguely shambling look, his eyes changed too quickly from uncertainty and hurt to intense excitement. His actions, too, were unpredictable. He would want the groom to saddle his horse at midnight so that he could ride over the moors, or he would walk about the house calling out softly to see who was awake and would talk to him.

All the doctors said that a long period of rest and quiet was essential. After that he should be able to lead a normal life, not too strenuous, perhaps. His army career was certainly over. But there seemed no reason why he shouldn’t eventually marry.

‘George!’ That was his mother’s voice from the foot of the stairs. It was sharp. Although it was addressed to George, the sharpness was for Fanny. She was annoyed by this attachment her son had formed for Fanny, and blamed Fanny for it. It was easy enough to cool a young man’s ardour if one wanted to. Fanny obviously didn’t want to. After all, George was quite a catch.

‘George, Tomkins had been walking up and down with your horse for half an hour. He said you wanted it by eleven. Don’t keep the poor beast waiting any longer.’

‘Oh, lord, I forgot.’ George was an abashed schoolboy, the passionate lover gone. ‘Well, good-bye, Fanny. Have a good time. Don’t stay away long. We’ll miss you.’

Why, this might be the last time she ever saw him! The knowledge swept over Fanny, making her forget George’s recently developed disturbing habits, and remembering only that he had always seemed to be her brother.

‘Good-bye, George,’ she called fondly. ‘Take care of yourself.’

George turned to give a gratified wave. His mother said tartly, ‘Since you’ll be gone no more than two nights, Fanny, nothing much can happen to George or any of us in that time.’

‘Things can happen to people all the time,’ Lady Arabella was shuffling down the passage from her room. ‘I fancy I heard the bird last night.’

Once, only once, long ago, when she had been less than ten years old, Fanny, too, had heard the bird. She had lain petrified for hours after the scuffling noise had stopped. The legendary bird was reputed to be imprisoned in one of the many chimneys, though in which one no one was ever quite sure. It had been a white bird, the legend said, though when finally it fell lifeless into the hearth it was pitifully soot-streaked. It could have been a white barn owl, people said, or a dove. Or there was the fantastic story that it had been a white heron, its long legs hopelessly entangled in the narrow space. That had been why the fluttering and screeching had been so loud. Its imprisonment had coincided with the death of the young mistress of Darkwater at that time. When the dishevelled creature had fallen into the hearth, her young face had lain like snow on her pillow.

As the years and then the centuries passed, the struggling bird was heard again and again. It always portended disaster.

‘Mamma, there was a gale blowing last night,’ Aunt Louisa said. ‘That’s all you heard.’

‘That’s what you’d like to think,’ said the old lady portentously. ‘But remember the last time I heard it. We had news about George soon after.’

Aunt Louisa clucked impatiently.

‘Goodness me, it’s a good thing we haven’t all got your imagination. If I’d listened to all your omens I’d have been frightened out of my life years ago. Now watch your step. Where are you going?’

The old lady lifted her voluminous skirts an inch or two and peered short-sightedly at the stairs.

‘To say good-bye to Fanny, of course. Should I be left out of the farewells?’

‘First George, and now you. Anyone would think Fanny was going on a long journey and not coming back.’

Lady Arabella had reached Fanny’s side. She was out of breath and wheezing a little. She tucked a crumpled package into Fanny’s hand.

‘Sugar plums, my dear. Eat them on the journey. Keep one or two for the children. They will find them comforting. You always did, do you remember?’

‘Yes, Great-aunt Arabella. Thank you very much.’

Fanny’s eyes pricked with tears. It was a good thing the old lady was too short-sighted to see them. Anyway, she had turned to remount the stairs. She had two woolly shawls around her shoulders. Her head, with its slightly awry lace cap, sank among them cosily. With her short broad stature and her skirts tending towards the crinoline, it was virtually impossible to pass her on the stairs. She was more comical than sinister. Surely she wasn’t really sinister, at all. That had been only childish imagination in a dusk-filled room.

Now she had been kind, and Fanny wished passionately that she hadn’t been. First it had been Amelia with her request for French ribbons, then George urging her to hurry back, and now Lady Arabella giving her comfits for her journey.

But she mustn’t let these things shake her resolution. She wouldn’t be back at Darkwater. Never again…

Hannah had appeared with the baggage, and Uncle Edgar came in briskly to say that the carriage was at the door.

‘That’s better,’ he said, looking at Fanny’s smart appearance. Her fur-trimmed cloak, the smart shiny boots peeping beneath her silk skirts, her bonnet tied with velvet ribbon, all marked her as a young lady of taste and fashion. ‘You must look your best, my dear, otherwise you may find people trying to take advantage of you. Hannah!’

The elderly servant in her modest dark attire came forward.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I expect you to take good care of Miss Fanny. Don’t let her do anything foolish.’

Hannah’s lips went together. It wasn’t for her to say that the master must know Miss Fanny could be unpredictable at times. Didn’t he remember the storms and tantrums at intervals in the past? But one had to admit she looked a well-bred well-behaved young lady at this minute, so perhaps all would be well. Personally she couldn’t wait until the nerve-wracking journey in one of those fast smoky trains was over, the perils of London safely avoided, and all of them home again in the peace and quiet of Darkwater.

‘Fanny! Fanny!’ Amelia was flying down the stairs, her skirts billowing. ‘Here’s the money for the ribbon. Papa gave it to me. Don’t forget, it’s to be striped. And if you can’t get the exact shade, get the nearest you can.’ Amelia’s cheeks were as pink as the ribbon she hoped Fanny would bring back from London. She was a silly little affectionate thing, and one didn’t want to disappoint her…Reluctantly Fanny put out her hand for the money. Hannah could bring back the ribbon. Uncle Edgar was smiling indulgently. Aunt Louisa said, ‘Really, Amelia! You and your fal-lals. I hope you’re not neglecting the serious reading Miss Ferguson recommended every day. Then come, Fanny. Trumble can’t wait forever.’

Darkwater…All the way down the curving drive, Fanny’s head was thrust out of the carriage to look back. The sun was out from behind the clouds, and the house looked the way she loved it most, warmly red, the windows shining, smoke curling from the twisted chimneys. It was like a jewel lying against its backdrop of gentle green hillside. The flaring red of the rhododendrons marked the path to the lake. The lawns were velvet. The peacock and the peahen strutted near the rose garden. Rooks cawed in the swaying elms.

‘Put your head in, Miss Fanny, do.’

Fanny fumbled for her handkerchief. She couldn’t let Hannah see the tears on her cheeks. It was Hannah, long ago, who had told the children, and the avidly interested Lady Arabella the legend of the bird in the chimney. She had heard it from the previous housekeeper who had been in employment at Darkwater for forty years. And before that it had come from another superstitious and nervous servant.

It was only a legend. No one really believed it, not even Lady Arabella, although it pleased her to make startling announcements.

Indeed, there must often have been a bird caught in one of those many chimneys, a swift, perhaps, or a starling. But not that white forlorn sinister one that was a portent.

Yet Fanny had sometimes likened herself to the unfortunate creature. She too, had been caught in her poverty, in her orphanhood, in her inability to live a free untrammelled life because an unprotected young woman had little place in the world.

That was why she had determined to escape before she, like the bird, suffocated in the claustrophobic atmosphere.

But today she loved Darkwater. If only the morning had been dark and gloomy, the clouds pressing down, the wind whining. But the sun shone and she had a sense of identification with the great faded rose-red house lying against the hillside. It was as if she had known it, not only for the seventeen years of her residence there, but for centuries. She was going to long for it bitterly, as if she had left part of her heart behind.

A branch whipped her face. She drew back, a reason now for her tears.

‘There, I told you,’ said Hannah. ‘Hanging out there like a great overgrown child. You’re a fine one to be bringing little children safe home.’

Fanny dabbed at her reddened cheek.

‘I’m sorry, Hannah. I do foolish things.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that, Miss Fanny.’ Hannah had been at Darkwater for fifty years. She came from the village where she, and her seven brothers and sisters had slept like peas in a pod in the bedroom of the two-roomed cottage. Her father had been a labourer on the estate and her mother, in between being brought to bed with a new baby, had helped in the kitchen of the great house. Later, there had only been two brothers and a sister left. The rest, one by one, had withered away with a fever. Only four in the big bed had seemed lonely. Hannah had been glad at the age of twelve to begin work in the great house. Now she was sixty-two and had earned the privilege to speak her mind. ‘I can see I’ll have my hands full with the three of you.’

‘No, you won’t, Hannah. I’m going to be perfectly sensible.’