Читать книгу Hunter’s Moon - Alexandra Connor - Страница 11

Winter came in fast and hard that year, Netherlands cold, the fire in the girls’ dining room inadequate and only warming the nearest table – which was where the staff ate.

It was a bitter Sunday in November, Miss Lees toying with some tough lamb for lunch. On her left sat her assistant, Dolly Blake, and on her right the Reverend Grantley studied the gravy which had just been poured over his meat. He sniffed, his head bent down, intoning the grace automatically although he was still eyeing the gravy through half-opened lids.

No one was uncharitable enough to mention the vicar’s strange hair, or the fact that it was patently dyed. He was, after all, the only cleric who attended Netherlands regularly and he was responsible for reporting back to his superiors to ensure further financial support. So he was flattered and indulged by Miss Lees and all the staff. They puffed up his vanity and fussed him into thinking he was important – something he needed to believe desperately. A petty man, he had long given up his dreams of advancement. Bullied outside, he liked to visit the home where he was superior, the foundlings in awe of him.

Dolly glanced at the top of Mr Grantley’s head and winked at Ethel, sitting further down the table. Ethel smiled back, watching her. Dolly was a natural politician, with her sights set on running Netherlands after Clare Lees retired. ‘Why not?’ she had said to Ethel. ‘It’s a good job. Better than the mill or cleaning out some snotty cow’s fire grate at five in the morning.’

The vicar finished grace and then prodded his meat to check for signs of life. Satisfied that it was beyond resurrection, he cut off a piece and began to chew. Slowly.

‘So, Mr Grantley,’ Dolly said, in her best voice, the one she used for people she thought were her betters, ‘how are you keeping? I heard you had had a cold.’

He swallowed manfully, his expression all holy tolerance.

‘I …’ A piece of gristle stuck in his throat and he coughed loudly, waving his napkin in front of him like a white flag. ‘I’ve been better.’

You can say that again, Ethel thought, looking at Dolly, who was all mock sympathy. It’ll do you no good; the vicar’s not powerful, he’s just the governors’ poodle. Oh, Dolly, she mused, you think you’re so clever.

‘Perhaps a little whisky would help,’ Dolly went on, adding hurriedly, ‘for medicinal purposes, of course.’

‘I believe in setting an example,’ Mr Grantley replied, finding some gristle in a back tooth and sucking his teeth reflectively. ‘I have to be careful. A man in my position knows that all eyes are on him.’

Nodding, Dolly watched him suck his teeth again and looked away. The man was a pig, but it didn’t do to let her thoughts show … Like the children, she ate hurriedly, hungrily, her thoughts turning elsewhere. When she finished work that night, she would go to her room and write a letter to Andy. He had been posted to France to fight. Silly sod, he shouldn’t have volunteered like that, Dolly thought. Why not wait until he was called up? It was all right being a hero, but what about her?

She missed him … Her eyes wandered round the rows of tables. The girls sat together in ages, the smallest ones nearest to the staff table. When Andy and she got married they could run this place, no problem. He’d be caretaker and she’d be principal. The thought warmed Dolly, almost made the food taste good in her mouth. Her eyes glanced over to the vicar, still picking at his lamb. He’s lucky to get it in wartime, Dolly thought. They don’t have lamb in the Army. Andy would be grateful for it, but not this old coot. I hope he chokes.

A child sneezed suddenly, Dolly frowned.

‘Oh no, not a cold. That’s all we need,’ she said to Ethel, hurriedly reassuring the vicar, ‘It’s not your cold, of course,’ as if there were a pecking order to chills, ‘but we have to be so careful here, Mr Grantley. If one child gets a cold, they all do.’ And that meant more work, she thought to herself. One snotty nose was all it took …

Ethel knew exactly what she was thinking. Dolly might think she could fool the vicar, but not Ethel, She looked back to her plate. Honest to God, she thought, this was never lamb! It tasted more like something that had been pulling a cart yesterday. She chewed on a piece of the hard meat and then looked down the table again.

‘I find it so bracing, this cold weather,’ Dolly went on, her voice ludicrously forced. ‘So good for the lungs.’

‘Not if you’re recovering from a cold,’ Mr Grantley said darkly, turning over a suspicious-looking piece of meat with the end of his knife. ‘I’ve heard that chill weather can turn a cold into pneumonia. I had two parishioners who died last winter from colds. Never stood a chance. They were fine one Sunday and then,’ he paused, flicking over the meat like a corpse on a slab, ‘bang! Dropped down dead. From cold. Pure cold.’

More likely that they’d frozen their bloody arses off in your church, Ethel thought wryly.

‘Well, you must take care of yourself, vicar. No one would want to miss one of your services,’ Dolly ventured, watching, glassy-eyed, as the clergyman began to pick at a piece of gristle stuck in his front teeth.

‘I am always available to my flock, cold or no cold. I have to be.’ He sucked his teeth forcefully to release the wedge of gristle. ‘People look up to me; they look to me to set an example.’

Ethel was certain that Dolly did not see the humour of the situation, and regarded her thoughtfully. Dolly’s high spirits were a little too excessive for lunch with Mr Grantley. She must have heard from Andy, Ethel thought. Did she really believe that she had it all worked out? Most of Salford knew that Andy was writing to a number of lovesick girls. At the last count he had three fiancées, one putting on a lot of weight recently …

Dolly’s blonde hair was bent towards the vicar’s dyed pate. There was no chance she’d be running this place one day, Ethel thought. Dolly Blake might be pretty and clever, but she wasn’t what the governors looked for in a principal. She was too flash. Too obviously on the make.

If anyone was going to take over from Clare Lees it would be the quiet man sitting at the head of the next table. Ethel studied Evan Thomas curiously – the narrow head, long nose, and large luminous eyes the blue of iris. A very delicate creature, too frail to be sent off to fight. Ethel smiled to herself. Oh, Dolly might think she was smart, but Evan was the one to watch.

Suddenly there was a commotion, a shriek of temper as a glass was thrown across the dining room. Miss Lees stared open-mouthed, Dolly wide-eyed, Mr Grantley poised with his fork halfway to his mouth.

It was Alice. Screaming, standing up on her seat as the girls around her shrank back. They knew there would be trouble, but she seemed immune to everyone. Her face was pink, her fists clenched, a steady wail coming from her open mouth. Ethel got to her feet, roughly caught hold of the child and physically removed her from the dining room.

Her hand fastened over Alice’s mouth as Ethel paused outside the door and listened. At first there was a stunned silence, followed by the angry scrape of a chair being pushed back. As fast as her stocky legs would carry her, Ethel hurried away. Alice had relaxed in her arms and was heavy as Ethel hurried up the narrow back stairs and on into the pharmacy.

Out of breath, she deposited Alice in a chair and put her hands on her hips.

‘What …’ Ethel puffed, ‘… what … was …’ She breathed in deeply. ‘What was all that about?’

Alice was quiet, surprised by the anger coming from the only person who had ever shown her affection.

‘Alice, talk to me!’ Ethel snapped. ‘Miss Lees will be here in a minute and she’ll take a bad view of this. You’re in trouble, my girl. You don’t know how much. Alice, you have to help me to help you – now, what happened?’

‘She took my jewel.’

‘What?’ Ethel said, baffled.

Alice looked up, tears on her black lashes. ‘Annie Court took my jewel. I felt her hand go in my pocket and she stole it.’

‘What jewel? Oh, you mean your stone.’

‘It’s a JEWEL!’ Alice shrieked. Her voice was rising again.

She’s going to have hysterics, Ethel thought frantically. Oh no, not that. Hurriedly, she bent down to the child. ‘Alice, pull yourself together! Miss Lees will be here any minute –’

But it had no effect. Alice had lost all fear of anything. Her cheeks burned red, her fists clenching as she swung her feet against the chair. Ethel was shaken and remembered all too clearly what had happened a few years ago. There had been another child who had been troublesome – prone to tantrums, Miss Lees said. One day the child was transferred to another home. No one knew where. Ethel wasn’t about to have that happen to Alice.

So she grabbed the hard green soap in the sink and worked at it frantically, lathering up some thick white foam. Then, she grabbed Alice by the scruff of the neck and smeared the foam around the child’s mouth. She screamed – just as the door opened and Clare Lees walked in.

Her glance took in Ethel and the red-faced child, who was apparently ill, foaming around the mouth. Anger left her at once. This wasn’t a bad child, but a sick one.

Appalled, she glanced over to Ethel. ‘God, what is it?’

‘She’s having a fit, ma’am,’ Ethel said calmly. ‘If you’ll just let me deal with it … Having people around only excites them more.’

Clare Lees nodded, and backed out. When Ethel finally heard her footsteps die away she got a cloth and wiped Alice’s mouth. The child was silent, her huge dark eyes watching Ethel.

‘Now look what you’ve made me do! Made me lie for you.’ Ethel wiped the beautiful little face. ‘They’ll think you’re ill now, not just a child having a tantrum. You’ll get away with it this time, but not the next.’

Alice’s tongue tasted of soap and her mouth hurt from where the towel had rubbed it. But she knew that Ethel had saved her. Had looked out for her. Noone else had ever done anything like that before. The child put her arms around Ethel’s waist and buried her head emotionally in her apron.

‘Aye, luv, you’ll have to learn to be good,’ Ethel said gently, stroking her hair. ‘It’s a hard life, and it gets harder. Don’t go looking for trouble.’

Alice was crying softly, the sound muffled. She was so highly strung, Ethel thought anxiously, and that was dangerous anywhere. In amongst a family, with supportive parents, it could be managed, but here … Ethel shivered. She didn’t want to see Alice’s spirit knocked out of her. How sad that the child had inherited a volatile character along with her beauty. A mixed blessing, to put it mildly.

‘You must learn to be good,’ Ethel urged, her voice soothing. ‘Be good. Be quiet, sweetheart. Don’t make waves. Please.’

Evan Thomas was walking out of the front gates of Netherlands, completely unaware that he was being watched. His slight tall figure in his dark coat was huddled against the cold November rain, his hand over his mouth. He paused, coughing hoarsely, as he padlocked the gate behind him. The cough had kept him out of the war. Most of the other men in their twenties had been called up, but Evan’s life had changed little. He coughed again, then moved on into the street and out of Clare Lees’ gaze.

As he disappeared from sight, Clare found herself curious, wondering where he was going. Sundays dragged. Her hand idled along the side of her desk, her fingers tapping the wood. Mr Grantley was hard work, she thought; it was a nuisance to have to make him feel so important. But what could she do? She relied on his good feeling to make things smooth for her with the governors.

Clare stepped back to the window. The empty area of gravel drive was dull, unchanging. It had been like this when she was a child here, and it would be like this after she had gone … Her mood darkened with the dull day. Dolly was angling for her job, Clare thought, smiling coldly. What a fool the girl was. But Evan Thomas was another matter.

He wasn’t orphanage fodder. He was educated, his parents both teachers in Wales. So why come to the North of England? Clare had asked him when he applied for the post. ‘It’s good to get away and see other places,’ he had replied. ‘Good to see as much of the world as possible …’ Clare wasn’t sure of that.

Her gaze moved back to the gates. She had been outside, of course. But infrequently. There seemed little reason to go out. The home provided everything she needed. It gave her accommodation and had its own chapel. She could work, eat, sleep and pray – what else was there? As for the shopping, that was done by the kitchen staff on Clare’s orders, never by herself. Even the governors of Netherlands Orphanage came here to see her.

Clare leaned her head against the glass, wondering where Evan Thomas was now. Was he in the town, or visiting friends? Maybe he had a girlfriend. She blushed at the thought, mortified at the feelings it provoked in her. Why should she care? He was nothing to her, and besides, he was thirty years younger than she. He wouldn’t be interested in some spinster with rounded shoulders and no charm.

But she hadn’t always been like this. She had been young, once. The high black gates of the home suddenly looked different to Clare – terrifying and inviting all at once. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. It was raining hard. All the children would be in their dormitories now, learning the religious collect for the day, and most of the staff were relaxing. On an impulse, Clare hurriedly put on her coat and hat, then left her office by her own private exit.

The gates were huge, only yards away, the rain blowing into her face. Her heart speeded up as she hurried towards them, her hands shaking as she took out her key and unlocked the gates. In another instant Clare Lees was outside. Firmly she pulled the gates closed behind her and looked ahead.

The street was empty. The vast Victorian viaduct threw its massive shadow, its arches mouthing at her. Go back, go back. Nervously, Clare moved a couple of feet to her right and then felt her head begin to swim. Breathing rapidly, she unfastened the collar button of her coat and noticed that her palms were sticky.

She could remember the first time she’d come through these gates – wearing a dress which was too long for her and a coat which smelled of stale cooking fat. Only seven years old. Her mother had died and Clare had stayed beside her body for two days and two nights in their shabby rooms in The Bent. A neighbour had finally found them and before Clare knew what was happening she had been taken away and brought to Netherlands Orphanage.

‘Little one, come and sit by me,’ her mother had said when she was so ill, lying in a poor cot of a bed beside a damp wall, with a cheap print of a sailing boat on it. The sounds of the pub below came loudly up through the bare floorboards. Her mother’s face was gaunt, the eyes flat. A stupid face in reality, but the hands had been kind. They had held on to Clare and pulled the thin blanket over both of them. ‘Little one, one day we’ll get out of here, and go away. Go off to somewhere sunny. We’ll have a garden, and servants … I love you. I love you.’

Clare stopped, her mouth half open, the shocking memory a fist in her heart. The street was still empty, nothing familiar in it, nothing she remembered from over forty years ago. I could run away, she thought, then remembered that she was a grown woman. Besides, she had nowhere else to go. Her gaze lingered hopelessly on the street ahead of her. She studied the dark viaduct; watched the rain making the cobbles shine.

They had buried her mother in the same graveyard as her father and that was that. The end of her family. The end of her life outside. Slowly Clare tipped back her head and felt the rain on her face. Netherlands had become her prison, she knew that. She was serving a sentence which would only end at her retirement, and even then she would stay on. And die there.

The cold rain fell against her eyelids and ran over her cheeks. Memory and longing beat to the rhythm of her heart.

Then, slowly, she turned and walked back through the gates, locking them after her.