Читать книгу The Silent Pool - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Janet went down to Ford House next day. She sat in the train to Ledbury, and something kept telling her that she was running into trouble, and that she was a fool to be doing it. Staying in town would have meant bread and margarine with a sprinkling of cheese and an occasional herring washed down with cups of weak tea, but it might have been preferable to a fortnight with Star’s relations. She didn’t know them, and they didn’t know her. When she thought about them she got the sort of feeling you have when you open the door at the top of steps going down into a cellar. There was a place like that in the Rutherfords’ house at Darnach. The door was in the passage outside the kitchen. When you opened it there were steps that disappeared into the darkness, and a cold air came up that was tinged with mould. Going down to Ford House felt like that.

Janet took herself quite severely to task about the feeling. She did have that sort of feeling sometimes, and when she had it she blamed a Highland grandmother. Three-quarters of her derived from Lowland Scots who made common sense and a firm adherence to principle their rule of life, but the Highland grandmother was not always to be silenced. Ninian had once declared that she would be unbearable without her—“Too ‘dull’ and good, for human nature’s daily food”.

She pushed Ninian out of her mind and shut the door on him. Since she had been doing this for nearly two years, it ought by now to have been easy, but push and shut as she would, there was always something that got left behind or that came seeping back—the way he looked when his eyes laughed at her, the black look of his anger, his quick jerking frown. She supposed they would stop hurting in the end, but at the moment the end was quite a long way off.

At Ledbury she took a taxi, and was driven three miles along country lanes to Ford village. There was a green, a general shop, a church, a garage with a petrol pump, and the entrance to Ford House—tall stone pillars with no gates between them, a squat-looking lodge to one side, and a long unweeded drive stretching away between trees and overgrown bushes.

They emerged upon a gravel sweep. Janet got out, and the driver rang the bell. Nobody came for quite a long time. The bell was an electric one. Janet had begun to think it must be out of order, when the door was opened by a girl in a washed-out cotton dress. She had pale, prominent eyes and she poked with her head, but her voice sounded amiable as she said,

“Oh, are you Miss Johnstone? I didn’t hear the bell with all the noise that’s going on. That Stella—I never heard a child scream like it in my life! She’s been something dreadful ever since Nanny went. I only hope you’ll be able to do something with her. Slapping’s no good, for I’ve tried. Nothing to hurt her of course, but sometimes it stops them—only not her. All she does is carry right on till you don’t know whether you’re on your head or your feet.”

While she spoke the driver dropped Janet’s suit-case on the step, pocketed his fare, and drove away.

Janet walked into the hall. Someone was certainly screaming, but just where the sound came from, she could not be sure.

“There!” said the girl. “Did you ever hear anything like it!”

“Where is she?” said Janet quickly.

But the words were hardly spoken before they were answered by Stella herself. A door at the back of the hall was pushed open and a screaming child ran out. And then in an instant half way across the floor she stopped dead, stared at Janet’s suit-case, at Janet herself, and said,

“Who are you?”

Janet went to meet her.

“I’m Janet Johnstone.”

The child was the child of the photograph. She showed no sign of having just emerged from a screaming fit. The dark straight fringe was neat, the fine pale skin unmarked by tears. The beautiful deep-set eyes were fixed in an appraising stare.

“Are you Star’s Janet?”

“I am.”

“That played with her and Ninian at Darnach?”

“Of course.”

“You mightn’t have been. I know three other people called Janet. Ninian plays lovely games—doesn’t he?”

Janet said “Yes” again.

The eyes looked through and through her. They were of so dark a grey that they might almost have been black. Janet wondered what they saw. The thought went through her mind, and as it passed, Stella put out a hand and said,

“Come along and see my room. Yours is next door. It’s Nanny’s really, but she’s gone away on a holiday. I screamed for two hours.”

The little hand was cold in hers. Janet said,

“Why?”

“I didn’t want her to go.”

“Do you always scream when you don’t want things and they happen?”

With simple determination Stella said, “Yes.”

“It sounds very unpleasant.”

The dark head was vigorously shaken.

“No, I like it. Everyone else puts their hands to their ears. Aunt Edna says it goes through and through her. But I don’t mind how much noise I make. I was screaming when you came.”

Janet said, “I heard you. Why? Why did you scream?”

They had reached the top of the stairs. Passages ran away to the right and to the left. Stella tugged at her hand.

“We go this way.” They took the right-hand passage. “I didn’t want you to come.”

“Why?”

The child caught her breath.

“I wanted to go with Star in an aeroplane. It would be fun. So I screamed. Sometimes if I scream long enough I get what I want——” Her voice trailed away, the clasp on Janet’s hand tightened, the dark brows drew together. “I don’t always, but sometimes I do. And it’s no good trying to stop me. Joan slapped me just before you came, but it only made me worse.”

“Was that Joan who let me in?”

Stella nodded vigorously.

“Joan Cuttle. Aunt Edna says she’s such a nice girl, but I think she’s a sissy. She can’t even slap properly. She just flaps with her hand—it doesn’t hurt a bit. Anyhow I oughtn’t to be slapped—it’s bad for me. Star would be very angry if she knew. Do you think I am a problem child? Uncle Geoffrey says I am.”

Janet said, “I’m sure I hope not.”

They had arrived at what was evidently the nursery. It had a lovely view over green lawns that went down to a stream, but after the merest glance her hand was tugged again.

“Why did you say you hoped not? I think it’s intresting.”

Janet shook her head.

“It sounds very uncomfortable, and you wouldn’t be happy.”

The dark eyes were lifted to hers in an odd deep stare. Stella said mournfully,

“But I don’t scream when I’m happy.” Then she jerked her hand away. “Come and see my room! Star had it done for me. It’s got flowers on the curtains and blue birds flying, and there’s a blue carpet and a blue eiderdown, and a picture with a hill.”

It was a pretty child’s room. The hill in the picture was the hill that stood over Darnach with the Rutherfords’ house at the foot. The name of the hill was Darnach Law, and she and Star and Ninian had climbed over every foot of it.

Nanny’s room, which was to be hers, opened out of Stella’s. It had the same outlook, but a good deal of heavy mahogany furniture made it dark. There were pictures of Nanny’s relations on the mantelpiece, and a many times enlarged photograph above it. Stella could tell her who everyone was. The young man in uniform was Nanny’s brother Bert, and the girl next to him was his wife Daisy. The picture over the mantelpiece was done from quite a little one of Nanny’s father and mother on their wedding day.

Stella knew everything about the people in the photographs. She was in the middle of a most exciting story of how Bert’s youngest was in a ship that was blown up in the war—“and he swam for miles and miles and miles, and it got dark and he thought he was going to be drowned”—when the door opened and Edna Ford came in. Stella finished the story in a gabbling hurry—“and an aeroplane came and he wasn’t, and Bert and Daisy were ever so glad.”

Edna Ford shook hands in the rather limp manner in which she did most things. She had a washed-out, faded look, and she wore the least flattering of clothes. Her tweed skirt hesitated between brown and grey and dipped at the back. The jumper, of an indeterminate mauve, clung closely about stooping shoulders and a singularly flat chest. Nothing more trying to face and figure could have been devised. The sallow skin, the light dry hair, were cruelly emphasized. She said in a complaining tone,

“Really, Miss Johnstone, I don’t know what you must think. Stella had no business to bring you up like this. But of course with no proper staff this is the sort of thing that happens. A small convenient house would be so much better, but it is out of the question. Someone has to look after my aunt. Simmons does what he can, but he is not strong, and we spare him as much as possible. I don’t know what we should do without Joan Cuttle. I believe she let you in. So helpful and good-natured, but of course not really trained. Such a nice girl though. The Simmons are old servants of my aunt’s, and Mrs Simmons is a very good cook. And then, of course, there is a woman from the village, so I suppose it might be worse. Now let me see, Joan will bring up your case—she said you only have the one. And then perhaps Stella ought to go to bed. Star said she would ring up at seven—there’s an extension in your room. And I only hope she will be punctual, because we dine at half past, and it does put Mrs Simmons out if anyone is late.”