A Proper Family Christmas (3 page)

“That's very thoughtful…”

“Children find invalids so distressing, don't they? And Tobias is at such a vulnerable age.”

“Yes, well - I shall be perfectly all right…”

“However, we both feel that it would be a tragedy for him to miss out on a proper family Christmas at this essential stage of his social development…”

“Quite”.

He wished Stephen would hurry up. The greasy-haired yob was about to attack an old lady. She had foolishly turned up a lonely passage-way and he was creeping up behind her…

“…So it means we'll have to come to you.”

“What!” William's head swam as if he'd been mugged himself. “You can't possibly… I haven't got anything in. There's no room!” He snatched excuses desperately. If Stephen and Ratso once installed themselves at Haseley House, there'd be no getting rid of them before New Year.

“There's plenty of room, Dad. You've nine bedrooms, for heaven's sake! Surely Mrs. Arncott can bestir herself to make up one of them - well, two, actually. We've got a nanny now, did I tell you? And we'll bring food. Tobias only eats organic products anyway…”

William put the phone down with a shaking hand. Stephen and Ratso for Christmas! Spreading their things all over his house! Making him eat ‘proper' meals and watch
their
television programmes…! He flicked the T.V. off angrily as a comedy came on. …Telling him the gadgets he ought to buy and the repairs he ought to make, as if they owned Haseley House already!

Well, he would get Mrs. Arncott to prepare the rooms at the far end of the attic, which were probably damp and certainly dust and spider-ridden, where Tobias could exercise his weak lungs well insulated from the rest of the house. If Stephen and Ratso stuck it out for more than two days, he doubted the new nanny would. Nannies were fussy creatures, as he well remembered. They bustled about in white aprons, wanting everything just so. He hoped this one would be fat and cosy - William liked fat people. Mrs. Arncott was reassuringly plump.

Frances, Tobias's new nanny, was actually rather thin, and she had long, delicate hands and feet, which made her appear even more so. Her hair was a wispy blonde, which she wore piled on top of her head to make her look responsible and older than her nineteen years. Being Nanny to Tobias Sebastian Shirburn was rather a responsibility, as she had soon discovered.

“Come on, the water's lovely and hot now.”

“You've made it too hot,” said Tobias suspiciously.

“No, I haven't,” said Frances, splashing her arm in the bath to prove it was neither too cold, as Tobias had first complained, or too hot. “Why don't you get in and see?”

Tobias put one leg over the side and grimaced, but with a look at Frances's face, gave in and clambered into the bath. “I need my boats.”

“Here…”

“No. The other ones.
Those
two.”

“What about a wash first?”

“Not
soap
!” said Tobias witheringly. “I have my special stuff - there.”

“You remind me of the Chinese Boy-Emperor,” said Frances.

“Who's he?”

“A little boy who had to have everything special,” sighed Frances, anointing his arm, “and liked to have his orders obeyed. What sort of games do you play with your boats? Sailing races, or discovering desert islands - or battles?”

“Battles,” said Tobias firmly, retrieving his arm in order to stage a head-on collision with a boat in each hand. “A-a-a-a!! These boats have got guns and they've both sunk and everyone's drowned.”

“Right,” said Frances. “Um - what about if one boat was hiding from the other, behind your back, say, or in this cave under your knee? Then the other one might go sailing all round here trying to find him…”

Tobias giggled.

“Keep still, or you'll have him on the rocks!”

“We prefer Tobias to structure his own imaginative play.” Mrs. Shirburn stood in the doorway, trying to temper her reprimand with a tight smile. She had a long thin nose and long mousy hair, and made no attempt to disguise her thin mouth and rather pink eyes with any make-up.

“Right,” sighed Frances again, not wanting to jeopardise her job so early. “Let's wash this other arm then.”

It had seemed such a good idea at the time, coming to work for an academic family in a romantic place like Oxford. Frances had left her Warwickshire village with visions of starting a whole new life in the City of Dreaming Spires.

Living at home with her mother and three young brothers and working just round the corner meant that she never seemed to go anywhere or meet anybody new. In Oxford she saw herself mixing with exciting, lively-minded people, joining in their witty, intellectual conversations, and of course meeting
the
person - her soul-mate - who would love her for the rest of her life.

She had come down for an interview with the Shirburns, not really expecting to get the job. They were obviously dreadfully fussy, and a child-care course at the local college and couple of years looking after the local doctor's family wasn't going to compete against some uniformed Norland Nanny with generations of satisfied aristocrats under her belt. Still, it was an excuse to have a day out in Oxford, and she spent the morning wandering round the colleges, soaking up the atmosphere, and trying to spot her soul-mate among the students.

There was a suitable air of romantic decay about the Shirburns' rather dilapidated Victorian house. Frances longed to paint the contrast of straight architectural lines half smothered in tangled vegetation, the glimpses of vivid orange brickwork under the dull greens and browns of December foliage.

But there was nothing romantic about Dr. Shirburn, with his flat pale hair, thin-rimmed glasses, selfish, turned-in mouth, or his rat-faced wife. They led her into a dingily-furnished living-room, sat her in an uncomfortable chair, and explained that they were looking to replace their previous nanny “who unfortunately did
not
understand the needs of a gifted and sensitive child like Tobias.”

The gifted and sensitive child sat between them, apparently sizing her up as attentively as his parents. They must have had Tobias late in life - in fact there was a bachelor-spinster quality about them which suggested a late marriage - and they had clearly devoted themselves to the subject of child-rearing with the same thoroughness they would apply to academic research. They talked of books and diets and educational methods. Frances said ‘yes' in what she hoped was the right places, and watched Tobias surreptitiously pulling the fringe out of a cushion and waiting to be told not to. His parents hadn't noticed, and she didn't think it was up to her to indulge him until she was being paid for it.

At the end they had said “Thank you. We'll let you know,” and Frances assumed that was that, and tried not to be disappointed.

Then the letter had come.

“Wow!” she'd screamed at the breakfast-table. “They want me after all. I've got into Oxford!”

They'd teased her of course, laughing at the self-satisfied way the Shirburns' letter gave no option for her to turn the job down, and the horrific-sounding contract enclosed with it.

“‘Suitable dress at all times',” quoted Joe, pulling gleefully at the long tee-shirt which was all she happened to be wearing.

“‘No men in your room at
any
time,'” chanted Liam. “We can't visit you, then - and nor can little Tobias.”

“That kid sounds a pain,” said Alex, with eight-year-old superiority. “I don't think you ought to go.”

“You did say the parents were awful and the child was a monster,” Mum reminded her. “Are you sure you'll be happy working for them?”

“She thinks she's going to meet all these cool new people - men!” Joe explained. “You're such a little mouse, you won't dare talk to them. And if they're Oxford students they'll think you're just a thickie nanny…”

“Frances isn't thick at all!” Mum had interrupted. “She'd be at university now, if she wasn't so pig-headed!”

Frances grinned. Her mother had been horrified when she had insisted on leaving school and starting to earn her own living, instead of taking A levels and going on to Art College, as had always been planned. But when her father had died, she simply didn't feel she could let Mum go on supporting her as well as the boys, just so that she could indulge her childhood dream of becoming an artist. She still thought she'd made the right decision - her job didn't bring in much, but at least she paid her way at home - just sometimes she couldn't help wondering what would have happened if things had been different, and what that other Frances would be doing now. In a way she saw Oxford as a second chance that she mustn't miss out on.

The doctor's family had wept, and gave her a hugely expensive box of oil-paints as a leaving present. The boys kept telling each other how much more room there'd be in the house and how nice it would be not having an older sister bossing them around, and bought her a silly great teddy ‘so she'd have something to cuddle in Oxford until she found a boyfriend'. Mum obviously thought she was doing the wrong thing, but didn't feel she could say so after the row about leaving school. The whole family waved her off from Warwick Station as if she was a Pilgrim Father, setting off to discover the New World.

Well now she was coming down to earth, if not with a bump, at least with an unpleasant rush of cold air. Far from introducing her to their intellectual friends, the Shirburns seemed determined to keep her firmly in what they saw as her place. They were obviously appalling snobs, and she was beginning to think they had chosen her more for her educated accent and the fact that her parents had been teachers than for her child-care skills. Mum had been right, the job was a nightmare, but having left home with such ceremony, she could hardly go back and tell them that she couldn't hack it. Thank goodness the Christmas holiday wasn't too far away!

With Lesley present, the rest of the bathing carried on in silence. Not wanting to keep a dog and bark herself, she was nevertheless obviously itching to seize her child and take over.

“All clean now, Tobias?” she asked, as Frances prepared to lift him out of the bath. “Who would you like to read you your bedtime story - Nanny or Mummy?”

This was a minefield, Frances knew. Tobias looked from one to the other, eyes gleaming, revelling in control.

“I'm sure Mummy reads much better.” Frances seized the reins, risking the implication she wasn't up to the job rather than leave Tobias with this golden opportunity in his hands.

Lesley muttered something about ‘quality time' and bore her son away, leaving Frances to clear up the bathroom with a sigh of relief.

Dr. Shirburn was putting the phone down when she went downstairs an hour or so later.

“That's all fixed up then,” he said, thinking it was his wife, and broke off with an embarrassed “Ah!”

Frances found her position awkward outside ‘office hours'. Once Tobias had gone to bed and her function was over, the Shirburns obviously didn't know what to do with her. The previous nanny had not lived in.

“We'll be spending Christmas at Haseley House,” Stephen informed her. “ - My father's place in Gloucestershire.”

“We?” She felt a sudden pang of foreboding.

“You were employed on the understanding you would be available over the Christmas period…”

“What? Yes, but I thought you meant…” Surely they were going to let her home for at least Christmas Day?

“We leave on Saturday. The old man's a bit eccentric, I should warn you, but the house is a magnificent old place, though he doesn't keep it up as he should…”

“Did you tell him what we'd arranged?” asked Lesley, coming down the stairs. “This house is quite uninhabitable at the moment, and surely Father wouldn't be so selfish as to deny his own family a roof over their heads at Christmas…?” Her voice rose, ready to counter argument.

“No, no. It's all settled. I said we'd be there about lunch-time.”

Lesley, unwilling to let a good grievance go, turned to Frances. “It's not as if he didn't have masses of room at Haseley. In fact it's quite ridiculous - an old man on his own. We must have another talk to him, Stephen. …And we really can't expect Tobias to stay in Oxford with water streaming down the walls - I'm sure you agree with me, Nanny.”

Frances winced. She wished the Shirburns would call her by her name. She hadn't actually noticed any damp, and she certainly didn't want to spend Christmas in some pile in Gloucestershire with this awful family and a dotty old man who obviously didn't want them. She wanted to go home!

“Yes, of course,” she said again. “I mean, of course we can't. Would it be all right if I made a cup of coffee?”

At nine, William received another phone-call.

“Yes I'm
quite
well, thank you! I wish you wouldn't answer in that silly way!” said his sister Margery crossly. “Are you going to be there for Christmas?”

“Yes, unfor…”

“Good. I'm bringing Oliver Leafield down to see the house.”

“Who?”

“The architectural historian - surely you've heard of him? He's a friend of Nigel Rofford's.”

“That old pansy!”

“I met him at dinner there the other day. He's very keen to see Haseley and he happens to be free over Christmas.”

“That's all very well…”

“It's high time it was written up in Country Life or something - adds thousands to the value if you sell…”

“I don't
want
to sell it…!”

“Of course you do! It'll fetch a packet, and you can live in luxury for the rest of your life. No sense in hanging on to the old ruin just so Stephen can play lord of the manor when you've gone!”

“And where am I supposed to live?”