Anna (58 page)

She raised her hand as she spoke and smoothed down the billowy lace fichu of her dress.

“There's still your hair,” she said. “I really don't know what we can do about it.”

Anna half raised her hand to her head but Lady Yarde stopped her.

“It's not your fault,” she said. “You'd better consult a good hairdresser. He might be able to suggest something.”

She stopped and tried to recollect what it was that she had wanted to say. It disconcerted her to find that Anna's full eyes were still staring at her.

“When do I begin my duties, your ladyship?” Anna asked.

“Your duties,” Lady Yarde replied. “Oh yes, of course, your duties.”

She paused.

“We'll have to discuss them to-morrow,” she said, “Miss Delia is out with the horses now. She'll be too tired when she gets back. All that she'll want is a bath.”

She broke off abruptly as she had not in the least intended to refer to Delia's bath.

“You look tired,” she said. “You'd better go and get an early night or you won't be fit for anything in the morning. There's no point in exhausting yourself.”

When she had gone, Lady Yarde got up and began to walk about the room.

“Why was I so horrid to her?” she asked herself. “Poor child she's lonely. I ought to have tried to make a friend of her, a confidante. What was it I said about her dress? And her hair? I've probably offended her so much that she'll go straight back to France to-morrow and Delia will be left without a governess for another term.”

Then because she felt faint—when things upset her she usually felt faint—she sat down again on the long couch, and sniffed eagerly at the smelling bottle. It cleared her head and she was able to come to a decision. Leaning forward, she rang the little bell on the table beside her.

“Send Merton to me,” she said. “Tell her I want her at once.”

“Oh, Merton,” she said as soon as the housekeeper had arrived. “It's about the new governess. I want you to put her into a nicer room. Put her into the blue room.”

“Very good, your ladyship!”

“Or the pink, your ladyship?”

Lady Yarde hesitated.

“I'm really not sure,” she said. “It can be very embarrassing having a total stranger too close to one.”

Then her face cleared.

“Why not the Tower room?” she asked. “That's quite separate and
very
comfortable. Put her in the Tower room.”

Anna had moved into the room obediently, without questioning the change. It seemed to her immaterial where she should sleep. She was too miserable to mind. There was a kind of numbness hanging over her so that even the rudeness of Lady Yarde was now forgotten.

She undressed in front of the fire, trying to warm her body at the blaze; but it was one of those fireplaces in which every morsel of heat goes leaping up the chimney. Still shivering, she got into the large bed and drew the clothes around her. She lay there for perhaps an hour, perhaps more, trying to forget how far she had come, how much alone she was. Then, finally, she drew the pillow down and held it to her, pretending that it was Annette whom she was hugging …

When she awoke in the night, the moon had moved round the Tower and was now shining in through the Oriel window. It cast a bright circle of light above the fireplace. In the centre of the circle the shield of the Yardes had been emblazoned—a swan, a bull and a plumed helm. And, as she looked, she suddenly remembered the words that had once been spoken to her.

“I see you sleeping in a bed with a coronet over it,” Madame Sapho had predicted. “The bedroom is panelled with gold and there is moonlight on it. The whole château can be yours if you ask for it.… You will marry a soldier.”

“Les animaux domestiques sont très utiles a l'homme,” Anna said slowly and distinctly.

“Les animals …” Delia began.

“Animaux: it's the plural,” Anna explained.

“Why isn't it like English, with an ‘s' on the end?” Delia asked. “It's much easier that way.”

“Because in the French language words which finish ‘al' in the singular become ‘aux' in the plural.”

“I don't see why they should,” Delia persisted.

“But they do,” Anna told her. “It is simply that they do. Now let us try again.”

She paused, and pushed Delia's hand away from her lips: the child bit her nails dreadfully.

“Les animaux domestiques sont très utiles a l'homme,” she said again.

“Les animals …” Delia began.

“But you're not attending,” Anna told her. “How can you expect to learn if you are not attending?”

“I'm sorry,” Delia replied. “But it's all so difficult.”

“But just think what a lot you could learn if you really tried,” Anna reminded her. “You've only been taught French before by English governesses. Now you have a real French governess. That will make it much more exciting for you.”

She was trying hard, really she was. She had not known that anyone so stupid as Delia could exist.

“As it is,” Anna told herself. “Lady Yarde will surely send me back at the end of a month when she realises that I have not taught Delia anything. And it will be Delia's fault, not mine. I am going to
make
her learn.”

She turned towards her.

“Open your book at page three,” she said. “I will listen to you while you read.”

Delia found the place with difficulty, turning the pages over clumsily, as if handling any book were unfamiliar to her. Then she looked up.

“Do you like England?” she asked.

“I think it is a very interesting country,” Anna replied. “And very nice.”

How could she tell the child that she hated the country, the people, their manners, the kind of houses they lived in, everything about them, that she wanted to go back to Annette and never return here?

“You're awfully pretty?” Delia said suddenly. “Are most French people pretty? I thought they were dark.”

“You can get dark people who are pretty too,” Anna answered. “But we are not talking about dark people now. I want to hear you read.”

The child looked at her book and fidgeted.

“May I ask you one question about France?” she said. Anna sighed.

“Just one,” she told her.

“Do they ride horses in France?” she asked.

“Of course they ride horses,” she answered.

“And jump?”

“And jump.”

“Can you ride?”

Anna tapped the table with her pencil.

“Isn't it time you began to read to me?” she asked. “I'm waiting to hear you.”

Delia sat up indignantly and pointed to the clock.

“But look,” she said. “It's after twelve already. We never have lessons after twelve. Mama likes me to get some fresh air before I eat my lunch. That's why I always go for a ride at this time. You can come too to-morrow if you like. It would only make us late if we waited for you to get changed now.”

She gathered up her books and thrust them into the drawer of the schoolroom table.

“Oh, Golly,” she said. “I'll have to hurry.”

The park in which Anna was walking seemed to have no limits. In front of her stretched another long avenue, so long that the trees at the far end—they were chestnuts—looked no taller than small bushes. And at the end of the avenue when she reached it, she found the parkland widening out into pasture and in front of her the hard rounded line of an oak wood.

Because she was alone, she began imagining; and straightway she was not alone any longer. Annette was with her. She could feel the small hand clasped tightly in hers. And she was showing her things as she walked—a squirrel that ran up a tree chattering, a bright toadstool, a place where aconites were growing. But the moment did not last. The hand that was in hers loosened; she could no longer hear the voice answering, and she was alone again.

There was a glade running deep into the heart of the wood, and she followed it. The ground was soft underfoot and soggy. Ferns sprang out from the roots of the trees.

“These shoes will get spoiled,” she realised. “And they are the only pair of shoes I have. I shall not be able to go out again until the weather gets finer. I shall just have to sit indoors waiting. Whoever heard before of a governess without any shoes?”

But she went on. The glade had grown narrower by now; and here and there a tree had fallen and lay across the path. She clambered over them, catching her skirt on the dead branches. It was silent here, right in the heart of the wood. And she stopped for a moment, listening.

Then something, some sixth sense, told her that there was someone near, and she turned. In a clearing between two of the trees a man was standing. He had a gun under his arm. He raised his cap and gave a sly, half-apologetic smile.

“I say, you know,” he said. “These woods are preserved. Very dangerous. Might have got yourself killed.”

He was a man of early middle-age, she noticed. His cheeks were tanned and roughened by the weather, and there was a scar running up from one corner of his mouth. The pale grey eyes were set rather wide apart, and the fingers that held the gun were square and strong-looking. Altogether he seemed someone who had spent most of his life in the open air.

“Never dreamed that there was any one about,” he went on. “Lucky I didn't fire.”

“I'm sorry,” Anna told him. “It is my fault.”

She paused.

“Please,” she asked. “Are you Lord Yarde?”

The man looked at her with surprise.

“No, I'm not Lord Yarde,” he said. “Do you want him?”

“No, it isn't that,” Anna answered. “I do not want him. It is simply that I am living at the house. I am the new governess.”

The man with the gun examined her closely for a moment. He had seen a whole procession of governesses pass through Tilliards, had met them one after another at Sunday lunches—it was their one public appearance of the week. But in the whole regiment of them he had never encountered any one quite like Anna; and as he looked he reminded himself that as a matter of principle he disliked women.

“My name's Webb,” he said. “Captain Webb. I'm the agent here.”

“How do you do, Captain Webb?” Anna said politely.

Captain Webb gave a little stiff formal bow.

“How do you do…?”

He stopped as though searching for the name.

“Karlin; Anna Karlin,” she told him,

Captain Webb gave another little bow.

“You have lived here a long time?” she asked.

“Nearly twenty years,” he answered briefly.

“And I have been here less than a week,” Anna said. “I have not yet met Lord Yarde. Only his wife.”

Captain Webb said nothing. He didn't altogether approve of calling her Ladyship “his wife.” But he told himself that it was probably only because Anna was a foreigner; because she didn't know any better in fact.

He took out a large silk handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. Then he stood still fidgeting.

“But I can see,” Anna said to him. “You want to get on with your shooting. I've been stopping you. Do please go on shooting things.”

Captain Webb gave that little half-apologetic smile again.

“If I might offer you a word of advice,” he said. “I'd suggest you give a shout or something before entering those woods. Might scare the birds a bit, but it may save your life.”

He replaced his cap and, turning his back on her, walked slowly up the clearing from which he had come.

The Sunday luncheon table at Tilliards was an awkward affair. In the first place it was too long; and secondly it was too empty. Lord Yarde himself at sat a high chair at one end and surveyed the table from a kind of distant throne. He was a tall gaunt man with greying side-whiskers and a long military moustache that swept upwards at the ends. The veins in his cheeks stood out with a peculiar blueness as though the flesh all round them had been burned, and the whites of his eyes were a trifle bloodshot. But his most remarkable feature was his nose: it was long, high-arched and pointed. It jutted. In the result, his face, even in repose, had a resentful angry cast to it. He seemed to be frowning over the whole table.

At the far end of the table, some twelve feet away, sat Lady Yarde. On her right was an old lady with a high querulous voice and withered fingers—she was a second cousin of Lord Yarde's and so deaf that she interrupted him constantly without realising it; and next to her Captain Webb was sitting. On the other side of the table there were places for Delia and Anna. And in between were large vacant spaces as though other guests were mysteriously missing.

The conversation was mostly from one end of the table: it was Lord Yarde's monopoly. And it was all of a kind. It concerned the estate, and was exclusively addressed to Captain Webb.

“You know that row of trees down by the west gate,” Lord Yarde went on.

Captain Webb acknowledged them.

“They need topping,” Lord Yarde told him. “Now. While there isn't too much sap in them. Make the whole place look untidy if they're not taken in hand.”

He took a mouthful of food, and continued.

“The bridge has gone again,” he said. “I noticed it this morning.”

“It really needs a
steel
girder,” Captain Webb replied diffidently.

Lord Yarde looked at him sharply.

“Steel,” he said. “What's wrong with wood?”

“Not strong enough,” Captain Webb answered. “Gets a lot of traffic over it.”

“Then put in a thicker piece of wood.”

“I didn't think,” Captain Webb replied quietly, “that you wanted any of the large timber cut just now.”

Lord Yarde turned towards him in exasperation.

“My dear Webb,” he began, “do you mean to tell me that you can't find …”

“Have you seen Pelham lately?” the old lady suddenly asked Lord Yarde. “I hear they've moved to Bath?”