Anna, Where Are You? (7 page)

“I answered Mr. Craddock’s advertisement. Do you know, I believe I hear the children. They undertook to meet me here.”

With a sweeping gesture Miranda folded her arms and her cloak across her capacious bosom.

“Then I will leave you. But we must meet again. Together we will see what can be done to help Emily. Goodbye!” She went off with a swinging stride, her dark red hair waving in the wind.

As soon as she was at a safe distance, the children came tumbling downhill out of a patch of. scrubby woodland which looked as if it might harbour primroses in the spring. They were in high spirits, laughing and shouting.

“Did the masonry fly at you?”

“I’d like to see it fly—I want to see it fly!”

“I haven’t got any spiders! They go somewhere in the winter!”

“They climb up drain-pipes and drown themselves in your bath!”

“Don’t want spiders in my bath!”

Jennifer said,

“That was Miranda. She thinks we want discipline. Maurice put an earwig in her tea, and she poured the whole cup down the back of his neck.”

“It’s better to leave her alone,” said Maurice gloomily. “Is it tea-time yet? Shall we go home? I’m hungry.”

They went home.

These was a cold wind blowing in the park. Leafless trees made a pattern against the lowering sky. There was a kind of prickle in the air, which generally means that it may begin to snow at any moment. It was not the sort of day to tempt anyone to linger, but Thomasina Elliot and Peter Brandon were not only lingering, they were actually sitting on one of the green park seats. There is, of course, nothing so warming to the blood as a good brisk quarrel. Not that either Peter or Thomasina would have admitted that they were quarrelling. Thomasina was merely refusing to be bullied, while Peter was engaged in pointing out the folly of her ways. In an atmosphere of pure reason no doubt, and without any undignified heat, but he had no right to be doing it. After all, at twenty-one you are of age. You can record a vote or make a will, you can get married without asking anyone’s leave. You are, in fact, an adult human being. And Thomasina was twenty-two. She had been an adult human being for thirteen months and ten days. It was outrageous of Peter to behave as if he was a Victorian parent, or the sort of guardian that you come across in old-fashioned books. She said so.

“Thank you—I don’t feel in the least like a parent! And thank God I’m not your guardian!”

Rightly considering that she had scored a point, Thomasina produced an odiously complacent smile.

“It was rather clever of me really.”

“Clever!”

“Well, it was, you know. I don’t suppose I’d heard their names for years and years and years. Well, at least five, because that is when Aunt Barbara was down at that folk-weaving place, Wyshmere. She wanted to learn how to do it so as to teach Tibbie.”

“Tibbie?”

“Jeanie’s sister—the one that was crippled in an accident. She got her a little hand-loom, and she made scarves and did quite well with them.”

“Who got who a loom, and who did quite well with it?”

She exercised an exasperated patience.

“Aunt Barbara gave Tibbie a loom of course. She never got very good at it herself, but Tibbie did.”

Peter said in the tone of one who wouldn’t agree with himself if he could help it, let alone with anyone else,

“I don’t remember a thing about it.”

“Because you were abroad. But that’s where she met the Miss Tremletts—”

“Tibbie?”

The patience vanished, the exasperation became a good deal more evident.

“No, of course not! Aunt Barbara—at Wyshmere—I told you! And the minute Inspector Abbott mentioned their names—”

“Why on earth should he mention their names?”

“He was telling me about Anna going to Deep End and there being an arty-crafty Colony there. As soon as he said two Miss Tremletts who did weaving and folk-dancing and their names were Gwyneth and Elaine, something went off in my head like striking a match and I remembered Aunt Barbara and Wyshmere. So I thought supposing they were the same—”

“Supposing who were the same as what?”

Thomasina’s eyes became considerably brighter. Some young men would have been alarmed, but Peter had a good deal of natural resistance.

“Peter, you are doing it on purpose!”

“My good girl, if you keep flinging about she’s and who’s and what’s—”

“I am not your good girl!”

“Agreed.”

“You are simply pretending not to understand. I thought if these Miss Tremletts were the same as Aunt Barbara’s ones—and they were practically bound to be, because you simply couldn’t imagine two families giving names like Elaine and Gwyneth—”

“I don’t see why not.”

Thomasina felt very much as she did on the occasion when she took off a shoe and threw it at Peter. The heel had cut his forehead and left a small white scar, and Aunt Barbara had talked to her about Cain, and being a murderess. All very horrifying when you were eight years old. She was twenty-two now, and they were in a public park, so she controlled herself.

“You just don’t want to see—that’s all! But I did, so I sent Jeanie a wire for Aunt Barbara’s address book, and there they were—Elaine and Gwyneth Tremlett,Wyshcumtru, Wyshmere.”

Peter laughed in a superior way.

“I don’t believe it. No one could possibly have an address like that.”

“Elaine and Gwyneth did. So I wrote and said I had just come across their names in Aunt Barbara’s address book, and were they still there and a bit about Tibbie and the hand-loom, and this morning I got a letter from Gwyneth who is the weaving one, and she said they had moved and gone to this place, Deep End. A ”Colony of Seekers“ she called it, with oh, such a wonderful man at the head of it. And she could never forget dear Mrs. Brandon, and they did sometimes take a paying guest so if I ever wanted a country holiday perhaps I would give them the great pleasure of making my acquaintance and renewing what had been very pleasant memories. There was a lot more like that, all underlined and gushing.”

“Now look here, Thomasina—”

“It’s no good, Peter—I’m going down.”

“You can’t possibly!”

“Oh, but I am. I wrote off at once and said I was yearning for a country holiday.”

“If you will stop to think for a single instant—”

“Yes, darling?”

He said with extraordinary violence,

“Don’t call me darling!”

“Well, I don’t really want to.”

“Then don’t do it! What I want you to do is to listen. You are paying this Miss Silver of yours to try and trace Anna Ball— she has gone down to Deep End for that specific purpose. If you go butting in, the odds are you will queer her pitch. To start with, there’s your name. Anna Ball may quite easily have talked about you when she was down there.”

“Anna never talked about anybody. That was what was wrong with her—she was all shut-up and tight. I don’t see her having a heart-to-heart with Gwyneth and Elaine.”

“She probably had a photograph of you.”

“Well then, she didn’t—at least it wasn’t with her. She only had one, and it was in the top of the trunk she sent to me.”

Peter leaned forward and put a strong gripping hand on her wrist.

“If you don’t make a mess of it one way, you will another. You’ll be going down there under false pretences for one thing, and you’ll be a serious embarrassment to Miss Silver for another. The whole thing is probably a complete mare’s nest. Anna went there and came away again, and just hasn’t bothered to write. But if there is anything wrong about the place—I don’t say there is, but supposing there was—you might be running into something that would make you wish you had listened to reason.”

Thomasina was only waiting for him to take breath. When he did she was more than ready.

“Why should I be going down under false pretences? I never heard of such a thing! I’m not calling myself Jane Smith or Elizabeth Brown, am I? They did know Aunt Barbara, and I am her niece, and if they want a paying guest and I want to learn folk-weaving and have a holiday in the country, why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you don’t want anything of the sort. You wouldn’t go within twenty miles of these Tremletts if you didn’t want to go snooping round about Anna Ball.”

Thomasina went quite pale with anger.

“You just said that because it was the nastiest thing you could think of!”

“Perfectly correct.”

“And it isn’t true!”

“You wouldn’t be so angry if it wasn’t.”

“Yes, I would! I don’t like lies and unfairness! I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with Gwyneth and Elaine. Aunt Barbara wouldn’t have been friends with them if they hadn’t been all right. She liked them, and Gwyneth called her ‘Dear Mrs. Brandon.’ So why shouldn’t I go and be a paying guest? If they are all right, and everything is all right, then I just learn a little folk-weaving and come away again. You are not going to pretend there is anything wrong about that, I suppose!”

“And if everything isn’t all right?”

“Then the sooner it’s found out about the better!”

There was quite a long pause. Thomasina’s colour came back rather brightly. She had reduced Peter to silence, a thing which had practically never happened before. This was extremely pleasing. But when the silence had gone on for quite a long time it didn’t feel so good. A small cold wind blew about them. The clouds were lower and had the rather horrid leaden look which is a presage of snow. She became aware that her feet were frozen, and that it would be much nicer to go and have tea somewhere instead of sitting mouldering on a park bench without even the satisfaction of saying how much you hated it. She looked sideways at Peter, who was staring gloomily at nothing at all, and was just going to look away again, when he turned with one of his abrupt movements and caught both her hands in his.

“Tamsine—don’t go!”

It was always dreadfully hard not to weaken when he called her Tamsine, but if you didn’t keep your end up with Peter you would be a trodden slave before you could turn round. The spirit of all the Border Elliots rebelled. She smiled right into his eyes and said,

“Darling, of course I’m going.”

After a week at Deep End Miss Silver had seen no reason to modify her first impressions. What she called her scholastic career had come to an end so many years ago that she might have expected to find it strange to be teaching children again, yet it was not strange at all. By what arts she had brought Jennifer, Maurice and Benjy to accept her teaching was just one of those things which cannot be explained. There are people who can manage children, and people who can’t. There are qualities which compel respect. When they are present they are respected. Miss Silver possessed these qualities. In return she respected the children under her charge—their privacy, their confidence, their rights. These things, though never put into words, are deeply felt. They establish a sense of security and evoke a responsive trust.

It is not to be supposed that the Craddock children became orderly and disciplined in a day or two. Jennifer remained aloof, with flashes of interest. Maurice, sturdy and literal-minded, was discovered to have a passion for trains. His attention was captured and his heart won by the fact that Miss Silver had had the forethought to provide herself with a book which displayed upon its cover the picture of an enormous engine very strikingly coloured in Prussian blue and scarlet, and inside, in addition to many other illustrations of trains and engines all duly named and numbered, a quite extraordinary amount of information about railways. Margaret Moray, who had a boy of the same age, had assured her that nothing in trousers between four and eight could possibly resist its lure. Little girls would find it dull, but any normal boy would eat it and ask for more. The number of miles between London and Edinburgh, the number of miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow, the history of the Flying Scotsman and the Coronation Scot, innumerable and solid facts about bogies, about fuel, about taking in water—these were meat and drink.

Mrs. Charles Moray was perfectly right. From his first sight of the blue and scarlet engine Maurice simply never looked back. He could be heard murmuring the names of favourite engines in his sleep. With a maddening persistence he imparted technical details during the family meals, a circumstance particularly obnoxious to Mr. Craddock, who considered himself to be the fount of knowledge and had no desire to receive instruction from a child of seven. A frown descended upon the Jovian brow, a ponderous displeasure filled the room. When Mrs. Craddock’s faint attempts to change the subject were disregarded her hands shook nervously. On one particularly trying occasion she dropped the teapot, scalding her wrist and flooding the table, but during the ensuing disorder Maurice could still be heard reciting the stations between London and Bristol, with Benjy chirping behind him and getting half of them wrong.

All this was trying, but both little boys now submitted to having their nails cut, and to washing their hands before meals, a practice previously considered to be sissy. Miss Silver found this expression intriguing, as it could not by any possibility have derived from Mr. Craddock. A conversation with Mrs. Craddock enlightened her. It appeared that they had been less than two years at Deep End. Mr. Craddock had been there a little longer, getting the place ready for them and for the Colony.

“You see, we used to live at such a pretty little place called Wyshmere—at least I and the children did. My husband travelled a lot. He was an artist. There were several artists in Wyshmere, and when he was killed in an air crash we just stayed on. Of course the children had to go to the village school. I was not nearly clever enough to teach them myself, and there wasn’t any money until my old cousin Francis Crole left me quite a lot. It was so very kind of him, because I only saw him twice. He came down after my husband died and paid for everything. And he came again a year later and said I hadn’t got any sense and the children were running wild, and I’d better marry someone who would look after them and me. He was killed in an accident about a month later, and he had made a new will and left me a lot of money. So I married Mr. Craddock.”

Miss Silver was remembering Jennifer’s “He wouldn’t like her to die—because of the money.” She found herself hoping that Cousin Francis had tied it up securely. Aloud she said,

“Then Mr. Craddock is the children’s step-father?”

A faint flush came into Emily Craddock’s face.

“Oh, yes. It is a marvellous thing for them having a man like him. He came down to Wyshmere for a holiday after Cousin Francis died. Everybody thought him wonderful. The Miss Tremletts lived there too, you know. They quite worshipped him, and so did Jennifer.” She paused, drew a long signing breath, and added the one word, “Then.”

“Children take these fancies.”

Emily Craddock sighed again.

“Yes, they do, don’t they? But he was so good to them. He took such an interest. He gave Jennifer lessons in saying poetry. He said she really had talent—but I don’t think I want her to go on the stage.” She drew another of those deep tired breaths. “Oh well, you never know how things will turn out, do you?”

They were sitting in the large shabby ground-floor room which served as schoolroom and playroom for the children, Mrs. Craddock at her everlasting task of mending, Miss Silver winding pale blue wool for a baby’s coatee. Her niece by marriage, Dorothy, the wife of Ethel Burkett’s brother, was expecting her third child. Since there had been a dozen childless years before the first was born, everyone in the family was very much interested. A boy was hoped for, hence the pale blue wool.

Miss Silver looked compassionately at the small figure bent over a much patched pair of shorts and said,

“Sometimes they turn out better than we expect. Your boys are strong and healthy, and Jennifer is very intelligent.”

“She is like her father. He had the artistic temperament. She has it too.” She spoke rather as if it was a malady of some sort.

Miss Silver wound her wool in silence for a little. Then she said,

“Have you not thought that it would be better for her to be at school?”

Mrs. Craddock looked up in a startled manner.

“Oh—yes—I did—”

“It would be good for her to have the companionship of girls of her own age. She is too sensitive, too intense. She needs to be taken out of herself.”

Emily Craddock shook her head.

“Mr. Craddock wouldn’t let her go. He doesn’t approve of boarding schools, and they are very expensive. You see, we had to buy this place. And then there have been the alterations. It cost quite a lot to convert the stables for the Miss Tremletts. And the lodge, and the two new cottages. It was a wonderful thing to do of course. Mr. Craddock has such very high ideals. I don’t understand them all of course. He says I am very earth-bound, but when you have so many things to do in a house—and I’ve never been very good at them—it doesn’t seem to leave you much time for anything else, does it? But of course I do feel that it was wonderful of him to want to marry me. Everyone at Wyshmere felt that—and it’s a great privilege for the children.”

Miss Silver wrote a letter that evening. It was addressed to Mrs. Charles Moray, and it ran :

“My dear Margaret,

This is an interesting old place. Such a pity that it was bombed, but the Craddocks’ wing is most comfortable. The children are a little out of hand, but I have very good hopes of them. You were quite right about the book of trains, which has been a great success with the little boys. Mr. and Mrs. Craddock are being all that is kind. He is a most interesting man, and very goodlooking. I understand that he is engaged upon an important book. She, I fear, is not very robust, and I am glad to feel that I can spare her some fatigue. I hope that all is well with you.

With my love,

Yours affectionately,

Maud Silver.

P.S.—Pray let me know whether you are able to get the wool I mentioned.”

This letter she stamped and placed upon a small table in the hall. There was only one incoming post a day, and the man who delivered the letters cleared the two post-boxes—the one at the gate of what he still called Deepe House in defiance of Mr. Craddock and the Colony, and the other amongst the cluster of cottages at the foot of the rise. The Colony corresponded voluminously, Deep End practically not at all. The Miss Tremletts in particular received letters, magazines, and periodicals from all over the world, and wrote reams in reply. Miranda’s mail was also very extensive but mainly home-produced. The postman, a very respectable man of the name of Hawke, regarded it with disapproval. “Stands to reason a woman’s bound to have two names same like anyone else, and stands to reason she’s bound to be Miss or Mrs. Indecent it looks to me, having nothing but her Christian name on the envelopes. Miranda—just like that—for all the world like going about without her clothes on! Stands to reason she’s bound to have a name! Same as anyone else! And why don’t she use it?” There being no answer, and the sentiment being generally approved, he was able to repeat it until by force of custom the subject lost its interest.

Instead of leaving her letter on the hall table Miss Silver might have gone down to the gate and posted it. Or, if she preferred the longer walk, she could have gone as far as Deep End and pushed Mrs. Charles Moray’s letter into the red slit which brightened the wall of old Mr. Masters’ cottage. Rain or shine, snow, hail or thunder, Mr. Masters would be out in his porch at ten o’clock to have a word with Mr. Hawke. During the war years, when it was Mrs. Hawke who had taken round the letters and cleared the boxes, he had felt bitterly deprived. Most days it would be no more than “Morning, postman” and a brief bulletin about his rheumatism, with perhaps a word or two in return about Mr. Hawke’s grandfather-in-law who was going to be a hundred on his next birthday, whereas Mr. Masters was only ninety-five, and no use trying to slip in an extra year or two, because everyone knew his age, and his daughter-in-law, still known as young Mrs. Masters though she was turned fifty, wouldn’t have it. She was a large and in the main silent person, but in matters like how old you were and how many times you’d got the prize for the best marrows over at Deeping she would speak up very awkward. Downright unfeeling, old Mr. Masters considered. For the rest, she was a hard-featured woman who kept him and the cottage like a new pin and found time and energy to put in three hours a day up at Deepe House, which neither she nor anyone else in either Deep End or Deeping could bring themselves to call Harmony.

As Mr. Masters put it:

“Might as well start giving me a new name at my time o’ life! And who’s Craddocks to go giving names and taking of them away—you tell me that! Ignorance and impertinence, that’s what I call it! Why, that there old house bin standing there since Queen Elizabeth’s time, and if you haven’t got a right to your own lawful name after all that time, when have you got a right to it—you tell me that!”