Broken Music (2 page)

1901–1905

The Wentworth family had not always lived here at Broughton, in the gloomy rectory. When the children were young, they had all lived in Worcester, in a pleasant house called White Lodge, just off the cathedral close. They had a pony and trap, the little girls went to a small school run by the genteel daughters of Canon Wigmore, they had a large garden to play in, a pretty house to live in, a handsome father, the Reverend Francis Wentworth, and a beautiful, much admired mother.

Mama had been – well, a less vibrant version of Amy, delicately pretty, with large hazel eyes fringed with dark lashes and an amazing cloud of hair of that shade of red she had passed on to all of her children, in varying degrees. Nella's most lasting memories were of her reclining on the sofa in the drawing room, looking too fragile to hug, but palely smiling, smelling of violets and always wearing lovely, becoming clothes. Sometimes she read them stories, or played the piano for them to sing to, but they were not encouraged, in general, to pester her too much in case their boisterousness should bring on one of her headaches, or fainting fits.

Their papa, a tall man like William was to become, extracting his fob watch from his top pocket after half an hour of their company, seeing Dorothea reach for her smelling salts, would suggest, ‘Perhaps it's time for you to go and play now, children, and leave Mama alone to rest for a little while.'

Mama, smiling faintly, would add, ‘My darlings, you know how I love having you all around me. But my head…your voices. Just a little…piercing, I'm afraid.'

But sometimes, Nella did not really believe that Mama
did
like having them in the drawing room – or not when Papa was there.

Guiltily, they would creep out into the garden, followed by Queenie, their shaggy English sheepdog puppy, and for a while play as quietly as possible, so that the noise they made should not reach as far as the drawing room. But after a while natural high spirits would prevail and William would persuade his sisters to embark on one of his adventurous games, climbing into the orchard over the wall, for instance, where they weren't supposed to go because it didn't belong to them. Nella, small and quick, ready for anything, would in any case usually do whatever William suggested, but Marianne, more often than not, preferred to be alone, lying on the grass or rocking gently on the swing, her red-gold curls, fine and soft as spun sugar, spread like a curtain over her shoulders, not doing anything in particular. Dreaming, as usual.

Amy had been born when Nella, the youngest, was four, in January, 1901, on the same day that the old queen died. Everyone expected her, like so many other baby girls born on that day, to be named Victoria, in honour of the queen's memory, but Dorothea had already chosen names for her unborn child – Amyas if it should be a boy, after her father, since William had been named for Francis's father, and Aimée if, disappointingly, it should turn out to be another girl. Aimée it was, but no one now ever bothered with the fancy, Frenchified pronunciation Mama had no doubt intended, except Amy herself, as she grew older. Dorothea was not there to enforce it. Four years after Amy was born, she gave birth to another baby daughter who died after just two days, and then she herself followed, leaving a legacy of guilt behind: with her son and elder daughters, feeling that if they had been better children, quieter, their voices not quite so
piercing,
their mama might not have died; and with their father…

Well, who knew what Francis felt?

No one except, perhaps, Eleanor Villiers, Dorothea's mother, and she could only suspect. Dorothea had never been strong, and Eleanor's late husband, an otherwise sensible and down-to-earth doctor, had been neither where his daughter was concerned. Amyas could deny her nothing, she could do no wrong, with the result that Dorothea – pretty, spoilt, and difficult into the bargain – had really never shown much sense.

Even in her own pain over the loss of her daughter, Eleanor could find room to pity Francis's obvious agony, but all the same, she thought, lips tightening…a delicate mother, four children already! In the first place, William's difficult birth had nearly cost his mother her life, and a strained three years had followed, during which Eleanor had prayed that he would be their only child, but then another two babies, first the peaceful Marianne, then lively, energetic little Nella, appeared in quick succession, and later Amy, none of them easy births. That should certainly have been the end of it. But when it came down to it, Francis, despite his splendid appearance in the pulpit, the eloquent sermons, delivered with such conviction in his mellifluous voice and listened to with such respect, hadn't shown much sense, either. He, a man of the cloth, a man of high principles, should surely have shown some restraint. And surely knew it.

After Dorothea died, Eleanor decided she had better stay on with the family to help out, not only from a sense of duty and because she was in any case lonely in her recent widowhood and needed something to fill her life, but because she loved her now motherless grandchildren, and there was little prospect of their father, wrapped up in his own troubles, offering the guidance they needed.

 

They were to leave Worcester and the cathedral, and their house, their school, their friends, everything they had previously known. Only Florrie would go with them, for she was to be four-year-old Amy's nurse. She was far too sensible a young woman to remain a parlourmaid, said Grandmama Villiers, their dear Grandy, who would be giving up her own house to come and live with them when they moved.

‘But I don't want to go away!' declared Nella passionately, stamping her foot. ‘I
won't
go if we can't take Queenie!'

‘Now, now, Fenella, don't be silly!' Grandy spoke severely. ‘Of course Queenie will be coming with us; she's a country dog, you know. She'll love it at Broughton Underhill. And so will you when you get there.'

Nella was absolutely determined she would hate it. It was all going to be quite horrid, strange and new; only for lucky William would it make little difference. His life was now centred on his prep school twenty miles away, and they said he could just as easily make the journey from there in the holidays (and later from Rugby, where he was to go when he was old enough) to their new home, which would be the rectory at Broughton Underhill.

‘Does that mean, Father,' William asked, when they were summoned into Papa's study some two weeks after the funeral, ‘that you'll be rector there?'

No, Francis told them. He would not be the rector. In fact, he would no longer be practising as a clergyman at all.

So
that
was why he was wearing a stiff collar and a tie, instead of his clerical dog collar. The children had absorbed, if not fully understood, through scraps of conversation picked up, and hints given by their mother, the belief that their father was settled here as a member of the cathedral chapter until one day he would be appointed dean, or archdeacon, or possibly bishop. This last they could well believe, their father being such a God-like creature. But what they had just heard was a puzzle, unmapped territory. Nella looked at her sister but Marianne, almost as though she hadn't heard, was far away as usual, dreamily watching a robin on the window sill outside who seemed intent on attacking his own reflection in the glass. Nella was still feeling mutinous about the move, though she had been somewhat reassured by hearing that at least their grandmother would continue to be with them. So much had changed and become alarming lately, but Grandy was always the same: kind – though quite strict, and sometimes rather sad since Grandpapa, and now Mama, had died.

‘Father…' William began, then hesitated. Twelve years old and already big for his age, muscular and athletic, untidy, his hair flopping over his forehead, he stood rigid and pale, the freckles on his nose standing out. He was growing up fast and had sensed things in the atmosphere, was nothing if not courageous – and had learnt more from the boys at his prep school than not to call his father the babyish ‘Papa' any longer.

‘What is it, William?'

‘Oh, nothing…it doesn't matter…it's nothing, not really, sir.'

‘William, you know me better than to believe that will serve as an answer.'

William went from white to red. Shuffled his feet. ‘Is there…? Have you…?' He stopped and then came out with it in an embarrassed rush: ‘Is there…anything
wrong,
sir?' There was only one reason, William had discovered, why clergymen parted company with the Church. Disgrace. And the whispers, like the ones that had followed the tutor at his school who had disappeared one day, never to return.

Francis's deep, dark gaze was bent on him. ‘Not in the eyes of the world, if that is what you are trying to say. It is entirely my own choice, and what is wrong is a matter between me and God.' His frown, and his tone, remote and far away, forbade any further questions.

Nella held on to Marianne's hand, as much to reassure Marianne as herself, for she often felt as though it was she who was the elder sister. William stood straight as a ramrod. They looked at their father, speechless, not understanding, their eyes begging for an explanation which Francis struggled for but was not able to give, since he barely understood what was happening himself. He turned his back and in his turn looked out of the window, then said in a curious, hoarse voice, without turning round, ‘That's all, children. You may go.'

Papa had never been a very
jolly
sort of father, not the sort who picked you up and gave you rides on his shoulder, made jokes or played French cricket with you in the garden, like other people's fathers did, though he sometimes smiled and patted you on the head. He was never unkind, or even very stern. But he was not the sort you could talk to, and his authority and rightness were not to be questioned. Outside the family, people spoke of him with a little awe, although everyone said he was not only the best-looking, but the most looked-up-to clergyman on the cathedral staff as he strode round the close with his quick, impatient stride, heels ringing, the skirts of his cassock flying.

But after Mama died, he had shut himself away for days in his study, and when he emerged he had become a different and rather frightening man. He hardly smiled at all, spoke rarely, and when he did he sometimes offended people.

He was, in fact, so rude to Nanny Rudd that she upped and left – or was sent packing, according to Marianne. Although she went about with her head in the clouds, as Nanny so often accused her, Marianne always remembered everything she heard – or overheard. This time it was what Nanny had said to Florrie (who wasn't Florrie then but still Greenwood, the parlourmaid), and though Marianne didn't really understand it, she knew it had made Grandy very angry. ‘Well, I don't care, I'm sure, Florrie!' Nanny had said. ‘I can't live in the same house as that man a minute longer, anyway! Wouldn't even look at his own baby, poor mite – can you believe that? It wasn't
the child's
fault she died,' she had finished, inexplicably. ‘He's a man, after all, and we all know—'

‘That's quite enough, Nanny,' Grandy had said sharply, entering the room just in time to hear this last.

So Nanny departed, and Nella had declared, ‘I don't
care
that she's gone,' using the absolutely forbidden phrase (‘don't care is made to care, miss!') since Nanny herself had used it. ‘She's a beast! And you're not to scold me for saying that, either, Marianne!'

‘I wasn't going to,' said Marianne mildly. ‘I agree with you, she is.'

Nanny Rudd hadn't been comfortable or kind, not like the nanny of their friends the Collins girls. She was strict and sharp and had strong fingers that dug into their scalps when she washed their hair, and pulled it back painfully when she tied their black bows. She saw to it that everything they wore was starched: their pinafores, handkerchiefs and even their drawers. Itchy britches, Nella named them. She was only nice to William, even when he was cheeky or disobedient. But then, nearly everybody was.

Broughton Underhill turned out to be a small, straggling community of some three hundred souls, a village situated in a valley between two ridges of hills and dominated by the largest of them, Broughton Hill, known simply as the Hill. The brisk climb to the top was strenuous, but the view from the top was worth it. On the one side the green Worcestershire countryside rolling towards the distant Welsh mountains. On the other, half a dozen miles away and spreading outwards as far as the eye could see towards Birmingham, began the industrial sprawl of the Black Country, which William, home from school and full of the history he'd learnt there, informed Nella had once been a great forest, the hunting preserve of kings. Land which was now despoiled, riven by canals and railways, punctuated with smoke stacks and great glass-work cones, its trees cut down years ago for fuel, its rich ores mined to feed blast furnaces and steel mills.