In Distant Fields (3 page)

‘I have told Bridie to attend to your every need,' Violet informed Kitty. ‘But don't be surprised if she appears a little over-excited. She says she has never seen a castle, let alone visited one.'

‘I keep feeling so guilty, Mamma. How will you manage on your own here, without Bridie?' Kitty paused. ‘I keep wondering what you will do if Papa comes home.'

Violet shook her head. ‘Stop wondering, Kitty. It is not your place to worry about me. Even should I need Bridie, which I will make sure that I don't, I have told you, you cannot possibly visit a place such as Bauders without a maid. It would not be understood.'

‘Yes, but, Mamma, what will Bridie do when we
are
there?'

Violet paused in her folding of one of Kitty's new blouses.

‘She will do as the other maids do for their young mistresses, Kitty. She will help dress you, and generally tend to your needs.'

‘But then how will you cope, without anyone but young Mary coming in to clean?'

‘I will cope, dearest, really I will.' Violet smiled suddenly at Kitty. ‘Now don't forget to remind Bridie to hand the keys for your luggage to the butler on your arrival – that is
de rigueur
. She will not want to look like a hayseed to the other servants, for they will make quite open fun of her if she does, believe me.'

Kitty smiled. ‘We will both try to be a credit to you, I promise.'

Mother and daughter stared into each other's eyes for a second, each knowing as she did that this invitation to Bauders could well change Kitty's life, and for so much the better.

‘Take heart, Kitty, really. You will be everything that I could wish. I know that.'

Later Violet watched Kitty, followed by Bridie, climbing into the waiting hackney carriage in her new travelling outfit. She looked a picture in her feathered hat and fur muffler, her new blue coat as elegant as anything either of them could wish. Bridie, of course, was dressed in her customary black since she always seemed to be in perpetual mourning. Her mind and spirit appeared to reside permanently in or around the churchyard.

‘Pray to the Lord our God to keep us safe on this journey,' the maid muttered as the cab took them across the park to the railway station. ‘And may He keep us and preserve us from the attentions of strangers and free from all pestilences on our journey – because you would do well to remember, Miss Kitty,' she said more loudly as she focused on her mistress, ‘that one soul's careless sneeze may be another's early demise. Wasn't my poor Uncle Fergus just such a victim, God rest his soul indeed, for didn't he take a train journey to Cork for a Nationalist meeting on the one day, and wasn't he dying in hospital on the next, and wasn't it all due to travelling in a train and being proximous to the afflictions of others? May God preserve us on this journey, Miss Kitty, for He will surely need to.'

They had barely settled themselves and their luggage into the railway carriage when Bridie took out her rosary beads and started to murmur her prayers and to toll the beads.

Kitty felt embarrassed, until after a short time she came to realise that as soon as the other passengers clapped eyes on Bridie tolling her beads they climbed back out of the carriage as quickly as they had climbed in. It seemed that Bridie's devotions meant that not only did her prayers put her in good stead with the Almighty, but they afforded the two travellers the most splendid privacy all the way to their station in Northamptonshire.

It was disappointing, but waiting at the station for Kitty's arrival was not as amusing as Partita had hoped it might be. Normally when visiting guests arrived at the Halt, they would be met by one or two of the servants, and transported back to the castle in one of the Duke's many ponytraps or another small horse-drawn carriage, but on this occasion Partita had insisted on going to the station to meet Kitty herself. She had been too excited to stay at home and wait. Now, however, she had cause to regret her eagerness, because besides half freezing to death in the back of Jossy's trap, she was discovering what everyone else knew, namely that there was very little to do at stations.

Of course, a small part of her had hoped that if she managed to get herself to the station on her own, without her maid, the ever-possessive Tinker, there might be some sort of adventure to be had. Perhaps a chance encounter with some dashing young cavalry officer in the waiting
room, or even a minor accident in a siding that would require the services of the estate fire engine, instead of which there was only the platform populated by a particularly idle-looking station-master who, despite the bitter nature of the wind, was leaning on one of the posts reading a stout almanac of some kind.

Partita sighed and finally took refuge in the Ladies Only waiting room, which was currently occupied by a harassed-looking woman and her three small sons, who immediately stopped trying to annoy each other to stare at the young woman beautifully dressed in velvet and furs, now standing in front of the waiting-room fire warming her gloved hands. A moment later one of the boys, prompted by a whisper and a nudge from his mother, offered Partita a seat, for which she thanked him, but demurred. Finally, having read every poster and notice hanging on the walls at least twice, she decided once more to brave the elements rather than endure the increasingly toxic fug of the overheated room.

Happily, and only five minutes late, the London train finally steamed in to the Halt and Kitty, closely followed by Bridie, disembarked.

An aged porter appeared from nowhere to fetch their luggage from the guard's van while Partita hurried down the platform to greet her friend, noting the thin whey-faced girl she assumed to be her maid walking behind Kitty, carefully carrying, as was the custom, a small black leather jewellery case.

‘I cannot tell you how happy I am that you could come, Kitty,' Partita smiled, absurdly relieved that Kitty had finally arrived. ‘I so hoped you could. Really I did.'

‘Mamma was not going to let me stay at home once I received your invitation, Partita,' Kitty replied, as they exchanged light kisses on the cheek. ‘It was so dear of you to ask me.'

‘I cannot think of anyone I would rather see at this moment, Kitty,' Partita said, smiling. ‘Christmas will be so wonderful now.'

She took Kitty's arm to steer her towards the exit and the patch of grass where Jossy was already standing holding open a little door in the side of the pony carriage.

‘I hope you don't mind the wind in your hair, Kitty,' Partita said, having climbed the steps into the trap after Kitty. ‘Papa refuses to enter the age of the motor car, alas. He declares he will always be a horse-drawn man until his dying day.'

‘Not a bit,' Kitty smiled, settling herself in under a warm wool travelling rug. ‘I can think of nothing more exciting than arriving at Bauders in a ponytrap.'

‘I would have driven myself, but Jossy here would not countenance it, would you, Jossy?'

‘Not after you turned my best rig over in the summer, young lady,' Jossy returned over his shoulder as he picked up the reins. ‘You was lucky to get away with that, and only a few scratches to show for it, I can tell 'ee.'

‘It wasn't my fault a wheel came off, and you know it, Jossy.'

‘If 'ee goes round t'corners on one instead of two, that'll be thy fault,' Jossy returned. ‘If I were 'ee, young lady,' he continued, now addressing Kitty, ‘I would think more 'an twice about letting young Lady Tita 'ere pick up the ribbons.'

Jossy handed Bridie up on to the seat beside him, and then with a gentle slap of the ribbons on the pony's flanks they were away, heading down the lanes towards the great estate. Kitty sat back smiling, but glad of her fur muffler.

‘I actually thought you might not be able to come, Kitty,' Partita said, pulling the travelling rug right up under her small chin. ‘That your papa might not like you to come.'

Partita already knew all about Kitty's father, and was quite openly envious. It seemed to her to be really rather thrilling to have a father who was such a notorious gambler and womaniser, compared to which her own father seemed dull and conservative to a degree. He might be a duke and come from a distinguished line, but Kitty's father was notorious, which was so much more exciting.

Despite the fact that it was a bitterly cold winter's day so there would be little to admire in most people's gardens, as Jossy's little equipage turned into Bauders' parkland, Kitty marvelled at how much there was to admire in the Duke's domain. Against the winter sky white deer seemed to be constantly moving in and out
of centuries-old oak trees, lakes and follies seemed to have been flung, almost carelessly, over acres and acres of carefully landscaped ground, and birds of every description flew between reddened shrubs and white-barked birches, while all the while, miles up the drive, the house remained barely discernible, tantalisingly distant.

As they drew nearer, the castle at last began to be defined as a long three-floored palace with ornamental battlements and vast windows at which Kitty imagined people might be standing gazing out across the park, watching the deer and the wildlife, perhaps feeling as awestruck as she was herself at being, however temporarily, a part of this great holding built so long ago. As they drew nearer to the house, Kitty was able to observe the arches of the forecourt, under one of which Trotty eventually clattered into a cobbled area, where the trap at last drew to a halt.

‘Nanny's door.' Partita nodded towards a side door before taking off her gloves, putting two fingers into her mouth, and emitting a piercing whistle.

‘You've no business whistling that way, Lady Tita,' Jossy grumbled, frowning at her. ‘You bin told about that time and again, and you know who'll be carryin' the can for that if her ladynobs gets to hear you.'

‘And rightly so too, Jossy,' Partita teased him. ‘Since it was you who taught me.'

‘Maybe it was, Lady Tita,' Jossy nodded,
having helped them all out of the trap. ‘But you're a young lady now, not a child no more, and her ladynobs, Nanny Knowle, will be putting me in the corner if she ever catches you at that again,' he added with a nod towards Nanny's door.

‘Nanny has retired to Seaford, Jossy, and you know it.'

Partita's eyes narrowed with a mischievous gleam, but since no boy was forthcoming in answer to her first whistle, she was about to repeat the offence, only for Jossy to quickly beat her to it with an infinitely louder and altogether more impressive whistle.

Perhaps because the boys being summoned knew how to differentiate between one whistle and another, or perhaps because like the dogs of the house they knew an old timer's whistle as well as their mother's bark, less than half a minute elapsed before two pages emerged at the double, coming to a halt by the pile of luggage, which they set about sorting out between them.

‘If that'll be all, Lady Tita, I'll be off for me tea,' Jossy said, touching his cap. ‘The lads'll take your things into servants' quarters, miss,' he added, addressing Bridie, who for once in her life seemed speechless. ‘You'll have a boy assigned you to show you what's what and where's where, because make no mistake, folks has a habit of gettin' lost here, and not always on their first visit neither.'

He nodded while at the same time giving
Bridie an appreciative look, which, to Kitty's surprise, was returned with a smile brighter than Bridie had ever shown anyone in London.

Partita went ahead of Kitty up the shallow stone steps and into the house, suddenly increasing her pace as did the two pages following with Kitty's luggage.

At first Kitty could not understand what the hurry was. Then she felt the bitter cold eating into her as they scurried through a labyrinth of dimly lit corridors even colder than the freezing weather they had left behind outside, their breath coming in little wispy trails on the air.

‘When the weather gets like this we don't only wear coats between rooms,' Partita sighed. ‘We sometimes even wear them in bed!'

Finally they reached a large studded door at which Partita stood back, waiting for the page boys to push it open, which they very promptly did in the accepted manner of page boys everywhere – backside first.

‘This, Kitty, is my room,' Partita announced proudly. ‘And I did it all myself.'

Kitty went in and looked round. She had no difficulty in believing that Partita had designed the large purple-painted walls, the Bakst-style drapes looped around her ancient bed, the shell-encrusted mirrors and sparkling boxes encrusted with stage jewels. Nor would it have taken a genius to realise that Lady Partita Knowle's passionate love was the theatre.

Kitty gazed upwards to the great lantern that
hung in the centre of the room, the only light source for the immensely high ceiling, and as she surveyed the extraordinary room she felt oddly disconcerted. Partita's boudoir was such a dramatic contrast to her own modest room in South Kensington, decorated as it was in light floral wallpaper, with hangings around the bed of a pale primrose, and small brass-fitted electric lights, but here in this vast and astonishing room there was no sign of the twentieth century, no hint of modernism, no electricity or even gas, just a host of dark tallow candles casting a medieval glow on the room.

‘Your room is through here,' Partita announced, leading the way through another large studded door to an adjoining room. ‘You will have to keep your coat on until your bath is drawn,' she added factually. ‘In weather like this you should keep your coat on at all times, but we can leave the adjoining doors open and talk all night – which I know we will.' She gave Kitty's arm a quick affectionate squeeze. ‘Now we must go down to the library where everyone will be having tea. I shall instruct Wavell to tell Dixon to send your maid up to unpack for you. It really is so unendurably
lovely
that you are here, Kitty Rolfe!'