The Flight of Swallows (16 page)

Because it bit my finger so.

Which finger did it bite?

This little finger on the right.

The book was a mixture of pictures, of the hen, the eggs, the fish and the finger, with the numbers in figures and letters and was surprisingly effective in teaching the children, she was to learn from the young woman who had accosted her. Miss Seddon had been born in Overton and had attended the school in which she was now the headmistress. At the age of twelve, ambitious, bright and clever, she had become a monitor which meant a teaching assistant. When she was thirteen she had become a pupil teacher. At great sacrifice from her family she had entered the Queen’s Scholarship Examination and as a successful candidate she had won a place on a real teaching training course and with a first-class qualification she had returned to the school where she had begun her education.

There was an infant class up to the age of six. A dozen or so well-scrubbed but ragged children were crammed on benches in varying degrees of boredom with, here and there, a bright child eager to learn, all in charge of a pupil teacher. Another larger classroom housed the older children. Both rooms had narrow windows, purposely high so that the children could not see out of them and be distracted and here, thanks to the improvements fought for by Miss Seddon, two children shared a dual convertible desk. The walls were painted a plain white but were covered with paintings by the children. The only defect in this otherwise well-set-up school was the heating. It was December and the cast-iron stove provided the only warmth in the main classroom. The children all wore their outdoor clothing, as did Miss Seddon.

Charlotte was impressed with Miss Seddon and with the girl who taught the infants and while Miss Seddon’s monitor took over her class, she and Miss Seddon, who thought she could see a benefactor in the wife of the wealthiest landowner in the parish, discussed young Robbie Drummond’s future schooling and it was decided that he would begin lessons at the Overton village school after Christmas.

Robbie was delighted. He could ride his pony to school, as did the friends he had made with Jack Emmerson’s lad, and the offspring of Cec Eveleigh, Davy Nicholson from Primrose Farm and the sons of Jeff Killen of Foxworth. He was settling in and with his new routine and the attachment he had formed with Jenny Wainwright who was getting close to her time and needed, she told him, someone to fetch and carry things for her and generally be her friend since she had no other, they saw less and less of him in the big house. Whenever Brooke was out of the place, hunting, shooting with friends, riding his acres, fishing his trout stream and inspecting his farms, Charlotte spent time with Jenny and, with a sigh of relief, the servants relaxed in the general atmosphere of calm that now pervaded King’s Meadow.

It was in January that Charlotte, walking round to the Dower House on a bright, frosty morning, first got what she called her revelation. She had been made love to by her husband every night since the terrible day of Jenny’s arrival and Brooke’s explosion of rage over Robbie. She realised that he desperately wanted a son, wondering at the same time why gentlemen were so obsessive about it but supposed it was only natural that an heir was needed to continue the line. She also realised that every night he was unconsciously stamping his own possession of her. She obliged him willingly, remembering that wild night when he had carried her upstairs and, she decided, he had almost raped her but at the same time knew that was not so. He had brought her to a height of what she could only call exhilaration. She knew no word to describe how she felt but for that one time only she had matched Brooke in his explosive and, to her, unaccountable frenzy. He had kissed her cheeks, her mouth, the outline of her ears and throat, the length of her breastbone and thighbone, turning her this way and that, totally absorbed until her body was ready to dissolve into his, to flow over him and through him. She was lost, bemused and when he entered her in a turbulence of male joy she had shouted out her own. She had been mindlessly content but it had never happened again and she thought that perhaps she was trying too hard to achieve it.

The ground was hard with frost and the sun was a hazed pink disc in the sky. Smoke drifted from the Dower House chimneys and the grass on which she walked was stiff and crisp beneath her feet. There were pink flushes on the frozen soil and each twig and blade sparkled separately as the sun caught them in its brightening pink glow. The world was so crisp you could almost hear it crackle, she thought as she knocked on the door and entered the house. There was a blazing fire in the grate and Jenny sat before it, sewing serenely, her face placid and plump, for the months she had spent at King’s Meadow had produced in her not just the normal weight of a pregnant woman but the bonny bloom that was naturally hers and which hard work and worry had denied her.

Kizzie sat opposite her but rose immediately to ‘mash’ the tea or would Miss Charlotte like a cup of chocolate? she asked.

They sipped contentedly, the three women, for when Master Robbie was at school this was a solely female establishment.

‘What are you making, Jenny? I should have thought you had enough baby garments to clothe the whole village by now.’

Jenny smiled. She did all Miss Charlotte’s sewing, mending torn hems, darning Master Robbie’s socks, repairing the rips in his breeches and even embroidering motifs on Charlotte’s nightgowns but this was not one of those. She did exquisite sewing. She had a small pile of torn-up rags in a basket by her side and in her lap lay a piece of what looked like hessian; she pushed through the hessian with some sort of a hook, then drew a thin strip of material selected from the pile in the basket through the hessian and out to the front.

‘Nay, don’t tell us tha’ve never sin a rag rug, Miss Charlotte,’ Kizzie asked. ‘We allus ’ad one in front of fire at ’ome. That way tha’ use up all yer old bits o’ material from clothes what are no use ter wear. Mind, this ’un is what Jenny calls a “wall ’anging”. She’s gonner purrit on t’wall on a sorta frame. Isn’t that right, chuck?’ Kizzie had become rather fond of Jenny in the months she had lived with her.

Jenny nodded and held up her work for Charlotte to see.

‘Why, Jenny, that’s quite lovely. Where did you get the design?’

‘She medd it up ’erself. Drew it on t’ hessian and then follers the outline with that there ’ook.’ Kizzie was as proud as punch of her clever protégée just as though the whole thing was her idea and it was then, with Kizzie obviously made up with her relatively new position, confident and doing all the talking, for Jenny was still a shy little thing, that Charlotte began to form her idea. That was all it was. Not even an idea really, just a little light shining in the darkness of her mind. What Jenny was to do when her baby was born had not yet been discussed. She would not give up her child, she had said stoutly, but somehow she must earn a living. No matter what Charlotte said or did or how she pleaded in the kitchen with the maidservants, it was very evident that Jenny and her illegitimate child would never be accepted by them, not even as a lowly scullery-maid.

Charlotte had taken an instant liking to the young teacher at the school in Overton and trusted her to put as much learning into Robbie as he was capable of imbibing. He was happy and no longer clung to her as the only stable thing in his rocky world, or the world he had once known. He had become more confident and since he was not in his, or Charlotte’s company as much, was less inclined to annoy his brother-in-law. Sometimes Charlotte rode over with him to school, not to intrude but to discuss his progress with Miss Seddon.

On this particular day Miss Seddon was occupied for a moment, but her assistant, who popped her head out of her own classroom, told her she would not be long and would Mrs Armstrong be good enough to wait in the hallway.

Miss Seddon could be seen talking earnestly to a girl who sat blubbering on the other side of her desk then, with a speed that bemused Charlotte, the girl sprang up, raced from the room and darted back down the passage to where Charlotte imagined the kitchen, if such existed, would be.

Miss Seddon stood up and came to the door, somewhat discomposed, and ushered her into her office. ‘I am so sorry to keep you waiting since I know you wish to discuss your brother’s progress. Do sit down. Now, Robert has become quite an asset to his class, Mrs Armstrong. He is a lively, imaginative boy and invents many games for the others to play. In this cold weather especially’ – she shivered inside her rather thin grey coat – ‘they have to keep on the move at playtime and I believe they are playing King Solomon’s Mines of which they have never heard and Robbie, in the part of the hero, is fighting the natives. It is the children’s admiration for him that has given him confidence and I believe when he moves on to public school he will cope very well. Now, if you don’t mind, perhaps a cup of tea. I have a certain matter I must attend to and then I will return to continue our discussion.’

Charlotte was quite taken aback, for Miss Seddon did not appear to be quite herself, watching as she vanished up the passageway following the distraught girl.

It took only ten minutes for the matter Miss Seddon spoke of to be completed then she returned and sat down by the tiny flickering flame of her fire, drawing her coat about her. ‘Very sad, very sad,’ she was murmuring. ‘These girls have a chance to make something more of themselves than their mothers did but they . . .’ She shook her head and sighed.

‘What is it, Miss Seddon?’ Charlotte leaned forward and placed the lukewarm and very weak cup of tea on the desk.

‘This particular girl could finish her education and then move on to her first job as a scullery-maid in a wool merchant’s home on the outskirts of Halifax. Not much, but a decent start in life,’ Miss Seddon told her, then watched with consternation, as did Charlotte, when the girl, a tall girl but plumper than would be expected, came from the back of the school and hurried along the passage towards the front door and out into the village street. She was weeping. Charlotte stood up and watched her go, wondering what Miss Seddon had said to upset her so.

Miss Seddon, looking even more distraught, invited Charlotte to re-seat herself. It was cold, for the only heat in the building was in the big schoolroom and the poor excuse for a fire in the fireplace of Miss Seddon’s office. Their breath could clearly be seen about their mouths and Charlotte made up her mind then and there to do something about it.

‘Anyway, to return to Robert,’ Miss Seddon said. ‘As I say I’m happy to tell you he is doing well and next term I am going to try him in the big class. He seems to have settled down and though he was behind the others of his age when he came he has caught up. He is happy, you see, and I believe that a happy child will flourish. I think that his . . . background’ – she was trying to be diplomatic, for Arthur Drummond’s reputation as a hard man was well known in Overton – ‘has held him back. His friends here at the school are all . . . all from stable homes, from families where they know they are . . . well, I will say no more except he is doing well. I know he is to join his brothers at public school when he is old enough but he will be ready then to leave the . . . the safety of your love and support. He tells me they were all at King’s Meadow at Christmas, his older brothers, I mean, and that you had a wizard time.’ She smiled. ‘His words. He is becoming a—’

‘Yes, thank you, Miss Seddon,’ Charlotte said somewhat impatiently, for she could not get the picture of the anguished young girl she had seen running from the school out of her mind and she was eager to know who she was and what the trouble was, though anyone with eyes in her head could see the girl was with child.

Miss Seddon blinked, since Mrs Armstrong was usually very keen to talk about her brother and after all that was why she was here, interrupting Miss Seddon’s class which had been left in the charge of her monitor.

‘Yes, Mrs Armstrong?’

‘That young girl who ran from your office as I came in. Is she to have a baby? She seems very young and I was wondering . . .’

‘Yes, very sad. She is a pupil, or was. She has been a naughty girl and I was forced to ask her to leave. The parents of my pupils are . . . well, you know the sort of problems this causes.’

‘What sort of thing, Miss Seddon? Surely but for the grace of God go you and me.’

Miss Seddon looked vastly offended. ‘Mrs Armstrong, I cannot believe you said that. Ruth Hardacre comes from a decent family but they are horrified at what has befallen her and have turned her out. She came to me for help.’

‘Which you refused her.’

‘I have no way to help her, Mrs Armstrong. This is a school not a home for fallen girls. I must think of my pupils. There is nowhere . . . nothing to be done here. I must think of the good of—’

‘Where has she gone?’ Charlotte rose to her feet imperiously and Miss Seddon, though she had a good heart and would help if she could, knew that Mrs Armstrong was not pleased with her.

‘I told her there was a home for girls in her situation in Wakefield. There is a lying-in place for when she is brought to bed or they would take her in at the workhouse.’

‘Where has she gone now, Miss Seddon, if you please? When she ran out of here where was she headed?’

‘The river, she said, but of course she did not mean it.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘There is no river, Miss Seddon.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Armstrong but I have a school here which is my responsibility and I can assure you if I could have helped the girl I would but . . .’ Miss Seddon was genuinely sorry and very flustered, for at heart she was a kind woman. ‘There is the reservoir off Moss Lane but I’m sure she did not really mean it.’

‘Would you care to risk it, Miss Seddon, because I wouldn’t,’ and before Miss Seddon, almost weeping by now, could answer Charlotte whirled round and flew from the office and out to her gig. The patient little pony, which often drew the mower but was now elevated to pulling the gig, turned his head and whickered in welcome and when she flung herself in the gig, set off at a spanking speed along Moss Lane, having enjoyed the mouthfuls of grass he had managed to garner from the strip of vegetation in front of the school. The reservoir was on the right of the lane and even from the gig Charlotte could see that there was a thin film of ice on it. She jumped from the still moving vehicle and ran across the strip of field that divided it from the lane and was just in time to see the figure of the girl step out on to the ice and vanish beneath it.