The House at Tyneford (11 page)

“You may read them, if you like,” said Mr. Rivers. “They must make you think of home.”

I thanked him politely; Anna always said that a man with excellent taste in literature was a man to be trusted.

Dinner passed without incident. I poured water and stacked plates and stood in the corner and was miserable. The two men sat at opposite ends of the dining table, separated by a desert of polished mahogany, so that all conversation had to be yodelled from one end to the other. Mr. Wrexham shuttled between them, carrying trays of vegetables and pouring wine. I could not understand why they did not sit together at one end of the table like Julian and Anna did when they had no guests to entertain. It was absurd English manners and tradition over common sense—if this was Mrs. Beeton’s advice, I didn’t think much of it. Mr. Rivers neither looked at me nor acknowledged my presence. His guest was a jowly man, with a red beard coating his double chins. They spoke of politics and war and Chamberlain, but I was too unhappy to eavesdrop. Mr. Wrexham was pleased with my performance and sent me up to bed with a cup of cocoa as a reward. I could not understand why the English used food to communicate. In Vienna Frau Finkelstein trained her pug with treats.

Upstairs in my attic room, I poured the dregs of cocoa out into the yard, watching it spatter down the brickwork. Pulling on my pyjamas, I settled onto the bed and, drawing out a scrap of writing paper and a pencil, began to compose a letter home.

I read through the letter, which seemed to hold a lightness that I did not feel, pulled out the viola from its hiding place beneath my bed and cradled it in my arms.

“What’s your story? Do you have a name yet? I think you are about a girl stranded on a rainy island. A girl with green eyes and a weakness for chocolate.”

In my mind I heard a snort, as Julian shook his head.

“I’d never write that sort of story. Not in a million years.”

I rattled the viola, listening to the stack of pages inside knock against the wood.

“Pirates, then, Papa. I hope there are pirates and a tall ship.”

Julian laughed, a deep rumble. “Far too romantic.”

“Give me a hint?” I pleaded to the imaginary Julian. I tried in vain to shake a page loose from its hiding place and out through the f-holes. It was no use and I stashed the viola back in its case. I closed my eyes and pretended that I was at home in Vienna, listening to Hildegard fuss in the kitchen, while Anna and Julian slept across the hall. If I tried very hard, I could almost hear Julian snore.

I awoke in the middle of the night. I sat up in bed, listening to the unfamiliar creak and tick of the old house and feeling utterly alone. I needed comfort. In a daze I padded downstairs and into Mrs. Ellsworth’s larder. I reached up to the top shelf and helped myself to the elderflower syllabub left over from the gentlemen’s desserts. Thinking back, I was lucky that no one caught me. Then, I did not consider my midnight snack as theft. I only wanted to gorge like I did at home, but the sweetness was sickly and unfamiliar. All this time later, the taste of syllabub is still the taste of homesickness and if, in early summer, I catch the scent of elderflower, I am nineteen again, sitting cross-legged on the larder floor, clasping a basin of creamy dessert, refusing to cry.

T
he next few days passed in a haze of polish. I dusted in my sleep and my clothes smelled of spilled vinegar. The only respite from loneliness was stolen minutes in the yard, feeding apple cores or lettuce scraps to Mr. Bobbin. The yard was situated at the side of the house away from the sea, but I could hear the crash of the surf, while coarse marram grass sprouted at the edges of the cobbles. Each night I lay in bed listening to the water rush and smash on the rocks below, promising myself that in the morning I would walk down to the sea. Yet, when dawn came, I was always too tired, and wriggled under my blankets, desperate for another few minutes of sleep.

I had no free time. In the five minutes before dinner, when I was supposed to be washing my hands and face, I wandered into the yard. I fed the horse from my palm, feeling his warm breath upon my skin, and listened to the rhythmic grind of his large yellow teeth. He never made any noise but huffed out of his nostrils and bumped his stable door with his nose whenever he saw me. I realised that I was becoming like Art, my only friend having four legs, and decided it was imperative that I improve my English. Mr. Wrexham was similarly determined, although for a different motive: he had high hopes for me in the dining room. I must not speak, nor eavesdrop, and yet I must be capable of impeccable English conversation. He thrust upon me
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, in Two Volumes
, as well as
Debrett’s Baronetage of England, 1920.
He attempted to add Mrs. Beeton to my pile, and his lip twitched in approval when I explained I already owned a copy.

“You would do well to study it, Elise. Devote one hour a day to the wisdom of Isabella Beeton. She writes for the lady of the house, but her insight is universal. Universal.”

I would have laughed at his familiarity with “Isabella,” whispering her name in the dreamy tones of an old lover, but I knew by now that Mr. Wrexham was a man entirely without humour, who did not take kindly to the smiles of others. I stashed his books in the corner of my bedroom, resolving never to read them.

Early one morning in my second week, while cleaning the blue guest room, a sun-filled space with sky-coloured curtains, I encountered a stack of novels on the windowsill. They were clearly provided for the entertainment of female guests, set apart from the leather-bound volumes in Mr. Rivers’ library. I perched on the window seat overlooking the rolling lawns. It had been pouring for hours, and the gardens were soaked, the snapdragons and hollyhocks lying stooped and battered in the beds, but now a streak of sun made the wet grass glisten, while the black storm clouds raced across the hills like smoke from a band of dragons. The sky drifting above the sea was empty and pale blue. I longed to walk down to the beach, sit on the rocks and breathe gulps of salt air. I’d been inside the house for days, and I felt caged and cross. Picking out a novel with a tattered orange cover, I determined to escape for a couple of hours. I concealed the filched book at the bottom of my cleaning box and disappeared up to my room to collect a volume of the
Oxford English
before returning to the service corridor. I paused outside Mr. Wrexham’s open door. It was not yet eight o’clock, and he stood in his perfectly pressed tails, ironing Mr. Rivers’ newspaper. I entered in silence, peering around his elbow as I tried to read the headlines. I needed to find a way of obtaining the discarded papers; I’d been in Tyneford for nearly a fortnight and I was starved of news. Mrs. Ellsworth had a wireless in her parlour and allowed May and me to listen as a treat some evenings, but she only liked the light programs. The old papers were meticulously stored in the butler’s room, but I suspected that Mr. Wrexham would class borrowing discarded newspapers from his room as theft. He did not approve of females taking any interest in politics; newspapers were the preserve of men, while only gentlemen were permitted opinions upon their contents.

“Mr. Wrexham?”

He jumped, nearly dropping the iron.

“Elise! You almost made me scald Mr. Rivers’
Times.”

“I am most sorry, Mr. Wrexham.”

“No, it’s ‘I am
very
sorry.’ You must learn.”

“I am
very
sorry.”

He set the iron beside the stove in the corner. “Almost. It’s ‘v-very.’ Not a ‘w-wet Wellington.’ Ah. Good, I see you have the dictionary.”

“Yes, I have the headache, Mr. Wrexham. Please, I go and study English in fresh air?”

He scowled. “But your duties?”

“I have cleaned guest rooms. Fires are laid. With air I be better by lunchtime.”

He hesitated and then shrugged. “Very well. One hour. But this is not to become a habit, mind. You need to be strong in service, yes?”

I nodded and gave a smile, which I hoped appeared sincere. “Yes, I am strong girl.”

“Very well, then. Off you go.” He returned to ironing the newspaper.

I hesitated and then cleared my throat. “Mr. Wrexham? I can put newspaper in morning room. I know.
Times
placed on side plate, headlines facing Mr. Rivers.”

“Yes. All right. Don’t crease it,” he said, handing me the paper with reverence.

I scurried out of his room before he could change his mind, slowing down to a forbidden dawdle as soon as I left the servants’ corridor, so that I had time to read the headlines.

There was insufficient time for me to do anything but scan the first few lines, and I wanted to search inside for any snippets about Vienna. I ambled into the morning room and placed the paper on the side plate of the single place setting. Since my first night serving in the dining room, Mr. Rivers had had no other guest. He appeared to live in the house in quiet solitude, save for the staff. He went into the study in the mornings and then walked out each afternoon. The only regular caller was Mr. Jeffreys, the estate manager, a gentleman invariably clad in muddy breeches and accompanied by a wagging red setter. I wondered why we scrubbed and polished the half dozen guest rooms each day, when no guest ever stayed.

I lifted the front page of the paper, peeking for any scraps of news. I’d had no letter from Vienna since Margot’s, and I was desperate for word. The brass clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour and I scurried out, not wanting to be found riffling through the newspaper by Mr. Rivers. It was a habit my father detested. “A man’s newspaper is his own. It’s a thing of sanctity.”

I exited through the back door into the yard, but for once I did not pause to pet Mr. Bobbin, even when he thudded his nose against the stable door to draw my attention. I hurried along the footpath leading off the beech grove and headed toward the village. The hedgerows trickled with rain, and my shoes were instantly sodden from the dripping grass, but I did not care. For the first time at Tyneford, I was free, even if it was just for an hour. The track was slippery with liquid mud, gnats slapped into my face and white butterflies flitted among the honeysuckle, which smelled sickly sweet in the damp air. I emerged in front of a cluster of houses and a neat row of stone shops: a bakery, a butcher’s and a post office–cum–general store, with a scarlet-painted letterbox set into the wall outside. Behind the shops lay a small church, built out of the same grey limestone, and in the distance the low bank of the Purbeck hills. The ancient roof and chimneystacks of the great house peeked out from above the beech copse like the masts of a command ship among the fleet of cottages.

From behind a netted window, an old woman sewed and stared. I smiled and she almost waved, before sealing the gap in the curtain. Several women in floral dresses, cardigans and galoshes walked past me and filed into the shop, the door clattering and brass bell jangling. Peeping through the glass frontage, I saw piles of boxes heaped on top of one another containing flour, polish, sugar, soap flakes, combs, chocolate, suet, envelopes, toilet tissue, bottles of rum and lemon cordial, paperback books, razor blades and balls of wool. I had never seen a shop so tightly packed; it appeared to sell everything, so that the customers were forced to clamber carefully over the stacked goods. In my pocket I clasped a whole shilling (a reward for having helped Art scrub the interior of the Wolseley) and, with only a slight twinge of guilt, I entered the shop. Five minutes later I rushed out, my pockets stuffed with three bars of chocolate.

The village nestled at the foot of the valley, the ring of hills enclosing it on three sides, and in front the grey sea stretched away into the horizon. I turned away from the clutch of houses and walked along the unmade road toward the beach. The tinkle of cowbells was carried on the wind and filled the air with an eerie music. On the sloping hillside, two men in shirtsleeves selected pieces of flint from a large pile, stacking it into a curving wall to mark a new field boundary. A solitary rook perched on a gatepost, surveying their progress with lazy curiosity. As I walked farther along the track it became rougher, too narrow for cart or car. The roar of the sea grew louder and I started to run.

In ten minutes, the village lay behind me and I reached the edge of the curving bay. Just above the tide line lay a tumbledown hut, half concealed by bramble and blue sea grass, like a fisherman’s cottage in a story. It almost appeared to be growing out of the rock. An old man, his hair as white as dandelion feathers, sat on a lobster pot mending a piece of netting with a rusted knife. He looked strangely familiar, but I couldn’t think where I had seen him before. I smiled and he gave me a curt nod before returning to his net. I scrambled over the rocks leading down to the beach, holding my books under one arm and trying not to drop them in the dirt. It was growing warm, and sweat made my top lip itch. Several fishing boats lay propped upon the rocks beside a cobbled causeway out of the reach of the high tide. The painted bottoms were speckled with barnacles and stinking scraps of seaweed. Even from several yards away, I could smell the stench of fish.