Tyringham Park (20 page)

By the time Beatrice popped her head around the door Edwina had decided to take the safest way out and say she couldn’t remember anything about the day of the accident. This was partly
true – she had no recollection of the impact, though everything leading up to it was all too clear. Beatrice had a talent for eliciting information, remembering what one had said previously
and applying laws of logic, so it was easy to trip up oneself when talking to her. A convenient memory lapse was the surest way to outsmart her.

After Beatrice, wanting details “for Charlotte’s sake”, left with no information, and while the nurse attended to her, Edwina remembered clearly how, on the
day of the hunt, she had used a special crop with metal spiky tacks she’d pressed in through the soft leather ends. It would give Sandstorm a nice jolt if he became too complacent. But when
she, Charlotte and the loose grey were heading for the same space and of the three only Mandrake could be controlled, she gave him an unambiguous crack with the crop, assuming it would give him an
extra boost and he would jump safely ahead of the other two. Instead he propped, then half reared, and that was when Sandstorm crossed in front and clipped the two front legs with his back legs.
Only she knew what had happened. Charlotte would have no idea why Mandrake had acted in such an uncharacteristic manner, and no doubt she was blaming herself for not being able to obey her
mother’s commands to get back. No one would think to look for the riding crop in all that sleet in the darkness and, with luck, it had landed in the hawthorn bushes, hidden from view, and
would gradually rot away.

Charlotte’s uniform was ready and her trunk packed in readiness for the hour’s drive to Vetchworth Preparatory School near the Dublin Mountains, where the
headmistress and matron were eager to take in the notorious child to redeem her and, more interestingly, find out what had happened to cause her expulsion from the exclusive school in England.

Charlotte wouldn’t put on her uniform, and alternated between floppiness and rigidity while two servants tired themselves out dressing her. She refused to walk to the car. A male servant
carried her in a fireman’s lift, and when he placed her on the back seat, she slid to the floor and he couldn’t lift her up again as her bulk filled the space and he couldn’t find
any room for leverage.

Confident that she would behave properly in front of strangers, Waldron accompanied her optimistically to the school, but she made no attempt to move from her prone position. He was forced to
walk alone to greet the two women, shake their hands and explain that his daughter was unwell, in fact had fainted, so that it might be better to take her home for the time being. He was sorry to
inconvenience them, but he would be in touch. The women exchanged looks of disappointment as he left.

After an hour’s silence on the return journey Waldron said, “We’ll say nothing of this to your mother. She has enough on her plate. I have decided to hire a private tutor
instead, and as it so happens I know just the man for the job.”

Waldron was pleased with this decision that seemed to come out of nowhere and reminded himself that retreat was a legitimate form of attack.

Waldron contacted ‘the man for the job’ as soon as they returned home, where Charlotte immediately recovered the use of her legs and ran into the house and up the stairs before
anyone could speak to her. He didn’t want to face Edwina with the failed school-entrance attempt unless he had an alternative in place, an option that he favoured all along, he would say, on
account of Charlotte’s inability to get along with other children.

Waldron’s desperation to hire someone who would stay, and lack of interest in what happened after that, along with the knowledge that the atmosphere in the house would hardly tempt anyone
to commit themselves, prompted him to make a princely offer to Cormac Delaney, a young Galway soldier from his regiment who had attracted his attention by admiring his military drawings and who had
voiced a desire to become a professional painter after his army career had come to an end with the loss of part of his left hand.

While Charlotte was in her room stuffing her school uniform under the bed, Waldron wrote to Cormac, offering generous terms for five hours of tuition five days a week for six years. The young
man was to regard the townhouse as his home where he would be free to come and go as he pleased outside school hours. Furthermore, he could choose an empty room for his exclusive use as a studio to
pursue his interest in the fine arts and an account would be opened for him in Wilkinsons, supplying him with as many canvases and paints as he required.

The girl’s intractable, he reasoned as he wrote, so the terms have to be tempting.

Cormac Delaney wrote back by return post to say he accepted the offer.

Holly was pleased to be asked to supervise Charlotte together with Harcourt from two o’clock in the afternoon, the end of lessons, until bedtime. She thought it would be good for the
sister and brother to get to know each other better and, in her kind-hearted way, wanted to make up to the lonely girl for the misfortunes she had suffered in her life so far. Until Lord Waldron
asked her, Holly assumed and feared that Aunt Verity Blackshaw would be chosen for the task.

When Cormac arrived, full of enthusiasm, he saw a fat little melancholiac tearing up her exercise books and flicking the paper onto the floor. Charlotte looked up at him with
dull eyes when he spoke to her.

I’ll have my work cut out, he thought.

Only after he was installed did Waldron tell him about Charlotte’s expulsion from the English boarding school and her refusal at Vetchworth.

“On the positive side, she draws well. Takes after me in that respect. Thought that might interest you. That’s all I can think of. Ask Nanny Holly if you want to know anything else.
Can’t bother Lady Blackshaw about such things at the moment.” Waldron seemed to be glowing inwardly. “Good man. Good man. I knew I could count on you. I can now make arrangements
to return to my regiment, or what’s left of it.”

“Do what you like,” was Edwina’s reaction when Waldron, uncharacteristically effusive in his praise of the tutor he had hired, told her what he had
decided.

“He speaks French like a native,” said Waldron. “That’s enough to recommend him apart from anything else. Mutilated left hand put paid to professional army life. Lucky he
has something to fall back on, and I don’t mean tutoring. He’s an artist in his spare time.”

“
Artist
?”

“Didn’t I mention that? He liked my drawings. That’s how I got to notice him.”

A nurse came in to turn Edwina on to her left side. Waldron went out into the grounds to have a puff on his pipe.

What’s all this about artists, and Blackshaws bringing them in to live with them? And hands? Either there was an irrepressible artistic strain running through both branches of the
Blackshaw family that emerged every now and then and should be taken seriously, or else Edwina was going mad and past memories were coming back to torment her.

That night in her dreams, visions of disembodied hands and faceless artists painting ugly sitters were so unsettling that for once she was relieved to be woken by the nurses’ chatter at
the change of shifts.

Charlotte woke and looked across to see if Victoria was still asleep in her cot. Around the edges of the drawn curtains, only small strips of light entered the dark room. There
was no cot. She sat up and stared at the wall opposite.

No Victoria, no cot. She wanted to call out to Miss East in the next room. She wanted Miss East to rush in, wrap her in her arms and comfort her.

She wanted to be back at Tyringham Park with Victoria asleep in her cot, Miss East next door and Mandrake down at the stables. She wanted Nurse Dixon to take back her curse.

The energetic maid Queenie came in, bringing Charlotte back to the present moment. She said it was time to get up for her first day of lessons with the nice Mr Delaney, and wasn’t she
looking forward to it?

“No,” said Charlotte.

“Are you poorly?”

“No.”

“Well, up you get, then. Rise and shine.”

“No.”

The maid hesitated for a minute, and left the room.

The sound of the word ‘lesson’ was enough to plunge Charlotte into a state of agitation. The one term she had spent in boarding school exposed her to ridicule, as it was evident she
was the only one in the class who couldn’t read or write. Declensions, fractions, long division, essays, clauses, punctuation and spelling were all incomprehensible to her. She had felt
bewildered and frustrated on a daily basis.

She would stay in bed.

After Cormac heard part of Charlotte’s story from Holly, he thought the best plan for Charlotte’s education would be to start from scratch. To treat her as a five
rather than a ten-year-old.

From Waldron he gathered if Charlotte learned to read and write, add and subtract, speak a bit of French and do some watercolour landscapes, he would be more than happy. Latin and Greek would be
wasted on her, being a girl. In fact, if Cormac wanted to play tiddlywinks for most of the day no one would chastise him.

On his first day he arrived at the classroom to be met by Queenie the maid who informed him Charlotte was still in bed and refused to get up even though she wasn’t poorly.

Cormac had been expecting some kind of resistance from his young charge. “If the pupil won’t come to the teacher, then the teacher will have to go to the pupil, so he will. Lead me
to her.”

Queenie hesitated. “I don’t know if that be allowed,” she said. “I’ll have to ask Miss Blackshaw.”

“Don’t you worry. I have to follow Lord Waldron’s instructions. I’m here to teach, so I am, and I have to teach someone, or else I’m here under false pretences. You
see my dilemma. So please show me the way and announce my arrival so I don’t put the heart across the poor child.”

Cormac’s second time to see Charlotte disheartened him even more than the first. She lay curled in a ball as if all life had been sucked out of her.

His only option, he decided, was to tell stories. He would be fulfilling his side of the bargain by doing something, and she could continue to lie there passively with her eyes closed until she
chose to show some interest. He could threaten to wait in the classroom until she was ready to be taught, but what if she took him at his word and never came up, where would he be then? If he
didn’t give her an order she couldn’t disobey him. He badly needed the board and the materials included in his contract until he made a name for himself in the art world and could
support himself. Starving in a freezing garret in Paris wouldn’t enhance his work in any way – he had already proved that. Besides, he wanted to do his best for the unhappy child and he
didn’t want to force her into a situation where she would not be able to extricate herself without losing face and he was aware he couldn’t afford to lose face himself if he was to earn
her respect.

Stories were one thing he knew in abundance.

Taking the chance that ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Cinderella’ would not be considered babyish by her, he related them first, acting all the parts in an exaggerated
fashion. For the first hour when Charlotte looked away he ran around the bed to intercept her gaze and when she turned over, he retraced his steps. When she looked up he loomed over her (that
suited the part of the wolf) and when she looked down he knelt on the floor (coinciding nicely with Prince Charming fitting the glass slipper on Cinderella). By the time he began to describe the
vain stepmother, jealous of Snow White’s beauty and bearing a poisoned apple to kill her off, Charlotte stopped trying to pretend she wasn’t interested.

“Snow White, even though forbidden to, opened the front door . . .”

Cormac flung open the bedroom door to find Aunt Verity Blackshaw with a glass to her ear, frozen in the leaning-over posture of an eavesdropper. He took the glass from her hand and held it
up.

“. . . to find the wicked stepmother in her disguise of an old woman offering Snow White the sweetest apple in all the kingdom and urging her to eat it. Now I’m afraid it’s
time for lunch.” He had spotted Queenie coming along the corridor with a tray for Charlotte. “Would you like to join us later, Miss Blackshaw, to hear what happened to Snow
White?”

“Thank you, Mr Delaney, but I’m afraid I have my own duties to attend to. I don’t have the luxury of sitting around all day frittering away my time, listening to
make-believe.” Her colour was still high after being caught in a compromising position. “Not my idea of an education. But then nobody ever consults me.”

When Cormac returned after lunch he deliberately left the story of ‘Snow White’ unfinished, and launched straight into the story of ‘Hansel and Gretel’, describing in
detail the various types of confectionery that decorated the walls of the gingerbread house, assuming from the size of Charlotte that food would be one of her main concerns. She still hadn’t
spoken a word to him, though he could tell by the way she was reacting to each dramatic scene that she was captivated by the old tales she was hearing for the first time. He didn’t ask her
any questions, as he didn’t want her to get the upper hand by refusing to answer.

“The children of Lir were changed into swans by their jealous stepmother.”

What’s going on here, Cormac wondered? He had just switched over to Celtic legends and there was that wicked stepmother character popping up again. This stepmother, Aoife, had the grace to
feel enough remorse to limit the spell to nine hundred years – not much of a consolation for poor Fionnuala, Aed, Conor and Fiachra, who had to stay on water and were separated from their
father and the land they loved, and when they were transformed back to themselves after nine hundred years weren’t children any more, but very old people ready to die. “Not very fair,
was it?”

Cormac was reading Charlotte’s expressions despite her best attempts to disguise them.

As a change from all the gloom brought about by stepmothers, he introduced Setanta, the seven-year-old sportsman and warrior who could take on a hundred and fifty opponents at one time and
vanquish them unaided. Charlotte’s eyebrows said, “Who are you trying to fool?” but she seemed to revel in the descriptions of Setanta’s battle frenzies and the amount of
killing that resulted from them. His exploits, both as a boy and then as the renamed Cúchulainn, the hound of Ulster, took them up to two o’clock.