Tyringham Park (47 page)

At the back of the house she passed the door that led to the nursery wing and it took all her strength of purpose not to open it and go straight up the three flights of stairs to confront
Charlotte who would already be there waiting, expecting to be saved, unaware of the sharpness of the axe that was about to fall, splitting her life apart, separating her from her daughter, and
serve her right the little tattle-tale and liar who had told Lily East that Dixon had hurt Victoria. As if she would have hurt a pretty little thing like that. Dixon had tripped, that’s all,
and accidentally dropped Victoria against the slats of the cot. It could happen to anyone. And as a result of Charlotte’s lie, Dixon had been cast out, deprived of Manus, the only love she
had ever wanted.

Let Charlotte wait and stew.

First, the former Miss Lily East had to be enlightened.

The rowan trees in front of Sid’s cottage had grown so thick she couldn’t see the building, but she remembered where it was and followed the path.

One thought persisted. If Miss East hadn’t taken it upon herself to get rid of her, she would have made Charlotte speak that time and, who knows, might have forced the truth out of her.
She estimated she was only two days away from starving her into submission. But the old witch had come along with her jealousy disguised as concern and, with her friend to back her up, had cast
Charlotte as the innocent victim rather than the child murderer that she was.

She saw a bent figure kneeling on the ground digging holes and separating seedlings. Moving closer, she stood to take in the scene and deliberately let her shadow fall across the woman and the
flowerbed.

What a comedown, she thought. Instead of the neat, spotless figure with her set of keys jingling with each brisk step she took along shining corridors as she inspected her domain and gave
orders, here was a dumpy old widow with clay on her hands, wearing shabby clothes and not a servant in sight to do her bidding.

Lily Cooper couldn’t turn her stiff neck to see who was casting the shadow behind her and struggled to get to her feet. Dixon took her arm and with a strong grip pulled her to a standing
position. The old woman looked up at her helper.

“Well, Lily East,” said Dixon. “I can’t think of you as Mrs Cooper, so I’ll stick to Lily East if you don’t mind.” She paused, pleased with her cool
delivery. “You may call me Elizabeth, my proper name. I’d be upset if you didn’t remember me. And what are you doing putting in flowers that you won’t be around to see
blooming?”

Recognition flared in Lily Cooper’s eyes. She stepped back, treading on the seedlings she had just planted and held on tightly to the picket fence behind her for support.

“There’s no need to back off like that. I’m not going to bite you.”

She held out her hand.

Lily kept clutching the fence and ignored the outstretched arm.

“Have it your own way, then. I think what you need right now is a nice cup of tea. Or perhaps something stronger after you hear what I’ve come twelve thousand miles to tell
you.”

Tyringham Park
1943

Charlotte’s shoes clattered on the wooden stairs. She could feel a heaviness bearing down on her head. Around the return and up the second flight she found it difficult
to lift her feet as more weight seemed to press on them. Her mind told her she was moving upwards but her perception was that she was sinking into a basement.

At the top of the third flight she stood on the landing and looked over the banister into the dark stairwell, hearing Nurse Dixon’s voice shouting: “Come away from there! It’s
dangerous. If you fall over and break your legs, don’t think you can come running to me to complain!” cackling each time at her tired joke as if she had just thought of it and was
saying it for the first time.

Charlotte was eight years old again, standing in trepidation outside the nursery door, wishing she didn’t have to enter. Wishing she could go back to the kitchen and stay there all day
with Cook. Or sleep on a bench in the tack room with a horse blanket over her for warmth, waiting for Manus to arrive in the morning. Or in the servants’ quarters with Miss East who always
looked at her with a kind face, but to whom she wasn’t allowed to speak as Nurse Dixon said she was a witch. Charlotte knew that she wasn’t as she didn’t have a lump on her nose
or a pointy hat or chin but she stayed away from her all the same to avoid Nurse Dixon’s wrath.

Looking back it seemed as if she had spent hours wishing she were anywhere else but here, on this landing, delaying for as long as possible having to face Nurse Dixon, but knowing in the end she
had no option as there was no one at the Park willing or in a position to take her part.

She turned the handle of the nursery door. It was a surprise to see the light coming through the windows dazzling her when she looked in, as in her memory the nursery was always dark. She had to
remind herself she was now an adult, tall and strong, and had nothing to fear, but the eight-year-old inside her was full of apprehension, waiting for a punishment that could fall on her at any
moment for no reason at all except to satisfy a whim of Nurse Dixon’s.

Victoria’s cot and her own bed were still in their original positions, unused for twenty-six years and covered in dust. There beside the window was the rocking chair that Dixon slept in
for most of the day while Charlotte was forced to keep quiet or, as she grew older, go off and amuse herself. Charlotte, who until recently had been able to block out all memories associated with
this place, could now see Victoria sitting in her small chair beside the low table, as clearly as if no time had passed.

With anguish borne of her new sensibility as a mother, she remembered the day Dixon’s indulgence towards Victoria changed to anger when Victoria refused to eat a portion of particularly
disgusting-looking steamed liver. It pained her to picture Dixon forcing open the child’s mouth and pushing in a spoonful. Victoria spat it on the floor and ran away laughing, thinking it was
all a game. “You won’t make a fool of me, young lady,” Dixon growled, seizing her and yanking her back to the table with an action strong enough to stretch a ligament in the
child’s shoulder. Victoria looked towards Charlotte, bewildered and frightened into silence by the pain of the rough handling. Closing her mouth and twisting her head from side to side was
futile after Dixon scraped up the liver and forced it back into Victoria’s mouth. Victoria spat it all out. Dixon slapped her and repeated the procedure. Victoria gagged. Dixon slapped her
again and screamed: “Open your mouth.” Victoria refused. Dixon used force to shove in three pieces. Victoria panicked and made choking noises and the three pieces flew out.
“Don’t think you’ll get the better of me,” growled Dixon, picking up the wet liver.

How powerless Charlotte had felt, and how well she knew without being told that none of this was to be mentioned to Teresa Kelly when she returned from the village where she had gone to pick up
a length of lace. Worst of all, though, was her shameful reaction, a quivering gladness that it was Victoria rather than herself who, for a change, was being attacked.

After Dixon failed to impose her will, she lifted Victoria high in the air and threw her from a distance into the cot, ignoring the loud crack the child’s head made against the side and,
not checking to see if the impact had done any damage, left the room. Charlotte, now flooded with genuine sympathy for Victoria who had blood pouring from a gash on her scalp, ignored one of
Dixon’s rules and climbed in beside her sister who turned and put the unhurt arm around her in a tight clasp, and quietened her hiccupping sobs. Charlotte pressed the red blanket against the
cut and cuddled Victoria until the little one stopped quivering and fell asleep. It was one of the sweetest memories of her life. After Dixon came back and found the two of them in each
other’s arms, it turned into one of the bitterest.

That episode which occurred a month before she disappeared marked the end of Victoria’s babyhood. Every day after that the two little girls held themselves suspended, listening for the
sound of Teresa Kelly’s footsteps, knowing that Dixon’s manner would change at the sound, after which time she would pretend to be as good-natured as Teresa herself. A reprieve would be
won for only as long as Teresa was present.

“I’m sorry, Victoria. I wish I’d known what to do,” said the adult Charlotte to the memory of her sister. “I did tell Mother but it got worse after that. She told
Dixon what I’d said and Dixon called me a sneak and a tattle-tale and said if I ever told anyone anything again, worms would grow inside me and they would eat my tongue and heart and grow so
big my tummy would explode all over the room and I would die, and I believed her and I never said another word about her.”

When Dixon told them Teresa Kelly was leaving for good because they had become too wicked for her to tolerate any longer, Charlotte could see only bleakness in the future. Worse for Victoria
than for herself, as Victoria would have seven more years to endure, whereas Charlotte would be escaping to boarding school in September, only three months away – or so she thought at the
time.

When Teresa came to say goodbye, she and Victoria clung to her, weeping, begging her not to go. Teresa joined in the tears. Dixon stood by, grim-faced, and later punished them for being so
undisciplined. At her orphanage no one was allowed to show any sadness when any of the girls left, either for adoption or employment, and she didn’t see any reason why that rule
shouldn’t be applied to this nursery.

The day she saw Teresa descend the nursery stairs for the last time before heading off to Australia, Charlotte remembered, was the day she completely lost hope.

Before Dixon arrived, there was something she must do.

She entered the room beside Dixon’s that had been permanently out of bounds for as long as she could remember. It was filled with hundreds of years of accumulated broken and discarded
items – toys, books, clothes, lamps, shoes – such small shoes – cribs, baby carriages, sporting gear for cricket, swimming, tennis, rugby, and football, burst and perished balls:
heaven for a bored child on a rainy day, but a place deemed dangerous by Dixon. The smell of damp was stronger than she remembered. All the objects to the right were covered by thick mould, the
cause of which was easy to see – a missing slate from the roof that had let in years of rain. It crossed her mind that she should tell someone about it before the whole room and the two rooms
below it were destroyed. She should but she wouldn’t.

She lifted up objects and stacked them to the side as she made her way to the back corner, which looked relatively dry. As a child, she was able to crawl under or over, but that wasn’t an
option now. No one had been there since then, she could tell by the uniformity of the thickness of the dust and the uninterrupted pattern of the widespread mildew.

Reaching under a small wicker chair, she pulled out an object wrapped in an embroidered cushion cover, cold to the touch, but not damp. She let the light from the hole in the roof shine on the
cover as she partially unwrapped it to reveal a doll’s red hair. Breathing deeply to control her nerves – she didn’t want to have another attack – she pushed the doll in its
cushion cover into the bottom of her bag, where she covered it with her cardigan, scarf and gloves. Halfway across the Irish Sea, on her way to London after she received the summons bound to come
from Colonel Turncastle, she would drop it over the side of the mail boat and never have to think of it again.

Closing the door of the storeroom behind her, she returned to the nursery to wait for Nurse Dixon’s arrival, expecting to stay only as long as it took to tell her how much she hated her.
What she really wanted to do was give her a hard slap on her face. Better still, eight hard slaps, one for every year Dixon had made her life a misery. But she wouldn’t do that, lowering
herself to Dixon’s level. She would control her outrage and keep her dignity.

Then over to the cottage to see Lily East at last. To apologise for not coming down to see her, to ask forgiveness for throwing the brooch at her, to thank her for saving her from Dixon, to beg
her to come and live with her in Dublin, where she would live in luxury with the family, being treated like royalty, until they all returned to Tyringham Park together.

After that, down to the stables to see Manus and tell him about Harcourt’s heroic end. Presumably her mother hadn’t bothered to write to tell him the details he would be so avid to
hear.

But first she had to endure this meeting with Dixon. She had nothing to fear, so why did she feel so afraid?

It wasn’t as if anyone had forced her to come. She had come of her own free will to face her old tormentor. After today she would never think of her again.

Lily sat slumped at the kitchen table as if winded. She had seen pure joy on Sid’s face when his first grandchild had been placed in his arms, on Sinéad
Quirke’s face the day she married Manus, hardly able to credit she had finally secured the man she had been in love with for years, and on Manus’s face when Charlotte completed her
first clear round on Mandrake, vindicating his method of training to Lady Blackshaw. Now she saw a look of joy in a distorted form on Dixon’s face as she headed off to ruin Charlotte’s
life.

Lily wanted to run after her to hold her back, but she couldn’t run and if she were able to catch up with her, Dixon would swat her off like a fly, the way she had done all those years ago
in the nursery before Dr Finn had to come to her rescue. If only Sid were here to stand by her and support her.

“Charlotte expects me to remove my curse,” Dixon had said before she left, “but she’ll find she’s going to cop a lot more than she bargained for, and leaving the
curse where it is will be the least of it, as you now know. No doubt she’ll come running back to you after I’ve finished with her, so that you can kiss her and make it all better. That
should test your motherly skills, kissing away murder and making it better.”