Tyringham Park (8 page)

Elizabeth Dixon. Not Eliza, or Betty, or Lizzie or Beth Dixon. Elizabeth Dixon. That would do nicely. No one else had bothered to give her a proper name, so, while she was giving herself one,
she might as well make it a royally impressive one.

By the time the train to Dublin pulled in an hour later, Elizabeth Dixon was still imagining returning to Tyringham Park, not in her present form as a disgraced nanny, but as something else
entirely. What exactly she didn’t know yet, but it would be something worthy of her new name. Something to make Manus and Lily East sit up and take notice, and something to send shivers down
the spine of that rich brat Charlotte who by then would be older and wouldn’t have Lily East’s authority and protection to hide behind.

London
1917

Arriving in London, Edwina left her maid and luggage at the Officers’ Quarters while she met her husband for an allotted ten minutes before he had to dash back to the War
Office.

Her chair was too low. Glad of the space between her husband and herself, she concentrated on the brass buttons and medals on his uniform to avoid looking directly at his face.

“Too bad you had to make the trip over, old thing. No way could I be spared. You know that. You received my letter?” Waldron put his pipe on the ashtray and looked at it while he was
talking. He made vague circular hand movements.

“Yes. I realised before I received it that you couldn’t leave the Office.”

“Quite. Well, what brings you here? Has something new come up?” He picked up a pen, checked the ink, and started doodling.

“Nothing, unfortunately.” Edwina managed to control the urge to reach over and knock the pen from his hand. “I need your help.”

“My help?” He almost looked at her but raised his eyes only as far as her neck. “I didn’t think there was anything I could do from a distance. Otherwise I would have done
it, of course.”

Edwina’s face tightened with the effort of holding back a sarcastic rejoinder. To give herself time to collect herself, she took off her coat and turned to drape it on the back of her
chair, all the while telling herself she mustn’t fall at the first fence.

“I’m sure you would,” she said finally, settling back. She waited.

He was concentrating on making short, repetitive movements with his pen and was unaware of her, so she continued to wait.

“Oh, sorry,” he said at last. “Where were we?” He stilled his hands. “You wanted my help. What specifically can I do?”

“I want you to find Teresa Kelly for me.”

“Can’t say I can put a face to the name. Who is she?”

“One of the servants. A girl from the village . . .”

“You know we never employ local people. Those Papists are likely to shoot one in one’s bed with the least hint of an uprising. I thought I told you –”

“I know you did, but you can’t blame me. If you must blame someone, make it Miss East. She installed Teresa Kelly when I was in Dublin giving birth to Victoria, and I wasn’t
informed.”

“Oh, dear.” Waldron poised his pen and adopted an unblinking attentive expression to avoid having to comment on that piece of information. The effort made his eyes smart. “Why
do you want to find this particular servant?”

“I think she stole Victoria.”

He made a sound as if to speak, but she talked over him.

“As a matter of fact I’m sure she did. I’ve no evidence but I just know. Call it a mother’s instinct.”

Waldron made a sound like a snort that turned into a cough. He tapped his chest and took up his pipe for a puff. The coughing stopped. “Works every time,” he said as he wiped his
mouth.

Earlier, Edwina had noticed the pipe falling sideways, allowing a revolting brown slime to trickle from the mouthpiece. Now that she’d seen him take a mouthful of it, she was glad she
hadn’t warned him about it.

“What do the police think?” Waldron pulled a face, drank from the glass beside him and made some throat-clearing noises.

“They think Victoria fell into the river and was washed out to sea. They discounted my theory as a mother’s wishful thinking.” Her voice had a flat quality to it. “But no
one knows anything for sure. No one saw anything and nothing was –”

“Quite. I get your point. Why then do you suspect the servant you mentioned?” His hand had found the pen again. He was making such tiny strokes he must have thought he wouldn’t
be noticed.

“Te-re-sa Ke-lly,” she said, drawing out the syllables of the name as if she were talking to someone with limited understanding, “was seen leaving on the same afternoon
Victoria disappeared. That’s enough in itself to point to her.”

“Could be pure coincidence.”

“Too much of a coincidence. What are the chances of those two things happening together?”

“That’s what a coincidence is.” His pen looked as if it was making flourishes.

Edwina took two deep breaths and continued with what she’d rehearsed on the way over: Teresa was forty, had given up hope of having children of her own, was besotted with Victoria and had
begun indoor employment at the Park at the same time Victoria was born.

“Another coincidence?” He was colouring with a red pencil, licking the point after each stroke, and making sure he stayed inside the lines. “What does Miss East think? Sound
woman. She always knows what’s what.”

“No point in asking her. She’s completely one-eyed. Blames Dixon for everything and thought the sun shone out of Teresa Kelly. Of course they had a lot in common, both old maids who
played cards and hankered after children.”

“Wouldn’t dismiss her opinion out of hand. A rock of sense, that woman.” He was now stretching his arm to reach the top right-hand corner of his drawing while trying not to
lean over.

“You always favoured –”

“Come in,” he ordered, reacting to a tap on the door.

Edwina started – she was fully occupied with her thoughts and hadn’t heard the knock. Waldron sat up straight, patted the long strands of hair across his bald patch to make sure they
were in position, smoothed his handlebar moustache, and draped one arm over the back of his chair.

A young soldier entered, saluted, handed Waldron an envelope, saluted, turned, looked intently at Edwina for a second and left the room without speaking.

“Nice-looking boy,” said Edwina absent-mindedly. “He looks about fourteen.”

“He does, doesn’t he? Thatcher. Name, not trade. Talented chap. Lucky to have him. Asthmatic – not eligible for active service. More man than boy, actually. He’s
twenty-five.” Waldron made a surreptitious move to choose a green pencil and lick it. “Allergic to horses, unfortunately. Imagine never being able to ride.”

“Why are we wasting our time talking about him?” she asked.

Waldron bridled. “Just making conversation. You brought it up.” He was stabbing the paper with the pencil. “So what is it you think I can do that you haven’t already
done?”

“I want you to use your contacts in the army and fisheries and Civil Service –” Waldron’s chest expanded and the medals rose two inches.

“– to force them to show you shipping and ferry records. I want you to find out if a middle-aged woman and a young child left Irish shores on the 7th of July or thereabouts. If they
went over to the mainland or wherever else.”

“That’s quite a list.”

“I’m sure a man as powerful and influential as you will have no trouble dealing with it.”

Waldron was pleased with the compliment. “I’ll certainly pull out all the stops. Everything else over there still the same?”

“More or less. We’re quiet enough but there have been rumblings since that uprising in Dublin last year. Did you hear much about that over here?”

For the first time since they’d sat down he looked straight at her and smiled. “Hear much about it, did you say? Hear much about it?” He turned to an imaginary audience, both
arms raised as if acknowledging applause, then back to her, pausing for greater impact. “The papers were full of it for weeks, but my name wasn’t mentioned which was jolly annoying as I
had a pivotal part to play.” He paused again to make sure she was listening. “I was one of the advisors who recommended the ringleaders be shot.”

Edwina sat stony-faced and was not applauding.

He leaned back in his chair. “I haven’t given my life to the service of the Empire for nothing. Troublemakers like that have to be shown who’s boss early on in the piece. And
they were shown. In no uncertain terms.” He emphasised his words with three sharp stabs of his pencil, breaking the lead. “A lesson to the rest. Never fails.”

Edwina stood up, dropping her handbag on the floor. “Does anyone in Ireland know you were involved?”

“Can’t say, actually.” Waldron stood, straightened his jacket and came round to the other side of the desk to pick up the handbag and help her with her coat. “But
don’t see why not. Never made any secret of it. Proud of it, in fact.”

She moved away from him on the pretext of looking at the large piece of paper on his desktop and was surprised to see on it, not doodles, but a fully realised drawing of a battle scene featuring
horses with stylised twirls for manes and tails, soldiers on horseback complete with helmets, chin-straps, red coats, black boots and spurs, canons and mountains in the distance, and a tangle of
bodies on the ground.

“What’s this?”

“The Crimean War. My favourite subject.”

“May I have it?”

“Of course. Always giving them away.” He smiled as he signed it on the bottom right-hand corner. “Getting quite a name for myself.” He rolled up the sheet and gave it to
her. “About your Teresa Whatshername. I’ll set the wheels in motion straight away even though I’m up to my eyes. Pity you didn’t tell me earlier.” He opened the door
for her.

Thatcher, standing to attention outside the door, saluted.

“Thatcher will see you back to my quarters, old thing,” said Waldron.

As he escorted them out, Edwina half-turned her head to say something to her husband but stopped when she saw a look pass between him and the young soldier. Could she be mistaken, or had she
seen Waldron actually wink at him?

Edwina suspected that Waldron made no effort to trace Teresa Kelly. She could picture him, whiskey in hand, one elbow anchored on a mantelpiece in the mess, holding forth to
his subordinates about the insignificant concerns that filled the pretty little heads of women, and wasn’t it fortunate that men ruled the world, ensuring that wars would be properly
fought?

But the visit had not been a complete failure. Edwina had managed to steel herself sufficiently to be able to fulfil her wifely obligations twice.

As her maid helped her settle herself in a railway carriage for the first part of their trip back to Cork, she felt a heaviness lift from her mind, knowing that from this time on she would
never, ever have to submit to Waldron’s marital ministrations again. That part of her life with him was over. To celebrate she tore up his drawing of the Crimean War and flung the small
pieces out the window.

After the month with him, seeing him brought home drunk at least four nights a week between two slightly less inebriated young soldiers, one of whom was always young Thatcher, she asked herself,
not for the first time, what had possessed her to marry him in the first place.

She presumed it was a commonly held belief that she had married her husband for his title, money and status, but it wasn’t true. She had married him in good faith. It was he who had acted
in bad faith – two months after the wedding, deserting her for India. Edwina had presumed he would take her to that country with him, or accept a local posting or retire from the army
altogether after his marriage, but he said he didn’t know where she’d got that idea from. He’d always intended to go back. It was a pity it was no place for a woman who was not
used to a hot climate, but that’s where his life’s work was, not on the estate, and certainly not in a local regiment that would bore him with its provincial outlook.

Contrary to her expectations, her lot turned out to be a life of solitude, with only servants for company, witnessing the rituals of a large country estate dying out through lack of attention
from the absentee landlord.

What would it have been like if she’d married Dirk? She often tormented herself with the question and re-ran the old scenes to look for clues. As the years passed the answer became
clearer.

At the age of nineteen Edwina had suspected that she was different from other girls. Her public failure to snare a husband three years in a row when all her set had secured one
with ease confirmed her suspicion.

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t admired. On the contrary, many suitors were drawn to her beauty and social standing, but every approach filled her with anxiety, knowing that each new
admirer would soon sense the emptiness and joylessness that had been her companions for as long as she could remember, and turn away to seek a more congenial partner.

For her part, if she found herself initially attracted to one of the young men her own age, the feeling didn’t last. She soon found fault with his accent, tone of voice, hair line,
gestures, hands, clothes, shape of ears, nose, chin, back of the head, length of neck, posture, height, teeth, laugh, skin, conversation or demeanour, and sometimes all of them if she gave herself
time to list them, and he, sensing the depth of her disapproval, would turn away.

When Edwina returned home from her third unsuccessful London season her father Algernon was in an unusually buoyant mood, and didn’t even comment that he now had two
daughters who had passed unsold through the market despite the generous dowry he had settled on them.

“Come and see this,” he said to his wife and daughter before they had time to divest themselves of their hats and coats.

He led them to the schoolroom, which had been turned into a studio during their absence. Two large portraits, one of Edwina’s older sister Verity, and one of her father, mesmerised them as
soon as they came through the door. Neither woman had time to say she knew nothing about art, to excuse herself in advance if she said the wrong thing, before the power of the images silenced them
both.