“Didn’t you go to him? Didn’t you tell him that you would look after him forevermore?”
She was silent, looking back into the past. “He hadn’t spoken. Nobody knew how it was, you see. There would have been opposition, I daresay. What could I do?”
“I would have gone to him. I would have done the speaking.”
She smiled at me indulgently. “A woman cannot do that.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because … she has to wait to be asked. He wouldn’t ask me, would he … when he was in that state? It couldn’t be. It was ordained.”
“By whom?”
“By God. By Fate. By Destiny … whatever you like to call it.”
“I wouldn’t have allowed it. I would have gone to him and told him I would marry him.”
“You have much to learn, Davina,” she said, and I retorted: “Then teach me.”
“There are some things,” she said, “which people have to learn through experience.”
I thought a good deal about Lilias and I sometimes wondered whether it was the idea of being married, of not having to be a governess, always wondering when she would be looking for another post in a strange household, that she had been in love with … rather than with the man.
I was growing very fond of her, and I knew she was of me and, during those weeks before my mother died, her fear of what the future held drew her close to me—and after my mother’s death we were more friendly than ever.
But I was growing up. I was facing facts and I knew that Lilias would not be in the house much longer.
Nanny Grant had left only a short time before. She had gone to live with a cousin in the country. Her departure had saddened me deeply. She had been my mother’s nurse and had stayed with her until her marriage and then she had come to this house and eventually nannied me. We had been very close in those early days. She was the one who had comforted me when I had my nightmares and fell and hurt myself. There would always be memories of those days. When the snow came she would take me out into the garden at the back between the mews and the house, patiently sitting on a seat while I made a snowman. I remembered her suddenly picking me up and crying: “That’ll do. Do you want to turn your old nanny into a snowman? Look at you now. Your eyes are dancing at the thought. Ye’re a wee villain, that’s what ye are.”
I remember those rainy days when we sat at the window waiting for it to clear up so that we could go out. We would sing together:
Rainy rainy rattle stanes
Dinna rain on me
Rain on John o‘ Groaties’ hoose
Far across the sea.
And now Nanny Grant had gone, leaving those wonderful memories—all part of a life over which a shutter was drawn on that tragic day I had gone into my mother’s room and found her dead.
”MOURNING FOR A DAUGHTER is a year,” announced Mrs. Kirkwell. “For us I reckon it should be from three to six months. Six for Mr. Kirkwell and me. Three months will be enough for the maids.”
How I hated my black clothes. Every time I put them on I was reminded of my mother lying dead in her bed.
Nothing was the same. Sometimes I had a feeling that we were waiting for something to happen, waiting to emerge from our mourning. Lilias, I knew, was waiting for the summons to my father’s presence to be told that as I was growing up her services would no longer be needed.
As for my father, he was away more than ever. I was glad of this. I dreaded meals with him. We were both too conscious of that empty chair.
Not that he had ever been communicative. He had always seemed encased in a demeanour of formality. My mother, though, had been able to break through it. I thought of how his lips twitched when he felt amusement which he tried hard to suppress. I guessed he had cared for her deeply, which was strange because she was so different from him. She would have thrust aside the conventions to which he adhered so strongly. I remembered his gently reproaching voice when she said something which he considered rather outrageous. “My dear … my dear …” I had heard him murmur, smiling in spite of himself. If it had been left to her, our household would have been a merry one.
Once my mother said: “Your father is a man of high principles, a good man. He tries so hard to live up to his high standards. Sometimes I think it is more comfortable to set them slightly lower, so that one does not have to disappoint oneself.”
I did not quite understand what she meant and when I asked her to explain she just laughed and said: “My mind’s wandering. It’s nothing …” Then she shrugged her shoulders and murmured: “Poor David.”
I wondered why she should be pitying my father. But she would say no more on the subject.
Some three weeks after my mother’s death my father’s sister, Aunt Roberta, came to stay with us. She had been ill at the time of the funeral and unable to attend, but at this time she had recovered her good health.
She was quite unlike my father. He was a reserved man who kept aloof from us. Not so Aunt Roberta. Her voice could be heard all over the house, high-pitched and authoritative. She surveyed us all with the utmost disapproval.
She was unmarried. Mrs. Kirkwell, who greatly resented her presence in the house, said she was not surprised that Miss Glentyre had not been able to find a man bold enough to take her on.
Aunt Roberta announced that she had come to us because my father, having lost his wife, would need a woman to supervise his household. As my mother had never supervised anything this was unacceptable from the start. Moreover it sent shivers of apprehension through the house, for it implied that Aunt Roberta intended to make her stay a permanent one.
From the moment she arrived she began to disrupt the household. Resentment was brewing, and it occurred to me that the servants might soon be looking for new places.
“It’s a good thing that Mr. Kirkwell is a patient man,” Mrs. Kirkwell told Lilias, who imparted the information to me. Lilias added: “I really think that, comfortable as they have all been here, this might be too much for them.”
How I wished she would go.
My father, fortunately, was less patient than Mr. Kirkwell. There was an acid conversation between them one evening at dinner.
The conversation was about me.
“You should remember, David, that you have a daughter,” began Roberta, helping herself from the dish of parsnips which Kitty was offering.
“It is something I am not likely to forget,” retorted my father.
“She is growing up … fast.”
“At the same rate, I have always thought, as others of her age.”
“She needs looking after.”
“She has a perfectly adequate governess. That, I believe, will suffice for a while.”
“Governess!” snorted Aunt Roberta. “What do they know about launching a girl?”
“Launching?” I cried in dismay.
“I was not talking to you, Davina.”
I felt angry that she should consider I was still at the stage of being seen but not heard, yet not too young for launching.
“You were talking about me,” I retorted sharply.
“Oh dear me. What is the world coming to?”
“Roberta,” said my father calmly. “You are welcome to stay here, but I cannot have you attempting to rule my household. It has always been efficiently managed, and I do not care to have it changed.”
“I cannot understand you, David,” said Aunt Roberta. “I think you forget …”
“It is you who forget that you are no longer the elder sister. I know that you are two years older than I, and that may have had some significance when you were eight and I was six. But at this stage I do not need you to look after my household.”