I loved Polly dearly. She was my ally, mine entirely; she and I stood together against Lady Harriet and the world.
We occupied the top rooms of the rectory. My room was next to hers; it had been from the day she had come and we never wanted to change it. It gave me a nice cosy feeling to have her so close. There was one other room on the attic floor. Here Polly would build up a nice cosy fire and in the winter we would make toast and bake chestnuts. I would stare into the flames while Polly told me stories from London life. I could see the market stalls and Eff and Him, and the little place where Polly had lived with her sailor husband. I saw Polly waiting for him to come home on leave with his baggy trousers and little white hat with H.M.S. Triumphant on it and his white bundle on his shoulder. Her voice would quaver a little when she told me of how he had gone down with his ship.
"Nothing left," she said. "No little 'un to remind me of him." I pointed out to her that if she had had a little 'un she wouldn't have wanted me, so I was glad.
There would be tears in her eyes which made her say briskly: "Here. Look at me. You trying to make me soft in me old age?"
But she hugged me just the same.
From our windows we looked down on the churchyard ... tottery old gravestones, some of them, under which lay those who had long since died. I used to read the inscriptions and wondered what the people who lay there were like. Some of the writing on the stones was almost obliterated, so old were they.
Our rooms were big and wide with windows on either side. Opposite the graveyard, we looked on the village green with its pond and the seats where the old men liked to congregate, sometimes talking, sometimes sitting in silence staring at the water before they shuffled off into the inn to drink a pint of ale. "Death on one side," I pointed out to Polly, "and life on the other."
"You're a funny bit of baggage are you," Polly would often reply, for any fanciful remark produced that comment.
Our household consisted of my father, myself, my governess Miss York, Polly, Mrs. Janson the cook-housekeeper, and Daisy and Holly, two lively sisters who shared the housework. I learned later that the governess was there because my mother had brought a little money into the family which had been set aside for my education and I was to have the best possible, no matter what hardship had to be endured to attain this.
I loved my father but he was not as important in my life as Polly was. When I saw him walking across the graveyard from the church to the rectory in his white surplice, prayerbook in hand, fine white hair made untidy by the wind, I felt a great desire to protect him. He seemed so vulnerable, unable to take care of himself, so it was odd to think of him as the guardian of his spiritual flock—particularly when it contained Lady Harriet. He had to be reminded of mealtimes, of when to put on clean clothes, and his spectacles were constantly being lost and found in unexpected places. He would come into a room for something and forget what it was. He was eloquent in the pulpit, but I was sure the villagers at least did not understand his allusions to the classics and the ancient Greeks.
"He'd forget his head if it wasn't fixed on his shoulders," was Polly's comment in the half-affectionate, half-contemptuous tone I knew so well. But she was fond of him and would have defended him with all the rhetoric of her colourful language—sometimes quite different from ours—if the need arose.
It was when I was two years old that I had the adventure of which I could remember so little. I had had the story by hearsay, yet it made me feel I had some connection with the Big House. If Polly had been with me at the time, it would never have happened; and I believe it was due to this that my father realized I must have a nurse who could be trusted.
What happened is an indication of the nature of Fabian Framling and his mother's obsession with him.
Fabian would have been about seven at the time. Lavinia was four years younger and I had been born a year after she was. I had heard details of the story because of the friendship between our servants and those of Framling.
Mrs. Janson, our cook-housekeeper, who worked so well for us and instilled discipline into the house and kept us all in some order, told me the story.
"It was the strangest thing I ever heard," she said. "It was young Master Fabian. His lordship leads them all a fine dance up at the House ... always has done. Lady Harriet thinks the sun, moon and stars shine out of his eyes. She won't have him crossed. A little Caesar, that's what he is. He'll have his own way or there'll be ructions. Heaven knows what he'll be like when he's a bit older. Well, his little majesty is tired of playing the old games. He wants something new, so he thinks he'll be a father. If he wants it ... it's going to be. They tell me up there that he expects everything he wants to be his. And that's no good for anyone, mark my words, Miss Drusilla."
I looked suitably impressed, for I was eager for her to get on with the story.
"You were put in the rectory garden. You could toddle round and that was what you liked to do. They shouldn't have left you. It was that May Higgs, flighty piece, she was. Mind you, she loved little ones ... but she was courting that Jim Fellings at the time ... and he came along. Well, there she is giggling with him ... and didn't see what was happening. Master Fabian was determined to be a father and a father had to have a child. He saw you and thought you would do. So he picked you up and took you to the House. You were his baby and he was going to be your father."
Mrs. Janson put her hands on her hips and looked at me. I laughed. It seemed very funny to me and I liked it. "Go on, Mrs. Janson. What happened then?"
"My goodness, there was a fine how-do-you-do when they found you'd disappeared. They couldn't think where you'd got to. Then Lady Harriet sent for your father. Poor man, he was in a rare flummox. He took May Higgs with him. She was in tears, blaming herself, which was only right that she should do. Do you know, I think that was the start of the rift between her and Jim Fellings. She blamed him. And you know she married Charlie Clay the next year."
"Tell me about when my father went to the House to fetch me."
"Well, talk about a storm! This was one of them tornados. Master Fabian raged and he fumed. He wouldn't give you up.
You were his baby. He had found you. He was going to be your father. You could have knocked us all down with feathers when the rector came back without you. I said to him, 'Where's the baby?' and he said, 'She's staying at the Big House, only for a day or so.' I said, shocked-like, 'She's only a baby.' 'Lady Harriet has assured me that she will be well looked after. Miss Lavinia's nurse will take care of her. She will come to no harm. Fabian flew into such a rage when he thought he was going to lose her that Lady Harriet thought he would do himself some harm.' 'You mark my words,' I said, 'that boy—Lady Harriet's son though he may be—will come to a bad end.' I didn't care if it got back to Lady Harriet. I had to say it."
"And so for two weeks I lived in the Big House."
"You surely did. They said it was real comical to see Master Fabian looking after you. He used to wheel you round the gardens in the push chair which had been Miss Lavinia's. He used to feed you and dress you. They said it was really funny to see him. He's always been such a one for rough games ... and there he was playing the mother. He would have overfed you if it hadn't been for Nancy Cuffley. She put her foot down, took a firm hand for once and he listened. He must have been really fond of you. Goodness knows how long it would have gone on if Lady Milbanke hadn't come to stay with her young Ralph who was a year older than Master Fabian. He laughed at him and told him it was like playing with dolls. It didn't make any difference that this was a live one. It was a girl's game. Nancy Cuffley said Master Fabian was really upset about it. He didn't want you to go away ... but I suppose he thought it was a slur on his manhood to look after a baby."