Dedication

For my granddaughter, Hope Thomas, who brings sunshine to the cloudiest day.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Joe Maron, who inspired this book by telling me about ornamental hermits.

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ONE

When Florie Wilks arrived at Mullings to work as a kitchen maid, she saw herself stepping not only into a world of grandeur, but one poised thrillingly on the ledge between reality and the sort of transporting fiction she loved.

She couldn’t count the number of such books she’d devoured at the risk of being told by her furious father that the next time she wasted a tallow candle staying up half the night reading he’d send her to live with nasty Aunt Aggie.

Carrying her small bundle of possessions on arrival day, she passed through the iron gates and was waved on by the lodge keeper towards the servants’ entrance. Alas for her wide-eyed dreams, she was soon to discover that bricks and mortar, coupled with extensive acreage, do not always make for a world abounding in heroes and heroines.

With its velvet lawns, formal gardens, expansive woodlands, serenading waterfalls and productive home farm, Mullings was the acknowledged great house of Dovecote Hatch. Nonetheless, it had long been the conviction of the neighbouring gentry that the Stodmarsh family, which had inhabited the estate from one generation to the next since its beginnings, must be counted hereditarily a sadly dull lot. In the broad scheme of things, this view had validity. England had long flourished or floundered without members of the Stodmarsh family being accorded honors for valor or hanged for villainy.

Within an hour of her arrival, Florie was to discover that throughout the generations not one riotous scandal or harrowing melodrama had occurred within the boundaries of Mullings to wend its way into local, let alone national, lore. She was promptly informed by the housekeeper that there were no tales to be told of unfaithful wives tossed off the roof, no insane persons locked in turrets, no duels fought with either swords or pistols in the murky first light of dawn, no daughters gambled away into wedlock with debauched old men by their profligate fathers’ reverses at the gaming

table. A pity the same could not be said of other leading families who she wouldn’t name!

In the view of those who gladly boasted of their rollicking forebears’

escapades, the Stodmarshes’ failure to live life to the hilt would have been their affair, had their mopish propriety not cast a pall over any social event in which they participated. The men did not foxhunt, revere their tailors or know a damn thing about poker. They handled the running of their properties themselves without the aid of an estate manager, and even when young their conversation was jeeringly found to be middle-aged, running the gamut from farming to the need to repair the church roof. As for the Stodmarsh females, it was a source of much drawing room tittering and chortling that they were either petulant pansies or dismal dahlias not worth being plucked.

Had Florie heard these comments, she would have thought them very unkind (even though she would have been disappointed that the Stodmarsh women were not considered as beauties scattering male conquests like silk scarves in their wake). Just the sort of thing nasty Aunt Aggie would say in different words: ‘All of a bunch, squint-eyed or saggy-bottomed, take your pick.’

There was one meagre mercy. The critics – chief of whom were the Blakes of The Manor in Large Middlington, the Stafford-Reids of Hidden Meadows in Small Middlington, and the Palfretts of Chimneys in Kingsbury Knox – could not accuse the Stodmarshes of viewing themselves as scholarly. An announced familiarity with Virgil, an impassioned interest in the history of the Belgian Congo, or even – God forbid – the ability to haltingly list all the kings and queens of England from Ethelred the Unready to present times would only have served to shove them higher up the ladder of the most crushing bores the glory of Britain had ever produced. Leave the pontificating to politicians and parsons! The Blakes in particular believed the increasing association of brains with success in trade made displaying more than a modicum of intelligence smack of a coarseness verging on blatant vulgarity.

Florie would have been surprised to discover this attitude. She had been brought up to believe that her betters, whilst knowing how to frolic with style, were far cleverer than any ordinary person could ever hope to be.

Else, why would God have put them in charge of things?

The Blakes, Stafford-Reids and Palfretts acknowledged this superiority as a fact, not a view, but that didn’t mean one had to go around pondering the universe all day. What thought must necessarily be expended by a gentleman beyond crushing the bloody impudence of the lower classes, and instilling in their sons the virtue of doggedly sowing their wild oats before ardently beseeching the hand in marriage of a woman of beauty, breeding and fortune? The desire for one’s girls to make spectacular, or at the very least creditable marriages, perhaps burned more fiercely in the maternal than the paternal bosom.

The Stodmarshes had husbanded their wealth well and, lacking charm or wit had, as already observed, done nothing to bring dishonour on their name. Yet no Blake or Stafford-Reid parent had ever encouraged, let alone endeavoured to coerce, an offspring into marriage with a Stodmarsh. The very idea was unthinkable … intolerable. Every celebration, every funeral henceforth ruined! One could laugh if the prospect were not so wretched.

Tales of forbidden love would have been right up Florie’s alley. Growing up, she had thrilled to her mother’s stories about her own days in service, before she had been married, with a titled family named Tamersham in Northumbria. Their illustrious ancestral home had possessed a moat, turrets and battlements, a portcullis and, casting an even more alluring spell, an old man with long, matted hair and beard dressed in a rough-spun robe dwelling in a cave in a wooded embankment. He was not there by happenstance – Sir Peregrine Tamersham had adhered to a tradition of employing ornamental hermits – although Florie’s mother mistakenly believed this to be a fascinating eccentricity peculiar only to that family.

This whimsical folly dated back to the eighteenth century, when some of the upper-crust believed no self-indulgence could be too ridiculous, in keeping up with the Jones-Joneses. Advertisements appeared for male persons willing to serve in such a capacity. Essential requirements for an ornamental hermit included never cutting his hair, beard or nails, and upon leaving his shelter he meandered with his head bowed above an open Bible.

The very air around him was steeped in saintly melancholy. It was a delightful fillip for house guests to espy him amidst the groves or by a woodland stream, as it was incumbent on him to ensure they did. He was not hard done by. Nature provided water, and food was brought to him from

the house, but he was strictly forbidden from exchanging a single word with the servants.

As a child, Florie had loved listening to her mother’s stories, and had particularly thrilled to the image of the pious ancient drawn so vividly by her mother. Oh, to work in such a place! She could not expect Mullings to possess this rare entrancement, but she had hoped for others. Perhaps a private cemetery where wisps of something more than mist drifted up from the graves at dusk, gathering shape and purpose as they slipped across the grounds to seep through walls and windows, back to where they rightfully belonged. Who would not wish to cling, however vaporously, to a world forever glittering with merriment or plunging into thrilling turmoil, where the days swirled from one to the next in a dazzle of privilege? Of course, Florie didn’t put it that way to herself as a little girl. But many years later, as housekeeper of Mullings, she would spread it out as such in a letter to her cousin Hattie Fly in London.

The fourteen-year-old Florie who had arrived at the servants’ entrance to Mullings, tremulous with anticipation, had looked as much a ghost as any she had hoped to glimpse in a richly appointed corridor or on a dark turn of the stairs. The mature Florie was wont to smile, albeit ruefully, at such starry-eyed simplicity.

Mrs Longbrow, the housekeeper in 1900 when Florie arrived, having reduced Florie to a squeak and nod of the head, continued making it clearer than glass for the next five minutes that the Stodmarshes were the worthiest of county families. They did not indulge in escapades or tantrums.

‘So there’ll be no point in attempting to listen at keyholes.’

‘No, Mrs Longbrow.’ A dipped curtsy.

‘Not that you’ll have reason to leave the kitchen, except to go outside to the privy, until bedtime.’

‘Yes, Mrs Longbrow.’ Another dip. Within another half hour Florie had learned that the lord’s Christian name was Edward and Lady Stodmarsh’s was Lillian. They had two sons – Lionel, aged fifteen, and William, only eleven months younger.

‘Both bode well to follow solidly in their father’s footsteps. Never a scrap of trouble from either of them since the cradle.’

The consolation for this depressing information was being told to sit down before being handed a cup of the best tea Florie had ever tasted. At

home in the cramped house twelve miles away, the amount of leaves that went into the pot could have been counted out, and when the situation demanded they were re-brewed until there was little or no colour or flavour left.

In the course of that first day at Mullings, Florie’s hope that the stories she would one day be able to tell of her years in service began to dim around the edges. The spurt of interest aroused on hearing that Lord Stodmarsh had possessed a youthful enthusiasm for putting on theatricals in the gallery was quickly doused.

‘He long ago abandoned such ideas, which did rather worry his father, to concentrate devotedly on overseeing the estate, which includes Farn Deane, the home farm. Lord and Lady Stodmarsh used to attend the occasional play in London, but she’s no longer fit for the journey.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it, Mrs Longbrow.’

‘No life’s without its sorrows, as the vicar enjoys reminding us from the pulpit. Well, Florie, standing here feeling sorry for our good lady won’t bring her improvement. There’s the larder shelves still to be done and the vegetables peeled for Mrs McDonald.’ Mrs McDonald, the cook, had never been married; the Mrs was a courtesy befitting her position in the household. Though immensely proud of her Scottish heritage, she’d not once been further north than Yorkshire.

‘I’ve already seen to both, Mrs Longbrow.’

‘Then you can help get the soup on.’ This said, the housekeeper swept away to have a word with the head housemaid about turning the library carpet, something that was done every three months to even the wear.

The poor health that often kept Lady Stodmarsh confined to her bedroom turned out to be nothing more interesting than rheumatism – not a chronic violent hysteria that would have required her door being locked from the outside. The sons were red-haired, fair-skinned and blue-eyed. Boys of that description could, unfairly or not, never grow up to be unflinchingly heroic or fascinatingly ignoble. Red hair might even mean ginger. Undoubtedly there would be freckles. The death knell to dreams indeed!

And yet, for a girl prepared to make the best of things, there were indications of compensations at Mullings. Mrs Longbrow, though strict sounding, did not seem unkind; the butler looked a little like Florie’s father.

Mrs McDonald was red-faced without looking scarily fierce, and the lesser

members of the staff (though all far above herself on the importance ladder) seemed willing to welcome Florie into their midst. During the evening meal, a feast of sausages, pork pie, bubble and squeak, and apple Charlotte, Lady Stodmarsh’s lady’s maid smiled at her. The bootboy winked.

By the end of the week Florie was included, somewhat hoveringly, in the other girls’ giggling chatter in those rare free moments between scrubbing, polishing, sweeping, fetching and carrying. She missed her parents and younger brother and sister, but wasn’t homesick. A fortnight later the bootboy had asked if she would go with him to the Dovecote Hatch Summer Fair. She wasn’t put off by his impishly cocksure manner; she rather liked him for it, but she wasn’t ready for holding hands, let alone kissing, so she encouraged him to take the other kitchen maid instead. She was sure it was Betty he really fancied, but was afraid she’d toss her head and tell him he had a nerve to think she’d be seen out with him. Betty was pretty enough to be pert. Florie wasn’t, not even in her best dress with the collar daintily stitched from two lace-edged handkerchiefs given to her mother as a wedding present by the titled lady in Northumbria.

The looking glass didn’t tell fibs. She was overly tall and reed-thin, with a pale, narrow face and hair that, though thick, could not have been described as anything other than mousy. And there was something else to cause diffidence. Her passionate love of reading made her different from many other young people of her class. A vivid imagination stirred by her mother’s storytelling led to her grasping for any book she could lay her hands on, from penny dreadfuls to Jane Austen, Thackeray, the Brontës, and Dickens; and then there was poetry, especially Keats and Shelley. The elderly bookseller three streets away from her home had at first sold her badly worn copies for a penny and then begun giving them to her because he said her smiles brightened his week. Not something to be talked about if you didn’t want to be thought above yourself. She had learned to guard against using big words or allowing her grammar to veer into something better than that spoken around her. She must be even more careful at Mullings. A kitchen maid seeming to give herself airs would have laid herself open to ridicule anywhere, devastatingly so in the world below stairs. Far better to be viewed as awkwardly shy.

Fortunately she was kept too busy scurrying to complete two or three tasks at once to worry about much else. By the time she crawled into bed in

the box-like room she shared with Betty she was tired out, but never unhappy. She knew she was giving satisfaction, especially to Mrs McDonald, whom she’d once overheard saying to Mrs Longbrow, ‘That Florie has a quick mind in addition to getting more out of five minutes than Betty ever could in an hour.’

Florie did not catch a glimpse of Lord Stodmarsh until a month after her arrival when she was about to leave by the woodland path at the rear of the house for her first day off. He was crossing a stretch of lawn with a golden Labrador at his side. She had learned that he was in his late thirties, but his burly build, grizzled hair, side whiskers and drooping moustache made him look almost elderly to her youthful eye. Seeing her, he raised his hat and inclined his head in her direction. It was a courtly gesture at odds with the less than patrician appearance. She was so surprised she almost tripped over her feet in fumbling a curtsy. This was something – small but still exciting –

to tell her mother on reaching home.

In the coming years her opinion of Lord Stodmarsh as a kind and considerate man was confirmed, as was the case with Lady Stodmarsh in her gentle way. When Florie’s father died unexpectedly, Mrs Longbrow told her that the master and mistress wished to see her in the drawing room to express their sympathy. She returned to the kitchen additionally heartened by permission to go home for a week without loss of wages. On every Christmas Day each member of the staff was presented with a gift, handkerchiefs or gloves, and on New Year’s Eve the entire staff was invited into the hall for a celebratory cup of punch.

By the age of twenty-four Florie was head housemaid and had gained sufficient assurance of being liked and respected at Mullings to no longer feel the need to conceal the fact that much of her free time was spent reading. Indeed, on encountering Lord Stodmarsh outside Craddock’s Antiquarian Bookshop one Saturday afternoon, she unhesitatingly responded to his enquiry as to what she had purchased by showing him the volume – a copy of The Tempest.

‘Ah, yes!’ his eyes revealed a wistful gleam. ‘When I was a very young man we performed that play at the house. I played Prospero. Wonder where my costume for that part and others went! I expect up to some trunk in the attics. We Stodmarshes have always been loath to throw away anything that might one day be put back to use, even a hundred years hence! Good day to

you, Florie. I trust you find your mother well if you are about to go and visit her.’ How could some members of the gentry regard him as a buffoon? He hesitated before adding, ‘I hear you and the younger Norris boy are courting. I consider you both fortunate.’

Florie knew herself to be so. The Norrises were the tenants of Farn Deane, the home farm. She had become acquainted with Mrs Norris, conversing pleasantly in the village street, before being invited to tea on a day off when she wasn’t going home because her mother had gone to nurse a cousin who was ill. It was on that occasion that she met Robert, the older son – his brother Tom was off at market – and was immediately drawn to him. She liked his warm respect for his parents; saw he had a sense of humor that had at its core a keen intelligence. And there was something else. A fluttering of attraction that had her fearing she would flush when he looked at her. He wasn’t handsome – his build was too lanky, his face long and bony – but she felt that he was a man she’d never tire of seeing come through the door.

Florie and Robert married within the year and such was her happiness that she felt little sadness at leaving Mullings. Besides, she could frequently walk over for a visit with the staff or have them over to visit. Tom was yet unmarried and shortly after Florie’s settling in at Farn Deane her mother-in-law suffered a heart attack, which left her permanently fatigued and often breathless. It was a relief to her and her husband that Florie could take over the running of the house. As the years passed without her conceiving, Florie tried not to give up hope that she and Robert would be surprised, like other couples, by the eventual arrival of a baby. Otherwise their marriage had in every way fulfilled the promise of their courtship.

Then came the declaration of war against Germany in 1914. A dark cloud swamped the village at the thought of its young – and not so young – men donning uniforms and marching off to who knew what fate. The former bootboy at Mullings, now a tanner’s assistant, was amongst the first group to go. Florie shared the general anguish, but had little dread for Robert or his brother Tom: surely farmers were too much needed at home to be called upon. She should have known her husband would writhe against what he perceived as an avoidance of duty. One sunny morning – she was always to remember the incongruity of the cloudless sky – he told her the decision he had reached. Tom could manage well enough without him and their father,

although in his sixties, still relished getting up at five and going down to the barns and dairy before heading for the fields. There was no argument she could bring to this, and the depth of her love for him and her respect for his viewpoint made selfish pleas unthinkable.

She knew with a numbed certainty the day she saw him off in 1915 that she would never see him in this life again. She read the same anguished awareness in his mother’s eyes and they clung together before reminding themselves it was wash day and humble duties must go on. A telegram brought the news of Robert’s death three months later. Florie was yet another war widow; more fortunate than many in that she didn’t have to worry about keeping a roof over her head or putting food into hungry little mouths. And yet she chafed to leave Farn Deane, to escape the aching emptiness of rooms he would never again enter. Unfortunately she was more needed than ever, especially when her mother-in-law died in 1919.

Everything changed the following year, when Tom married Gracie, a farmer’s daughter from Kingsbury Knox, who was more than capable taking over the household reins.

Florie was considering her future with an optimism she had not felt for a long time, when Mrs Longbrow, the housekeeper under whom she had worked at Mullings and who was now well into her seventies, came to see her. This was not an unusual occurrence – she quite often stopped by for a cup of tea and a chat – and Florie had retained her fond interest in life at Mullings. She had gone to the church to see Lionel marry and had grieved when he and his wife were killed in a motoring accident, the fault of the other driver, on returning home from a weekend in London. They left behind them a two-year-old son named Edward after his grandfather but called Ned. His presence, Mrs Longbrow had assured Florie on several occasions, had done a world of good in bringing solace to Lord Stodmarsh and his good lady. Mr William had also married. When those who had not seen his bride asked for a description of her, the most frequent response was, a fine figure of a woman – so often the more tactful way of saying stout. On the occasion of her latest visit to Farn Deane, Mrs Longbrow brought news on her own account.

‘It’ll be a sad wrench, Florie, but the time has come for me to take life easier. I’m going to live with my widowed sister in Weymouth, and what

I’m here to suggest is you take over from me at Mullings. You’re the right age, close enough to what I was when I was taken on as housekeeper.’

Florie’s teacup rattled as she set it down in its saucer. ‘It’s very good of you to think of me.’

‘I did think of you,’ the old lady’s face crinkled into a smile, ‘but it was His Lordship that suggested it. He’s always thought very highly of you. So don’t go disappointing him or Lady Stodmarsh, who’s none too well, as you’ll have heard – crippled now with the rheumatism and so tired much of the time.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Longbrow – there’s nothing I’d like better.’

‘Well, that’s a relief! I’m sure it won’t make difficulties that Mr Grumidge the butler and some other members of the staff are new since your day. You’ve got what it takes to get along without giving in, which, when it comes down to it, is what this job entails.’

And so Florie returned to Mullings at the age of thirty-five. In doing so, she felt that she had left Robert’s grief-imprinted image behind at Farn Deane, allowing her to remember only the happiness. She received an especially warm and respectful welcome from Mrs McDonald the cook, who looked very little different from the old days, and was just as nimble on her feet despite her fifteen stone.

‘Nice, hard-working little Florie is how I thought of you when you first come here, Mrs Norris, if you’ll forgive the remembering.’

Almost imperceptibly over the years she had become ‘Florence’ to her family, with the exception of her cousin Hattie Fly in London, whom she did not see as often as she would have liked, but was in regular correspondence. In the eyes of the others, she had gone too far up in the world from her beginnings for ‘Florie’ to be right or proper. She wished it weren’t that way, but nothing she lovingly said or did had any effect, except to bring awkwardness to the situation. Even her mother rarely slipped back to the shortened version. Other than Hattie, there was only one person who still addressed her as Florie.

This was little Ned Stodmarsh. Now seven years old, he was a remarkably articulate child who quickly captivated her heart with his pluck and mischief, which Mrs Longbrow was complacently certain he’d outgrow. Equally endearing to Florence were his ginger hair and freckles.

He rarely mentioned his parents, but Florence was sure that he had not

forgotten them completely even though he had been several months short of his third birthday when the accident occurred. She discovered shortly after her return to Mullings that his learning of the accident and the consequence that his mother and father weren’t ever coming home to him again had imprinted itself starkly on his little mind.

Shortly after midnight one evening, a tap came at her bedroom door. It was Ned’s nanny, dressing gown sagging off one shoulder and cord untied.

The ring of housekeeping keys lay on the dressing table, but Florence, having just finished writing a lengthy letter to Hattie, was still in her navy-blue dress with the round, silver-plated brooch Robert had given her on their wedding day at its throat. Surprise escalated into concern as she faced the woman – saw her lean into the wall, hand pressed against it as if to maintain her balance.

So far Florence had had few encounters with her. From these she had gained only an impression of sombre bustle and a disinclination to continue a conversation, let alone start one. She appeared to be in her late fifties, a shortish woman of medium build with coarse, graying hair. Anything more meaningful had been learned from other members of the staff, not Ned. She was a Miss Hilda Stark, previously employed by a family named Rutledge in the northern part of the county. Understandably, she was now bleary-eyed and frowsy-haired, as anyone would be after being roused from a night’s slumber – or, possibly, from being drunk. Florence caught the fumes of whisky from her breath. Saw her stagger when her hand slipped off the wall. Belligerence, rather than distress, contorted her features.

‘What’s wrong, Nanny? Is Master Ned ill?’ The enquiry was unusually sharp for Florence.

‘Not the fever sort of ill.’ She noted the thickened, slurred voice. ‘Just his nibs having a screaming fit; woke from a nightmare, he said; but if you ask me it was sheer naughtiness. Claimed he’d go on bellowing the house down if I didn’t fetch you.’

‘Had he calmed down when you left?’

The mouth worked itself into a grimace. ‘I told him I wouldn’t take a step if he didn’t. What I should’ve done was tape his wretched mouth shut.’

‘Not so easy to do for someone lacking control of her limbs.’ This was a Florence even Robert wouldn’t have recognized. She’d never at Mullings had to deal with such an ugly situation, but now she had to get to Ned.

‘And why wouldn’t I be all of a shake, roused out of a deep sleep by that ear-piercing racket he made? You saying anything different will be a wicked lie that’ll you pay dear for!’

The woman’s face, contorted by spite, verged on the grotesque, with its florid complexion and slack lips, spittle dribbling down her chin. Did she see no reason to rein herself in, or was she too sozzled to know half of what she was saying?

‘Go down to the kitchen and get yourself a cup of hot milk,’ Florence ordered, and brushed past her to head down the corridor. She had been sorely tempted to add, ‘and not a buttered rum’, but to have aggravated the situation would have been foolhardy. The respectable front that Nanny would seem to have created for herself, at least to pass muster in daylight hours, had abandoned her – or she it. She hurled her response at Florence’s retreating back. That the words were slurred did not lessen their force.

‘Hot milk, my foot! That slop’s for the likes of the mistress. It’s a wonder nobody’s dosed her nightly cup with more than the bicarb she takes in it!

Talk about enjoying ill health to the hilt! You’d think her husband for one would’ve had enough of it by now. The man might as well be wed to his grandma for all the good that limp lily will do him under the sheets! Or would it be more respectful to say Lillian, you posh-voiced stuck-up piece?’

Florence pivoted. ‘Either go downstairs without another word or I’ll rouse Mr Grumidge, who I’m sure will be in agreement that you should be removed from this house within the hour.’ She waited for the woman to go before continuing along the corridor and taking the short flight of steps to the night nursery. First things first. She needed urgently to make sure that Ned was all right; then she would decide whether or not to wait till morning to report the situation to the butler.

Even in the short, narrow bed, Ned looked pathetically small when Florence went in to him. The room was dimly lit, accentuating his pallor amidst the freckles. She loved those freckles, loved everything about him, even at his naughtiest times.

She sat down on the coverlet beside him, her heart aching, brimming with the need to reassure him of the wakeful world’s safety.

‘Tell me, dear.’ She gently cupped his hand in hers, as if cradling a wounded bird.

‘It was a bad, bad dream,’ Ned whimpered, all his customary bravado gone. ‘It was the one I often have – about Mummy and Daddy. They hated having to go and live in the cemetery. They kept trying to tell people before they got buried that they were scared of going down into the dark and the cold. They didn’t want to leave me or Mullings.’

‘No, of course they didn’t; but when they got to heaven they’ll have stopped being sad; knowing they’d always be with you – in a different, but very special way.’

‘I want to believe that … I do most of the time.’ Ned relaxed against her shoulder. ‘You won’t ever leave me; will you, Florie? Not ever in a hundred years, even when I’m older than Grandpa? Promise me you’ll stay!’ The green, amber-flecked eyes held hers in desperate appeal. ‘Promise, honour of a Stodmarsh. You’re the nearest possible to one, aren’t you?’

‘Well, it’s very kind of you to think so. Your family has been a big part of my life for a long time now.’ How should she continue? Florence had always thought it terribly wrong to lie to a child. She knew as well as anyone that in life there is no certainty; something can always happen beyond our control or deepest wishes that alters everything. Tomorrow, next week, next year, any time during his growing-up years, the ground could shift beneath her feet and his. But she couldn’t bring herself to look into those stricken eyes and slide behind the use of unsatisfying soothing noises

– saying she would do her level best; that he mustn’t worry about it. She drew him to her and stroked the spiky ginger hair back from his damp brow.

‘I promise, Ned.’ He had insisted sternly on her third day as housekeeper that she not address him as Master Ned. ‘But what’s most important is that you’ll grow up here with your grandparents; they love you enormously.

And they’re such wonderful people.’

‘Not more special than you.’ The mulish note, which had undoubtedly irritated, if not infuriated, Nanny, entered his voice. ‘Grandfather is marvellous, of course, and I do love Grandmother, but being unwell all the time she can’t ever play games or even read to me very long without getting tired. I know she can’t help it, but anyway … I wish a blackbird would come down and peck off Nanny’s nose for saying it’s all put on.’

Florence answered carefully. ‘People can be mistaken in their views at times, as is the case with Nanny about this. Lady Stodmarsh most certainly does not wish to be ill.’

‘I know.’ He patted her hand, becoming the soother. ‘Nanny tells fibs.

Big ones. The vicar could put her in hell for it.’

‘Try not to think about her right now.’ Hopefully the woman had made it down to the kitchen and had not yet returned to her bedroom, which had access to the night nursery through the communicating door. But Florence had heard no sound from behind it.

‘I hate Nanny! I know we’re not right to hate anyone, but I do her! She told me I’ve a bad streak in me that I got from my mother … that she was wilful, too, and that she and Daddy probably had a row in the car that night that made the accident happen, and most likely it wasn’t the other driver’s fault at all.’

Florence, the even-tempered, was seized by an almost overpowering urge to haul Nanny out of the house by her hair. Mrs Longbrow had described Jane Tressler during her engagement to Lionel Stodmarsh as a spirited girl but sweet-natured with it. ‘No doubt sparks will fly between them, and so much the better for both!’ Nothing Florence had heard afterwards suggested the couple were not ideally suited.

‘Ned, have you told your grandparents about this?’

‘No.’ He stirred nervously within the circle of her arm. ‘She said if I told she’d say I was lying or imagining it – which would be worse, because …’

his voice cracked and his small hand tightened on hers, ‘… because mad people make up things and we all know what happens to them. They get locked away.’

A physical pain stabbed through Florence’s outrage. ‘You’re a perfectly normal, healthy little boy. No one, especially Lord and Lady Stodmarsh, could think there’s anything wrong with your mind.’

‘But they might start to wonder, not wanting to, but unable to help it because of my other grandmother. She had to be sent away for a while after Mummy was born because she started thinking all her teeth were rotting and about to fall out. And that her dog, a nice old spaniel that she loved, had got possessed by a devil and was going to tear her to pieces.’

‘Oh, Ned! The poor lady!’

‘She got better and came home.’

‘It happens to women sometimes after childbirth.’

‘Does it? Then maybe I needn’t worry, because men don’t have babies.’

Ned shifted closer. ‘That’s a good thing … although it seems unfair that it’s

always left to the mother and isn’t turn and turn about with the father.’

‘There’s something to that,’ agreed Florence gravely, ‘but I think a lot of women like being the ones to have babies.’

‘Perhaps.’ Ned stiffened. ‘But after the accident it happened again, and that time Grandmother Tressler was away longer. At a place called Meadow Vale.’

‘Again, Nanny could be mistaken.’ Or might there be truth to this particular revelation? Ned hadn’t accused Nanny of lying about this – and would the woman have bothered inventing the name of the facility?

Ned shook his head. ‘I overheard Uncle William and Aunt Gertrude talking about it before Grandma Tressler came to stay here for a fortnight last year. Uncle William got very loud. “For God’s sake, old girl, don’t go upsetting the woman and send her off the deep end again!”’ The mimicry of the man’s deep voice by a child was uncanny. ‘“We’ve never in the history of Mullings had to lock up a mad woman, and I’d just as soon not bloody well start now!”’

‘I’m sorry you had to hear that.’ Florence fought down fruitless anger.

‘Then Aunt Gertrude said, “No one can disagree that she’s mental, William, but I’m not sure that’s quite the same as mad.”’ Ned did almost as good a job with his aunt’s stolid voice as with his uncle’s bellicose one.

‘Did you say anything to your grandparents about this?’

‘Of course not.’ Ned’s chin went up. ‘That would have been dishonourable. Ungentlemanly. I shouldn’t be telling you now, but …’

Florence reassured him, ‘It’s helping fill in the picture about Nanny.’

‘You can guess what Uncle William roared back at Aunt Gertrude?’

‘My mind doesn’t work as quickly as it should at night.’

‘“Balderdash!”’

Florence smiled, but she was remembering when she’d thought the notion of a mad woman being confined to a secret room was the height of enthralling mystery. She knew very little about Mrs Tressler, other than that her Christian name was Eugenie and that she had been widowed a year or so before her daughter and only child married Lionel Stodmarsh. And then, a few years later, she had lost that child in an accident. What woman might not have fallen apart – especially if she was at that time going through the change? There had been a woman two doors down from the house where Florence had grown up, who’d been ‘taken bad’ after childbirth and then

again in middle life. On the latter occasion she had not recovered, as it would seem Mrs Tressler had done.

‘It’s Uncle William that makes scenes, not Aunt Gertrude. Anyway,’ the bravado was creeping back, ‘who cares what they think?’

Florence stroked his arm. It was not permissible for her to comment on his relations’ attitudes or behaviour, but what he said of his uncle and aunt was true. Loyalty did not prevent an inward denial of fact. William Stodmarsh was a blusterer and his wife a mild woman – outwardly, at least.

Florence had wondered at times if her emotions were not as well corseted as her stout figure.

Ned yawned and after a moment turned on his side. ‘I think I can nod off now, Florie.’

‘Good.’

‘Stay a little while, please.’

In a couple of minutes he was asleep, but she waited another ten or so before getting off the bed and tapping on the communicating door. On opening it she saw, as expected from there having been no sound from that quarter, that Nanny had not returned. The bed did not look as though it had been slept in earlier. A bottle along with a glass containing an inch or two of whisky stood on a table next to an easy chair. Where was Nanny – passed out in the kitchen? Florence was halfway down the corridor when she heard heavy, laborious footsteps on the back stairs. A moment later, four persons came into view at the top – two of the maids holding Nanny up under the armpits and another propelling her from the rear. She went instantly to their assistance and with their combined efforts got Nanny into bed. The room was immediately filled with raucous snores.

Annie Long, a timid and extremely nervous kitchen maid, liable to collapse into hysterics if she heard the word mouse, let alone saw one, now burst into tears, and Florence hurried her and the other two girls out of the room.

‘It was Annie what found her lying on the kitchen floor,’ explained the sturdily built, rosy-cheeked girl who had been doing the propelling. ‘She’d gone down because she kept waking up, worrying she hadn’t put the scrubbing brush in the right bucket and there she was,’ cocking an eye to the closed door, ‘lying on the floor.’

Annie had wiped away her tears but continued to snuffle. ‘It give me such a turn, Mrs Norris. I come over right queer. I thought she was dead.

Then I heard the snoring and I run up to fetch Molly and Violet. We was struggling to get her upright when Mr Grumidge come in.’ Annie’s voice trailed off. Florence thought vaguely that there wouldn’t be much work got out of her that day. Molly, who had spoken previously, picked up the thread.

‘He’d heard the running up and down stairs and wanted to see what was going on. He picked her up, talked soft but firm till he got her moving – like sleepwalking, it was – told us to get her into bed and then wake you and ask if you’d go down to him.’

Molly was a girl destined to become head housemaid. The silent Violet struggled to suppress a yawn and Annie hiccupped. Florence thanked them, asked them not to talk about any of this to other members of the staff and sent them back to their beds.

She found Mr Grumidge, dressed and alert as if the working day were well begun – in the kitchen, where she had expected him to be. At this hour propriety forbade a conference in either the butler’s or housekeeper’s room.

He was a neatly built man, probably a few years older than herself, with a grave manner suited to his position but none of the pomposity prevalent in his species. His pale hair and complexion served to heighten the keenness of his eyes. Florence both respected and liked him, and believed he felt the same about her; making for a harmonious relationship.

‘I apologize for asking you to come down, Mrs Norris, but I thought it right to inform you immediately of this regrettable incident.’ His composure was as it would have been on learning of any other household infraction.

‘That’s perfectly all right, Mr Grumidge.’ The kitchen, with its scrubbed stone sinks, old cupboards and vast deal table, gave off a peaceful sense of having seen and heard anything and everything many times over, and had survived to witness modern cook stoves. Florence relaxed for the first time in over an hour. ‘I had been sitting with Master Ned.’

She followed quickly with her account of events, including ordering Nanny to go to the kitchen and heat herself a milky drink. ‘I’m sorry to say she was very belligerent. Fortunately, Master Ned seemed not to have noticed the state she was in – having wakened terrified from a bad dream.’

‘Poor child.’

‘He did say that Nanny has been treating him unkindly – increasingly so, it sounded – of late.’ Florence did not elaborate; doing so would have violated what Ned had said to her in confidence. Mr Grumidge did not press her; there was a heightening of that keenness in his eyes.

‘A possible contribution to his nightmare. He cannot have informed Lord or Lady Stodmarsh of her treatment or she would have been dismissed. Our English code of not carrying tales may be good for the character, Mrs Norris, but it does not always serve the practicalities well.’

‘I could not agree more.’ Florence clasped her hands, recalling the feel of Ned’s small one. ‘I’m sure that but for his distressed state Master Ned would have thought it unmanly to tell me what had been happening. If only suspicions that she was inclined to the bottle had been aroused! But I never heard a whisper.’

‘Nor I, Mrs Norris.’

‘I’d prefer to believe this a one-time lapse, but sadly – for Nanny’s own sake as well as the family’s – I can’t. Master Ned’s account of her behaviour suggests that she has been increasingly unable to control her emotions.’

Mr Grumidge nodded. ‘There is, however, no point in blaming ourselves or other members of the staff for failing to recognize there was a problem.

Perhaps we might have done had she been with Master Ned during the mornings. But with his spending the hours between nine and twelve-thirty taking lessons from the retired schoolmistress, she will have been free to return to her bed after seeing him up, dressed and breakfasted. Also, secret drinkers must of necessity become adept at allaying suspicions. I have sometimes thought that women may be more prone to secrecy because society allows men so much more latitude when it comes to libation.’

‘She may have started slowly, Mr Grumidge. Indeed, I have to believe that she wasn’t anywhere close to getting out of her depth when she came here, or the family that recommended her to Lady Stodmarsh would not have done so.’

‘One would think not, but the Rutledges had a large number of children very close in age, making, I’ve gleaned, for a cheerful if somewhat chaotic household. This may have inclined them to be grateful to any nanny who had been willing to stay.’

‘What now, Mr Grumidge?’

‘I doubt she took a hard fall, more likely crumbled to the floor, but I believe telephoning the doctor is in order. An examination will prove me right or wrong on that and should also provide confirmation of her inebriated state. Such an action on my part will necessitate rousing the master, but hopefully the mistress will not need to be disturbed.’

‘A wise course of action. I think I should go back to the night nursery so Master Ned has someone with him should he be awakened by footsteps or voices from the adjoining bedroom.’

‘Excellent.’ Those keen eyes appraised hers. ‘You must, however, be exhausted at this hour.’

Florence assured him she was not tired, but within moments of sitting down in the armchair across from Ned’s bed, where he was sleeping peacefully, she felt herself beginning to doze. She must have dropped off for almost an hour, although it seemed only moments before she heard a tap at the door to the corridor. There stood a stocky, grizzled man, black bag in hand.

‘No head injury, Mrs Norris,’ said Doctor Chester in his comfortable manner. ‘I’m on my way down to talk with His Lordship, which means that you can go to your bed, my dear, reassured that all will be dealt with as it should be. We both know he won’t send her off without something to live on. I hope Miss Stark will agree to let me help her, but I doubt she will; they rarely do.’

Florence went gratefully to her bed. She woke at seven, an hour later than usual, feeling well rested. At ten Mr Grumidge informed her that Lord and Lady Stodmarsh requested her presence in the elegant but restful drawing room. They greeted her warmly and invited her to sit down on one of the cream- and gold-striped Regency sofas. After thanking her for all she had done on the previous night, they spoke of the future. Nanny had declined a pension in favour of a settlement and would not be replaced. Ned would be moved from the nursery down to his father’s old room, where his daily needs could be handled by one of the maids. Florence suggested Molly –

the sensible, sturdy girl who had propelled the barely awake woman up the stairs. Earlier that morning His Lordship had placed a telephone call to a Mr Shepherd, headmaster of Westerbey Junior Boys’ School, halfway between Dovecote Hatch and Large Middlington, and had arranged for Ned to start

there in a couple of weeks instead of at the start of the new term, as had previously been intended.

‘It sounds ideal.’ Florence’s smile lit up her face. ‘It will be good for Master Ned to be with other boys, and I’m sure he’ll take to Molly – she’s a very cheerful girl. Do please let me know if there is any way in which I can be of help.’ She started to rise.

‘Oh, do stay a few moments longer if you can spare the time,’ said Lady Stodmarsh in her light, musical voice. ‘My husband and I want you to know how important it is to us that you continue the close relationship you have begun to establish with Ned. He told us earlier this morning how he had confided in you in the small hours about what Nanny had told him regarding his other grandmother – so unkind. Certainly she had a couple of distressing episodes, but is now recovered. It says so much that he unburdened himself to you after keeping silent for too long.’

‘It had frightened him.’

‘Of course it did.’ Lord Stodmarsh shook his head. ‘How could he not worry at the idea he might inherit a mental weakness? Your reassurances appear to have helped a good deal, Flor— Mrs Norris. That he trusts you completely, as we all do, is apparent. He is always at the heart of our thoughts and we greatly enjoy spending time with him, but …’

His wife gave him her sweet smile. ‘You, my dear, are as active as you ever were and can completely fulfill your role with him. Regrettably, I am unable to provide all that I would wish by way of activities to make for a happy childhood, and an orphaned boy needs a woman’s daily touch to help soften the rough edges of life for him, if he is not to grow up with an empty place in his heart. Our daughter-in-law is kind, but admits neither she nor our son has a way with children. So, to come to the point!’ Lady Stodmarsh looked hopefully at Florence. ‘In addition to your other qualities, you have the benefit of being of his mother’s generation. We do hope our asking you to help nurture him is not an imposition?’

‘Of course not.’ Florence had not felt such deep happiness since Robert’s death. ‘Would it be all right if I took him with me to Farn Deane, when I go to see Tom and Gracie? It has been agreed that I shall have midday dinner with them one Sunday a month and remain through afternoon tea.’

A short, cheerful conversation followed. Knowing that this was His Lordship’s day for going through the estate’s accounts, Florence got to her

feet and was about to excuse herself when Lady Stodmarsh spoke ruefully.

‘I should not allow a dark thought to intrude, but I suspect that we have made a lasting enemy in Nanny.’

‘An ill-wisher perhaps,’ responded her husband with tender affection in his eyes, ‘but what possible harm can she do us?’

‘None, I suppose, unless her bitterness should one day align itself with some unforeseen circumstance.’ Lady Stodmarsh shivered, and then smiled.

‘I cannot lay claim to being fey, as I understand Mrs McDonald does, and it is well documented that in all these hundreds of years nothing in the way of melodrama has ever touched Mullings. So silly, that feeling that a goose has just walked over my grave.’

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