It was only natural that Susan Cowley would be a governess. Even as a girl she’d had a calming effect on the other children playing around her; she didn’t seem to have any friends amongst them, not as such, but what of that? And Susan seemed to accept that role with incurious equanimity. Her little sister would be given all manner of pretty clothes; Susan, more and more, would get formal dress, bordering even upon uniform in its austerity, all befitting her future career. She never complained.
When she reached seventeen, her great aunt found her a placement at Exley Hall, to look after two young children of friends of hers.
It was impossible to judge how responsible Susan Cowley was for the Exley Hall scandal. Certainly, she never tried to offer any defence, and that may well have been her undoing. She seemed only too willing to take the blame, and so the blame was put squarely on her shoulders. And maybe that was right. The children were in her care. Whether or not she had done anything directly to influence events, that, surely, cannot be disputed.
There were no criminal proceedings, and that was just, for it was hard to see how anything that had happened could be called a crime. The Exleys did not want any muck clinging to their son’s name. They did not want any word getting out. That said, Susan Cowley was unable to find herself another position afterwards, so someone must have talked.
Mr and Mrs Cowley did not know what to make of it all. Susan had always been such a quiet child, the reliable one, the boring one truth be told. They did not discuss the matter. They tried to pretend nothing had happened. Mr Cowley only lost his temper the once, and that was not even with Susan; at the dinner table the little sister began asking how it was that Susan was home again, didn’t she like being a teacher?—and at that, without a word, Mr Cowley had got up and slapped the girl around her face. The girl was so shocked she even forgot to cry.
One night, when he couldn’t sleep, Mr Cowley found Susan in his study. She was sitting on the floor, a stack of books by her side, and she was leafing through them slowly. All her old favourites—Arthurian legends, a Latin primer, and tomes and tomes of rudimentary calculus. “Susan?” he asked softly, “are you all right?” It was the gentlest thing he had said to her since her disgrace; Susan looked up at him, but her face registered no surprise at his new tenderness. She nodded. Mr Cowley stood there in the doorway, and he knew that this was the moment he should reach out to her, try to talk to her, maybe find out what had happened. This was his chance. And he couldn’t take the chance, or didn’t, at any rate; he nodded back, quite formally, turned, and went back to bed.
There came in the post one morning a letter for Susan. Inside there was a newspaper clipping advertising for young teachers at H___ Priory. There was no letter, no indication who it might have been from; Mr and Mrs Cowley wondered whether the great-aunt was offering some help, just as she had done before; she hadn’t spoken to the family since the incident but maybe she had relented. It was not a governess’ position; it was not ideal; it was to teach a class of young children of no discernible means or background, and the wages offered were meagre. But, as Mr and Mrs Cowley said, beggars could not be choosers. They looked for H___ on the map. It took them a while to find it; it was far away, and seemed very small, tucked away at the edge of the page.
Susan replied to the advertisement. She did not expect an interview. By return of post she received notice that the job was hers.
There was no direct railway line to H___. Susan was obliged to make no fewer than four connections, and each train she boarded was smaller and slower than the last—and emptier too, so that by the last service Susan was the only person in the carriage. It fell dark. It began to rain hard. No one came to inspect Susan’s ticket, and as the train crawled on she began to fear that the driver would just decide to stop, that he’d feel the journey wasn’t worth the effort, and that she’d be stuck there in the blackness and the wet forever. And she had the absurd desire to start shouting, to chivvy the driver on, to assure him he had a passenger and that he mustn’t give up, for her sake. Of course, she did nothing of the sort. She kept her composure, and only by hugging her suitcase close would she have given any outward sign that she was afraid. She sat still, looked out of the window into the pitch black, and hoped that soon she would reach her destination.
And, at length, she did. She hauled her suitcase on to the platform. The station was dark, and she could not see an exit. The rain sliced through her. “Over here!” she heard, and she realised that the platform wasn’t deserted after all; it was a woman’s voice, low in pitch, and she was gesturing at Susan to come and take shelter beneath her umbrella. The woman was large, and Susan couldn’t quite fit under the umbrella beside her; generously, the woman side-stepped and stood out in the rain to keep Susan dry.
“You’re Miss Cowley?” she said.
“Yes,” said Susan.
“Good! Follow me!”
And the woman marched on into the night, still holding out the umbrella for Susan, but she was striding away so fast that both of them got soaked. “It’s not always like this, sometimes the weather is quite nice!” And soon they were outside the station, and there was a little jalopy waiting for them. “Hop right in, the door’s open!” Susan took the passenger seat, and watched as the woman struggled against the wind and the pelting rain to get the umbrella shut. And then the woman was in the car beside Susan, and so drenched through that she couldn’t help but spray Susan with water as she shifted into her seat, like a dog shaking itself dry without worrying about the soaking it will give its owner. She beamed at Susan. She offered her hand, and Susan took it, and the woman pumped it up and down like a piston.
“I must say, I’m glad you’re you,” she said, and then blushed.
“Are you?” asked Susan.
“I thought you might be one of those dreadful old women! The school always gets dreadful old women, they never last long. Stay a term or two, and then go off to die somewhere, I’ll bet. Ha! Miss Susan Cowley, you must admit, the name sounds a bit elderly and a bit dreadful.”
“I had never thought,” said Susan.
“Like some Godforsaken spinster! Not that I’m judging. I mean, Valerie Bewes. That sounds shocking, doesn’t it? That sounds positively decrepit! I’m Valerie, by the way.” And she offered her wet hand again, and Susan had to take it. “I’m just so pleased you’re young, like me! We can be proper girls together!”
Susan didn’t think that Valerie looked especially young, she must have been thirty if she were a day. “Is the school very far?” asked Susan.
“Lord love you, you’ve travelled all day, and here I am jabbering! Yes, it is quite far. About nine miles, which isn’t too bad, but it’s uphill and this old girl doesn’t like climbing hills, and it’s dark and it’s wet—we’d better go slow. We should get moving, we can chat along the way!”
But they didn’t chat much. Valerie pointed at the hills and countryside (“Really, it’s quite nice when it’s daylight, and dry”), and talked all about herself, and Susan quickly realised that the information offered was neither interesting nor pertinent. When Susan declined to join in the conversation, even Valerie at last ground to a halt. “You’re tired, poor darling, I’ll let you have some peace!”