The big grey house lay in a fold of the moors, about half a mile from a winding river. Surrounding it was a jungle of neglected garden. Pine trees rose like sentinels at the back.
Harriet knocked nervously at the huge studded door, which was opened by a middle-aged woman with piled-up reddish hair and a disapproving dough-like face. She gave Harriet a hostile stare, but seemed far more interested in stopping a large tabby cat from escaping.
‘Ambrose! Come here, you devil!’ She just managed to catch the cat by the tail and pull him squawking into the house.
‘Miss Poole?’ she said icily, very much on her dignity. ‘I’m Mrs Bottomley.’
‘How do you do?’ said Harriet, trying to shake hands and clutch William and the luggage at the same time.
As she walked into the hall, two children rushed down the stairs, dragging a black labrador, and stopped dead in their tracks, gazing at her with dark, heavily lashed and not altogether friendly eyes.
‘Jonah and Charlotte,’ said Mrs Bottomley, ‘this is Miss Poole.’
‘How do you do?’ said Harriet nervously. ‘This is William.’
‘Did you have a good journey?’ said the little girl in a formal voice. ‘We’re so recited to see you. Ambrose is on heat; that’s why he’s not allowed out. We thought he was a “he” when daddy bought him.’
Mrs Bottomley picked up one of her suitcases.
‘I’ll show you to your room,’ she said coldly, starting up the stairs.
‘Watch the string,’ said Harriet in anguish, but it was too late. The string snapped and the contents of the suitcase — all the dirty laundry — her own and William’s that she hadn’t had time to wash before she left — cascaded onto the floor with a crash.
The children shrieked with laughter. Chattie went into hysterics of excitement. Nothing could have broken the ice more completely as they rushed round putting things back.
Mrs Bottomley, frostier than ever, led Harriet along a winding passage to her room. The house, in contrast to its grim exterior, was positively sybaritic inside. Whoever had chosen the moss-thick carpets, the watered silk wallpapers, the brilliantly clashing curtains, had had an inspired eye for colour, if no regard for expense.
There were also looking glasses everywhere, in the hall, on the stairs and at the end of the landing. Harriet tried not to look at her worried, white-faced reflection.
‘What a lovely house, and how beautifully you keep it,’ she said, making a feeble attempt to remove the rigid expression of disapproval from Mrs Bottomley’s face. The housekeeper ignored her.
‘You’re in here,’ she said, showing Harriet into a little grey and white room with yellow curtains and yellow flowered four-poster bed. ‘The child can sleep next door,’ she added coldly. It was as though she couldn’t bear to acknowledge William’s existence.
‘Chattie and Jonah are at the far end of the passage, but there’s a device you switch on, so you can hear if they wake in the night. I’ll see them to bed tonight. Your supper will be ready in an hour.’
All this time she had not looked Harriet in the face. Oh dear, sighed Harriet, she really does resent my coming here.
Later, feeling more and more depressed, Harriet found a place laid for one in the huge green Victorian dining-room.
She looked at Mrs Bottomley timidly:
‘Won’t you come and eat in here with me?’ she asked.
‘I have my meals in my own part of the house. I hope that will be all,’ said Mrs Bottomley.
But as she stalked majestically towards the door, she heard a muffled sob and, looking round, she saw that Harriet’s face had disintegrated into a quivering chaos of misery, as she fished out her handkerchief.
Mrs Bottomley’s heart melted. She padded across the room and put an arm round Harriet’s shoulders.
‘There, there, my lamb, don’t cry. You’ll get used to it all in no time. I know it seems an out-of-the-way place for a young girl, but the children have been so excited, especially with you bringing the baby, and you’ll be company for me. I get lonely of an evening.’
Harriet wiped her eyes. ‘You don’t mind about William, and me not being married?’ she said.
‘Never gave it a thought,’ lied Mrs Bottomley, who had been boasting in the village that she’d soon put the hussy in her place.
‘You come and eat in the kitchen with me. You’ll feel better when you’ve got something inside you. We’ll have a drop of sherry to cheer ourselves up.’
From then on Harriet and Mrs Bottomley were firm friends. The housekeeper bossed her, fussed over her, bullied her to eat, and gave her endless advice on how to look after the children.
Chapter Eleven
Even so Harriet often wondered afterwards how she survived those first few weeks looking after Cory Erskine’s children. The day seemed neverending, rising at six, feeding and bathing William, getting Chattie off to school, by which time William’s next feed would be due. Then there was endless washing and ironing, shopping, rooms to be tidied, meals to be cooked, beds to be made.
Night after night, she cried herself to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, to be woken a couple of hours later by William howling because his teeth were hurting.
Hard work alone she could have coped with. It was just the endless demands on her cheerfulness and good temper. Chattie, incapable of playing by herself, wanted constantly to be amused or comforted. She adored the baby and was a perfect menace, feeding him indigestible foods which made him sick, going into his room and waking him just after he’d fallen asleep.
Jonah, Harriet found even more of a problem than Chattie. He was obviously deeply unhappy and, when he came home at weekends, Harriet did her best to amuse him.
In between bouts of moodiness, he was very good company, but Harriet could never tell what he was thinking behind the aloof Red Indian mask he had inherited from his father. Often he didn’t speak for hours and, although he never mentioned his mother, Harriet noticed that he always hung around when the post was due, and was hard put to conceal his disappointment when no letters arrived.
Cory wrote to them regularly, long letters full of drawings and wild, unexpectedly zany humour. Noel Balfour patently didn’t believe in correspondence. Only one postcard arrived from her in five weeks, and that was postmarked Africa and addressed to Cory. On the front was a picture of a team of huge muscular Africans playing football. On the back she had written, ‘Had them all except the goalkeeper, darling.’
Mrs Bottomley’s face shut like a steel trap when she saw the postcard, but Harriet, although dying to know more about Cory Erskine’s relationship with his wife, was sensible enough not to ask questions. She felt that Mrs Bottomley would tell her in her own good time. She was right.
They were sitting before supper one evening towards the end of February in the small den off the dining room. Above the fire hung a huge, nude painting of Noel Balfour. She’s so beautiful, thought Harriet, I can’t imagine any man not wanting her.
‘Who did it?’ she asked.
Mrs Bottomley puffed out her cheeks and went red in the face with disapproval, but the desire to gossip was too much for her.
‘Master Kit did, and he never should have done, neither.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Mr Cory’s younger brother.’
‘Goodness,’ said Harriet. ‘That’s a bit close to home. It’s awfully good.’
‘So it should be,’ said Mrs Bottomley glaring at the lounging, opulent figure of Noel Balfour. ‘He took long enough over it. Mr Cory was abroad at the time, and Master Kit rolls up cool as a cucumber. “Ay’ve come to paint the magnificent scenery, Mrs B.” he says, but there was a wicked glint in his eyes. I knew he was up to no good.’