Miriam might be lured into betraying something, but she was not one for confidences. There was an ‘understanding’ between her and the Rev.
Jasper Grey’s curate, but they couldn’t marry until the curate became a vicar, and hi view of his retiring nature that seemed unlikely for years to come.
Maddy told me that if we’d still been at Oakland Hall there would have been coming out dances, people would have been visiting and it wouldn’t have been a curate for Miss Miriam. Oh dear no. There would have been Squire This or Sir That . -and maybe a lord. They had been the grand days.
So it all came back to the same thing; and as Mrs. Cobb could never be kept from telling of her own Better Days I couldn’t hope to get her interested in those of my family.
As I might have known, Maddy was the only one who could really help.
She had actually lived at Oakland Hall. Another point in her favour was that she loved to talk and as long as I could be sworn to secrecy-and I readily promised that-she would at times let out little scraps of information.
Maddy was thirty-five-five years older than Xavier-and she had come to Oakland Hall when she was only eleven years old to work in the nursery.
“It was all very grand then. Lovely nurseries they was.”
“Xavier must have been a good little boy,” I commented.
“He was. He wasn’t the one to get up to mischief.”
“Who, then? Miriam? No, not her either.”
Well, why did you say one of them was ? “
“I said no such thing. You’re like one of them magistrates, you are.
What’s this? What’s that? ” She was hurry now, shutting her lips tightly as though to punish me for asking a question which had disturbed her. It was only later that I realized why it had.
Once I said to Miriam: “Fancy, you were born in Oakland Hall and I was born in the Dower House. ” Miriam hesitated and said: “No, you weren’t born in the Dower House.
Actually. it was abroad. “
Miriam looked embarrassed as though wondering how I could have lured her into this further indiscretion.
“Mama was travelling in Italy when you were born.”
My eyes widened with excitement. Venice, I thought. Gondolas. Pisa with its leaning Tower. Florence, where Beatrice and Dante had met and loved so chastely or so Miriam had said.
“Where?” I demanded.
“It was… in Rome.”
I was ecstatic.
“Julius Caesar,” I said. ‘“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” But why? “
Miriam looked exasperated.
“Because you happened to appear when they were there.”
“Father was with her, then?” I cried.
“Wasn’t it costly?
Penury and all that? “
She looked pained in the special way Miriam could. She said primly:
“Suffice it that they were there.”
“It’s as though they didn’t know I was about to be born. I mean they wouldn’t have gone there, would they, if …”
“These things happen sometimes. Now we have chattered enough.”
She could be very severe, my sister Miriam. Sometimes I was sorry for the curate, or should be if she ever married him-and for the sad children they would have.
So there was more to brood on. What strange things seemed to happen to me! Perhaps it was because they were in Rome that they had called me Opal. I had tried to discover information about opals. After looking up the dictionary I had mixed feelings about my name. It was not very flattering to be called after ‘a mineral consisting chiefly of hydrous silica’, whatever that was, but it did not sound in the least romantic. I discovered however that it had varying hues of red, green, and blue in fact all the colours of the spectrum and was of a changing iridescence, and that sounded better. How difficult it was though to imagine Mama, in a moment of frivolity inspired by the Italian skies, naming her child Opal, even though the more serviceable Jessica had been added and used.
Soon after that occasion when I had seen the guests riding out from Oakland, I heard that the owner had gone away for a while. Only the servants remained, and there were no longer sounds of revelry across the stream, for visitors never came-only those, of course, connected with servants and they were quite different.
Life went on for a while in the old way-my father solitary with his patience and his walks and the ability to shut himself away from his complaining family; my mother dominating the household, busying herself with Church matters, looking after the poor, of which community she was constantly’re minding us we had become a part.
However, we were at least still sufficiently of the gentry to dispense benefits rather than receive them; Xavier went his quiet way, dreaming no doubt of the unattainable Lady Clara (my sympathy was tinged with impatience because had I been Lady Clara, I should have said it was all nonsense to make a barrier of her money, and if I were Xavier, I should have said the same); and Miriam and her curate too. Of course she might be like Poor Jarman and bring a lot of children into the world.
Curates did seem to breed rather freely and the poorer they were the more fecund they seemed to be.
So as the years began to pass the mystery remained, but my curiosity did not diminish. I became more and more certain that there was a reason why the family gave me the impression that I was an intruder.
Prayers were said each morning at the start of the day and every member of the household had to be present for them -even my father was expected to attend. These were said in the drawing-room, “Since,” my mother often commented coldly, ‘we have no chapel now! ” And she would throw a venomous glance towards my father and then turn to Oakland Hall, where for so many years she had knelt in what was meant to be humility. Poor Jarman, Mrs. Cobb, and Maddy would be present.
“All the staff,” my mother would say bitterly.
“At Oakland there were so many that one did not know all their names, only those of the ones in higher positions.”
It was a solemn ceremony conducted by my mother when she exhorted us all to be humble, grateful, and conduct ourselves with virtue in the station into which God had called us-which always seemed incongruous to me since she was far from contented with hers. She was inclined to be a little hectoring towards God, I thought. It was: “Look down on this” and “Don’t do that…” as though she were talking to one of the superior servants she must have had at Oakland Hall.
I always found morning prayers irksome, but I did enjoy the church services, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. The church was a fine one, and the stained glass windows, with their beautiful colours, a joy to study. Opal colours, I called them with satisfaction. I loved the singing of the choir and most ‘of all I liked to sing myself. I always thought of the times of the year through hymns.
“Christian, dost thou see them,” used to thrill me; and I would look over my shoulder almost expecting to see the troops of Midian prowling around.
Harvest time was lovely.
“We plough the fields and scatter …” and “Hark the Herald Angels’ at Christmas; but best of all I loved Easter:
“Hallelujah. Christ the Lord is risen today.” Easter was a lovely time, when the flowers were all delicate colours whites and yellows, and the spring had come and the summer was on the way. Miriam used to go and decorate the church. I wondered whether the curate helped her and whether they sadly talked of their inability to marry’ because they were so poor, I always wanted to point out that the people in the cottages had far less and yet seemed happy enough. But at least the church was beautiful and particularly at Easter time.