Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

‘You’re a wicked tease,’ Hannah said. ‘Just because Pa is too unfair to let Emmeline and me go to school doesn’t mean you should try to make us look stupid at every opportunity.’

‘I don’t have to try,’ David said, sitting on the toy box and flicking a lock of hair from his eyes. I drew breath: he was beautiful and golden like his sisters. ‘Anyway, you’re not missing much. School’s overrated.’

‘Oh?’ Hannah raised a suspicious eyebrow. ‘Usually you’re only too pleased to let me know exactly what I’m missing. Why the sudden change of heart?’ Her eyes widened: two ice-blue moons. Excitement laced her voice. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve done something dreadful to get yourself expelled?’

‘Course not,’ David said quickly. ‘I just think there’s more to life than book-learning. My friend Hunter says that life itself is the best education-’

‘Hunter?’

‘He only started at Eton this form. His father’s some sort of scientist. Evidently he discovered something that turned out to be quite important and the King made him a marquis. He’s a bit mad. Robert, too, if you believe the other lads, but I think he’s topping.’

‘Well,’ Hannah said, ‘your mad Robert Hunter is fortunate to have the luxury of disdaining his education; but how am I supposed to become a respected playwright if Pa insists on keeping me ignorant?’ Hannah sighed with frustration. ‘I wish I were a boy.’

‘I should hate to go to school,’ Emmeline said. ‘And I should hate to be a boy. No dresses, the most boring hats, having to talk about sports and politics all day.’

‘I’d love to talk politics,’ Hannah said. Vehemence shook strands loose from the careful confinement of her ringlets. ‘I’d start by making Herbert Asquith give women the vote. Even young ones.’

David smiled. ‘You could be Great Britain’s first play-writing prime minister.’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah.

‘I thought you were going to be an archaeologist,’ Emmeline said. ‘Like Gertrude Bell.’

‘Politician, archaeologist. I could be both. This is the twentieth century.’ She scowled. ‘If only Pa would let me have a proper education.’

‘You know what Pa says about girls’ education,’ said David. Emmeline chimed in with the well-worn phrase: ‘“The slippery slope to women’s suffrage.”’

‘Anyway, Pa says Miss Prince is giving us all the education we need,’ said Emmeline.

‘Pa would say that. He’s hoping she’ll turn us into boring wives for boring fellows, speaking passable French, playing passable piano and politely losing the odd game of bridge. We’ll be less trouble that way.’

‘Pa says no one likes a woman who thinks too much,’ Emmeline said.

David rolled his eyes. ‘Like that Canadian woman who drove him home from the gold mines with her talk of politics. She did us all a disservice.’

‘I don’t want everyone to like me,’ Hannah said, setting her chin stubbornly. ‘I should think less of myself if no one disliked me.’

‘Then cheer up,’ David said. ‘I have it on good authority that a number of our friends don’t like you.’

Hannah frowned, its impact weakened by the involuntary beginnings of a smile. ‘Well I’m not going to do any of her stinking lessons today. I’m tired of reciting The Lady of Shallot while she snivels into her handkerchief.’

‘She’s crying for her own lost love,’ Emmeline said with a sigh.

Hannah rolled her eyes.

‘It’s true!’ Emmeline said. ‘I heard Grandmamma tell Lady Clem. Before she came to us, Miss Prince was engaged to be married.’

‘Came to his senses, I suppose,’ Hannah said.

‘He married her sister instead,’ Emmeline said.

This silenced Hannah, but only briefly. ‘She should have sued him for breach of promise.’

‘That’s what Lady Clem said-and worse-but Grandmamma said Miss Prince didn’t want to cause him trouble.’

‘Then she’s a fool,’ Hannah said. ‘She’s better off without him.’

‘What a romantic,’ David said archly. ‘The poor lady’s hopelessly in love with a man she can’t have and you begrudge reading her the occasional piece of sad poetry. Cruelty, thy name is Hannah.’

Hannah set her chin. ‘Not cruel, practical. Romance makes people forget themselves, do silly things.’

David was smiling: the amused smile of an elder brother who believed that time would change her.

‘It’s true,’ Hannah said, stubbornly. ‘Miss Prince would be better to stop pining and start filling her mind-and ours-with interesting things. Like the building of the pyramids, the lost city of Atlantis, the adventures of the Vikings…’

Emmeline yawned and David held up his hands in an attitude of surrender.

‘Anyway,’ Hannah said, frowning as she picked up her papers. ‘We’re wasting time. We’ll go from the bit where Miriam gets leprosy.’

‘We’ve done it a hundred times,’ Emmeline said. ‘Can’t we do something else?’

‘Like what?’

Emmeline shrugged uncertainly. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked from Hannah to David. ‘Couldn’t we play The Game?’

No. It wasn’t The Game then. It was just the game. A game. Emmeline may have been referring to conkers, or jacks, or marbles for all I knew that morning. It wasn’t for some time that The Game took on capital letters in my mind. That I came to associate the term with secrets and fancies and adventures unimagined. On that dull, wet morning, as the rain pattered against the nursery windowpanes, I barely gave it a thought.

Hidden behind the armchair sweeping up the dried and scattered petals, I was imagining what it might be like to have siblings. I had always longed for one. I had told Mother once, asked her whether I might have a sister. Someone with whom to gossip and plot, whisper and dream. How potent the mystique of sisterhood that I had even longed for someone with whom to quarrel. Mother had laughed, but not in a happy way, and said she wasn’t given to making the same mistake twice.

What must it feel like, I wondered, to belong somewhere, to face the world, a member of a tribe with ready-made allies? I was pondering this, brushing absently at the armchair, when something moved beneath my duster. A blanket flapped and a female voice croaked: ‘What? What’s all this? Hannah? David?’

She was as old as age itself. An ancient woman, recessed amongst the cushions, hidden from view. This, I knew, must be Nanny. I had heard her spoken of in hushed and reverent tones, both upstairs and down: she had nursed Lord Ashbury himself when he was a lad and was as much a family institution as the house itself.

I froze where I stood, duster in hand, under the gaze of three sets of pale blue eyes.

The old woman spoke again. ‘Hannah? What’s going on?’

‘Nothing, Nanny,’ Hannah said, finding her tongue. ‘We’re just rehearsing for the recital. We’ll be quieter from now on.’

‘You mind Raverley doesn’t get too frisky, cooped up inside,’ Nanny said.

‘No, Nanny,’ Hannah said, her voice revealing a sensitivity to match her fierceness. ‘We’ll make sure he’s nice and quiet.’ She came forward and tucked the blanket back around the old lady’s tiny form. ‘There, there, Nanny dear, you rest now.’

‘Well,’ Nanny said sleepily, ‘maybe just for a little while.’ Her eyes fluttered shut and after a moment her breathing grew deep and regular.

I held my own breath, waiting for one of the children to speak. They were still looking at me, eyes wide. A slow instant passed, during which I envisaged myself being hauled before Myra, or worse, Mr Hamilton; called to explain how I came to be dusting Nanny; the displeasure on Mother’s face as I returned home, released without references…