Rose Rivers Page 4

  When I reached Kensington High Street I calmed down a little because a few ladies were staring at me, and one fierce soul in black bombazine caught hold of me and asked if I was running away from my nurse.

  ‘I am too old to have a nurse,’ I said, and wriggled away from her.

  After that I walked more decorously, not wanting to draw further attention. I enjoyed looking in the shop windows, though I didn’t care for any of the clothes on display. I hate the way ladies’ costumes are so rigid. If I stay as thin and flat as I am now, perhaps I won’t need to wear a corset and all those other hideous underpinnings. I’ll wear a loose dress of some beautiful soft patterned silk – maybe a kimono? Papa very much admires Oriental art and has a fine set of Japanese prints in his studio.

  Perhaps, if I sketch assiduously every day, I can become a great lady artist and have my own studio. When I’m painting I will wear a voluminous smock and wipe my brushes on it as I fancy. Papa is frequently paint-stained, and his hands are either rainbow coloured with chalk or black with charcoal. Perhaps that’s why Mama cringes when he puts his arms around her.

  I walked on and at long, long last, reached Hyde Park. I flopped down beside Rotten Row and started drawing men on horseback. I couldn’t be bothered with the fine ladies because they looked so lopsided riding side-saddle, and no lady ever fought in a military battle anyway, as far as I was aware.

  I sketched brown horses, black horses and grey horses – magnificent sleek beasts which looked like a different species to the milkman’s old nag or the coalman’s massive carthorse. I learned how their necks arched and which way their knees bent. And yet they still didn’t look right.

  I tried hard, but eventually I had to give up. Besides, I soon grew very cold and cramped sitting on the damp grass. I wasn’t too sure of the time either. I had to get back or there might be trouble when I returned home.

  There was trouble. Apparently I’d been missing for a full hour after Nurse and the children arrived back from their afternoon stroll. Time for the servants to scour the house for me, for Nurse to tell Mama, and for Maggie to be sent off to fetch a policeman because they thought I might have been kidnapped!

  I stood squirming in the drawing room while Mama lectured me. She spoke lying down, a scented handkerchief on her forehead, because my disappearance had given her another sick headache.

  ‘Shame on you, Miss Rose,’ said Edie. ‘How could you be so thoughtless! Your poor mama’s been beside herself.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to worry you so. I simply thought I’d take a little stroll by myself,’ I said.

  She reacted as if I’d taken it into my head to march around Kensington like Lady Godiva, clothed only in my hair.

  ‘You must surely understand that children of thirteen do not wander around London by themselves!’

  ‘Rupert does, quite often,’ I retorted. ‘Don’t you remember the day he spent his pocket money on a cab to Buckingham Palace so that he could see the soldiers in their scarlet uniform?’

  ‘I do indeed, the little scamp!’ said Mama, shaking her head fondly. Rupert can do no wrong in her eyes. ‘Rupert is a young man with a very independent spirit. He is able to look after himself. Boys aren’t subject to the sort of dangers girls are. There are all sorts of evil men who prey upon young girls!’

  She hissed the last sentence dramatically, as if she believed a thousand crazed cut-throats lurked in the sleepy streets of Kensington, ready to attack any young girl who came skipping past. I smirked at the idea, which infuriated her.

  ‘How dare you snigger like that, you insolent girl! You seem to think you know best!’

  I felt I did know better than Mama, but I knew it would be fatal to say so. I stayed silent, staring at my feet. My white satin indoor shoes looked a little the worse for wear after their long walk. I thought of the thrilling fairy story of the red shoes. Perhaps I would never remove my white satin shoes now. They would take me further and further away, until I’d danced the length and breadth of Britain, and I’d end up dying of exhaustion climbing a Scottish mountain or tumbling down some Welsh waterfall. (My geography was too hazy to name specific places.)

  ‘Rose! Don’t ignore me!’ Mama said sharply. ‘Where did you go? Tell me at once!’

  ‘I went to Hyde Park,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ Mama warned.

  ‘I did, Mama, truly. You can ask Nurse. I begged her to take us there, but she said it was too far for the little ones.’

  ‘Of course it is. So why did you want to go to Hyde Park? Children go to Kensington Gardens,’ said Mama.

  ‘I didn’t want to look at children. I see enough of them at home. I wanted to go and look at the riders in Rotten Row.’

  ‘You’re interested in riding?’ Mama asked. She sounded a little less hostile. ‘Well, why on earth didn’t you say so before?’

  I DID MY best to tell Mama that I didn’t want to ride. When I was little I didn’t even want a rocking horse. Mounting a huge creature with flaring nostrils, sharp teeth, steel-capped hoofs and an unpredictable nature seemed a terrible idea. Mama spoke about her friend Mrs Feynsham-Jones, whose daughters were all magnificent horsewomen. She wondered if they might allow me to ride with them.

  ‘I don’t want to ride, Mama,’ I said yet again. ‘And I can’t bear those Feynsham-Jones girls. They’re ghastly, all three of them.’

  ‘Don’t be so difficult, Rose! The Feynsham-Jones girls are lovely young ladies,’ Mama declared.

  They aren’t official Ladies, but Mama feels that double-barrelled names are the next best thing, and with the middle Feynsham-Jones girl you got two for the price of one. Lucinda-May is my age, and the dullest creature ever, even worse than her silly big sister, Pamela, and her whining younger sister, Cecily. They came to tea this summer and it wasn’t a success.

  Mama made Nurse keep Beth upstairs in the nursery with baby Phoebe so that she shouldn’t disgrace us. She insisted that Clarrie and I wear our best organdie party frocks, and Sebastian and Algie had to wear their cream summer suits. Rupert chose to wear his striped boating blazer and cricketing flannels instead, but looked so charming that Mama let him get away with it.

  He was the only one who didn’t end up in disgrace. He played an elaborate game of Charming Pamela, sitting next to her and asking her questions as if he really wanted to know the answer, then plying her with cups of tea and little raspberry sponge cakes in a wondrous parody of gentlemanly behaviour. She simpered and tossed her long curls and giggled at his jokes, her pale face turning as pink as the icing on her cake. She thought Rupert was really smitten with her, the silly girl, though whenever she bent her head over cake or cup he rolled his eyes at me or openly yawned. It was hard not to snort with laughter.

  I was supposed to be entertaining Lucinda-May, but it was an uphill task. I don’t know how to make small talk or indeed any kind of talk. I asked her what games she liked, and she said she had just learned to play Bezique and was very fond of it. She offered to show me, and asked me to fetch two packs of cards. It turned out that Bezique was an incredibly boring card game. I had meant a real game of Pirates or Savages or Damsels in Distress, the sort of games I used to play with Rupert – but when I explained she looked appalled.

  ‘I don’t play those sorts of rough, childish games any more,’ she said, looking at me as if I were very strange indeed.

  So then I asked her which books she enjoyed, thinking this safe territory.

  ‘I don’t really care to read much nowadays, though I used to like fairy stories,’ she said.

  How can she bear not to read? I read when I wake up, when I go to bed, when I have my bath, when I have nursery tea, when I’m sent out into the garden for fresh air, and I read for hours and hours and hours whenever I sit on the window seat halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t have any very exciting books,’ I said. ‘You could borrow some of mine, if you like. I read anything I fancy – all kinds of grown-up novels, thou
gh I still like fairy tales too. Which are your favourites? I like the Jack stories: “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Jack the Giant Killer”.’

  Lucinda-May looked puzzled. ‘I never cared for stories about boys, especially not ones with giants in them. I liked stories about pretty fairies.’

  Oh dear. Those kinds of fairy stories. Pwetty lickle fairy-wairy stories. I gave up trying to entertain Lucinda-May, made some excuse about using the facilities, left the room and didn’t come back. I couldn’t go to my usual window seat because Nurse and Edie always found me there. I went right up to the attics, using the narrow servants’ stairs. They’d never think of looking for me there.

  I peeped into the maids’ bedroom, curious to find out more about them. I was startled to see how bare it was: just an iron bed, a washstand with a jug and basin, and two hooks on the door for their clothes. The bed wasn’t very big, but they obviously had to share it. They’ve tried to make their room pretty, with a rag rug on the floor, a patchwork quilt on the bed, and fairground china spaniels on the windowsill. I wonder if either has a gentleman admirer who won the spaniels at a coconut shy.

  The other attic rooms were used to store old furniture and cast-offs. Most had buckets on the floor, because the roof leaked. It was just as well that Nurse shared the night nursery with the little children, and Nurse Budd slept with Beth.

  The rest of the staff slept down in the basement. Mr Hodgson had a proper chamber, and Mrs Harrison shared her room with young Mary-Jane, who had to squeeze herself in beside Cook’s big bulk. Little Jack Boots had to do without any kind of bed, curling up on a rug under the kitchen table. He isn’t Jack who climbed a magic beanstalk, Jack who killed giants. He is Jack who cleans our dirty boots, though his own are worn through, with the soles flapping comically when he walks. No, it isn’t comical at all.

  Were Jack and Mary-Jane close, like Rupert and me? Did they have little private jokes? Did they talk about us? Do they like us or despise us?

  I was forced back downstairs because someone had started shrieking. I thought at first it must be Beth, though the screams were unusually high-pitched and I found that it was Lucinda-May! She was standing on the velvet sofa in the drawing room, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  I stared at her in astonishment, delighted that such a dull girl was now behaving so badly, throwing a tantrum of Beth-like proportions. However, it turned out that she was screaming with terror, not temper. Sebastian had been carrying Montmorency Mouse inside his shirt, and Montmorency had woken up, nose twitching at the smell of cake crumbs, wriggled out between Sebastian’s buttons, run across his chest, over his tummy and down his leg to the carpet.

  Sebastian tried to catch him while Algie and Clarrie laughed, but all three Feynsham-Jones girls had reacted ridiculously. Cecily jumped onto her mother’s lap, spilling her tea. Pamela clutched hold of Rupert, practically climbing onto his lap. Lucinda-May had no one to cling to, so jumped up on the sofa and screeched. She couldn’t have made more fuss if a man-eating tiger were prowling our drawing room.

  Poor little Montmorency was terrified by all the noise and darted under the sofa. Sebastian had to wriggle right underneath, and emerged with little bits of fluff sticking to his cream suit, because Maggie isn’t very thorough when she sweeps.

  After the Feynsham-Joneses had departed Mama was furious. She told Sebastian that if he let Montmorency loose again she would give his mouse to Mistletoe. I don’t think she meant it, but Sebastian burst into tears and declared that he would have to live in a cage too, because he couldn’t bear to be parted from Montmorency. Algie and Clarrie and I were delighted by the turn of events, because we’d found Lucinda-May and little sissy Cecily hard going.

  ‘Aren’t you glad that terrible Pamela has gone, Rupert?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course!’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know how you stood it when she held you so tightly!’ I laughed.

  ‘Yes, it was frightful,’ Rupert agreed.

  For once we were all united in scorn for the Feynsham-Jones girls. I’m pretty certain they detested us too. They surely won’t want me to go riding with them, no matter how hard Mama tries to ingratiate herself.

  Remembering the disastrous tea party made me think about Mary-Jane and Jack again. I’d been full of good intentions to try to make their life less bleak, but I’d been so intent on making the most of Rupert during his last weeks at home that I’d done nothing.

  I decided to try now. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. I couldn’t just march down to the basement and announce that I wanted to be their friend. It would sound so peculiar. But then I hit on the idea of drawing them. Papa sketches humbly born children for Sarah Smith’s books, so why shouldn’t I?

  Cook and Mr Hodgson were very suspicious when I asked if Mary-Jane and Jack could come upstairs with me for half an hour.

  ‘What do you want with my Mary-Jane? She’s busy peeling my veg for dinner. I know she’s a bit heavy-handed, but she’s a good girl really. You aren’t going to tell your ma on her, are you, Miss Rose?’ Cook fussed, while Mary-Jane hid behind her, biting her lip.

  ‘Is young Jack in trouble?’ asked Mr Hodgson. ‘Tell me what he’s done and I’ll sort it out, Miss Rose. He makes a nice job of all the boots. You can practically see your face in them. We might make a footman of him yet, though he’s got to be trained up right. He’s still a bit rough and ready round the edges, but he’s a good lad for all that.’ He cuffed Jack about the head even so, but there was such concern on his face it was almost like a caress.

  ‘They haven’t done anything. I’m sure they’re both splendid at their jobs. I simply want to draw them, if that’s all right with you,’ I said.

  ‘Draw them?’ they said in unison. It clearly wasn’t all right, but they let them come upstairs with me. I suppose they had to. I’m the eldest daughter of the house. They are servants. It seems so strange that I can tell adults what to do even when they’re old enough to be my grandparents.

  Mary-Jane and Jack trailed after me nervously. I didn’t quite know where to take them. We usually entertained guests in the drawing room, but that didn’t seem sensible, especially with Mama reclining on her chaise longue. I wondered about taking them up to my bedroom, but it was my own private space and I hated anyone invading it, even my own brothers and sisters. Especially Algie.

  The nursery wasn’t suitable either. Nurse would disapprove of the kitchen staff marching into her territory. Papa was out doing his own sketching. I made a bold decision: I would use his studio.

  I felt anxious all the same. Papa lets me come in, but only when he’s there. I have to keep very still and not disturb him. He doesn’t mind me looking at his current work, but I’m not allowed to touch his pastels and paints, or fiddle with the props scattered about the studio. I knew that Algie and Clarrie would create havoc there, and Sebastian would be unable to resist dressing up in the draperies. What would I do if Jack and Mary-Jane behaved like my siblings?

  But Jack and Mary-Jane didn’t behave like ordinary children. They stood stock-still just inside the doorway, staring at Papa’s paintings. They seemed particularly disconcerted by the abandoned nude study of the Honourable Louisa propped in one corner. Well, she wasn’t completely nude. She had a filmy strip of gauze about her hips, and her chest was half hidden by her long auburn hair, but she was still pretty bare.

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t look so shocked. She isn’t rude, she’s art,’ I said.

  They glanced at me as if I were mad. Perhaps I was. I was pretending to be blasé and sophisticated, but I found that portrait shocking too. It seemed extraordinary that she had taken off her clothes – shoes, stockings, dress, petticoats, drawers, even her corset – and stood there in front of Papa, seemingly quite at ease. Her eyes were very blue and bright, her mouth half open as if she were chatting to him. It implied that they were on very intimate terms.

  I wondered if Mama had seen the portrait. Perhaps that was why Papa hadn’t finished it and Louisa
didn’t come to the house any more. Artists had been painting nudes throughout the centuries. I had looked at engravings in Papa’s art books and had seen Greek and Roman statues, pale Flemish ladies, rounded Renaissance beauties. But they were women in history and I didn’t know them. Louisa was real, and I’d seen her as she ran lightly up and down our stairs in her blue velvet coat, her glorious hair piled high and held in place by tortoiseshell combs.

  I covered her portrait with an old sheet. Jack and Mary-Jane stared anxiously at me.

  ‘Now, let’s begin,’ I said brightly.

  ‘Do you want us to tidy this room, miss?’ Mary-Jane asked huskily.

  It certainly needed tidying. Papa never allowed Maggie to dust and sweep in his studio because he said she’d get everything in a muddle. It was in a fine old muddle already, canvas and cloth and paint and brushes spilling everywhere.

  ‘No, I don’t want you to tidy, Mary-Jane. I want to sketch you. And you too, Jack,’ I said.

  They blinked at me.

  ‘How do you mean sketch, miss?’ Jack asked, scratching his head.

  ‘I want to draw you,’ I said, holding out my sketchpad and pencil.

  He looked horrified. So did Mary-Jane.

  ‘I’m not taking my clothes off, miss!’ said Jack.

  ‘I’m not either. I’m a good girl,’ said Mary-Jane.

  ‘I don’t want you to pose nude for me!’ I told them. ‘I simply want to draw you as you are. Don’t look so worried! It won’t hurt. Look, go and stand under the skylight. Then I’ll sit here and draw you.’

  I tried to arrange them as if they were having a natural conversation – maybe even playing a game. It was impossible. It was like trying to breathe life into a pair of broomsticks. They stuck their arms and legs out at the oddest of angles and scarcely breathed, grimacing as if I were about to throw a bucket of water over them.

  ‘Couldn’t you just relax a bit?’ I begged them. ‘How about jiggling your arms and legs about, maybe running around a little, and then standing still?’