Autumn Softly Fell (4 page)

She looked out of the nursery window. It was growing dark. Hours and hours had passed, and her papa had not come.

He was not going to come. He had abandoned her. Forsaken her.

It seemed suddenly very cold in the big room, despite the glowing fire. She was shivering, her hands pressed against the cold window, the icy metal of the bars digging into her head.

‘Will I ever see him again?’ she whispered to her dim reflection in the glass.

But the winter dark gave no answer.

DOROTHEA LAY FORLORN
between crisp sheets listening to the rain beating against the window and trying to count the days and weeks since she’d arrived at Clifton Park. It was impossible. One day blurred into another. Time dragged, yet seemed to pass her by. It had been weeks and weeks since she’d last left the confines of the nursery – since she had seen her fierce uncle or kind-hearted Henry or the black bat-figure of Mrs Bourne. Did any of them even remember her, after all this time? She felt as if she was being slowly suffocated.

Nanny had sent her to bed early this evening. ‘I can’t be doing with you, fiddling and fidgeting.’

‘But I didn’t—’ (She hadn’t).

‘None of that! I won’t have you answering back! Now off you go, and be quick about it!’

Dorothea did not really mind. It was all the same being bored in her bedroom as bored in the day room. It was Sunday, too, which made things even worse. Sundays were days that lagged, dreary days when the nursery seemed more like a prison than ever. Nothing was allowed; even reading was forbidden on Sundays.

‘The Sabbath is a day of rest,’ said Nanny. ‘Whoever doeth any work on the Sabbath, he shall surely be put to death.’

But this did not seem to apply to Nora who did as much work on the Sabbath as she did on any other day – not that Dorothea dared point this out to Nanny who, she felt, was more than capable of putting people to death. Nanny reminded her of Mrs Browning with her short temper and cuffs round the ear. They even had the same red nose; but Nanny never smelt of gin.

The nursery was a lonely place. Baby was no company at all, Nora was often too busy to talk, and Roderick had gone away. Dorothea was not entirely sure that she liked Roderick, but he was better than nothing. He had, however, been sent off to school. There were schools where boys went to live for weeks at a time without ever coming home. That was where Roderick had gone. The way he’d described it sounded horrible, another kind of prison, but Roderick had stuck out his chin and said, ‘It’s not as awful as all that, not really.’ Afterwards she wondered if he’d been telling the whole truth. There’d been a look in his eye that she remembered seeing in Mickey’s when he was telling fibs.

So Roderick had gone, and even Nora escaped the nursery each evening when she went home to the village.

‘I wish I could go too, Nora! I’d much rather live in your cottage than here!’

‘Whatever for, miss, when you’ve a room to yourself and your own comfy bed? What a funny one you are! Why, there’s no room to swing a cat at home, and six of us to share two bedrooms. You’d not like it at all.’

But Dorothea felt it was exactly what she
would
like. Had not five of them shared just
one
room in Stepnall Street? Nora’s village, she was sure, was a place where real people lived – ordinary people: not like this house, full of the strangest, most objectionable people you could imagine.

Dorothea shivered, listening to sleet pummelling the window and the sound of the wind seething amongst the branches of the big tree (a cedar tree, it was called). Whatever Nora might say, Dorothea could not get used to a room of her own. It made her think of the old woman in Stepnall Street – the old woman who’d lived in a
basement
room in the same court where Dorothea lived. The old woman had hardly ever been seen. No one had noticed when she’d stopped being seen altogether. And then one day she’d been found dead. Mickey had known all about it, of course. Someone had come looking for the rent, he said. When their knocking went
unanswered
, they had broken down the door. The old woman had been found sitting in her chair dressed in her old rags, covered from head
to foot in lice. She had been dead a week at least. Mickey had laughed. He was like that.

Lying in the dark of the deserted room, Dorothea wished she had never known about the old woman. She wondered if she would end up forgotten too. She wondered if she might die and no one would know.

When at last her eyes shut and she slid into sleep, it seemed to her that she woke up again almost at once but somehow she knew that she wasn’t awake in truth. She tried to ignore that because she wanted the dream to be real. She was at home, in Stepnall Street, in the room on the third floor, lying in the ramshackle bed with only one blanket. The wall beside her was cold and damp to the touch, but Mickey was there to cuddle up to, warm as toast. He was fast asleep, gently snoring, dribbling too. The way spittle leaked from the corner of his scabby mouth always made her queasy but for once she didn’t mind a bit. She was just glad to be home.

The room was in darkness. The others were sleeping too. Flossie was gurgling faintly in her banana crate cot. Beyond the pinned-up curtain, Papa and Mrs Browning were breathing noisily out of sync, Mrs Browning whimpering every time she exhaled. Dorothea listened happily to these familiar sounds. There were others. Rats were scrabbling under the floor boards; there were muffled voices and the sound of thumping and bumping from other rooms. Outside, cats were fighting on a nearby roof, mewling and hissing, their claws scraping and sliding on the tiles. Faint footsteps came from the street; someone was singing out of tune; down in the court a man and a woman were arguing, their voices shrill, their words slurred. After so long away – weeks and weeks – these well-known noises which had so often disturbed her sleep sounded more like a favourite lullaby.

She smiled drowsily and tightened her grip on Mickey, pulling his warm body close. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. She felt herself drifting, drifting….

She woke with a start. There was still a smile on her lips but this time she was
really
awake. She was not in Stepnall Street. She was
lying in the big bed in her room at Clifton Park and it was morning. Another dreary day had arrived.

The sense of disappointment was crushing.

Slowly she sat up, wiping away the tears that had sprung into her eyes. As she did so, she suddenly realised what she had to do. Her papa had not come back for her, so she must go to him. Stepnall Street was not just a dream, it was a place, it existed, and maybe – just maybe – her papa would be waiting there for her.

She reached a decision. It was like a weight being lifted. She would go to London. She would go to Stepnall Street. She would go home.

Dorothea sat at the big table in the day room fingering carved wooden objects that Nanny called ‘chess pieces’. Chess was a game, Nanny said. Dorothea did not know anything about it. She moved the black and white counters across the scrubbed tabletop, putting her plans into place.

‘Nora….’

‘Yes, miss?’

‘When Roderick goes to school, does he go by train?’

‘He does, miss.’

‘And is the station far from here?’

Nora paused in her scrubbing of the floor, sat back on her haunches. ‘It’s not far at all, miss. I’ve walked it many a time.’ The station, Nora said, was on the main line down from London. It was at a place called Welby.

But where was Welby? How did you get there?

That was easy, Nora said. She knew the country hereabouts like the back of her hand, could find her way to Welby with her eyes shut. From Clifton you would go down the drive, turn left at the road, head for the village. Once in the village it was straight on at the Green and out the other side. You crossed the turnpike and took the road to Welby. The station was on the right, just before you reached Welby village itself. ‘You must have come that way yourself, miss, the day you arrived. You came by train, you said.’

‘I don’t remember. It was dark. I was asleep most of the time.’

Nora looked at her curiously. ‘What’s brought this on, Miss Dorothea? Why are you so interested in the railway all of a sudden?’

Dorothea sidestepped the question, wrinkled her nose instead. ‘That smell….’

Nora laughed. ‘Carbolic, miss. Helps keep the place clean. Never mind, I’ve nearly finished. You can help me put the rugs back, if you like.’

One step at a time
, Mrs Browning said. The first step of Dorothea’s escape was to get out of the house. She called it her
escape
because, although no one really seemed to want her (‘A plague and a nuisance,’ Nanny muttered, casting dark looks at her, and hadn’t Mrs Bourne said something about an orphanage?), she felt sure that
they
(Nanny, her uncle) would never agree to her going off on her own and would probably veto any idea of returning to Stepnall Street under any circumstances. She had no choice but to keep her plans under her hat. This
troubled
her. Was it the same as telling fibs? Mrs Browning maintained there was nothing wrong with a
little white lie,
but Papa thought differently. He had taught her that all lies – white or otherwise – were wrong. But what else could she do? She just hoped Papa would understand.

Mulling things over, she took considerable heart from the
experience
of her first morning. She had managed to get all the way to the front door without being caught. Would she be able to do so a second time? And when would her chance come?

‘Now then,’ said Nanny, looming over the table. ‘Eat your breakfast. I want it all finished by the time I get back. But I must just have a quick word with Cook.’

Off she went to the kitchen (wherever that might be in this labyrinth of a house) for yet another of her ‘words’ with Cook: words which, Dorothea had soon learnt, were never ‘quick’. At first she thought nothing of it, carried on eating. But Baby was being particularly fractious that morning and Nora had her hands full. ‘She’s teething, poor thing.’ Cradling Baby, gently rocking her, Nora
looked round the day room and sighed. ‘I just can’t get on today, no matter how I try.’ There was always so much for Nora to do, cleaning, tidying, dusting, scrubbing, polishing, laying and lighting the fires, making the beds, feeding and bathing Baby, but Nora rarely complained. It was Nanny who felt hard done by. ‘I’m nothing but a slave, and never a moment to rest my weary legs.’ But what Nanny actually
did
was something of a mystery.

As Nora stooped over the cot, laying Baby down, Dorothea suddenly remembered her plan. Swiftly, she slipped two pieces of toast into her sash and stood up. As she edged towards the door, Nora didn’t so much as give her a glance.

In her room, Dorothea pulled on her coat and tam o’shanter, her heart thumping. The coat was a boy’s and rather too small for her; the hat was too big and kept slipping down over her eyes. All the same, she would be leaving Clifton in better clothes than those she’d arrived in. She had the toast, too, to sustain her on her journey.

She took a last look round. It was then that she had her first wobble. She would not have said until now that she had grown fond of her room, but it seemed something of a wrench to be leaving it forever. She trailed her hand over the old wardrobe (still mostly empty) and over the dressing table with the three-folded mirror. She looked at the big bed, so soft and comfortable. Must she really give it all up?

She took a deep breath. She was just being soppy. Mickey would have jeered at her. He was never soppy and not afraid of anything. He took on boys twice his size in the blink of an eye. But even Mickey would be bowled over when she walked into their room in Stepnall Street after so long!

If she ever got there.

But she mustn’t think like that. She mustn’t get too far ahead of herself. One step at a time.

She left her room and opened the green baize door which marked the frontier of the nursery. She took one step, then another. Now she was beyond the pale. She was trespassing. She was at large in the forbidden parts of the house. The endless maze of stairs and
corridors
was a daunting prospect, but she knew that if she kept her head
she wouldn’t get lost. She just hoped she wouldn’t run into the menacing figure of Mrs Bourne. She was in no hurry to meet
her
again.

She was tiptoeing along the corridor to the stairs when the sound of a voice made her jump out of her skin. She half expected to see Mrs Bourne sweeping towards her to grab her arm, drag her screaming back to the nursery. But nothing happened. The corridor was empty. There was no footstep on the stairs.

The voice came again, faintly. ‘Nurse! Nurse! Where are you?’

It was not Mrs Bourne or even Nanny. It was not an alarming voice at all. Just the opposite: rather feeble and peevish. A child’s voice. It was coming from the room away on the left: the very room, Dorothea now remembered, into which the bald man with the black bag had gone on her first morning. The bald man was Dr Camborne. He had called to examine her soon after her arrival. She had not liked him much.

‘Nurse!’

Perhaps the child in the room was ill. It would explain the doctor’s visit. Nobody had mentioned a sick child in all the weeks she had been here, but then nobody told her anything. They wouldn’t even tell her about her papa. ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,’ Nanny said.

Dorothea hesitated at the top of the stairs. She felt an urgent need to get on, to make good her escape. But what if the child needed help? You couldn’t ignore a cry for help. Mickey would no doubt say that she was being soppy but what about the Good Samaritan? Papa had told her that story many times. People should help one another, he said. It was the Christian thing to do.

Reaching a decision, she walked quickly along the corridor and pushed open the door on the left.

She found herself in a room like her own, or perhaps a little bigger. It was very gloomy for the curtains were closed. Lying in a large bed – dwarfed by it – was a pasty-faced boy with deep-sunk dark eyes and coal black hair. He did indeed look ill, as feeble and peevish as his voice, his head lolling and listless, but his expression changed when he caught sight of Dorothea. His head jerked up, his
mouth fell open. His big dark eyes looked as round as saucers in his thin face.

‘Hello.’ Dorothea found her smile had deserted her.

‘Who are you?’ the boy whispered.

‘My name is Dorothea. I … I heard you calling for a nurse.’