Autumn Softly Fell (6 page)

What could she say? She had no plan now and no choice. She nodded glumly. Did Henry realise he was taking her back to gaol?

He set the machine in motion. At once, Dorothea forgot
everything
else, was consumed by terror. She clung to her seat as the autocar bowled along, bumping and jerking over the ruts in the road, the roar of its engine and the noise of the wind deafening. There was an oily, smoky smell that made her feel sick and the hedgerows flashed past in a way that made her giddy. Yet all the time Henry kept up a flow of chatter as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

‘…quite a decent little machine … speedy too…’ (Many of his words were blown away by the wind). ‘…twelve miles per hour is the limit … the police hide in ditches with stopwatches … quite ridiculous, but there’s nothing one can…. Oh rats, what’s up with her now?’

The last words came out loud and clear as, without warning, the engine coughed, spluttered, and died. The autocar ground to a halt, one wheel lurching into a rut. Dorothea’s head was still spinning. All those miles and miles she had walked – through the village and up the rise: and they had covered them in just a few minutes. They were almost back at Clifton already. She recognized the crumbling
sandstone
wall on the right.

As she collected herself, Henry jumped down, tore off his gloves, threw up the bonnet. He began poking around inside with an oily rag.

‘Come on old girl. Don’t let me down today of all days.’

He was speaking to the machine as if it was a person. Dorothea remembered that someone had said Henry was cracked. Perhaps they’d been right. But at that moment he looked up at her and grinned and she knew that he wasn’t cracked at all. He was, in fact, the nicest grown-up she had ever met – apart from Papa, of course.

‘Now don’t you worry, Dorothea. This often happens. It’s only a glitch. I’ll have her going again in no time.’ His grin broadened as he looked her over. ‘That coat is far too big for you. It’s like a marquee.’

But he’d been right about it being warm. It was much better than her own coat. She felt warm now inside, too, just as she’d done all those weeks ago sitting on his knee with his arm around her. She wanted him to know. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t think he was cracked, that he was nicer than anyone, that she too believed in autocars – because if Henry believed in them, how could you not? But when she opened her mouth to speak, the right words wouldn’t come out and all she could manage, stammering and blushing, was, ‘You’ve got a black eye.’

‘Yes. A real shiner.’ He touched it gingerly. ‘Someone threw a stone at me. Well, more of a rock, actually.’

‘But why?’

‘Because they want autocars kept off the roads. They don’t think autocars belong there. A lot of people get very angry about it indeed. Most just shout and wave their fists, but one or two throw things too. Luddites, I call them.’

‘There was a man who wanted a law against it,’ said Dorothea, thinking back to her first morning, the overheard conversation in the hallway.

‘That would be Colonel Harding – the chief of all the Luddites. I drive past Newbolt Hall every day to annoy him!’ He chuckled, then ducked back down inside the machine. His muffled voice came floating up to her. ‘No news about your father, then?’

‘He hasn’t come back. That’s why I have to go and look for him.’

But even as she was speaking, she suddenly wondered why. Why hadn’t he come back, why should it be down to her to go looking for him? How dare he bring her here and just leave her! How
dare
he! It was wrong. It was cruel. It was …
selfish
!

She was choked with rage, knocked off balance by it, flooded with guilt too because Papa wasn’t cruel or selfish, of course he wasn’t. He was the kindest, the best man who’d ever lived! But just at that moment she couldn’t quite believe it. It was as if the world had been tipped upside down.

Tears sprang into her eyes. The wind whipped her. The big, grey, empty sky made her want to cower and hide.

‘Why did he leave me?
Why
?’ Her voice was little more than a whisper but Henry must have heard because his head reappeared and he regarded her thoughtfully.

‘Who can say why parents do anything?’ he said at length. ‘Take my mother, for instance. She’s forever trying to marry me off. She won’t let it lie. I’ve told her time and again that it’s too early for all that. I’m only twenty-two and I’ve no intention of getting married until I’m thirty at least. But she won’t have it. Says I need a steadying influence. Can’t imagine why.’ He wiped his hands on the oily rag, put it aside. ‘Hey now! Don’t look so glum! I’m sure your father only wanted to do right by you. He wouldn’t have left you at Clifton if he didn’t think it was for the best. And I don’t suppose he’s gone for good. I daresay he’ll turn up again sooner or later. Which is more than can be said for my pater.
He’s
dead and buried.’ She caught her breath and he glanced up and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it all happened long ago, I’m over it now.’ But as he closed the bonnet and climbed back into the seat beside her, a faraway look came into his eyes. ‘Funny thing, really. I haven’t thought about it for years. It hits one hard at the time but I’d almost forgotten. Cried my eyes out, I seem to remember. But I was only ten.’

Dorothea looked at him – his plain but affable face, his thin moustache, his deep eyes. He looked so grown up that she couldn’t imagine him aged ten. Had he really cried for his father? Mickey would have died of shame at the very idea. But Henry was not like Mickey. He was not like anyone she had ever met.

‘I wish I could live with you, Henry, instead of at Clifton!’

He smiled. ‘That wouldn’t work at all. I’d drive you up the wall. I do Mother. Me and my fads, as she puts it. She thinks it’s high time I took a more serious view of life. But why would you want to live with me when you’ve an aunt and an uncle and all the comforts of Clifton Park?’

‘Nobody there wants me. They keep me locked in the nursery, I never see anyone. Roderick has gone away and Nanny is horrible and – and—’

‘Well I never! What a life! But it can’t all be bad, surely? As for your nanny, I wouldn’t take too much notice of
her
. It’s her job to be horrid. All nannies are. Mine used to lock me in a cupboard for misbehaving. It didn’t make a better boy, but I’m jolly well terrified of the dark even now!’

Was it true, she wondered? Could someone as brave and wise as Henry
really
be scared of the dark? She watched him rubbing his chin. There must have been a speck of oil on his fingers because when he took his hand away, there was a black smudge on his jaw.

‘I’m sure your aunt and uncle will be wondering where you are. They’ll be worried about you, mark my words!’

‘But I never even see them. And my uncle—he and Papa—they had the most terrible argument—’

‘Don’t take it to heart. Grown-ups are always having
disagreements
. It never amounts to anything.’

‘But why does my uncle hate Papa so much?’

‘Well, let me see. I’m no expert of course. I’ve not had much to do with your uncle, being away at college and so on. Some people in these parts consider Mr Brannan an interloper. He’s
not one of us,
as Mrs Somersby would say. But Mother’s always got on with him, and she’s no fool, so….’

‘But the argument, what was it all about?’

‘Well, now, what can I say?’ He caressed the steering wheel absently, weighing his words. ‘I only know what Mother’s told me. She says it’s all to do with the elopement.’

‘What’s an … elope…?’

‘An
elopement
. It’s when two people run off together without telling anyone. That’s what your parents did, or so Mother
understands
. I suppose you can see that your uncle might be angry about it, when it was his own sister and it was your father she ran off with.’

Dorothea looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why did they do it? Why did they run away?’

‘For love, I suppose. People do the rummest things for love – or so I’ve been told.’

‘And now I’ve run away and Uncle Albert will be angry with me, too!’

‘I’m sure he won’t be angry. He’ll be glad to have you safe and sound. You’re his niece when all’s said and done. Blood is thicker than water, as Mother always says.’

Dorothea looked at Henry from under the hat with the ear flaps and wondered what it was like to have a mother. She thought of the sister who’d eloped, someone she had never known, a stranger. You couldn’t call a stranger
mother
. Mrs Browning was the nearest thing Dorothea had ever had to a mother but it had never crossed her mind – it wouldn’t have seemed
right
– to call Mrs Browning
mother
. Not that she’d ever felt she was missing out, not having a mother. She had her papa, and that was enough.

Except that now he had gone.

She shivered inside Henry’s dust coat. Grey clouds scudded across the vast sky. The cold wind gusted round her. The road stretched ahead, rutted, muddy, empty. Fields receded endlessly in every
direction
. It was a wild and cheerless place and Henry her only friend in all the world. He looked rather comical with his black eye and the matching smudge on his jaw. She smiled but the smile faltered and tears came into her eyes as she thought how Henry was afraid of the dark, how he’d cried as a boy for his father, how people called him cracked because of his enthusiasm for autocars. Why did she feel so miserable? Why did the world seem so topsy-turvy and beyond repair? And all she had to look forward to was returning to the big house, being locked in the nursery again. It filled her with a sense of despair. No one would ever come for her, no one cared, she would end up forgotten, discarded, like the old woman in the basement.

‘Hey now!’ Henry was watching her anxiously. ‘Why the long face? It can’t be as bad as all that, surely?’

But it was. It was all hopeless. All the same, she swallowed her sobs and put on a brave face for Henry’s sake. And she thought of her papa, too.
Gee up, Dotty. Look on the bright side. There’s always a bright side, no matter how well hidden.

Henry was the bright side – meeting Henry. Nora, too. Perhaps Roderick, if she ever saw him again. And what about the boy with the big dark eyes? Might he become a friend too? But she didn’t even know who he was! Perhaps Henry might know.

‘What boy’s this?’

‘He said his name was Richard.’

‘Ah. That boy.’

‘I didn’t know he was there until today.’

‘He often seems to get overlooked, one way or another.’

‘But who is he? Why is he in bed?’

‘He’s Richard Rycroft, your aunt’s nephew. A delicate creature, they say, but I don’t really know what is wrong with him. You’d have to ask Mother.’

‘He wanted me to stay but I couldn’t. I was running away. I felt mean, leaving him.’

‘Why was that?’

‘He looked sad. I wanted to … to make him smile.’

‘Did you, now?’ Henry gave her a curious glance. ‘You’re quite something, Dorothea, do you know that?’

‘Is … is that good?’

‘Yes. Very good. Very good indeed.’

‘I … I think you’re
something
, too, Henry.’ She felt it a great cheek using his name so freely but he didn’t seem to mind.

‘My word! You certainly know how to make a chap blush!’ He laughed, looked rather bashful, but then rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘We should get going, before we catch our deaths. If Bernadette will oblige….’

Bernadette did oblige. In the blink of an eye, it seemed, the Daimler was juddering up the long driveway between the tall
evergreens
. Huddled in Henry’s dust coat, Dorothea couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling inside. Her escape was over. The big house was waiting to claim her once again.

Uncle Albert put in an appearance. Dorothea had never seen him in the nursery before. He did not look best pleased.

They left her alone with him. She felt all trembly, as if her legs might give way at any moment. It didn’t help that she was still giddy from Nanny’s cuffs and blows. Not that she was a stranger to such treatment – Mrs Browning was none too gentle – but Nanny seemed to take a particular pride in that aspect of her work. Dorothea did
not like to imagine what Uncle Albert would have in store for her. She wished she had run along that endless road as far as her legs would have carried her. She might have been curled in a ditch, starving, by now but anything would be better than this.

‘Why did you go off like that?’ Uncle Albert’s voice was an angry growl. ‘Eloise – your aunt – is very cross. Very cross indeed.’

Dorothea stood frozen, couldn’t speak a word.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he murmured after a pause. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best.’ His big, thick fingers tapped
impatiently
on the table but he wasn’t looking at her, which was a blessing. ‘Ellie would prefer it if you were sent away, but … well … I don’t like the idea of … of
those
places.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Don’t you like it here, eh? Eh? Is that why you ran away?’

Dorothea quailed. His fierce eyes seemed to burn into her. But it was important to tell him the truth. ‘Please, uncle, I just want to go home.’

‘And where is home? Where did you live before you came here?’

‘In … in Stepnall Street.’

‘Stepnall Street?’

‘It’s in London.’

‘Big place, London.’

‘There’s a house, a court, cobbles….’ She tried to put her thoughts in order. ‘There’s a road nearby where the trams run. Mickey likes to race the trams.’

‘And who is Mickey?’

‘Mickey is….’ Who exactly
was
Mickey? She’d thought of him as a sort of big brother, but he wasn’t really her brother. He belonged to Mrs Browning. But who was Mrs Browning? Papa had called her
the landlady
but he gave a strange sort of laugh when he said it, as if it was some sort of joke. Their room, though,
was
Mrs Browning’s, she’d been there first. Dorothea found herself wondering who Mickey’s papa was, and Flossie’s. She’d never thought about it before.

But it wasn’t important. All that mattered was her own papa. ‘Please, uncle, can’t you find him? Can’t you find my papa?’