108. An Archangel Called Ivan Read online

  It was in fact very much the same as she had had when she had been very small.

  She then supposed that the children, who now had a Governess rather than a Nanny, were still isolated in the nursery.

  She was not mistaken.

  The butler opened the door into what was obviously a large comfortable room, but still a nursery with a rocking horse near the window.

  A boy on the floor was playing with tin soldiers, while the twin girls, who were remarkably like each other, were seated in a large chair each holding a small doll in their arms.

  They all three looked up when Arliva appeared.

  Then the butler said,

  “Here she is. She has arrived safely as we expected and you’ll have to show her round the house and tell her all the things she has to know now she’s come to look after you.”

  The children did not seem very enthusiastic at the idea, which did not surprise Arliva.

  “Thank you very much,” she said to the butler, “and can I see where I am expected to sleep so that I can take off my hat and coat.”

  As she spoke, an elderly woman, who she realised must be the housekeeper, then came up the stairs, breathing heavily on every step.

  “You knows I hate havin’ to hurry up these here stairs,” she puffed.

  “I forgot, Mrs. Lewis,” Evans the butler said. “But you’ve managed them better than you did yesterday.”

  “They’ll be the death of me sooner or later,” Mrs. Lewis grumbled.

  She turned to Arliva and looked her over before she remarked,

  “You’re a touch younger than I expected, but then we’ve had all sorts here as I suppose Mr. Evans told you.”

  Arliva held out her hand.

  “I am delighted to meet you,” she said. “And I am so sorry you have had to climb up all these stairs to do so.”

  The housekeeper seemed almost taken aback at the courtesy, but shook her hand and replied,

  “I’ll show you to your room and, if there’s anything you wants, then, of course, you asks me.”

  Arliva said nothing but followed her into what she thought was very much a nursery bedroom with blue and white chintz curtains.

  She hoped the bed would be comfortable, but rather thought that it would not be.

  Breathing even more heavily than the housekeeper, the elderly footman brought her case up the stairs and put it down with a bang against one of the walls.

  Then Mrs. Lewis suggested,

  “I expects you’d like your luncheon now after the journey. The children usually have theirs at one o’clock, so it should be upstairs at any moment.”

  “Surely it would be much easier for them to have it downstairs,” Arliva said. “It must be an awful nuisance for the household having to come up and down these stairs so often.”

  Both the butler and the housekeeper looked at her in astonishment.

  “The Master eats downstairs,” Evans told her.

  “And so do you,” Arliva added with a faint smile. “If the children are not welcome in the dining room, I am sure that there must be another room which would make it far easier than having to take the food up so many stairs.”

  Evans and the housekeeper looked at her as if she had proposed an uprising.

  “But the young people have always had their meals in the nursery,” Mrs. Lewis managed to say at last.

  “That was when they had a Nanny,” Arliva replied. “But once they are with a Governess then they should be downstairs. If not with their parents, then in a room which is easier for the staff and better for them to learn how to behave as young ladies and gentlemen.”

  Evans and Mrs. Lewis exchanged glances of sheer bewilderment.

  “I never thought of that,” the housekeeper admitted eventually.

  “Nor did I,” Evans agreed. “But then it does seem common sense. The Missus complains to me day after day coming up all these stairs. You knows yourself it’s bad for your heart.”

  “That be true enough,” the housekeeper said.

  “Well, think it over,” Arliva suggested, “and now I should get to know the young people I am to teach. But, as I can see how sensible and wise you both are, I am sure you will understand that, while a Nanny expects one thing, a Governess expects something quite different.”

  “It will certainly be easier for Mrs. Briggs to hurry up with luncheon if it was served downstairs,” Evans said, as if the idea was still moving in his brain.

  “If they are not allowed in the dining room,” Arliva suggested, “put the food in another room and there must be plenty of suitable rooms in this big house. Then we will come down as soon as it is one o’clock.”

  She glanced at her wristwatch as she spoke.

  “That will be in about twenty minutes and please tell your cook that I am very hungry.”

  “I’ll tell her and I thinks what you says will save us a lot of trouble,” the housekeeper said. “I’ve complained over and over again that these stairs’ll be the death of me.”

  “Just think what a trouble that would be,” Arliva remarked. “Surely his Lordship entertains a great deal and there must be rooms on the floor below where the children would realise that they have grown out of the nursery and into the schoolroom. We would be far more comfortable than if we had to keep climbing a mountain every time we came in through the front door.”

  “She’s right!” Evans agreed. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. There be all those rooms in the West wing that you were saying yourself was rotting away because no one ever uses them.”

  “That be true enough,” Mrs. Lewis agreed, “and it’d certainly save the housemaids who are beginnin’ to hate the stairs as much as I do.”

  “Well, let’s move later on,” Arliva proposed. “I hate long flights of stairs and I feel depressed in a nursery. Please be kind and give us a schoolroom and bedrooms on a floor where, if the children make a noise, they will not disturb anyone.”

  Arliva paused before she went on,

  “Now I must go and meet them and I feel sure that you will help me in every way you can.”

  She then went through the nursery door, leaving the butler and the housekeeper staring blankly at each other.

  The children were where she had last seen them and she sat down in a chair on the other side of the fireplace to where the two girls were sitting.

  “I am so hungry after my long journey,” she said. “When we have had luncheon, which I hope will be very soon, I want you to take me to see the horses. I understand that your grandfather has some fine thoroughbreds and I love horses.”

  The little boy looked up in amazement.

  “You want to see the horses!” he exclaimed. “But the last Governess we had, and the one before her, used to try in every way to stop me riding because she said it was dangerous.”

  “I rode very fast and big horses when I was your age,” Arliva replied. “I want to ride again and the first lesson you all have to learn is to ride well and then to jump well.”

  “We have never been allowed to jump,” one of the girls piped up. “They told us that it was risky and we were forbidden even to go over the small jumps.”

  “Well, I am a jumping Governess!” she answered. “I want to ride and I want you to ride with me. How can we go all round the estate except on a horse?”

  All three children gave a whoop of delight and ran to her side.

  “Do you really mean we can go riding every day?” the boy asked.

  “If there are horses, of course we can,” Arliva said. “I like riding very fast, so you will have to keep up with me.”

  The children looked at each other and gave a gasp.

  The girls no longer seemed interested in their dolls and the boy pushed his soldiers to one side with his foot.

  “Then have you ridden lots and lots of horses?” he asked.

  “As soon as I learnt to walk, I learnt to ride,” Arliva told them. “As I love horses, one of our lessons will have to be to look for pictures of
horses many of which are now very valuable.”

  “There are some pictures in the library,” the boy, whose name was Johnnie, replied to her, “but we are not allowed to touch them.”

  “But you cannot read a book without touching it,” Arliva said, “and I want you to find me lots of books about horses as well as about the other subjects I will teach you.”

  “What sort of subjects?” the girls asked.

  “When I was your age,” Arliva said, “I used to pretend I was going with my Papa in a ship all round the world and, until he could take me, I used to look up places I wanted to visit in books and find pictures of them.”

  She paused for a moment as if she was thinking back before she continued,

  “Then when Papa came home I used to ask him to take me there – and he did!”

  “Our father is dead and Grandpapa’s far too old.” Johnnie sighed.

  Arliva smiled sympathetically.

  “But I am here and perhaps your grandfather will let me take you in a big ship one day which will be very very exciting and I will tell you all about it.”

  “Do tell me now,” one of the little twins implored, whose name was Rosie.

  “I will tell you what I want to do first,” Arliva said, “but you must come with me to help me. I have asked Mrs. Lewis to give us rooms downstairs so that we don’t have to come up so many stairs. Besides you are all too old for a nursery now that you have me instead of a Nanny.”

  “I miss Nanny,” the other little girl, called Daisy, said.

  She looked so like her twin, except that she was a little thinner.

  Arliva guessed that she was the weaker of the three children and so should have more attention.

  “Let’s go downstairs and see if they have decided to give us rooms in one of the wings,” Arliva suggested. “I am sure it’s bad for us to waste our time up here when we might be doing more exciting things in other parts of the house.”

  “We are not really allowed in the other parts of the house,” Johnnie murmured.

  “That’s all in the past,” Arliva assured him. “We are now starting a new life together and you must behave in quite a different way from how you did while you were in the nursery.”

  “You mean we have grown older?” Johnnie asked.

  “And wiser of course. Come on, if we don’t get our own way now, it will be more difficult tomorrow.”

  She led the way downstairs and found, as she had expected, the butler and the housekeeper were just coming from the West wing of the house towards the centre of it.

  “Have you found a new schoolroom for us?” Arliva enquired.

  “We’ve found one,” Evans replied, “but I am just hoping that you’ll not do it any harm.”

  “You need not worry at all as we will treat it with the greatest respect,” Arliva said, “just as I want these girls and the boy who are no longer children, to be treated as students.”

  She was smiling as she spoke and the housekeeper gave a laugh.

  “Well you’re a one for thinkin’ up new ideas,” she said. “It never struck us that the nursery was out of date, so to speak, and that Master Johnnie should move down because he’s growin’ up.”

  Johnnie laughed.

  “When I get to the ground floor,” he said, “or the cellar, I will be old like Grandpapa!”

  “I hope you reach them long before that,” Arliva told him. “Now come along, let’s see what our schoolroom is like before we have a great deal to learn in it.”

  Johnnie and the two girls ran ahead.

  Evans, determined to be in on the act, hurried after them and opened a door at the end of the passage.

  It was indeed a vast improvement, Arliva thought, on the nursery.

  It had been furnished as a boudoir for someone who was staying in this part of the house. It smelt a little musty as did the bedrooms that had obviously not been opened or used for a very long time.

  “These will do us just beautifully and thank you for being so understanding and so sensible,” Arliva enthused.

  She knew that the way she spoke pleased both the butler and the housekeeper.

  Evans smiled at her before he replied,

  “Well, miss, you’ve certainly altered a few things since you arrived.”

  “I think, actually, I have saved not only your legs but your lives,” Arliva carried on, “and please understand when I say I am dying for my luncheon!”

  They laughed at this and told her to go downstairs with the children as soon as she had taken off her hat and coat.

  By the time she had done so and her case had been placed in a comfortable and well-furnished bedroom, it was almost one o’clock.

  The children had been exploring their rooms and the twins had chosen one with a communicating door.

  Johnnie had been allocated a room meant for a man and the pictures on the walls were all of horses and this delighted him.

  “Now come along and have luncheon,” Arliva said. “Then we must change so that we can go riding. It’s such a lovely day and I do want to see your beautiful grounds before we go to bed.”

  The room Evans had decided was to be their dining room had, she found, once been a breakfast room when there had been large families in the house and they had kept the dining room for luncheon and dinner.

  The breakfast room was very cosy and the children were thrilled to sit at the square table in the centre of it and be able to look out on the flowers in the garden as they ate.

  They were so excited at what was happening that they all wanted to talk at the same time during luncheon.

  Arliva listened to them, but did not try to explain anything until she was quite certain that they would not all be sent back in disgrace by Lord Wilson when he heard of the alterations.

  She learnt, however, that he was in ill-health and seldom left his bedroom.

  In fact there would be no reason for him to know what was happening in his house unless Arliva herself told him what changes she had made.

  She had a few words with Evans before she went upstairs to change, having sent the children to put on their riding clothes with a young maid, who had apparently been looking after them.

  “His Lordship’s lost interest and feels too weak to attend to what’s happening on the estate,” Evans told her. “He leaves it all in the hands of his manager. He just sits in his bedroom and his valet looks after him as good as any nurse could do.”

  He paused for a moment before he went on,

  “But it’s a lonely life for him and he’s never been the same since his son drowned and his wife with him.”

  “It must have been a terrible shock,” Arliva said.

  “It were indeed,” Evans agreed. “Now he just lets everything pass by, so to speak. It’s been up to us to keep things going as they should be.”

  “I think you have been absolutely splendid,” Arliva told him. “Now you must forgive me if I try to make the children much more interested in life than they are at the moment.”

  “I can tell you one thing,” the butler informed her. “The Governesses as came here never taught them as much as the alphabet or else they wouldn’t learn it. If you asks me, she didn’t like them and they didn’t like her.”

  “Well, let’s hope they will like me,” Arliva replied. “They are certainly excited at being allowed to ride.”

  “I thinks myself it were a silly idea to stop them, but it wouldn’t do for us to interfere with the Governess as you know.”

  “I don’t want you to interfere with me,” Arliva told him, “but I want you to help me and that is what I know you are doing now and I am very grateful.”

  ”It’s like having a whirlwind in the house, I can tell you that,” Evans said. “We’ve not had a new idea here for years and it’s good for all of us to have a shake-up.”

  He laughed and Arliva laughed with him.

  She ran upstairs to her new bedroom to change into her riding clothes.

  The housemaid, obviously on the instr
uctions of the housekeeper, had already unpacked for her.

  She thanked the housemaid and found out that her name was Ann.

  “You will have to tell me, Ann, who everyone is in the household and how many are in the kitchen or in the housekeeper’s room. It’s difficult when you are new to find out who works where.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Ann said eagerly, “and this place has been as dull as ditch-water until you arrived ’ere, miss. But now it’s all buzzin’ and quite different from what it were yesterday.”

  She looked round to make sure that the door was closed before she added,

  “To tell the truth I were thinkin’ of leavin’ because it’s so dull and grim. As I says to me Mum, it be like livin’ in a tomb, but now things are movin’ I want to stay.”

  “Oh, please stay and help me,” Arliva begged. “I need a lot of help and, as you know, it’s difficult to change anything that has been always done in exactly the same way, especially in houses like this.”

  “You’ll change ’em,” Ann said. “I’ve never seen Mr. Evans and Mrs. Lewis in such a state of excitement as they be now. When I left the kitchen, cook were talkin’ of what cakes she’s made for the young’uns and I can tell you she’s not bothered to make any for weeks.”

  Arliva smiled, but made no comment.

  Instead she asked Ann numerous questions which told her better than anything else what had been happening in Wilson Hall since the heir to it had been drowned.

  It did not take her long to put on her riding clothes, although they were, she felt, far too smart for this place.

  But it was all she had and she could not bear to leave them behind in London.

  When she was dressed, she went to the children’s bedrooms to find that Johnnie’s breeches were rather tight and he really needed new ones, as well as some new boots.

  ”We will make a long list of all the things you need tomorrow,” she told him, “but now let’s find the horses, which is far more exciting than anything else.”

  Johnnie ran off ahead of the two girls, who held Arliva’s hand as they crossed the corridor.

  Evans then showed them a side door, which was the quickest way to the stables.