108. An Archangel Called Ivan Read online

  She therefore smiled at the old man’s compliments, thanked him again and picked up the bill that she had made Johnnie read and add up to make certain that it was correct.

  She thought now that while he had done arithmetic there were many other things she ought to be teaching him as well as making him happy by giving him companions and a chance of competing with them.

  ‘I suppose really,’ Arliva thought, ‘we should have a cricket match. That is what Johnnie will play at school.’

  He was not likely to go for some years, yet at the same time there was nothing that men admired or enjoyed more than a cricket match.

  ‘I must think about it,’ she told herself. ‘But for the moment everything is going so well that I don’t want to interrupt anything.’

  The next day, however, she thought it only right that she should give the children at least one serious lesson, which she had not attempted to do since she arrived.

  During the night she had found herself composing a poem about what was happening outside.

  When the children had finished breakfast, she said,

  “Before we go out on our usual ride, I want you to do a little serious school work we have not done before.”

  She saw their faces drop.

  “If I don’t teach you some of the subjects I ought to teach you,” she continued, “your grandfather might send me away. That is why I want you to show that you are learning new ideas and new subjects as well as enjoying yourself.”

  Rather reluctantly they went up to the schoolroom.

  “Now pick up your pencils and paper,” she said, “as I want you to write a poem about what we are doing. I have written one myself to show you what I feel about the fairies.”

  “A poem!” Johnnie exclaimed. “That’s something new.”

  “We are trying out new ideas every day,” Arliva replied. “And this is my poem.”

  “There are fairies in the woods and in the flowers,

  And I could watch them flying round and round for hours.

  I see them in the rustle of the trees.

  I see them riding on the bumble bees.

  They will float on petals drifting on the stream.

  They enter all my thoughts like a dream.

  They sit amongst the clouds up in the sky.

  They hover near me when in bed I lie.

  Fairies bring happiness and love,

  A blessing from the angels up above.

  All of us must pray they will come to us and stay

  To bring much love and joy for every girl and boy.”

  As Arliva read her poem, she could see that they were listening intently.

  Then Daisy said excitedly,

  “I’m sure I can write a poem.”

  “Well, don’t make it too long,” Arliva told her. “Then we can go up to the swimming pool, which I know you are longing to do.”

  She watched the clock and ten minutes later she asked,

  “Have you now finished your poems? I am ready to hear them.”

  “I think so,” Daisy answered. “Rosie and I have done it together.”

  “That was very sensible of you. Now read it.”

  “I will read it,” Daisy insisted, as she picked up the piece of paper and read,

  “We love the fairies and the fairies love we.

  We saw a fairy riding on a bee.

  If Rosie and I catch a big bee,

  We will fly to the top of the big oak tree.”

  The spelling was appalling, but at least the girls had tried and Arliva could only say,

  “I think that is very very good. You have tried hard and have written it down well, now Johnnie what about yours?”

  Johnnie, who had been sitting with his back to her, had been drawing, so she was not surprised that his poem was very short.

  He picked up his piece of paper and read,

  “Fairies are for girls,

  Goblins are for me.

  If I find a goblin,

  I’ll ask him home for tea.”

  The children all laughed.

  “I suppose I will have to call that a poem,” Arliva said, “but I suspect you have drawn a very pretty fairy sitting on a bee.”

  “How did you guess?” Johnnie asked. “But it’s not as good as I would like it to be. Anyway men don’t write poems.”

  “There you are quite wrong. Some of the very best poems we have were written by men like Wordsworth’s beautiful Daffodils and The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But lessons are over for today and you can all run to the lake.”

  They had gone almost before she finished speaking and she laughed as she followed them.

  That evening after she had dined alone, she went to the library and found two male poets whose words she wanted Johnnie to read.

  She also found a book of drawings that she thought would help him.

  Then she put them on one side and started to find the books she wanted to read herself.

  It was two o’clock before she finally left, having found in the library some magnificent old volumes that she had never thought she would hold in her hands.

  She left the three books beside Johnnie’s bed as he was fast asleep when she tiptoed into the room.

  As she went to her room, she thought how lucky the children were to have such a magnificent library, which they would undoubtedly enjoy when they were older.

  ‘At the moment they are living in an exciting and thrilling world, which is different from anything they have known before,’ she thought. ‘When they are older, it will be something to look back on and remember.’

  As she snuffed out the candle and turned over on her pillow, she knew it was something she would always remember too.

  *

  The following week even more people came to The Hall.

  They drove in from all parts of the country and now it was not only the mothers and children who arrived but the fathers came too.

  Arliva could not help being aware that they looked at her in a very different way and they made every possible excuse to talk to her.

  ‘I must be very careful,’ she thought. ‘If anyone who has been in London recognises me, I might have to leave here and that would break my heart.’

  Relations, who had never bothered in the past about Lord Wilson, turned up and wanted to stay, not for one night but for several.

  There were young cousins with their husbands and young men who were distant relations and Lord Wilson had not seen them for years.

  Mrs. Lewis had to take on four more housemaids as the relations expected to stay the night.

  And Mrs. Briggs had three more helpers in the kitchen than when Arliva first arrived.

  ‘I am a success, a real success,’ she told herself one evening when they had had a record number of visitors to the wood and there were as many as nine relations staying in the house.

  One of them had a son who was the same age as Johnnie.

  ‘I am clever, very clever,’ she told herself proudly.

  At the same time, if there were too many visitors who were not near neighbours, it could be dangerous for her.

  Therefore when it was sunny and there were a lot of strangers around she took to wearing her dark glasses.

  “You look like a boogly-woogly,” one of the twins said and Johnnie remarked,

  “When we were out swimming yesterday, two men asked where you came from as you are so pretty and when I told them I did not know, they went off to ask someone else.”

  ‘I must be careful,’ Arliva thought. ‘If anyone in London has the slightest suspicion of where I am, I will have those fortune-hunters descending on me and I will have to run away again.’

  The mere idea made her shiver and yet she could not help but know that it was a distinct possibility.

  That night, when the dinner she had eaten all alone was finished, she decided to go into the garden.

  The house party was still in the dining room and, even with the door of the schoolroom shut, she could hea
r their voices and laughter.

  Lord Wilson’s cousin had arrived during the day with her little girl of seven years of age. She also had a son of twelve who was rather overwhelming to Johnnie.

  Besides he and his sister there were two middle-aged male relations staying in the house who had turned up out of curiosity bringing with them a girl of eighteen.

  There was also another child who was nearly ten.

  They all ate in the dining room, but Arliva had been wise enough to insist on having her meals alone in the schoolroom.

  ‘If I have meals with them,’ she thought, ‘they will think I am pushy, besides they might become curious about me which would be a disaster.’

  She then went down the backstairs and let herself out into the garden through a side door.

  The moon was coming up over the trees, the stars were shining in the sky and there was the scent of flowers.

  As soon as she had arrived at Wilson Hall, she had asked if the fountain could be repaired.

  Now it was throwing its water high into the air from a cupid holding a tall cornucopia and the water was glittering with a thousand colours as it fell back into the curved basin.

  ‘How beautiful it is,’ Arliva sighed to herself as she moved forward.

  As she did so, a man came out of the shadows and joined her.

  He was one of the guests staying in the house from whom she had kept a distance because she was afraid that he might recognise her.

  He was in fact very smart and she had heard from Evans that he was in the Grenadier Guards.

  Now, as he joined her, he said,

  “I expected to see you at dinner. Do you dine alone because you find our company so distasteful?”

  “Of course not,” Arliva replied. “But you must not forget that I am the Governess and Governesses might join the family at luncheon but never at dinner.”

  The man laughed.

  “What an absurd rule, especially when a Governess looks like you.”

  She knew she was beginning to hear compliments that she had heard so often before.

  But now surprisingly they were being paid to her as a nonentity and not as a rich heiress.

  “I hope you are enjoying yourself, sir,” she said. “It’s good for the household to have visitors after it has all been so silent and empty for so long.”

  “I heard my relatives saying that you had made all the changes,” the man said. “And I think it is very clever of you. My great-uncle was very lucky to find you.”

  He looked at her as he spoke with an expression in his eyes that she knew only too well.

  “I am sorry to seem rude,” she said, “but I have to go and see if the girls need anything. They were just going to bed before I came outside and they will now want to say goodnight to me.”

  “But I want to do the same thing,” he persisted, “and, as I am a guest, I think I can claim first place to your attentions.”

  He put his arms out as he spoke and Arliva knew only too well what he intended.

  With a swiftness that was unexpected she slipped away from him and, running across the lawn, she reached the side door that let into the house.

  Only as she pulled it open, did she look back and realise that he was not far behind her.

  She hurried inside and ran up the stairs reaching the West wing without looking back.

  Only as she paused to tidy her hair before she went into the girl’s room did she reflect that while she had been able to escape from London, London had come to her.

  ‘I should have left things as they were,’ she said to herself.

  Even as she spoke, she knew that she had brought a new life and happiness not only to the family but to the household and to the village as well as to those who lived nearby.

  ‘All the same I must be careful, very careful,’ she repeated to herself as she bent to kiss the twins goodnight.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  There was a huge roar of applause as Johnnie beat the other three boys he was swimming against.

  He had certainly improved extraordinarily in the short time they had been joined at the lake by a number of guests.

  “Your swimming pool,” one of the mothers said to Arliva, smiling, “is very much better than ours. I hope you will not mind if we turn up nearly every day.”

  “It’s very good for Johnnie and the girls to have companions,” Arliva replied.

  “You are quite right,” the mother agreed. “I often thought in the past that they looked rather lonely as if they were not enjoying themselves as they ought to do at that age.”

  It was a compliment that Arliva was receiving over and over again.

  She mused to herself that she had certainly brought a new atmosphere to Wilson Hall and its occupants.

  The number of servants had increased considerably and they seemed happy too. They were always thinking of new cakes and puddings to tempt the children’s appetites, not that they really needed tempting.

  Arliva was pleased to see that both the girls seemed to have grown a little while Johnnie was definitely much stronger than he had been when she arrived.

  More and more of Lord Wilson’s relations came to stay and they were obviously delighted at what they found.

  They did not leave without saying that they would be coming back very shortly.

  ‘What I have think about of now,’ Arliva said to herself, ‘is something special for the winter.’

  The idea of producing a Nativity play at Christmas passed through her mind.

  But she thought more important still that they must have something to keep them energetic, which their new friends in the County could join in.

  As Johnnie and the boys he had been swimming against came out of the water, the girls were ready for their race.

  They were all slightly older than Rosie and Daisy, but at Arliva’s suggestion they had practised early every morning before the party and she was sure if they could not win they would certainly not be last.

  The Vicar, who had been extremely interested in all that was happening up at The Hall, had undertaken to be the referee at the swimming races.

  He now began to give them their orders and to tell them that he would count up to three before he called out the word ‘go’ when they would plunge into the water.

  They lined up at the far end of the lake.

  As they did so, Arliva, looking back, saw a young boy running towards her from the wood.

  She wondered why he was coming and then saw from the way he was dressed that he was not one of their visitors.

  As he was running very fast towards her, she began to walk towards him.

  He was breathless by the time he reached her from having run so fast.

  She did not recognise him and thought that he must be from the village.

  “Are you looking for me?” she began. “What is it you have come to tell me?”

  Jerkily, because he was out of breath from running so fast, he answered,

  “There’s been – an accident in the wood to a little girl, miss, and – they wants you there.”

  Arliva looked back towards the lake and saw that the race had already started and the grown-ups were all cheering on the child they wanted to win.

  “I will come and see what I can do to help. What has happened?” she asked.

  The boy, however, was already running back.

  She thought that it would save time if she went with him at once rather than cross-examine him.

  She therefore hurried after him.

  But he ran very quickly and he reached the wood well before she did.

  There was an opening where there had once been a gate and from here there was a path between the trees that led to the pool.

  As she ran on into the wood, Arliva could see the fairies dancing amongst the leaves. There was quite a lot of them on the fence that surrounded the wood, both at the front and at the back.

  The boy had quickened his pace and he slipped into the wood ahead of her.

  Because
she thought that she might lose him and have some difficulty in finding the child who was injured, Arliva hurried after him and was rather breathless as she reached the opening between the trees.

  The boy was now no longer in sight,

  But she thought he would be waiting for her a little further on to take her to the accident.

  Then as she began to move forward, quite suddenly something, which felt like a blanket, was thrown over her head.

  Even as she gave out a little scream of astonishment she was aware that two men, one on either side of her, were picking her up in their arms.

  “Put me down!” she cried. “What are you – doing to me?”

  It was difficult for her to say the words.

  At the same time she realised that she was helpless.

  The men were carrying her not too quickly because they were moving between the trees.

  Although she tried to push the blanket away with her hands, it was too difficult to do so as the men had their arms tightly and securely round her.

  She could not imagine what was happening or why, if there had been an accident, they were behaving in such an extraordinary manner.

  Then she became aware that they were leaving the wood, not as she thought on the side that faced the house, but into the lane at the far end of it.

  It was a very narrow lane and very little used as it only led from the village up into a farm which was a small and insignificant one somewhere beyond the lake.

  She felt the men moving onto the road and then a moment later realised that she was being deposited onto the seat of a carriage.

  She tried to scream for help but they were fastening the blanket at her waist and it was impossible for her even to free her hands.

  Then her feet were tied together at the ankles.

  Without her hearing any word spoken, the horse or horses that were drawing the carriage moved off.

  She thought, although she could not be sure, that one man was sitting opposite her in the carriage and the other was in front with the driver.

  ‘How can this possibly be happening to me?’ she asked herself. ‘Surely I must be dreaming.’