Shackles Page 3

  “Louisa, this is your Miss Sawkins or Sawbones....”said Miss Lucas.

  Her displeasure and distaste was quite undisguised and Jo was conscious of knowing glances being exchanged between the other occupants of the room.

  “Her name,” said Mrs. Lucas on a note of reproof, “is Miss Saughton. My dear, I am so happy to make your acquaintance at last. My sister has told me so much about you....”

  Miss Lucas gave vent to what was almost a snort and assumed an expression at once disapproving and knowing. Jo moved forward and made her curtsey and took the misshapen hand, murmuring her apologies for being late and disturbing the household at such an hour.

  “And I am in such a pickle,” she added, looking at her draggled skirts.

  “As if you could help it,” said her new employer. “We all know what the new steamer is like, believe me. Do forgive my not rising. I have this stupid complaint as no doubt my sister has told you.”

  Jo by nodding implied that she had but Mrs. Lucas’s sister had not told her that her employer-to-be was crippled. Nor had she explained why it was that Jo who had been treated since she was a tiny baby as if she were a daughter of the house must of a sudden leave it at once to earn her living and never go back. Nothing had been explained.

  “You must be so uncomfortable,” Mrs. Lucas said, “and I expect you are in need of your supper but before you go I would be happy if you could make the acquaintance of my friends. They came here tonight to enquire whether you had arrived.”

  “In the island every newcomer is the object of keen curiosity,” explained the thin, small woman who was seated beside her hostess. She had a mischievous, amused expression and her clothes, while neat and becoming, indicated she did not much care for fashion.

  “So I have discovered,” admitted Jo. “Even the porter knew who I was and where I was going and he told everyone we met on the way.”

  The company laughed, except for Miss Lucas who sniffed and looked scandalised.

  “Let me make you known to my friend, Mrs. De Beaumanoir,” said Mrs. Lucas. “She is the children’s godmother and has come this evening to invite them to a pic-nic.”

  “It is to be on the seashore,” said Mrs. De Beaumanoir, reaching out a square little hand, “and it will be a family party, not at all a fête champêtre, you know. My daughter will be there with her two children as well as your charges. Everyone will get very wet and sandy but I dare say you will not object.”

  “How should I?” asked Jo ruefully as she indicated her wet skirts and Mrs. De Beaumanoir laughed. “You are very kind, ma’am.”

  “Not kind at all. It will give me a chance to better my acquaintance with you and show off Pierre and little Jeannette to a new audience. I fear I am a doting grandmama.”

  “I would suppose that most people would be reluctant to believe you are one at all,” Jo blurted out for Isabelle De Beaumanoir was no one’s idea of a grandmama, her hair dark and shining still and her eyes as bright as a girl’s.

  “There, Isabelle,” chuckled Mrs. Lucas, “such a compliment. No one would ever say that of me and I am years from having grandchildren. Or of Maria....”

  She set her hand to her mouth with a rueful expression for her other friend had assumed a stony mask

  “Oh, my tongue! I did not mean to imply that you looked old, Maria, merely that you have a more rangée air than dear Isabelle.”

  “If you mean that I don’t go shrimping in bare feet with my skirts tucked up like a fisherwife, or run races on the sand as Isabelle does, I accept I may be a trifle more grand-motherly, just a trifle.” said the third woman, unbending a little.

  “Spare us, Maria,” protested Mrs. De Beaumanoir, “or you will give poor Miss Saughton a very odd idea of her company.”

  Mrs. Lucas overrode a loud disapproving noise made by Miss Helen and said,

  “Let me make you known to my other very good friend, Mrs. Packard, who is to be my neighbour for this summer.”

  Mrs. Packard was a handsome woman of around fifty wearing the last vestiges of fashionable mourning. She acknowledged the introduction by a nod only slightly ameliorated by a faint smile. Clearly Mrs. Packard had reservations about having a mere governess introduced to her notice. Jo curtsied politely.

  “Mrs. Packard has a charming daughter,” Mrs. Lucas continued, “and doubtless you will meet her at the pic-nic.”

  “Possibly,” Mrs. Packard murmured. “I have yet to mention the matter to her and cannot say for sure if she will be able to come.”

  “Dear me,” said Mrs. De Beaumanoir, “when I have positively bribed James to make one of the party by telling him that Bella would be there. He hates pic-nics as much as most men, I know.”

  “Oh, I do not say she will not want to come,” Mrs. Packard said hastily, “but I do not know what engagements she may have. She has made so many friends since we arrived.”

  “And now you must make the acquaintance of Miss Beatrice,” Mrs. Lucas said and smiled towards the pianoforte.

  A dumpy, rather plain woman who had been sitting on the piano stool rose and came forward with her hand outstretched.

  “Beatrice Sutcliffe,” she announced gruffly. “Happy to make your acquaintance.”

  “Miss Beatrice is our good curate’s sister and she has been kind enough to take the children in charge since we lost Miss Simpson,” Mrs. Lucas explained. “Her mother became ill and she was anxious to go to her.”

  Miss Lucas gave vent to a decided snort of disbelief.

  “A likely tale,” she said, “the merest excuse, I am persuaded of that.”

  Mrs. Packard favoured her with a sardonic glance.

  “I have not the least doubt of her being anxious to leave,” she observed.

  “In the event we are well rid of her. She had a very careless way with the children, the poor dears,” said Miss Helen, “my dear brother would have been horrified. She was quite unsuitable. I said so from the beginning. I was always pointing out her duties to her. Not that she took the least heed.”

  Jo had strong misgivings. This woman was to be busy and it was not an enticing prospect. For some inexplicable reason she appeared to have formed a strong prejudice against Jo before she had even arrived. Encountering a look from her of mingled contempt and dislike she wondered what other posts there might be in such a small community. Evidently in Miss Sutcliffe she had a rival for such posts as there might be. Her hand was shaken painfully by this rival.

  “Hope you’ll be happy here,” said she. “Do indeed.”

  Jo smiled at the obvious sincerity of this remark and wondered if she would have been so vehement in her greeting of a successor. Clearly and ominously, Miss Beatrice was not unhappy to relinquish the post.

  Dear Miss Sutcliffe,” said Miss Lucas loudly and emphatically, “ was a real asset to the household, and I, for one, am sorry to see her go, very sorry. I could rely on her implicitly. Implicitly. I did not have to be constantly up and down stairs to make sure she was carrying out her duties.”

  “I don’t have the book-learning,” said Miss Beatrice. “I can sew and knit and play the pianoforte but I’ve no French or any such. Can’t draw to save m’life, either. Leave all that to you, Miss Saughton. Wish you good fortune. Do indeed!”

  She wrung Jo’s hand for a third time and went back to her post on the piano-stool. Mrs. Packard hid a smile behind her fan and Jo understood Miss Beatrice to have said in a manner more plain than polite, ‘rather you than me.’ Something not unlike a smothered giggle escaped from Mrs. De Beaumanoir.

  “And now you have met us all, my dear, you must go at once and get dry and warm and have a bite to eat. In the morning we will have a long talk and I will explain just what it is I want for the children. Meanwhile, goodnight to you, and I hope you sleep well.”

  There was a murmured ‘Goodnight’, from the company. Mrs. De Beaumanoir nodded and smiled encouragingly, as did Miss Beatrice. Mrs. Packard looked bored and aloof.

  Jo was curtsying for the last time when
a voice came from the door. Jeanne stood there looking as grim as Apollyon.

  “And is m’Delle to go from us in a decline or the lung-fever? She hasn’t a dry stitch on her and you keep her talking, you! Pshaw!”

  Mrs. Lucas looked a little conscious at such criticism and her friend giggled outright. Miss Lucas, outraged, jumped to her feet, her angry red face making a ludicrous contrast to the frivolous ringlets.

  “Mind your manners! That is no way to speak to your mistress.”

  Jeanne stared at her defiantly.

  “Pah! I will take Miss Sawkins....”

  “Saughton,” protested Mrs. Lucas.

  “Saughton, Sawkins, what does it matter? It’s not as if....”

  “Helen! Hold your tongue!”

  Mrs. Lucas’s good-natured expression had become unexpectedly stern. There was a strained silence broken by Miss Helen’s flouncing towards the door and saying,

  “All the same, I will take her to her room. It will be an excellent chance to instruct her in her duties before she meets the children.”

  “No Helen. Not tonight. And it is for me to do, not for you. Jeanne...”

  “My own dear brother’s children are as much my....”

  “Helen. Come away.”

  Miss Helen stood evidently undecided between defiance and compliance.

  Isabelle De Beaumanoir intervened.

  “But Miss Helen, you promised to sing for us,” she said gently. “Look, Miss Beatrice is all ready to play your accompaniment. What is it to be?”

  Miss Helen swithered and while the matters was in the balance, Mrs. Lucas said quickly,

  “Goodnight, Miss Saughton.”

  Jeanne swept Jo out of the room and shut the door between Miss Helen and her quarry. As she led Jo upstairs she was muttering Guernsey-French imprecations under her breath. From these Jo understood that Jeanne had no liking for her mistress’s sister-in-law, comparing her successively to an interfering nosy she-dog, an ill-natured she-devil and a bony she-cat. Jo silently agreed with what she could understand and was fairly certain she could sympathise with what she could not.

  Her room was in the attics but it was large, cheerful and comfortably furnished. It was, as Jeanne pointed out handy for the children who slept one floor below. It ran from the front to the back of the house with a dormer window at both ends. There was a tiny cam-ceiled compartment with a washstand and chamberpot commode.

  “You’ll need to mind your head, then, you,” Jeanne said and chuckled. “Not but what you’ll be sitting down in ‘yere, eh?”

  There was also a deep wall-cupboard with a hanging rail, a tallboy which dated from the time of Queen Anne and a comfortable cushioned basket-chair in front of the fire, which burned merrily in the tiny grate. Before it was a thick rag-rug,

  “I made that, me,” Jeanne informed her. “Nothing like a rag-rug for cold mornings.”

  The bed was high and narrow but it was well supplied with plump pillows and comforters and hung around with freshly ironed muslin curtains. On the rug before the fire stood a hip-bath, steaming gloriously behind a towel horse hung with thick bath towels.

  “You bathe you and get warm, m’Delle. In half an hour I’ll bring up some supper.”

  Left alone and struggling out of the clinging garments she had put on nearly thirty six hours before, Jo reflected that she was going to live in more comfort than in what, until recently she had believed to be her home.

  An hour later she was warm and fed and sleepiness was poised to break over her head like a wave when there was a scratching at her door and a child’s voice saying very quietly, “Please. Miss Saughton, may we come in?”

  She opened and found two small figures on the landing outside. One was about ten years old and the other about eight. They wore tucked and embroidered nightgowns over which they had each tucked a woolly shawl. Both wore nightcaps tied under their chins and from under these trailed long fair plaits with the ends turned up in rags. They were not really alike though anyone would have known them for Mrs. Lucas’s daughters, the elder in particular.

  “I’m Cassie,” she explained, “and this is Missie. I’m nine, nearly ten and Missie’s just eight. Leo will twelve in August and thinks he’s somebody,” she added bitterly. “But he’s just a nasty boy, really.”

  “How do you do, both of you,” Jo replied adopting their low voice and stood back to invite them in. Such an opportunity to become acquainted with her charges was not to be missed. Besides, to scold them back to bed would not be a good beginning. For a moment the pair of them stood, sizing her up and then Cassie’s eyes fell on the supper-tray.

  “Aren’t you going to eat your gâche-miel?” she asked incredulously.

  “I’ve eaten plenty. Jeanne brought enough for six and I was only hungry enough for two.”

  They giggled.

  “I wonder, I hardly like to hurt Jeanne’s feelings. Do you think you two could eat it for me?”

  The two girls fell upon the tray like starving wolves and before long they were on very comfortable terms. Miss Simpson, they informed her, was rather like a rabbit to look at, ‘one of those soft white ones in cages....’ and she wept all the time and sniffed.

  “How distracting. Why did she weep?”

  “Oh, Leo was horrid to her,” said Missie.

  “Aunt was horrider,” Cassie added and Jo’s heart misgave her.

  Miss Simpson had always been called Miss Simpson. She had kept her given name a secret.

  “But Leo found it out,” Cassie confided. “He looked at one of her mother’s letters.”

  “It was Rosaleen,” Missie told her.

  “Like in the poem,” said Cassie. “You know. Dark Rosaleen....”

  “But she wasn’t dark and beautiful like the poem one,” Missie went on, “her teeth stuck out like this...and her eyes sort of bulged and they were always a little red round the edges....”

  “...with crying so much.”

  “...and she was always afraid that Aunt would come in and scold and mostly she did...”

  “So we never finished any lessons properly,” Cassie concluded and sighed.

  “But Miss Sutcliffe was nice?”

  “Oh, yes,” they said in chorus. “Really nice.”

  “She said we call her Miss Beatrice,” Cassie enlarged. “She said Sutcliffe was a mouthful and y’can’t always be standin’ on yer dignity.”

  Jo noted Cassie’s gift for mimicry.

  “Aunt didn’t like it, she said it wasn’t proper and she always made us say Miss Sutcliffe when she was there,” Missie informed her,” but Aunt likes Miss Beatrice so she didn’t scold all the time like she did with Miss Simpson.”

  “Jeanne says that’s because Aunt has her cap set for Mr. Sutcliffe, the curate. He’s Miss Beatrice’s brother, you know.”

  “Oh, Cassie, you know Jeanne said we weren’t to repeat that and you promised her....”

  “Oh, anyone can see it, “ said Cassie. “It isn’t a secret.”

  “She invites him to tea all the time,” Missie explained, “and he eats all the cakes and the bread and butter and lets her talk on and on. I said to Miss Beatrice that her brother ate a lot of cake and she laughed like anything and said that they didn’t get much cake where they were lodging.”

  Meanwhile, Cassie had come to a conclusion.

  “May we call you by your name too?” she asked. “If we always remember to call you Miss Saughton when Aunt is there.”

  Jo pretended to consider the matter.

  “Why not? But I’ve got a funny sort of name...”

  “Can’t be funnier than ours,” Cassie put in.

  “My friends shorten it and call me Jo.”

  “Oh, I like that,” Missie exclaimed. “That’s easy. We’ll call you Miss Jo.”

  Cassie nodded her agreement and tried out the name for the first time.

  “Miss Jo,” she began, “Aunt says you’re going to addle our brains with unnecessary learning. But you aren’t really, are
you?”

  “Not unless I must,” Jo told her with a straight face. “Brains are better left unaddled.”

  “Good!” they said together.

  “You know, I think I have a secret to tell you,” said Jo.

  They looked delighted.

  “I think you might be going on a pic-nic.”

  They flung themselves at her with squeals of glee demanding to know when and where and who was going to be there. Jo explained.

  “M’Dame De Beaumanoir is our Tante Isabelle,” Cassie told her. “Not a real tante like Aunt but much, much, much nicer.”

  “Much nicer!” Missie agreed.

  “And Uncle Charles is our favouritest uncle. He’s lame because he was hurt in the war but now he builds ships and when maman was well we used to go down to his yard and collect shavings to make beards and wigs for playacting.”

  “Not any more,” Missie said mournfully. “Aunt doesn’t permit it. She says playacting is unchristian and wicked. Maman never thought so. She used to join in before she got so sick.”