And then I remembered. HB. The woman who had collided with me after I disembarked the London train. It must have been her. H. Bennet. She had looked at me and seemed to know me. She must have been watching for a young woman who fitted my description, satisfied herself that I was she, and then made her escape. But why would she do such a thing? It was extraordinary behaviour. Quite incomprehensible.
Chapter Six
IMUST HAVE DOZED off shortly after this for I was soon in a fitful, uncomfortable sleep. I dreamed that I was back in my school, or rather something resembling St. Elizabeth’s but not entirely the same, and Mrs. Farnsworth was there, speaking to my small girls, while Father was seated in the back row engaged in conversation with someone I identified as Miss Bennet, although she did not bear the same physical characteristics as the woman on the platform. Where she had been stocky and red-haired, the woman in my dream was dark and beautiful with Mediterranean features. No one would speak to me—it was as if they did not see me at all—and from there things grew rather more hazy and descended into a blend of strangeness and mystery, in the way that dreams will, but I fancy that I was asleep for some time for when I woke it was even darker than before, night-time now, and we were turning on to a narrow laneway that opened out finally to present a view of two extraordinary iron gates.
“Gaudlin Hall up yonder,” said Heckling, pausing the horse for a moment and indicating some place in the distance, although it was impossible to see it clearly through the darkness of the night. I sat up in my seat, adjusting my skirt beneath the blanket, aware of a stale, dry taste in my mouth and the heaviness of my eyes. My clothes were rather wet now and I regretted the fact that I would be meeting my new employers—whoever they were—for the first time in such a bedraggled state. I had never been an attractive woman but worked on my appearance to present the best possible aspect; such refinements were lost to me now. I hoped that they would excuse me quickly to my room after my arrival so that I could make some basic repairs.
My idea of a long driveway was not inaccurate and it took a few minutes for the house to come fully into sight. It was no Pemberley, that was for sure, but it was a grand country house nevertheless. Tall and imposing, the exterior bore a certain Baroque splendour with two wings jutting out from an impressive front portico, and I suspected that it was seventeenth century in origin, one of those houses whose design was influenced by the European fashions after the Restoration. I wondered how many bedrooms there might be inside—at least a dozen, I imagined—and whether or not the ballroom, for there was sure to be one in a house of this size, was still in use. Of course, I was in no way accustomed to this style of living and it rather excited me to imagine myself residing in such a place. And yet there was something frightening about it too, some darkness that I assumed would be washed away by the coming morning. But as I stared at my new home, I felt a curious urge to ask Heckling to turn the carriage around and drive me back to Norwich, where I might sit on a bench at Thorpe Station until the sun came up and then return to London, a job badly done.
“Now, Winnie,” said Heckling as we pulled up at the front door and he descended, his boots crunching in the gravel as he moved to the back of the carriage to remove my suitcase. Realizing that the man did not have the manners to open the door for me, I reached down to the handle to twist it. To my surprise, it would not budge. I frowned, recalling how lightly it had given way when I boarded the carriage in the first place, but now it appeared to be sealed fast.
“Staying in there, are you?” asked Heckling, ignorant fellow, standing on the opposite side of the carriage and making no move whatsoever to come to my aid.
“I can’t get out, Mr. Heckling,” I replied. “The door appears to be jammed.”
“Now’t wrong wi’ it,” he said, coughing some horrendous mess up from the base of his throat and spitting it on the driveway. “Turn it, that’s all.”
I sighed and reached down once again for the handle—where were the man’s manners, after all?—and as I tried to twist it, I had a sudden reminiscence about one of my small girls, Jane Hebley, who had taken against school one day for some silly reason and refused to emerge from the girls’ bathroom. When I attempted to open it from the outside she held it tightly and, resilient in her determination, managed to stay in there for several minutes before I was able to wrench it open. That was how this felt now. It was a ridiculous notion, of course, but it felt as if the harder I tried to twist the handle, the tighter some unseen force held it shut from the outside. Had I not been outdoors, and had Heckling not been the only other soul in sight, I would have sworn that someone was playing tricks with me.
“Please,” I said, turning round to glare at him. “Can’t you help me?”
He swore a blasphemy under his breath, dropped my suitcase on the ground without ceremony and walked around, and I stared at him irritably, wondering why he was being so difficult. I looked forward to him trying the door for himself so he would see that I was not some foolish woman who did not know how to turn a handle, but to my surprise, the moment he reached out for it, it opened easily, quite as easily as it had when I had first boarded the carriage a couple of hours earlier.
“Ain’t too difficult,” he grumbled, walking away, refusing even to offer me his hand as I descended, and I simply shook my head, wondering what on earth was wrong with me. Had I been turning it the wrong way? It was ridiculous, after all. The door had been sealed shut. I could not open it. And yet he could.
“Gaudlin Hall,” he said as we made our way towards the front door. He pulled a heavy rope and I heard the bell ringing within, at which time he placed my suitcase on the step beside me and tipped his hat. “Evening then, Governess,” he said.
“Aren’t you coming in?” I asked, surprised that I should just be deposited here like this, as if I was little more than a piece of luggage.
“Never do,” he said, walking away. “I live out yonder.”
And to my astonishment, he simply boarded the carriage and started to drive away, while I stood there, open-mouthed, wondering whether this was the manner in which all new employees were treated here.
A moment later, the door opened and I turned, expecting at last to come face to face with my new employer, whoever he or she might be.
It was not a man or woman standing there, however, but a little girl. She was about twelve years old, I thought, older than my small girls, and very pale and pretty. Her hair was curled into ringlets that hung down to her shoulders and perhaps a little further. She was dressed in a white nightdress, fastened at the neck and hanging to her ankles, and as she stood there, the candles in the hallway illuminating her from behind, she took on a spectral appearance that rather frightened me.
“Hello,” she said quietly.
“Good evening,” I replied, smiling, trying to put myself at ease by pretending that nothing was amiss. “I didn’t expect the door to be answered by the daughter of the house.”
“Oh no? Who did you expect to answer it then? The Prime Minister?”
“Well, the butler,” I said. “Or the maid.”
The little girl smiled. “We have fallen on diminished times,” she said after a long pause.
I nodded. I had no answer to this. “Well then,” I said. “Perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m Eliza Caine. The new governess.”