She went across to the window and sank down onto its cushioned seat. As well as the strange feeling in her tummy there was a tight, painful lump in the base of her throat, which made it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. She wondered if she might be coming down with some illness, and felt a tiny rush of hope. If she was poorly – really poorly – surely Mama would have to come back?
Outside the dusk was falling fast, swallowing up the bleak expanse of parkland. The frost lay thick in the folds and hollows that the sun’s weak fingers hadn’t touched, and it glowed palely in the gathering gloom. If you drew it like that it wouldn’t look real, she thought, but she would have liked to try. She thought of the pencils again and the lump in her throat swelled.
She didn’t know what she’d done to make Grandmama dislike her. While Grandfather, who was old and unwell, seemed merely indifferent, Alice felt Grandmama’s disapproval curling around her like an icy draught, but one whose source remained a mystery. As far as she could remember she’d never disgraced herself in front of her; never been disagreeable or disobedient or shown off. In fact, before two weeks ago when she’d arrived at Blackwood she’d barely spent any time with her grandparents at all, which was why the news that she was to stay with them while Mama accompanied Papa on a business trip to the East had come as such a shock. They were strangers.
It wasn’t fair.
The smell of toasting muffins drifted along the corridor from Miss Lovelock’s room. Hunger pinched at Alice’s hollow tummy and cold cramped her feet and fingers. There was a fire laid in the nursery grate, but she knew very well that she wasn’t allowed to light it, and that Miss Lovelock would be cross if she knocked and asked her to (she would feel guilty that she had forgotten, which would make the crossness worse). There was a frayed tapestry cord by the fireplace which you could pull to ring a bell in the servants’ hall downstairs, but it was Polly’s half day, which meant it would be Ellen who would come. Ellen, who (Polly said) was seventeen, and had her head stuffed with the nonsense she and Ivy, the kitchen maid, read in magazines – film stars and hairstyles and all sorts of beautifying treatments that involved raiding the pantry for baking soda and honey to smear on their faces. Alice had almost smiled when Polly told her that, but she was still a bit afraid of Ellen. She looked at the cord, but she knew she wasn’t brave enough to touch it.
She tucked her legs up against her chest and hugged them tightly. The nursery had subsided in shadow so she turned her face back to the window, but there was nothing to see now except the pale oval of her own reflection.
She should get up and switch on the lamp (she thought she was allowed to do that?) and choose a book from the shelf, but the minutes dragged by and she didn’t move. Reading never brought her much pleasure because the words always seemed to shimmer and shift in front of her eyes, rearranging themselves until they made no sense. It wasn’t just the cold that made her feel sluggish and numb, but the sense of being full to the brim of something that could spill over at any moment if she wasn’t very still. So she stayed where she was, balled up against the cold, listening.
A door slammed far below. Distant voices swelled and retreated again – from Miss Lovelock’s wireless, the servants’ stairs or the vanished past she couldn’t tell. Cold air shivered across her cheek, and strands of the rocking horse’s tail fluttered as if touched by the fingers of invisible children. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her throat was burning now, and there was a pain in her jaw from clamping her teeth together to stop them chattering. The sudden, close-by sound of a door opening set her heart banging against her knees.
She edged back, trying to hide herself behind the curtain, aware of how silly Ellen would think her if she saw her crouching in the dark like this. She prayed for the footsteps to pass, but a figure loomed in the doorway and a second later the electric light flicked on.
‘Oh my Lord—’ Polly clamped a hand to her chest. ‘You gave me the fright of my life! What are you doing, sitting all alone in the dark? Alice? Oh my lamb…’
The kindness was her undoing. Polly crossed the room with swift strides, opening her arms as the sobs that Alice had been holding back came spilling out. Polly held her, rocking and crooning until they had spent themselves, and then she gathered Alice more securely onto her knee and wiped her wet cheeks with a handkerchief.
‘There, there, my pet … That’s better … Polly’s here now. It’s just as well I came back early today – Lord alone knows how long you might have sat here in the dark otherwise. That useless Ellen, I could strangle her. Do you want to tell me about it, sweetheart? What’s got you so upset?’
‘N-n-nothing…’ The lump in her throat had dissolved, but her head throbbed from crying. Her breath was coming in odd little gasps. ‘It’s just … I m-miss my mama.’
‘Oh pet, of course you do … it’s only natural that you would, and there’s not much here to take your mind off it, is there?’ Polly’s hand rubbed a soothing circle on Alice’s back. ‘Especially not with the weather being so dreadful. Blackwood’s a gloomy old place at this time of year, that’s for sure. I tell you what—’ The rubbing paused as she smoothed a strand of hair off Alice’s cheek. ‘Why don’t I light the fire and get this place warm, and you can sit at the table there and write a nice long letter to your mama and tell her all about it. Not just about missing her, mind, because that would make her sad and we don’t want that, but I’m sure if you try hard you can find some cheerful things to write. And thinking of cheerful things might even make you start feeling a bit more cheerful yourself.’
Alice shook her head. ‘I’m not allowed. Miss Lovelock said. I’m to write one letter a week and make sure it’s my best writing with no spelling mistakes because Grandmama will check it before it gets sent to Mama. I wrote on Sunday.’
It had been a miserable letter. Not outwardly, of course; the words on the page had been as bland and careful as she could make them, but the spaces between them had echoed with all the loneliness she wasn’t allowed to express and the questions she couldn’t ask. Why can’t Papa sort out the business with the mineworkers on his own? How far away is Burma? When will you come back? Her tummy had felt very strange indeed by the time she’d signed her name beneath the few polite lines. She hated the thought of her mother reading it and thinking she was being cross and difficult.
‘Well, that seems a shame to me.’ Polly’s voice was unusually curt. ‘There’s nothing nicer than getting a letter from home when you can’t be there.’
‘It’s because it’s so expensive. Grandmama said it costs a lot to send a letter all the way to Burma, and to the boat Mama and Papa are sailing there on.’
‘Did she now?’ Gently, Polly tipped Alice off her knee and went over to the fireplace. Her movements were jerky as she lit a match and held it to the paper in the grate. When the flame caught she turned back to Alice with a strange sort of smile. ‘Well, I’m sure it can’t be that much – and to my mind it’ll be cheap at the price if it cheers you and your mama up. Look, why don’t I go down and see if I can find some notepaper and you can write again, and say anything you like. I’ll post it myself when I go into the village next.’