Desolate, I began to shrug my way out of his oilskin, but he shook his head. ‘Keep it on while we go down the lane. We’ll go to Upton Hall and have a warm by my fire.’
The cow parsley in the verges was drenched; the road shone in the sun. My head felt dull, my face and eyes sticky. I sniffed, to bring cool, damp air into my lungs. Suddenly Mr Kennet laughed.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’ He smiled. ‘I have a great deal to think about. That’s all.’
Then he stared ahead at the water shining on the puddles.
We reached Upton Hall and the potting shed. The crying had exhausted me and I was still chilled to the marrow. Mr Kennet kneeled down to attend to the stove. I sat on the stool thinking I would never be warm again. But it wasn’t long before the coals glowed and he was passing me a cup of hot tea.
‘What’s in store for you now, Ellen? Where will you go?’
‘I’m at the Dawes’.’ I bound my fingers around the tin mug.
‘After that?’
‘Well.’ I fixed my eyes on the brick-coloured tea. ‘I’ve been learning to type. I haven’t got a machine, but I’ve got a cardboard …’ It sounded pitiful spoken aloud. He turned round, still on his knees. I struggled on. ‘I’ve got a keyboard made of card. And I practise putting my fingers on it. According to the principles of rhythm and touch.’
‘Have you told those Dawes?’
I shook my head. I imagined their dismay as I showed them my typewriting book. I could see Miss Dawes picking it up by one corner, between finger and thumb. I had got rid of the mildew and the woodworm frass, but could do nothing about the chewed parts. They probably contained vital information about typewriting techniques. There might very well be additional apparatus, dials and levers about which I knew nothing.
‘No one’ll believe you can do it. Don’t take on,’ he chuckled, because I was hanging my head, my eyes welling. ‘I meant, you’ll have to have a go on a real one first. An actual typewriter.’
I looked up. He was staring into the distance again but this time his eyes were sharp, narrowed, as if scanning a strange new landscape. But he was intrepid. ‘I reckon Lady Brock’s got one,’ he went on. ‘It’s in the farm office. Len Norris, the farm manager – he don’t use it, but his girl does. Evie Norris. She might show you a trick or two.’
‘Yes, she might. Oh, Mr Kennet. How will I find the money?’
‘What for?’
‘Evie Norris. She won’t do it for free.’
‘Cross that bridge later. Let me ask her first.’
We sat at rest. He lit the gas lamp. I gazed at his hand, the forefinger and thumb braided scar tissue and the truncated palm, in its pincering strength somewhat like a crab, in its silvered puffiness somewhat like a quilt. He followed my line of sight.
‘When I was a young man I beat copper for a living,’ he told me. ‘I made the weathercock. The one on the clock tower of Waltham Town Hall.’
I had seen the weathercock many times, gybing with a flash of red-gold in the wind. I had never considered it as a thing to be fashioned, or that there were people who knew how.
‘That beautiful shiny bird? How wonderful!’
‘My cousin Mottram is a steeplejack. He brings it down every year, puts a polish on it.’ William grunted. ‘I wish he’d let the sun and rain turn it green, as is natural. So people would forget about it. So I could forget about it. But I can’t tell him to stop.’
‘Because he’s doing it for your sake?’
He nodded. ‘He thinks it’s a kindness.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m glad he does it.’
William smiled at me. ‘Then I shan’t mind so much.’
I hugged my knees, feeling the chill leave me. I knew that I ought to go back to the Dawes’ soon. But it was peaceful here.
‘Any road,’ William continued, ‘after the war Sir Michael gave me this job. One day I was in here whittling a birch twig, trying to get the knack of pruning, when your mother came by. On her way up to the Hall, she was. We sat and talked a while in the shed. She didn’t mind my hand. In those days, you see, people flinched at it.’
To think of my mother, young, before our ruin, in this shed where I was now. Perhaps she’d sat on the milking stool, like me. Or would he have given her the armchair? Surely, yes. In all our years at the Absaloms she’d never mentioned it. But then conversation on any topic had been beyond her in the Absaloms.
I looked out of the window. Venus rippled beyond the pane, as bright as a lamp. I thought of my mother sitting here, being kind.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Kennet. I never invited you back to our house, after all your hospitality here. I’m afraid it wasn’t suitable …’
He leaned forward to adjust the vent on the stove. ‘Don’t you mind about that.’ His voice was deep. ‘Your mother was a lady. She preferred to entertain in style.’
13
EVIE NORRIS’S TYPEWRITING MACHINE sat black and shining under a lamp with a hooked brass neck and a green glass shade. I was right: there were levers and rolls, things foreign to me. Evie bade me sit down and bent over me. She had warm, warty hands and smelled of Parma violets. She placed these hands on mine and I pressed the key of Q. Bang, went the machine. ‘Not so hard.’ Evie gave a violet giggle. ‘But better too hard than too soft.’
I went to Evie twice a week after school, where I continued as assistant to Miss Yarnold, handing my wages to Mr and Miss Dawes for room and board. They had agreed, reluctantly at first and then with good grace, to me extending my time with them until I was fifteen, a matter of six months or so. When the school closed for the summer Miss Dawes found me piecework making clothes-peg bags and hemming dishcloths. ‘The fabric’s from the fallen women. You know. The home for unmarried mothers,’ she added in a whisper, when I stared in confusion. ‘But you won’t mind that, dear, will you?’
I did not mind that.
One day in September Evie Norris said, ‘You’re about ready for the Misses Spall and Benn in Waltham. You need your shorthand, and I can’t help you with that.’ She gave me a contented smile, looked at the window where the sun made a muck of the glass, and I saw lines at her eyes and on her cheek, lines I hadn’t noticed when we were cooped over the typewriter.
The shorthand course cost ten shillings. I had nothing to sell but Downland Flora, so when the time came I asked Mr Dawes what I should do with it. ‘I believe Colonel Daventry’s an expert on antiquarian books,’ he said. ‘It is antiquarian, isn’t it?’
I turned it over. The cover had always been battered but it had survived the Absaloms remarkably well, collecting only a few spots on the flyleaf. The pages were so often turned, of course. The damp hadn’t got to them, to glue them shut. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It could be.’
Colonel Daventry and I hadn’t acknowledged each other since the Boxing Day meets of my early childhood, and it was with a stiff embarrassed little bow that he took the book from me. I didn’t like to see his fingers briskly flicking the thin paper from the colour plates.
‘Those papers are fragile, Colonel Daventry. They might tear.’
His eyes met mine, a pained light blue. ‘Quite right, Miss Calvert. This isn’t the railway timetable, after all. I stand corrected.’ He turned a few more pages, for form’s sake, and then he closed the book and placed it in a leather satchel. ‘I’ll take it to Bradwell’s in Southampton. But I’m so certain of a good price that I’ll advance you fifteen shillings, my dear.’
‘I only need ten.’
In unison, the Dawes broke into a ripple of discomfited laughter – at their charge’s rude tone, at the comedy of an indigent young person rejecting an offer of money. But Colonel Daventry gave a genuine wide grin, and stepped back, rummaging for his billfold. Then he took my hand, and I felt the crisp pressure of a note folded into my palm.
‘Ten it is, then. Be certain, you’ll get the balance, if there is any.’
‘What if it goes for less than ten shillings?’ Panic rose inside me. ‘How will I pay you back?’