‘So - you are the nanny they’ve sent?’ Susan Fairford held out her hand.
‘Yes,’ Lily said, shrinking inside. Her employer seemed as remote and frozen as the Antarctic.
Mrs Fairford was petite in stature, with hair of a pale honey colour and a strikingly pretty face, with cupid’s bow lips and wide blue eyes. She was dressed in a beautiful ivory gown with bows and flounces in the long skirt, the whole outfit nipped in tightly at the waist and showing off a slim, well proportioned figure. As she spoke, Lily saw that she had little white teeth almost like a child’s. What was absent was any sense of warmth. The hand that she took to shake in introduction was small and unresponsive, like a dead thing.
‘Do sit down - '
They sat opposite one another and Lily waited, hearing the ticking of small ormolu clock from the mantelpiece.
They sat opposite one another and Lily waited, hearing the ticking of small ormolu clock from the mantelpiece. The room was at least pretty and feminine after the opulent, but creepy hall, a museum to dead creatures whose heads and skins decorated the walls and floor. From the garden came the sounds of crows cawing.
‘My sister wrote to tell me that she thought you had sufficient experience as a nanny for my son. She also said that she liked the look of you. Knowing Audrey, I suppose she meant that you are pretty, though whether that is a qualification remains to be seen. I have had to trust my sister, being so far away. I hope she has made a wise choice.’
All this was said in a distant, rather languid tone. Lily began to feel rather like a cow which has been brought from the market by proxy. Her heart sank further, but she told herself not to get upset. She had only just arrived and she had not met the boy yet. He was what mattered!
‘Well, I hope you think so,’ she murmured. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting your children.’
‘You only need to concern yourself with one of the children,’ Mrs Fairford said sharply. ‘I don’t know if my sister explained to you that we need a nurse for our son Cosmo, to prepare him for going home to school in England. Our daughter, Isadora, will not be going home. She is not… She…’
Lily watched the woman’s face. For a moment her composure had slipped and an expression of pained confusion passed over her face.
‘Isadora is not fully able to be educated. She has certain - difficulties. Unfortunately she is much attached to her ayah, the Indian girl who continues to look after her.'
‘Isadora is not fully able to be educated. She has certain - difficulties. Unfortunately she is much attached to her ayah, the Indian girl who continues to look after her. We’ve tried several times to prise her away from the girl, but it’s no good.’ Now there was bitterness in her voice.
She’s jealous, Lily saw. It was a chink in the woman’s armour, and even though she found her cold and intimidating, she could see that Mrs Fairford suffered because she thought her daughter loved an Indian girl better than her own mother, that there was much that lay behind this frosty mask.
‘Cosmo is to be your charge.’ For a second her tone softened a tiny fraction, but immediately grew cool again. ‘We don’t want him brought up by natives. When he’s old enough he’ll go home to Eton, like his father, away from this beastly country. He will learn to be an English gentleman. In the meantime we want you to speak with him - in English of course, always: you must stop his native prattle. Teach him songs and games from home, his letters and numbers and so on. Above all - ‘ Suddenly she looked very directly at Lily as she spoke, with a tone of pleading. ‘Be a friend to him.’
‘Yes, Mrs Fairford.’ She was not sure what else to say to this odd, naked request. Her heart had sunk at what she had seen so far of this chilly household. What on earth could Captain Fairford be like? She imagined a tight-lipped, forbidding man and wondered if that was the reason why Mrs Fairford seemed so tense and unhappy. Because she could see straight away that she was not looking at a contented woman. She decided to take the woman’s plea for her son as a sign of hope.
‘When am I to meet your little boy?’ she asked.
‘He and Isadora are resting at present. I suggest you go and do the same. I’ll send one of the servants to bring you to the nursery at teatime.’ It was a dismissal.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lily said.
‘You may call me Mrs Fairford. I don’t enjoy being called “ma’am.”’
‘Yes, Mrs. Fairford.’
Her employer stood up. ‘You may go.’
Lily left the room, feeling low and close to tears. Was she wrong to expect Mrs Fairford to ask her a single thing about herself, about her welfare after her long journey, or to give one word of welcome or gladness to see her?
‘You’ve been too used to Mrs Chappell,’ she told herself as she slipped along the passage to her bedroom. ‘Not everyone’s like that. You’re going to have to get used to the fact that you’re a servant and nothing else.’
But as she lay down on her bed, having crawled in under the swathing mosquito net, it was a dispiriting thought, and her heart ached with unshed tears as she lay down to sleep. On the journey to get here she had felt only excitement and expectation, but now she felt chilled and lonely.