Dancing the Charleston Read online

  ‘You’re such a weird girl.’ She picked up the snake bangle she had laid on her dressing table. ‘Do you like it? Desiree gave it to me. She’s very generous. She gave me this kimono too.’ She picked it up and rubbed it against her cheek. ‘It’s silk,’ she said.

  ‘I know. Silk feels lovely,’ I said.

  ‘The other evening Alistair Michael tried to stroke it,’ she told me.

  ‘Oh, how horrible!’

  ‘Yes, he’s positively disgusting. I can’t understand why Uncle Benjamin keeps inviting him here. I suppose he thinks he’s clever because he drones on and on about boring things like philosophy and politics. I think he’s simply tedious. So does Desiree,’ said Esmeralda. ‘She’s rather marvellous, isn’t she?’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said doubtfully. ‘What do you think of her mother?’

  ‘I can’t stand Lady Arabella. She’s incredibly spiteful.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t she? She called me a pert little nobody,’ I said, wincing.

  ‘That’s nothing. I heard her telling Barbara to keep an eye on me because I was a little trollop in the making, the way I was flaunting myself.’ Esmeralda tried to laugh to show she didn’t care, but her voice wobbled.

  ‘That’s hateful,’ I said.

  ‘Poor Desiree, it must be vile to have her as a mother. Barbara’s bad enough because she forgets we’re here half the time. When Bruno was little she left him in his perambulator under a tree and wandered off to paint. She didn’t remember him for hours, and when she ambled back at the end of the afternoon he was shrieking his head off. She thought it was funny.’

  I was shocked to hear that she was such a bad mother. ‘I’m so lucky – my mother was wonderful, even though she’s dead now,’ I said.

  ‘Dead, dead, and never called me Mother!’ Esmeralda declared.

  I blinked at her.

  ‘It’s a quote, silly. From a play,’ she told me.

  ‘Mr Benjamin said he wanted to put on a play in the garden,’ I said. ‘I think it was going to be A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You’ll probably be Titania. She’s Queen of the Fairies.’

  ‘I know,’ said Esmeralda, laying down her silver hairbrush, switching off the lamp and climbing into bed.

  ‘I’m not sure the villagers will like it, not if it’s full of fancy words they can’t understand,’ I said. ‘I know Mr Benjamin thinks it will be a lovely treat, but they might laugh.’

  ‘I’m sure they’d positively hate it. And I’d hate it too if I had to act in it. It’s such a bore to learn lines. I think Uncle’s gone off the idea now anyway. He’s planning to have a ball to celebrate the opening of the new swimming pool,’ said Esmeralda.

  ‘A ball!’ I exclaimed, thinking of ‘Cinderella’.

  ‘He’s going to erect a huge marquee beside the pool, and we all have to dress up as sea creatures,’ said Esmeralda.

  I’d have preferred a proper ballroom and beautiful gowns and glass slippers, but it still sounded wonderful.

  ‘Mr Benjamin has such amazing ideas,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you always call my uncle Mr Benjamin? It sounds so funny.’

  ‘Well, I can’t call him Uncle, because he isn’t.’

  ‘Why not just call him Benjamin?’

  ‘I couldn’t!’

  ‘I call my mother Barbara. And Stanley Stanley. Along with a lot of worse names. We all hate him. He doesn’t think much of us either. He’s always moaning that he left his own brats to run off with Barbara, and now he’s saddled himself with a worse lot.’

  ‘He says that to your faces?’

  ‘All the time. He’s not so bad with Marcella and me, but he’s positively beastly to the boys. He hits them sometimes. How I wish I could hit him back,’ said Esmeralda, punching her pillow.

  ‘Isn’t it strange that people with children are often so mean to them, when someone like Mr – like Benjamin – is always so kind and courteous and treats us like grown-ups,’ I said.

  ‘Mm,’ said Esmeralda.

  I thought she might have resented my saying us as if I was part of the family. Or maybe she was simply going to sleep, because in a minute or two I heard her breathing heavily. She didn’t snore though. Perhaps Esmeralda was too dainty to do such a coarse thing.

  I feared I might snore terribly. Aunty often said I did. ‘Wakey wakey! Stop snorting like a warthog! You’re a little girl!’ she often cried when she tried to get me up. I thought she was teasing – but what if it was true? I decided to stay awake as long as possible.

  I have no idea if I snored or not during the night. I woke very early, and was about to creep along the corridor to the water closet. I’d have died rather than use the chamber pot under Esmeralda’s bed in case she woke up and saw me. Someone was outside the door, pushing at it urgently. I peeped out anxiously, but it was only Nigel, escaped from his basket in the basement. He licked my bare feet, giving little barks of joy.

  I knelt down to pet him, but he seemed very fidgety, desperate to go out. I was decently covered because my nightie came down to my ankles – and Mr Benjamin didn’t give a fig about wandering the grounds in his own nightgown.

  ‘Come on then,’ I said to Nigel, and he pattered happily along the corridor, waited while I visited the water closet, and accompanied me downstairs.

  It was very quiet and still. None of the servants seemed to be up – though perhaps they were down in the kitchen. I found Nigel’s leash on the hall table and attached it to his collar. I couldn’t manage the complicated bolts on the front door, but the back door was easier.

  Nigel pulled on his lead and we shot out into the bright early morning air. I didn’t have any shoes on and the gravel path hurt my bare feet, so I kept to the grass. Nigel and I ran together. His nose quivered as he smelled rabbits and his ears twitched whenever a bird flew past. He had a jaunty air, seeming to know that all this land belonged to him because he was a Somerset dog.

  I wondered what it would be like to be a Somerset child. I pictured myself as Esmeralda, gliding along, my Rapunzel hair warm on my shoulders. I wished I was her – and yet she wished she was Desiree. Roland simply longed to be one of the workmen constructing the pool.

  The only person I knew who seemed really happy in himself was Mr Benjamin. I hoped he was taking another early walk today. We could do a stately dance together in our nightgowns! But there was no sign of him – no sign of anyone.

  ‘So Somerset Manor and all the grounds belong just to me now,’ I said.

  It was a dizzying idea. I wandered around, touching trees and shrubs and flowers, whispering, ‘Mine! Mine! Mine!’ I headed for the pool and marvelled at the pearly tiles and the green coping stones that blended with the grass. Ambrose had ordered palm trees in great terracotta pots, a cluster of three here, two there. I couldn’t stand Ambrose, but I had to admit that he was good at design. The trees gave the pool a tropical feel. I hoped parrots might come and roost there, while monkeys swung from the branches.

  The workmen had been busy levelling a very large area of grass, presumably for the marquee. I held out the imaginary skirt of a ball gown and waltzed around in a circle. No, they’d have modern dances at Mr Benjamin’s ball. I stepped out, waving my arms, trying to remember the Charleston. I worried that the workmen might arrive early and think me a fool, prancing about in my nightgown.

  ‘Come on, Nigel, time to go home,’ I said.

  He was very reluctant, so I had to drag him back and then carry him down to the kitchen. Cook was there, cracking eggs into a big bowl, and an anxious kitchen maid was scurrying backwards and forwards. The new butler, Harold, was there too, eating a bacon sandwich in his shirtsleeves. I blushed and bent my knees so that my nightgown covered more of me.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I murmured.

  Mr Marchant would have told me off, but Harold nodded to me in a friendly fashion. ‘We were wondering where the dog had got to! Here, boy!’ He held out a rasher of bacon from his sandwich.

  Nigel jumped out of my arms and ran over