Maddy told me that if we’d still been at Oakland Hall there would have been coming-out dances, people would have been visiting and it wouldn’t have been a curate for Miss Miriam. Oh dear no. There would have been Squire This or Sir That—and maybe a lord. They had been the grand days.
So it all came back to the same thing; and as Mrs. Cobb could never be kept from telling of her own Better Days, I couldn’t hope to get her interested in those of my family.
As I might have known, Maddy was the only one who could really help. She had actually lived at Oakland Hall. Another point in her favor was that she loved to talk and as long as I could be sworn to secrecy—and I readily promised that—she would at times let out little scraps of information.
Maddy was thirty-five—five years older than Xavier—and she had come to Oakland Hall when she was only eleven years old to work in the nursery.
“It was all very grand then. Lovely nurseries they was.”
“Xavier must have been a good baby,” I commented.
“He was. He wasn’t the one to get up to mischief.”
“Who then? Miriam?”
“No, not her either.”
“Well, why did you say one of them was?”
“I said no such thing. You’re like one of them magistrates, you are. What’s this? What’s that?” She was huffy now, shutting her lips tightly together as though to punish me for asking a question which had disturbed her. It was only later that I realized why it had.
Once I said to Miriam: “Fancy, you were born in Oakland Hall and I was born in the Dower House.”
Miriam hesitated and said: “No, you weren’t born in the Dower House. Actually…it was abroad.”
“How interesting! Where?”
Miriam looked embarrassed as though wondering how I could have lured her into this further indiscretion.
“Mama was traveling in Italy when you were born.”
My eyes widened with excitement. Venice, I thought. Gondolas. Pisa with its leaning tower. Florence, where Beatrice and Dante had met and loved so chastely—or so Miriam had said.
“Where?” I demanded.
“It was…in Rome.”
I was ecstatic. “Julius Caesar,” I said. “‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.’ But why?”
Miriam looked exasperated. “Because you happened to appear when they were there.”
“Father was with her then?” I cried. “Wasn’t it costly? Penury and all that?”
She looked pained in the special way Miriam could. She said primly: “Suffice it that they were there.”
“It’s as though they didn’t know I was about to be born. I mean they wouldn’t have gone there, would they, if…”
“These things happen sometimes. Now we have chattered enough.”
She could be very severe, my sister Miriam. Sometimes I was sorry for the curate, or should be if she ever married him—and for the sad children they would have.
So there was more to brood on. What strange things seemed to happen to me! Perhaps it was because they were in Rome that they had called me Opal. I had tried to discover information about opals. After looking up the dictionary I had mixed feelings about my name. It was not very flattering to be called after “a mineral consisting chiefly of hydrous silica,” whatever that was, but it did not sound in the least romantic. I discovered however that it had varying hues of red, green, and blue…in fact all the colors of the spectrum and was of a changing iridescence, and that sounded better. How difficult it was though to imagine Mama, in a moment of frivolity inspired by the Italian skies, naming her child Opal, even though the more serviceable Jessica had been added and used.
Soon after that occasion when I had seen the guests riding out from Oakland, I heard the owner had gone away for a while. Only the servants remained, and there were no longer sounds of revelry across the stream, for visitors never came—only those, of course, connected with servants and they were quite different.
Life went on for a while in the old way—my father solitary with his patience and his walks and the ability to shut himself away from his complaining family; my mother dominating the household, busying herself with Church matters, looking after the poor, of which community she was constantly reminding us we had become a part. However, we were at least still sufficiently of the gentry to dispense benefits rather than receive them; Xavier went his quiet way dreaming no doubt of the unattainable Lady Clara (my sympathy was tinged with impatience because had I been Lady Clara, I should have said it was all nonsense to make a barrier of her money, and if I were Xavier, I should have said the same); and Miriam and her curate too. Of course she might be like Poor Jarman and bring a lot of children into the world. Curates did seem to breed rather freely, and the poorer they were the more fecund they seemed to be.
So as the years began to pass the mystery remained, but my curiosity did not diminish. I became more and more certain that there was a reason why the family gave me the impression that I was an intruder.
***
Prayers were said each morning at the start of the day and every member of the household had to be present for them—even my father was expected to attend. These were said in the drawing room, “since,” my mother often commented coldly, “we have no chapel now!” And she would throw a venomous glance towards my father and then turn to Oakland Hall, where for so many years she had knelt in what was meant to be humility. Poor Jarman, Mrs. Cobb, and Maddy would be present. “All the staff,” my mother would say bitterly. “At Oakland there were so many that one did not know all their names, only those of the ones in higher positions.”
It was a solemn ceremony conducted by my mother when she exhorted us all to be humble, grateful, and conduct ourselves with virtue in the station into which God had called us—which always seemed incongruous to me, since she was far from contented with hers. She was inclined to be a little hectoring towards God, I thought. It was: “Look down on this…” and “Don’t do that…” as though she were talking to one of the superior servants she must have had at Oakland Hall.
I always found morning prayers irksome, but I did enjoy the church services, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. The church was a fine one and the stained glass windows, with their beautiful colors, a joy to study. Opal colors, I called them with satisfaction. I loved the singing of the choir and most of all I liked to sing myself. I always thought of the times of the year through hymns. “Christian dost thou see them,” used to thrill me; and I would look over my shoulder almost expecting to see the troops of Midian prowling around. Harvest time was lovely. “We plow the fields and scatter…” and “Hark the Herald Angels” at Christmas; but best of all I loved Easter, “Hallelujah. Christ the Lord is risen today.” Easter was a lovely time, when the flowers were all delicate colors—whites and yellows, and the spring had come and the summer was on the way. Miriam used to go and decorate the church. I wondered whether the curate helped her and whether they sadly talked of their inability to marry because they were so poor. I always wanted to point out that the people in the cottages had far less and yet seemed happy enough. But at least the church was beautiful, and particularly at Easter time.
We still had the Clavering pew in the church. This consisted of the two front rows with a little door, which had a lock and key, and when we walked in behind my father and mother, I believe she felt that the good old days were back. Perhaps that was the reason why she enjoyed going to church.
After luncheon on Easter Sunday we always went to the churchyard, taking flowers, and these we put on the graves of the more recently family dead. Here again, prestige was restored, for the Clavering section was in the most favorable position and the headstones were the most elaborate in the churchyard. I know my mother was constantly irritated by the fact that when she died her memorial would be far less splendid than it would have been if the money to provide a worthy one had not been gambl
ed away.
I was sixteen years old on that particular Easter Sunday. Growing up, I thought, and I should soon no longer be a child. I wondered what the future held for me. I didn’t fancy growing old in the Dower House like Miriam, who was now thirty-one years of age and as far from marriage with her curate as ever.
The service was beautiful and the theme interesting. “Be content and thankful with what the Lord has given you.” A very good homily for the Claverings, I thought, and I wondered whether the Rev. Jasper Crey had had them in mind when delivering it. Was he reminding them that the Dower House was a comfortable residence and quite grand by standards other than those of Oakland Hall; Miriam and her curate should be thankful and marry; Xavier and Lady Clara should do the same; my father should be allowed to forget that he had brought us to our present state; and my mother should rejoice in what she had? As for myself I was happy enough and if only I could find the answers to certain questions which plagued me I should be quite content. Perhaps somewhere inside me I yearned to be loved, for I had never really enjoyed that blessing. I wanted someone’s eyes to light up when I came by. I wanted someone to be a little anxious if I was late coming home—not because unpunctuality was undesirable and ill-mannered but because they were fearful that some ill fortune had come to me.
“Oh God,” I prayed, “let someone love me.”
Then I laughed at myself, because I was telling Him what to do just as my mother did.
When the time came to visit the graves I took a basket of daffodils and walked with Miriam and Mama from the Dower House to the church. There was a pump in the Clavering section from which we filled the jars which were kept there, and then put the flowers on the graves. There was Grandfather, who had begun to fritter away the family fortunes, and there was Grandmother and the Greats, and my father’s brother and sister. We could not, of course, deck out the graves of all the dead. I liked to wander round and look at the shrubs and open books in stone and read the engraved words. There were memorials to John Clavering, who had died at the battle of Preston for his King in 1648. James who had died at Malplaquet. There was another for Harold, who had been killed at Trafalgar. We were a fighting family.
“Do come away, Jessica,” said Mama. “I do declare you have a morbid streak.”
Called from the guns of Trafalgar, I walked solemnly back to the Dower House, and it was later that afternoon when I wandered out through the gardens to the edge of the stream. I was still thinking of long dead Claverings who had died so valiantly for their country and how John had fought the Roundheads in an unsuccessful attempt to keep his King on the throne, a struggle which had cost the King not only his throne but his head, and James fighting with Marlborough and Harold with Nelson. We Claverings had taken our part in the making of history, I told myself proudly.
Following the stream I came to the end of the Dower House gardens. There was a stretch of meadow—about an acre in which the grass grew long and unkempt. By the hedge grew archangel or white dead-nettle with its flowers just coming out. They would be there until December, and later the bees would be so busy on them that it wouldn’t be possible to get near them. Very few people ever came here and it was called the Waste Land.
As I walked across it I noticed a bunch of dog violets tied up with white cotton, which was wound around their stems. I stooped to pick them up, and as I divided the grass I saw that the spot on which they had been lying was slightly raised. It was a plot of about six feet long.
Like a grave, I thought.
How could it be a grave? Because I had been to the churchyard that afternoon with Easter flowers, my mind was on graves. I knelt down and pushed aside the grass. I felt round the earth. Yes, it was a mound. It must be a grave, and today someone had put a bunch of violets on it.
Who could possibly be buried on the Waste Land? I went and sat thoughtfully by the stream and asked myself what it meant.
The first person I encountered when I went back to the house was Maddy, who, now that I no longer needed a nurse, had become maid of all work. She was at the linen cupboard sorting out sheets.
“Maddy,” I said, “I saw a grave today.”
“It’s Easter Sunday so I reckon you did,” she retorted.
“Oh, not in the graveyard. In the Waste Land. I’m sure it was a grave.”
She turned away, but not before I had seen that her expression was one of shocked horror. She knew there was a grave in the Waste Land.
“Whose was it?” I insisted.
“Now why ask me?”
“Because you know.”
“Miss Jessica, it’s time you stopped putting people in the witness box. You’re too inquisitive by half.”
“It’s only a natural thirst for knowledge.”
“It’s what I call having your nose into everything. There’s a word for that. Plain nosiness.”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t know who’s buried in the Waste Land.”
“Buried in the Waste Land,” she mimicked; but she had betrayed herself. She was uneasy.
“There was a little bunch of violets there—as though someone had remembered it was Easter Sunday.”
“Oh,” she said blankly.
“I thought someone might have buried a pet dog there.”
“That’s as like as not,” she said with some relief.
“But it was too big for a dog’s grave. No, I think it was some person there…someone buried long ago but still remembered. They must have been remembered, mustn’t they, for someone to lay flowers there so carefully.”
“Miss Jessica, will you get from under my feet.”
She was bustling away with a pile of linen sheets, but her heightened color betrayed her. She knew who was buried in the Waste Land, but, alas, she wasn’t telling.
For several days I worried her but could get nothing out of her.
“Oh give over, do,” she cried at length in exasperation. “One of these days you might find out something you’d rather not know.”
That cryptic remark lingered in my mind and did nothing to curb my curiosity. All that year I brooded on the matter of the secret grave.
***
When there was activity across the stream at Oakland Hall, I ceased to think about the grave. I was aware that something was happening because suddenly tradesmen called constantly at the house, and from my seat by the stream I could hear the servants shouting to each other. There were regular thwacks as carpets were brought out of the house and beaten. The shrill feminine tones mingled with those of the dignified butler. I had seen him several times, and he always behaved as though he were the owner of Oakland Hall. I was sure he was not haunted by the specter of Better Days.
Then the day came when I saw a carriage arriving and I slipped out of the Dower House to see it turn into Oakland’s drive. Then I hurried back, darted across the stream, crept close to the house, and hidden by bushes I was just in time to see a man lifted from the carriage and placed into a wheelchair. He had a very red face, and he shouted in a loud voice to the people around him in a manner to which I was sure the rafters of Oakland Hall had been unaccustomed during the Better Days.
“Get me in,” he shouted. “Come on, Wilmot. Come out and help Banker.”
I wished that I could see better, but I had to be careful. I wondered what the red-faced man would say if he saw me. He was clearly a very forceful personality and it was, I felt, very necessary indeed for me to remain hidden.
“Get me up the steps,” he said. “Then I can manage. Show ’em, Banker.”
The little procession went into the house at last, and as I made my cautious way to the bridge I had a fancy that I was being followed, perhaps because I felt so guilty to be on the wrong side of the stream. I did not look round but ran as fast as I could, and it was only when I had sped across the bridge that I paused to look back. I was sure I saw a movement among the trees, but whether
it was a man or woman there I was unsure. I did have the curious sensation that I had been observed. I began to feel uneasy, wondering whether whoever had seen me would complain to Mama. There would certainly be trouble if he—or she—did. That I had stepped onto forbidden territory would be bad enough but to have been seen doing it would bring forth storms of contempt upon my head.
On my way to my room I met Miriam. “The owner of Oakland Hall is back,” I told her.
“May God preserve us!” she cried. “Now I suppose there’ll be entertaining, eating, and drinking and all kinds of depravity.”
I laughed gleefully. “It’ll be exciting,” I began.
“It’ll be disgusting,” she retorted.
“I think he’s had some sort of accident,” I ventured.
“Who?”
“The er…the one who took Oakland from us.”
“I’ve no doubt he deserved it,” she said with satisfaction.
She turned away. The very thought of them was obnoxious to her; but I was enormously interested.
I asked Maddy about them because she always gave me the impression that she could tell me a good deal if only I could make her break some vow she had made not to, and often, in fact, she did seem secretly as though she wanted to talk.
I said: “Maddy, a man in a Bath chair was taken into Oakland Hall yesterday.”
She nodded. “That’s him,” she said.
“The one who bought it from us?”
“He made a fortune. Never been used to such a place before. He’s what you call one of them new rich.”
“Nouveau riche,” I informed her grandly.
“Have it your own way,” she said, “but that’s what he is.”
“He’s an invalid?”
“Accident,” she said. “That’s what happens to his sort.”
“His sort? What sort?”
“Made a great fortune, he did, and so he buys Oakland Hall and them that has lived in it for generations untold has to give it up.”