Chapter 1
London, 1947
“Alice Miller—for heaven’s sake, wake up.”
It might be Mrs. Wilson’s uppity remark that jolts me out of my eleven o’clock reverie, or else it’s the warm muzzle of the Quakers Oatley & Sons’ resident Red Setter as it nudges hotly against my lap, for it’s hard to know which happens first.
“I’m awake,” I tell her, finding the dog’s warm ears under my desk and working them through my fingers; Jasper breathes contentedly through his nose and his tail bangs on the floor. “Can’t you see my eyes are open?”
Mrs. Wilson, the firm’s stuffy administrator, draws deeply on her cigarette, sucking in her cheeks. She dispels a plume of smoke before grinding the cigarette out in an ashtray. She pushes her glasses on to the bridge of her nose.
“I wouldn’t suggest for a moment, Miss Miller, that your eyes being open has the slightest thing to do with it.” Her fingers clack-clack on the typewriter. “It doesn’t take a fool to see that you’re miles away. As usual.”
If I were able to dispute the accusation, I would. But she’s right. There is little about being a solicitor’s secretary that I find stimulating, and my memories too often call me back. This is not living, as I have known living. Haven’t we all known living—and dying—in ways impossible to articulate? But to look in Jean Wilson’s eyes, just two years after wartime, as flat and gray as the city streets seem to me now, it’s as if that world might never have existed; as if it had been just one of my daydreams. I wonder what Mrs. Wilson lost during those years. It is easy for one to feel as though one’s own loss overtakes all others’—but then one remembers: mine is a lone story, a single note in a piece of music that, if played back many years from now, would be obscured by the orchestra that surrounds it.
Jasper pads out from under the desk and settles on a rug by the window. Through it, I hear the noisy brakes of a bus and a car tooting its horn.
The telephone rings. “Good morning, Quakers Oatley?”
We are expecting a call from an irksome client but to my surprise it is not he. For a moment, I hear the crackle of the line and the faint echo of another exchange, before a smart voice introduces itself. My grip tightens. I’m quiet for long enough that Mrs. Wilson’s interest is aroused. She glances at me over the top of her spectacles.
“Of course,” I say, once I’ve taken in all that he’s said. “I’ll be with you right away.”
I replace the telephone, retrieve my coat and open the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Wilson.” I put on my coat. “Goodbye, Jasper.”
It is the last time I will see either of them.
* * *
The Tube still smells as it did in the war—fusty, sour, hot with bodies. Next to me on the platform is a woman with her children; she smacks one of them on the hand and tells him off, then pulls both to her when the train comes in. I imagine her down here during the Blitz, when they were babies, holding them close while the sky fell down.
I take the train to Marble Arch, repeating the address as I go. The building is closer than I think and I’m here early, so I step into a café next door and order a mug of tea. I drink it slowly, still wearing my hat. A man at the table next to me slices his fried egg on toast so that the yolk bursts over his plate and an orange bead lands on the greasy, checkered oilcloth. He dabs it with his finger.
I’ve kept the advertisement in my handbag for a month. I didn’t think anything would come of it; the opportunity seemed too niche, too unlikely, too convenient. GOVERNESS REQUIRED, FAMILY HALL NR. POLCREATH, IMMEDIATE APPOINTMENT. I spied it during a sandwich break, in the back of the county paper Mrs. Wilson brought home from a long weekend in the South West.
I unfold it and read it again. There really isn’t any other information, nothing about the people I would be working for or for how long the position might be. I question if this isn’t what drew me toward the prospect in the first place. My life used to be full of uncertainties: each day was uncertain, each sunrise and sunset one that we didn’t expect to see; each night, while we waited for the bombs to drop and the gunfire to start, was extra time we had somehow stumbled into. Uncertainty kept me alive, knowing that the moment I was in couldn’t possibly last forever and the next would soon be here, a moment of change, of newness, the ground shifting beneath my feet and moving me forward. At Quakers Oatley, the ground sticks fast, so fast I feel myself drowning.
The tea turns tepid, the deep cracked brown of a terracotta pot, and a fleck of milk powder floats depressingly on its surface. The man next to me grins, flips out his newspaper: India Wins Independence: British Rule Ends. I sense him about to speak and so stand before he can, buttoning my coat and checking my reflection in the smeared window. I pull open the café door, its chime offering a weak ring.
There it is, then. No. 46. Across the road, the genteel townhouse bears down, its glossy black door and polished copper bell push like a delicately wrapped present that my fumbling fingers are desperate, yet fearful, to open. Before we begin, it has me on the back foot. I need it more than it needs me. This job is my ticket out of London, away from the past, away from my secrets. This job is escape.
* * *
“Welcome, Miss Miller. Do please sit down.”
I peel off my gloves and set them neatly on the desk before changing my mind and scooping them into my bag. I set the bag on my lap, then have nowhere to put my hands, so I place the bag on the floor, next to my ankles.
He doesn’t appear to notice this display, or perhaps he is too polite to acknowledge it. Instead, he takes a file from the drawer and flicks through it for several moments. The top of his head, as he bends, is bald, and clean as a marble.
“Thank you for meeting us at short notice,” he says, with a quick smile. “My client, as you’ll understand, prefers to be discreet, and often that means securing results swiftly. We would prefer to resolve the appointment as soon as possible.”
“Of course.”
“You have experience with children?”
“I used to nanny our neighbors’ infants, before the war.”
He nods. “My client’s children require tutelage as well as pastoral care. We are concerned with the curriculum but also with a comprehensive education in nature, the arts, sports and games—and, naturally, refinement of etiquette and propriety.”
I sit straighter. “Naturally.”
“The twins are eight years old.” His eyes meet mine for the first time, sharp and glassy as a crow’s.
“Very good.”
“I’m afraid this isn’t the sort of position you can abandon after a month,” he says. “If you find it a challenge, you can begin your instruction by teaching these children the knack of perseverance.” He puts his fingers together. “I mention this because my client lost his last governess suddenly and without warning.”
“Oh.”
“As a widower, he has understandably struggled. These are difficult times.”
I’m surprised. “Did his wife die recently?”
Immediately I know I have spoken out of turn. I am not here to question this man; he is here to question me. My interest is unwelcome.
“Tell me, Miss Miller,” he says, bypassing my inquiry with ease, “what occupation did you hold during the war?”
“I volunteered with the WVS.”
The man teases the end of his mustache. “Nurturing yet capable: would that be a fair assessment?”
“I’d suggest the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He writes something down.
“Have you always lived in London?”
“I grew up in Surrey.”
Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca James
