2006 - Wildcat Moon by Babs Horton Page A

time coming back.
    The nursery door opened with the tiniest of clicks. She stepped inside the room and looked around her. The rocking horse still creaked in the draught and the dying embers in the fire glowed brightly. A one-eared teddy bear sat on the window seat eyeing her balefully. A dolls’ house had replaced the wooden fortress of the old days and on the clothes-horse there were girls’ clothes now.
    How she had loved this room once. She’d always thought it would be a wonderful room for a child to have as its own. She’d hoped that one day her own child would wake in such a room as this.
    She bit her knuckle to batten down the sob that was rising. Then she made her way on tiptoe towards the bed where the child lay sleeping.
    The girl lay half in and half out of the covers as though she had slept restlessly. Her eyelids flickered and her mouth twitched into a fleeting smile.
    So this was Charles Greswode’s granddaughter!
    The child whimpered and Gwennie backed away from the bedside. If she awoke now she would be terrified to see an ugly old crone staring down at her like something from a nightmare.
    The girl snuggled further under the covers.
    Gwennie moved closer.
    She wouldn’t harm a hair of the child’s head of course, even though she was a Greswode. She just wanted to see her out of curiosity. She’d never dapped eyes on the girl in all the time she’d been living in the Boathouse. Poor little maid was kept like a prisoner.
    She drew closer to the sleeping girl and smiled with delight This child wasn’t anything like Charles Greswode or his son Jonathan to look at. Thank God! She didn’t take after her mother much either. Apart from the long hair she was the very spit of Thomas Greswode when he was a boy. She even had the small star-shaped birthmark on her neck. Gwennie ached to reach out and touch the silky hair, trace the outline of that determined little chin and stroke the soft downy skin on her cheeks. No matter that her father was determined to keep her away from the world, this child had spirit and he wouldn’t be able to keep her down for ever.
     
    In Nanskelly School Miss Eloise Fanthorpe stood in the upstairs study looking out as dawn broke. The storm had blown itself out during the night and now the sea was calm beneath a sky streaked with a pink and golden wash.
    She turned away from the window and smiled to herself as her eyes rested on the large, framed photograph that hung above the fireplace.
    It was of a group of men standing outside an ancient house deep in the French countryside. Her father was in the photograph and on his left was a small fellow not much bigger than a dwarf but with a gigantic moustache that curled up almost to his eyes. He was holding a baby in the crook of his arm, a baby looking straight into the camera, eyes enormous with surprise. On her father’s right stood a nun, smiling brightly.
    She looked closely at her father’s face, the sweet whimsical smile that belied such a brave heart, particularly where children were concerned. He was standing there, a frail old man although looking so vibrant, so alive and yet, a few weeks after this photograph was taken, he was dead.
    She stirred herself suddenly. All this reminiscing wouldn’t get her jobs done. She crossed the room and settled down at her desk to write the letters she’d meant to finish last evening.
    She picked up her pen, dipped the nib into the inkpot and began to write;
Nanskelly School,
    Linketty Lane
    Near Freathy
     
    Dear Mrs Greswode,
     
    Thank you for your enquiry regarding a place for your daughter Romilly at Nanskelly School. The entrance examination takes place in May of each year and if successful your daughter would be able to join us in September 1960. There are several scholarships of full fees available for those girls gaining a distinction in the examination…
    When she had completed the letter she put it into an envelope, sealed it and added it to a pile that she had written earlier.