Nan Easter’s house in Bury St Edmunds was modest compared to the grand establishment she kept in London’s fashionable Bedford Square, but even so it was impressive among the lesser buildings of a market town, holding its own in the cobbled square of Angel Hill against the combined splendours of the famous Angel Inn and the classical balance of the Athenaeum Assembly Rooms. Like them, it was meticulously maintained, sumptuously furnished and brilliantly lit, for where other householders were content with a set of candles or a lamp or two, Nan Easter indulged herself with dazzling chandeliers ablaze with the new golden illumination of gas-light.
She might be sixty-five and grey haired, but she was still as full of energy as she’d always been, outspoken and outgoing, straight of spine and straight of purpose. And her home reflected her personality. When the nights were dark and the weather miserable she left her drawing-room curtains open so as to share her opulence with the passers-by.
‘Tha’s so bright there of an evenin’,’ the locals would say admiringly, ‘you could read one of her ol’ newspapers right out there on the pavement.’
At Christmas when her entire family usually joined her for presents and parties, fires were lit in every room and the whole house pulsed with light. It was a celebration she particularly enjoyed, so this year’s blizzard was a nuisance and a disappointment, for it meant that both her sons would be stuck in London, her lover would stay where he was on his estate in Westmoreland, and even her daughter Annie, who lived a few miles away in the village of Rattlesden where her husband was rector, would certainly keep her family at home in the warm and defer travel until the roads cleared.
Nevertheless she did have company that Christmas, for her old friend and companion Bessie Thistlethwaite was with her as always, and Caroline’s brother Will had ridden over from Cambridge two days before the snow began.
Nan was very fond of Will, partly because she’d brought him up since he was eight years old but more because he combined a protective affection towards his family with startling good looks. He was eighteen now and exceedingly handsome, tall and slender, with long limbs, elegant hands, a well-shaped head and an almost Grecian profile. His hair, which he wore in the romantic style brushed forward onto his forehead, was thick and curly and the colour of ripe corn, and his eyes were very large and very blue and fringed with thick dark lashes that gave his face an air of tenderness and vulnerability which was rather at odds with the rest of his dashing personality, and which Nan consequently found extremely touching.
It was always a pleasure to welcome him home, and feed his healthy appetite and sit about the fire afterwards, laughing and talking, which is what the three of them were doing that Christmas evening, gathered round the drawing-room fire with port and porter on the low tables beside them, enjoying the warmth and planning the party they would throw when the roads were clear.
The frantic knocking on their front door was a great surprise.
‘Who in the world can that be?’ Nan said. ‘At this hour and in all this weather?’
Bessie went hobbling off onto the landing to find out. She was just in time to see Caroline’s snow-caked figure totter into the hall.
‘Caroline! Lovey!’ she said as she eased her old legs down the stairs. ‘However did you get here? Is yer Pa with you?’
‘I w-w-walked from Long M-M-Melford,’ Caroline shivered. ‘Pa’s still in London as f-f-far as I know.’ After the cold and fear of her journey the hall was so warm and so full of bright colours it took away the little strength she had left.
‘All the way?’ Bessie said, still struggling down the stairs. ‘You’ve never walked all the way from Long Melford! That’s miles and miles. Mrs Easter, mum, she’s walked all the way from Long Melford.’
But Nan’s quick brown eyes had already taken in all the information she needed. She was busy taking command.
‘Let’s have you out of these wet clothes,’ she said, untying the frozen ribbons of the poor child’s bonnet and lifting it away from her head ice and all, handing her muff and gloves to the parlour maid, carefully removing that bedraggled mantle. ‘I’ll wager you en’t eaten.’ And when Caroline shook her wet head, ‘Compliments to Cook, Bessie. Ask her to see what she can rustle up. There’s goose a-plenty, and vegetables for bubble and squeak. Bring the kettle to the boil and we’ll make a mustard bath. Two hot-water bottles. Blankets if you please, Will. Come along, my lovey. We’ll soon have you to rights.’
Caroline followed her gratefully up the stairs, shivering all the way to the drawing room, where Nan sat her by the fire and removed her boots that were so wet they were dripping water, and her stockings that were so hideously dirty she felt ashamed of them, and her lovely red dress that was wet to the knee, and both her horrid damp petticoats. And then Will came into the room with his arms full of blankets and they bundled her up like a parcel and sat her in the chair again with her raw red hands in her lap and her raw red feet on the fender.
‘There now,’ Nan said, smiling at the child. ‘That’s a deal better, I know.’
And it was a deal better, so it was foolish to burst into tears. But that was what Caroline did. She couldn’t help herself. ‘Oh,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m so cold and so sorry. I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t know it was going to snow like this. Tranter said we’d die. It was an awful journey. Oh, poor Pa! He’ll be worried out of his life and it’s all my fault.’
At that moment Bessie limped into the room with a footbath, a dish of mustard and a jugful of hot water and she and Nan got busy at once preparing the mixture, so it was Will who cuddled his weeping sister and listened to her confession and dried her eyes and wiped her nose and told her not to be a goose. ‘We’ll get a letter to Pa, somehow or other,’ he promised. ‘Don’t cry, Carrie.’
But her tears flowed freely, thawed into torrents by their warmth and affection.
‘Now then, my lamb,’ Bessie said, ‘put your little toes in the water and tell me if it’s too hot. We can’t have our lamb taking a chill now can we? Both feet if you please.’
Caroline’s feet were the colour of raw beef and they tingled and throbbed when she lowered them into the yellowing water, but the heat was blissful, warming the blood back into her toes, and rising over her ankles into her shivering calves like a spreading benediction. And finally drying her tears.
By the time Cook came upstairs with a tray full of good things to eat and a glass full of hot toddy to sip and a jug full of hot water to top up the mustard bath, she was red-nosed but almost herself again. She ate every last mouthful of her makeshift meal and drank the toddy as though she’d been downing intoxicating liquors all her life. And bit by bit she told them all about her adventure.
‘My heart alive!’ Nan said lovingly. ‘You’ll make an explorer before you’re done.’
‘No, she won’t,’ Bessie said. ‘She’ll find a nice young man to marry her, you’ll see, and she’ll settle down and be as happy as a sand-boy. Won’t you, my lovey?’
Emboldened by safety and hot toddy, Caroline pondered the prospect, snug inside her blankets. ‘Well I might,’ she said, ‘but I’d much rather work in the firm like Papa and Uncle Billy.’
‘Good heavens!’ Bessie said. And she looked disapproving.
‘Well, why not?’ Caroline asked. ‘Nan worked in the firm. You did, didn’t you Nan? So why shouldn’t I?’
‘No reason in the world as far as I can see,’ Nan said, grinning at her. ‘What would you do if you worked in the firm?’
‘Well, for a start I think I’d sell other things besides newspapers and stationery.’
‘Would you indeed, miss? What sort of things?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Caroline admitted. ‘But I’d think of something.’
‘Aye,’ Nan laughed, ‘I daresay you would.’ What spirit the child had! It was just what the firm needed. Somebody with drive and passion and energy to push it forward into new directions. Her son Billy ran the warehouses with easy efficiency and John had made it his life’s work to transfer the transport of goods from the coaches to the railways, but there was no one capable of inspiring the company except herself. And these days inspiration was often very hard work. She could do with a new young manager. ‘I might give you a place yet.’
Will gave his sister a hug. ‘She can have mine if she likes,’ he said.
Now that was surprising, for they’d all assumed that he would follow his father into management almost as a matter of course. ‘Why?’ Nan quizzed him. ‘Don’t you want it?’
He reassured her at once, smiling at her. ‘I’ll go into the firm if you want me to,’ he said. ‘Of course I will. You know that. But I’d rather not.’
‘What would you rather do?’ Nan asked, intrigued.
‘I would rather be a reporter and work for The Times. My friend Jeff Jefferson works for the Cambridge Chronicle and he says it’s a wonderful life. Imagine it, Nan, travelling the world, meeting famous people, seeing great events as they happen, no two days ever the same.’ His face was glowing with enthusiasm. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than that.’
‘Such talk!’ Bessie said, disapproving of it. ‘High time this child was tucked up warm in bed, if you ask me, instead a’ sitting here all night long a-talking nonsense.’
Will and Caroline grimaced at one another, half mocking their dear old Bessie, half admitting that they were ready for bed. So it wasn’t long after that that they kissed their grandmother goodnight and retired, with Bessie in attendance to make sure that the beds were aired and the fires properly damped down. But Nan stayed where she was.
It had been an eventful evening and had given her plenty to think about. It amused her to imagine Caroline as a future member of the firm. She would certainly be a challenge to the old fuddy-duddies who managed the regions. I shall keep an eye on her, she decided, and on Will too, for he was uncommon serious about being a reporter. What a fine strong-willed pair they are! Children after my own heart. And the best of the grandchildren without a doubt, for although Annie’s three were dear creatures, it was already plain that Jimmy would follow his father quietly into the priesthood and the two girls would marry and settle down in the most happily ordinary way and none of them would have the slightest interest in the firm. While as to Billy’s pair, dear little Matty would marry Jimmy in a year or so, and Edward was so spoiled it was hard to tell what he would make of his life, which was a pity for he was an affectionate creature underneath all that cockiness.
No, no, she thought, walking across the room to her writing desk, these two are the best. And she sat down to write a letter to John to tell him they were both safe with her in Bury.
The terrible weather continued. It was seven fraught days before Nan’s letter arrived in Fitzroy Square, sent by packet boat along the coast from Ipswich, and by then John Easter was suffering so much from sick headaches, indigestion and bad temper that his servants did their best to avoid him. And the odd thing was, as they told one another in the kitchen, that instead of bringing him relief, the letter seemed to make him worse.
‘Safe and well with my mother,’ he said to Tom bitterly. ‘Safe and well and here I’ve been worried out of my wits.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tom agreed. ‘Don’t need ter worry no more though, not now, do yer sir?’
‘I shouldn’t have been forced to worry in the first place,’ John said. ‘This sort of thing must never be allowed to happen again. I shall go to Bury on the first available coach and take some action.’
1837 was actually ten days old before the roads were clear enough for the mail coaches to venture out, and by then A. Easter and Sons had another problem to contend with.
As always after bad weather, there was an outbreak of serious illness in the capital, and this time it was influenza. The number of cases reported in the newspapers rose day by day, and although the coaches began to run again there were soon fewer and fewer drivers well enough to take them out. John carried his timetables about with him wherever he went, so that he could find other routes when particular services were cancelled, transferring papers from coach to coach, and sitting up into the small hours to keep his schedules up to date and ensure a smoother run the following day. Profits had been seriously affected by the snow and it was imperative to get his papers distributed now that it was clearing. But as the epidemic grew his task became more and more difficult.
By the end of January the contagion was so severe that there were a thousand funerals in London in one week; the undertakers were hard put to it to find space in the cemeteries and in St Pancras they had to arrange for navvies to dig and refill the graves. It was well into February and all the snow had long since melted before John felt able to write to his mother to tell her that he would be journeying to Bury in three days’ time ‘to attend to the matter of Caroline’s misdemeanour’.
Caroline had been enjoying herself so much with her brother and Nan that she’d almost forgotten her ‘misdemeanour’. She was quite cast down by his letter. ‘Oh dear!’ she said. ‘Do you think he’s still cross, Nan?’
‘He sounds cross.’
‘Oh dear!’ Caroline said again. ‘Then I’m for it!’
‘We’ll throw a party,’ Nan said. Perhaps that would put him in a better humour. ‘After all, we en’t had Christmas yet.’
They had Christmas on the day John arrived, and Annie and James and their family came over from Rattlesden, so that the house was full of people and laughter and everybody talking at once. And less than half an hour after the London coach had brought John in to the Angel Inn, there was another great to-do as Aunt Tilda and Uncle Billy and Matty and Edward came skating across from their house in Chequer Square to join the party. Soon they were all sitting round Nan’s great dining table eating their unexpected Christmas dinner. And after that Nan had presents for all of them. Caroline’s was a length of soft woollen cloth printed with tiny yellow roses, and Will’s a copy of the last two monthly parts of Mr Dickens’ ‘Pickwick Papers’ which he and his friends had been enjoying ever since the first hilarious instalment came out nearly two years ago. And after that there were charades and bobbing for apples and hide and seek and carols round the pianoforte and so many riotous games that by the time Annie and Billy took their dishevelled families home, it was so late that Will and Caroline and their father only just had enough energy left to climb the stairs to bed.
Nemesis arrived at breakfast the next morning.
Nan Easter was in the habit of taking breakfast in the front parlour on the ground floor of her house in Bury, partly because it was nearer to the kitchen which meant that the food always arrived hot, and partly because in the winter months the sun slanted in low through the windows and added warmth to the little room.
It was a small, cosy room and it felt private after the expansive size of the dining room upstairs. So it was a suitable place for John Henry to pronounce judgement on his daughter. Which he did as soon as their meal was completed. The bell was rung and Tom Thistlethwaite sent for and instructed to have the chaise ready by half-past nine. Then when his servant had left the room, John gave his instructions to Caroline.
‘You are to be dressed by twenty past nine,’ he said, ‘and ready to accompany me.’
‘Where are we going, Papa?’
‘To school.’
Her grey eyes widened in shock. ‘To school, Papa?’
‘Yes,’ he said mildly. ‘Your behaviour before Christmas was quite intolerable. But you know that, of course. I can’t imagine what Miss Murphy thought she was teaching you. It certainly wasn’t how to behave in correct society.’
‘Miss Murphy is very kind,’ Caroline said, springing to the defence of her governess. ‘I learn all sorts of things …’
‘Miss Murphy is dismissed,’ her father said. ‘I wrote to her last week. Now things have got to change. You are to go to school and learn how to behave. I have found an establishment here in Bury that promises to inculcate the proper attitudes, so that is where you are going. You may read the first page of their brochure, if you wish.’
Caroline took the paper he was holding out across the table and read the passage he had outlined in firm red ink.
‘MRS FLOWERDEW,’ it said, ‘begs leave respectfully to acquaint her Friends and Public, that her Select Seminary for YOUNG LADIES in BURY ST EDMUNDS, will be opened on Monday the 13th inst.
‘The charges for Board, exclusive of Washing, and for Instruction in English, Reading, Spelling, Grammar and Composition, in Geography, and the Use of the Globes, and in Ancient and Modern History, are, Thirty Guineas per Annum, and Three Guineas for Entrance.
‘The Terms for Instruction in the French Language, Music, Drawing, Dancing and Writing and Arithmetic, and for Washing, are inserted in a printed Paper, which will be delivered to any Persons who will do MRS FLOWERDEW the Honour to ask for it.
‘To Day-Scholars the Annual Charges for the general course of Instruction, will be Eight Guineas.’
And then in large print at the foot of the page were the ominous words, ‘The improvement of the mind is the primary object of all tuition. Learning in the usual sense of the word is by no means necessary. I will seek to impress upon the minds of the female pupil her duties in society and to inculcate the proper attitudes.’
Signed,
Amelia Flowerdew (Mrs)’
I shan’t like her at all, Caroline thought. ‘Duties in society’ sounded as horrid as ‘proper attitudes’. ‘I know how to read and write, Papa,’ she tried to argue, ‘and I can read the globes well enough, Miss Murphy says so. Mrs Flowerdew won’t teach me much, I can tell you. Do I really have to go there?’ And she looked at her grandmother for support.
‘Yes,’ Nan said, ‘you do.’ And the expression on her face brooked no argument.
‘You’ll like it, Carrie,’ Will tried to encourage. ‘Schools are quite fun sometimes. You’ll like it.’
‘I shan’t,’ Caroline said with determination.
‘I liked it.’
‘It’s all very well for you. You’re a boy.’
‘What has that got to do with it?’
‘I’m a girl.’
‘And a very naughty one,’ her father said, adding with chilling firmness, ‘You are not being asked your opinion of the place, miss, nor whether or not you are prepared to attend it. You are simply being required to obey.’
It was the moment when a lesser child would have capitulated. Caroline recognized the power before her and decided to change tack. ‘Very well,’ she said, still defiant, ‘I’ll go, if that’s what you want, but I shan’t learn anything. You’ll see. And I shan’t like it.’
‘Your school cloak and bonnet are in the hall,’ her father replied calmly.
Nan took Caroline off at once to try them on before she could make matters worse by saying anything else. They were made very simply of plain brown wool and had no decoration at all. She didn’t like them a bit.
‘I look absolutely horrid,’ she complained, scowling at her image in the hall glass.
‘Well, of course you do,’ Nan said, ‘pulling such a face. What do you expect, you foolish crittur?’
‘I hate school. And I hate uniforms,’ Caroline said, scowling more ferociously than ever.
‘Here’s your father,’ Nan warned. ‘Now just go along like a good girl and do as you’re told. At least it en’t a boarding school and you can come home to me at the end of the day. You just think of that.’
So she went along and did as she was told, scowling all the way.
Mrs Flowerdew’s Seminary stood just outside the west gate. It was a plain house behind a plain wall, and the parlour into which they were ushered by a sombre butler was a plain room, full of books. But Mrs Flowerdew was a surprise.
She didn’t look a bit like a teacher. She looked like a bed that had been made in a hurry, and a very brightly coloured bed at that, for she wore a gown of bright rose pink, patterned in a trellis of green and gold and set off with a triple collar of elaborate blonde lace, and no stay-maker alive could do justice to the voluptuous curves of her figure. Everything about her was larger than life, from the fat mounds of thick chestnut-coloured hair piled above her forehead to the bulging curves of the odd chestnut-coloured shoes upon her feet. She wore a gentleman’s signet ring on the middle finger of her right hand, and a gentleman’s fob-watch on the grand slope of her left bosom and neither looked out of place on a lady of such proportions. She was plainly not a woman to tolerate disobedience.
‘Mr Easter,’ she said, holding out her plump hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’
‘Mrs Flowerdew,’ John murmured. ‘This is my daughter, as I explained to you in my letter.’
‘That is all entirely understood,’ Mrs Flowerdew said, smiling at Caroline. ‘You may leave her with us, Mr Easter, with every confidence. Every confidence.’
‘I believe I may, ma’am.’
‘We understand one another I believe,’ Mrs Flowerdew said. Then she turned her body, swaying it to one side so that she was facing her new pupil. ‘Welcome to my seminary, Caroline,’ she said. ‘You may kiss your Papa goodbye, my dear, and then I will take you to the schoolroom.’
Caroline looked at her father in amazement. Was she supposed to start school this very morning? Surely not? He hadn’t said anything about starting school straight away. Why, she’d hardly had time to get used to the idea! But he didn’t say anything. He only gave her his distant smile and bent forward so that she could kiss his cheek. Oh, the treachery of it!
‘That’s the way,’ Mrs Flowerdew approved, and she rang the bell, which was one of the new bell-pulls on a long velvet ribbon. ‘Fenning will see you out, Mr Easter. So glad to have made your acquaintance.’
And that was that. The butler arrived, Papa gave a little bow and departed, and Mrs Flowerdew led her new pupil from the room.
I won’t cry, Caroline thought, as she climbed the stairs, and I won’t say anything, at least, not now, because that would be infra dig. But this is no way to treat an Easter.
Three minutes later her school-life began. It was all so quick that there was no time to protest or even think. Despite her bulk, Mrs Flowerdew moved at an extraordinary speed, rustling up the stairs like a clipper with the wind in her sails, and she fairly dashed along the gallery, calling as she went, ‘Come out my dears. Come out. We have a new scholar. Out you come!’
Doors opened as she passed, as though she were flicking them aside with her skirts, and out came a tumble of girls in bright coloured gowns and brown holland pinafores, scampering after her, tossing their ringlets and all talking at once. Little girls no older than Caroline herself, and tall girls quite as old as her cousins, and so many of them all together that she couldn’t count them or even distinguish one from the other, particularly as they were all on the move, their bright cottons swaying and fluttering like a great swarm of butterflies.
The clipper flung open a pair of double doors and sailed into the middle of a long panelled room where there were small chairs set in four rows facing the fireplace, and suddenly order was restored. The butterflies stopped fluttering and became demure young women, who walked quietly into the room and ranged themselves in front of the chairs each with her arms held neatly at her sides.
‘Stand here beside me,’ Mrs Flowerdew said to Caroline.
She’s going to give me a public scolding, Caroline thought, with foreboding. But I won’t cry. No, I won’t.
But, as she was to discover later, Mrs Flowerdew rarely scolded anybody. ‘This is Caroline Easter, my dears,’ she said. ‘You are to look after her and teach her what is to be done and what is not to be done, which I have perfect confidence that you will do because there are so many of you with a talent for caring. And now, Caroline my dear, we must see where to put you. Between Arabella and Betonia, I think. Make a space, my dears.’
Betonia was a rather superior-looking girl who wore her hair in tight braids. But her smile was friendly.
‘Pray sit down,’ Mrs Flowerdew said. And they all rustled into their chairs. ‘The parable of the talents, Mary, if you please. The Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 25, verse 14, “For the kingdom of Heaven is as a man travelling in a far country”.’
And the girl called Mary read the parable, in a quiet clear voice, in a room grown so still to listen to her that Caroline could hear the coals clicking in the grate.
‘Talents you see, my dears,’ Mrs Flowerdew said, when the reading was done. ‘We all have a talent of some kind, every single one of us, you may be sure of that. The Good Lord would never send any of His creation into the world with no talents at all. No, no, no. So we can all be perfectly sure that we have at least one talent, and some of us will have more than one, and some will have a great great many. And what is the purpose of having a talent?’ smiling round at her audience, ‘Myfanwy?’
A girl in the second row stood up to answer her. All heads in the front row swivelled round. ‘To use it, Mrs Flowerdew.’
‘Quite right. And to what purpose? Helen?’
Another girl gave the answer. ‘For the benefit of mankind, Mrs Flowerdew, and the greater glory of God.’
‘Quite, quite right,’ Mrs Flowerdew approved. ‘For the benefit of mankind and the greater glory of God. What a splendid thing. Don’t you think so, Caroline Easter?’
Well, of course she thought so. How could she think anything else? So she nodded, as that seemed to be expected of her, and was beamed upon, and felt vaguely aggrieved that everybody in the room seemed to be assuming that she would join in with them, and act as they did and believe the same things. Well, I won’t, she thought. I didn’t want to come here. I’ve no business being here. I won’t.
‘A splendid thing,’ Mrs Flowerdew said, clapping her hands together and shifting all the bright colours in her unmade bed. ‘And now let us return to our lessons and see how many talents we can discover today. First row to remain here with me for reading. Lead on Amy.’
The rest of the day was so full of movement and new faces that when she finally got home again in the evening Caroline could hardly remember any of it. She’d read from the Bible, eaten a stew that had turned out to be more appetizing than it looked, and begun to sew herself a holland pinafore, but the rest of her activities were mere confusion.
Bessie said it all sounded a fine thing and wouldn’t she be a scholar by the time she’d finished, and Nan said her father had gone back to London on the afternoon stage, ‘in fine good humour seein’ the way you settled’.
Will had left her a most loving note before he caught the Cambridge coach, hoping that she’d write and tell him all about the seminary. ‘The next time I come to Bury we will compare notes,’ he suggested hopefully. But Caroline didn’t even mention the school when she wrote back.
I shall never like it, and I shan’t have any talents at all, she thought rebelliously, and if I have I shall take jolly good care Mrs Flowerdew doesn’t see them. I am an Easter. Not just any ordinary girl. And my mother was a saint.
But she had reckoned without Mrs Flowerdew’s talents, which were considerable and subtle.
Mrs Flowerdew knew a headstrong girl when she saw one, and she’d seen one on that first morning, for Caroline’s scowl when she was asked that very first question had revealed her feelings very clearly indeed. Accordingly her new teacher left her alone, watched her and waited. She was praised when she read well, and sewed neatly, and mastered the steps of the polonaise, but there were no more public questions. Time would provide the moment. It always did.
So Caroline lived out her first few weeks in the seminary under cover of its constant activity. She quite liked her new teachers. Miss Butts, who taught arithmetic, grammar and spelling, was dry and papery and predictable, but usually kind provided you did exactly what she asked, while Mr Pepperoni, who taught dancing and French and music, was so dark and quick and volatile you never knew what he was going to do or say next. ‘No, no, no,’ he would howl, when the dancers got into a muddle. ‘Where-a you put-a your feet? I show you?’ And he would leap behind the maladroit dancer and seizing her in his long bony arms pace out the entire measure with her, singing the tune at the top of his voice. It was just the sort of eccentric behaviour Caroline enjoyed.
But Mrs Flowerdew was quite another matter. Mrs Flowerdew was the person who was going to ‘inculcate proper attitudes’ whatever that might mean. So Mrs Flowerdew had to be resisted. Even though it was really rather difficult to resist Mrs Flowerdew. She was so large and overflowing and brightly coloured and full of praise. And her drawing lessons were the easiest times of the week.
The entire school would gather in the schoolroom as soon as their mid-day meal was over, to arrange the chairs and the rostrum, and set up easels, and hand out paper and paint and brushes and sketch books and pencils. The older girls stood at their easels anywhere in the room, but the younger ones always sat in a circle round Mrs Flowerdew’s rocking chair. And by some peculiar magic, Mrs Flowerdew always arrived in the room at the very moment everything was in order, bringing with her the day’s model, which was invariably either a box full of butterflies or a dish full of fruit or a vase full of flowers. But the subject matter was not important. What they were all waiting for was the reading and the conversation.
It was Mrs Flowerdew’s custom on drawing afternoons to arrive with the day’s newspapers or a book of historical or cautionary tales and read an uplifting article to her pupils as they worked. ‘Art is always so much improved by agreeable circumstances, is it not?’ she would say. ‘Let us see what our dear little Princess Victoria is doing.’ Or, ‘Let us read a tale about our good Queen Bess.’ For all the chosen readings were about famous women, so naturally enough, the conversation that followed was all about fame and heroism and the particular and undeniable talents of women. It was very enjoyable, particularly as Mrs Flowerdew’s view of the world seemed very similar to Nan’s. Caroline found it quite hard to sit mum and not join in.
But on the third drawing afternoon they were discussing whether or not it would be possible for a woman to own a factory.
‘A woman could own one, I suppose,’ Betonia said, ‘if her father left it to her, or her husband or somebody, but she couldn’t run it, could she?’
‘Why not?’ one of the older girls asked.
‘She wouldn’t know what to do.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for heaven’s sake!’ Betonia said. ‘How could she? Women stay at home, don’t they? They learn to run a household. They don’t run factories.’
‘If they can run a household then why can’t they run a factory?’ another girl wondered.
‘Because it ain’t natural,’ Betonia said fiercely. ‘That’s why. Women are meant to stay at home and look after the children.’
‘Oh, what a lot of nonsense!’ Caroline said, her vow not to join in quite forgotten in the heat of the moment. ‘My grandmother didn’t stay at home and look after the children. She runs A. Easter and Sons, I’ll have you know.’
Her fellow pupils were impressed. ‘All by herself?’ Helen asked, eyes wide.
‘Of course,’ she said, with great pride, forgetting the regional managers and her father and her uncle Billy. ‘She founded it. Years and years ago when she was young. My grandfather died and she had no money so she sold newspapers from door to door.’
‘Out on the streets?’ Betonia asked. That was rather shocking, surely. No lady would sell things on the streets. Only costers did that. And costers were very low people.
‘Of course,’ Caroline said again. Now that she’d started her story she wasn’t going to allow anybody to be shocked by it. ‘If she hadn’t gone out to work my father would have starved. I think she was very brave.’
‘She was unnatural,’ Betonia said. ‘It ain’t natural for women to run things.’
‘They run households,’ Caroline argued back at once, enraged to hear her dear Nan being abused. ‘You said so yourself.’
‘That’s different.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Anyway,’ Betonia said haughtily, ‘I’ll wager your mother didn’t sell newspapers on the street. Not if she was a saint, the way you keep telling us.’
‘My mother,’ Caroline said furiously, ‘bandaged the wounded after a massacre. She tore up her petticoats to staunch the wounds. And after that she went from town to town all over the country making speeches so that people would look after them and not let them starve. And she was a saint. Everybody says so.’
It was an impressive story and her audience were obviously impressed.
‘My mother,’ Betonia said, annoyed to be losing the advantage, ‘says it ain’t natural for women to work. So there.’
‘Well it is!’
‘It ain’t.’
‘I know it is.’
‘We can’t both be right,’ Betonia said smugly. ‘Can we, Mrs Flowerdew?’
Every face in the class turned towards Mrs Flowerdew for judgement. Betonia’s certain of endorsement, Caroline’s suddenly anxious. Now she’d done it. Now she would be told she was wrong and made to look a fool. Oh, if only she’d kept quiet.
Mrs Flowerdew beamed at them all. ‘Yes, you can,’ she said easily. ‘Oh indeed you can. There are as many different ways of being right as there are different ways of being wrong. And what is right for one girl and her family could be wrong for another and hers. It is a matter of attitude and the kind of talents you possess and how you make use of them. I will explain.’ And she smoothed her skirt across her capacious knees and turned to look at Betonia.
‘Betonia, as we all know, has a talent for order and dependability, which are both excellent things. Look how we benefit from her arrangement of this room at the start of our lessons, for instance. Her family have lived their lives in the same dependable way for centuries, as we also know, so naturally Betonia will do the same thing, and that is proper and commendable and an example to us all. The Easter family, on the other hand, are men and women of fire and imagination, the sort of people who change things, and take us forward into new ventures and over new horizons. Mrs Nan Easter owns shops all over the country, my dears, and all of them are run most successfully. They are renowned for being first with the news. Is that not so, Caroline?’
‘Yes,’ Caroline said, amazed to be receiving such support, ‘we are. And we sell millions of papers every day.’
‘Very true,’ Mrs Flowerdew agreed. ‘I bought this very paper from Easter’s in the Buttermarket this morning. So you see, my dears, far from being unnatural, Caroline’s grandmother is another example to us all. A lady who uses her talents to the uttermost, my dear, as we should all strive to do. Different talents, you see, different strengths, different attitudes, and all of them valuable.’
‘But surely, Mrs Flowerdew,’ Betonia said, struggling to recover her lost superiority, ‘there is only one correct attitude.’
‘No, my dear,’ Mrs Flowerdew told her gently, ‘there are as many attitudes as there are people, and why should one be more correct than any other?’
This was heady stuff and it emboldened Caroline to ask a question of her own. ‘What does “inculcate” mean, Mrs Flowerdew?’
‘My father said you were going to “inculcate” proper attitudes in me.’
‘Ah!’ Mrs Flowerdew said. ‘To inculcate the proper attitudes, my dear, is to enable each and every one of you to discover for herself what attitudes are proper to her and her family and then to live by them. Do you see?’
Oh, indeed she did. How amazing! How absolutely amazing!
That night over dinner Caroline gave her grandmother a full report of the day’s events. It was the first time she’d done such a thing since she joined the seminary, a fact not lost on the shrewd Nan Easter, who was highly amused to hear how her life had been the subject of conversation.
‘Mrs Flowerdew says you are an example to us all,’ Caroline said as she finished her account.
Nan Easter grinned at her granddaughter. ‘A woman of sense,’ she said. ‘I take it you like her.’ She could have added ‘now’ but forebore, being a woman of sense herself.
‘Yes, I do. She’s lovely.’
‘So school might be useful?’
‘Oh yes,’ Caroline said. ‘Very useful. I think I have a talent for working in Easter’s, you see.’