Chapter Thirteen
The house was quieter without Clara. She’d been sent to finish her education at the Lawnside School for Young Ladies in Great Malvern.
Kate didn’t get to say much more than a secretly snatched goodbye, as the two young women had been instructed to spend no further time in one another’s company before her departure.
The whole arrangement was speedily attended to.
Clara was to spend a few days with an aunt in Tewkesbury and from there she would travel to the college.
How quickly things could change! Master Philip had tried to reassure her, when he came home from Cambridge for a short while, that it would soon all blow over and be forgotten. Kate wasn’t so sure.
The post box had been cleaned up and there was no trace of what had happened that day, but, whenever Kate walked by it with the three children, she felt that the fire had left an invisible scar inside her.
She couldn’t suppress a sense of regret.
But what was she regretting? That she had ever got involved in the protest in the first place, that she had lost Clara, or that she had even come to Woodland House at all?
She might have talked to Eliza about her feelings, but Eliza could only think about herself right now and what was happening in her own life.
Eliza’s wedding date had finally been set for December.
It was all planned; Eliza had given her notice but would stay to help prepare for the family move.
Mrs B and Kate were to go with the family to London, but a new kitchen maid and a butler would be employed for the new London house. The move was set for early November.
Kate was pleased for her but would miss Eliza terribly.
It would be like starting all over again, but there was nothing she could do about it.
Things could never stay the same. Mr and Mrs Tommy White would take up their new positions as Head Butler and Cook at ‘The Laurels’, Dorchester Road.
Kate would be alone. No Eliza to joke with, no Clara and no Philip to .
. . to what? Whatever did she think was going to come of any of it?
They were far above her and far away from her. She must concentrate on doing her job.
* * *
The packing and preparing was interminable.
Every way Mrs B, Eliza and Kate tried to suggest organizing things, Mrs Winton disagreed.
One day she instructed them to pack the best china and the next she said they must unpack it again for she couldn’t possibly serve dinner to her sister and family on the second-best dinner service.
They were coming to take the children to stay with them temporarily so that all the staff could concentrate on the removal arrangements.
Kate spent a good deal of time telling the children that the days would soon pass and they would all be together again in London ‘in the wink of an eye’.
Thomas, now approaching eight years old and very grown up, was very matter of fact about it all, and said he was looking forward to it for he would be going to one of the best schools in London, Dulwich College, and Father had said there would be a science laboratory with microscopes and petri dishes. The twins weren’t so sure.
They were to be separated for the first time. Simon was to join his brother but Sophie would be attending James Allen’s Girls’ School, a short distance away. They, like Kate, had little choice in any of these matters and were obliged to do as their parents bid them.
The whole performance was gradually ended and the move took place in early November.
Thankfully it was a dry day and not too cold.
As Kate lifted her bags into the hansom cab that was to take her and Mrs B to the station, she looked back at the house.
The windows looked back at her with the sadness of a child abandoned.
What waited for her in the city was a mystery to her, for the closest she had ever come to the capital was through the descriptions given by Clara and Philip, and through photographs glimpsed in the papers.
When she would see her family in Micklewell again, she had no idea.
She had expected to be able to go back home to say her farewells but Mrs Winton had said she couldn’t possibly spare her and there would be time enough once they had settled.
Kate tried not to think about such things and set her mind on what awaited her, but it kept drifting back to Eliza’s laughter and Clara’s determined frown.
She knew that she would probably never see Eliza again.
As for Clara, she wondered how long the master and mistress would keep her in isolation in Gloucestershire and if their plans to marry her off to some wealthy curmudgeon had only been delayed, not dismantled.
These were questions that could only be answered in the fullness of time.
She must have patience and fortitude. She found that recently the former was somewhat harder to achieve for she had been given a taste of what life could become, even for women in service such as her and she so wanted for change to come sooner rather than later.
She could feel her pulse quicken at the thought that she was living and working in such times.
Surely in London there would be opportunities.
She hoped Miss Clara would be allowed to return, and that they could explore those opportunities together.
She could never enter the sector of society that Clara belonged to, but they could both, in their own separate ways, ensure that they would not give up their right to strive for a better future.