Chapter 9 Diana’s Story Continues
Bird was almost fifteen and, envious though I was, I could not deny that she was turning into an attractive young woman.
She’d always been slender but now she was tall and willowy.
Wavy fair hair fell to her shoulders, framing her large blue eyes and heart-shaped face.
Her movements were graceful, her voice low and sweet.
She’d hum to herself in a way I found annoying, but others loved.
I tried to fight my hateful feelings, but it was difficult.
If she rushed in late for dinner, my father’s eyes lit up and he spoke softly.
If it was me who was late, he growled. How could I not be resentful?
If I’d hoped for support from my brother, I was quickly disappointed. As agreed, Andrew spent his university holidays working at the brewery. I could see that he hated it. Having suffered our father all day, he would go to his room after dinner to study or go out with friends.
The summer after I turned seventeen, my finishing school presented the year’s students with certificates of achievement and we returned home to begin adult life.
Many girls were looking forward to the Season, a whirl of parties and outings designed to introduce them to suitable young men.
One, an earl’s daughter, was to be presented to the Queen, but our family was not important enough for that.
Still, my father was determined that I should marry well.
One evening, soon after I arrived home with my bags and boxes, he requested my presence in the drawing room.
I found him sitting with my mother. The day had been one of the hottest of the year and even with the windows open the room felt oppressively humid.
My father stood squarely with his back to the empty fireplace and glowered at me.
My mother huddled in her chair, restlessly fiddling with her pearl necklace.
I perched nervously on the edge of the sofa.
‘We need to discuss your future, Diana,’ my father growled. ‘You can’t expect us to feed you for nothing, you know.’ His eyes shone at his own little joke.
‘I didn’t expect you to,’ I muttered. Where was this going? I glanced at my mother, but she only smiled.
‘You need to find something to occupy you and pay your way,’ my father went on. ‘Until we find you a husband.’
A husband! Of course, I hoped that sometime in the dim future I would meet someone nice and fall in love.
Every girl hoped that, or so I assumed. But I didn’t know any attractive young men.
Andrew rarely brought his friends to the house and the one or two he did were awkward, spotty and shy.
There was one I felt sorry for, a local lad named Walter, who quivered every time my father spoke to him.
He was the son of the Town Clerk, my father’s old enemy.
He and Andrew shared a love of fishing and used to go off on days together.
My father interrupted my thoughts. ‘… a teacher at Mrs Collins’ school,’ he was saying and I blinked.
Mrs Collins ran a school for infants in her house in town and apparently needed a new assistant.
I could start in September. I remember staring at him in panic.
I had no interest in small children, but I knew Mrs Collins.
She had a face like a currant bun and a whining voice.
‘Can’t I learn to type?’ I stuttered, thinking an office job would be more interesting, but he shook his head.
‘I’m not paying for you to waste another year. We need to have you launched, girl.’
‘Launched?’ For a moment I didn’t understand.
‘Your mother’s been busy,’ he said, rocking on his toes, a habit of his when excited. ‘She’s organizing a dance for you. In the Assembly Rooms,’ he said, naming the splendid hall in town which could be hired for receptions and balls.
And finally I understood. I was to have my own season! Not a grand one in London like girls from my finishing school, but a local one for young men and women from distinguished Farthington families. My parents wished me to ‘have my chance’ to marry well and further the Rutherfurd fortunes!
Despite my nervousness at the idea, I was excited.
Being on show would be an ordeal, but if I met a suitable man, fell in love and married him, I would both please my father and engineer my escape from my oppressive home in one fell swoop!
Like most young women with a protected upbringing, I had only a fuzzy idea of life with my Mr Right, but I was determined he should be someone as different from my father as could be.
I consented to my parents’ plans and was pleasantly surprised by my new life that autumn.
Probably because they at last took an interest in me.
My teaching duties at Mrs Collins’ school were not onerous.
Mrs Collins, I sensed, was overawed by my father, who was, after all, the town’s mayor, and she didn’t bully me as she did the other assistant.
At balls and parties, my finishing-school lessons were put to good use.
I might not be a graceful dancer, but I knew the steps and how to converse with the tongue-tied young men who were my partners.
They were for the most part the sons of good families, very respectable, moderately wealthy.
My brother was one of them, together with some of his friends.
The hapless Walter, I noticed, was not among them.
Nor was my sister invited. At fifteen she was still too young even to attend my own dance.
My father simply would not allow it and her complaints about this gave me a secret pleasure.
One young man caught my eye. Will Bramerton was not handsome, but I warmed to his friendly smile.
He was too stocky to be a graceful dancer but off the dance floor he moved with confidence as though he knew his place in the world.
He was easy to talk to and asked me about myself, which few of the other boys did, and I felt myself sparkle in his company.
At every ball he picked me as his partner, which led my mother to invite him to tea.
He had a car and took me out in it, showing off its speed in the country lanes.
Every time we were alone together, I felt we grew closer.
Of course, I was too well brought up to engage in any hanky-panky.
Perhaps in anticipation of my engagement, my father announced a special present for my eighteenth birthday. I was to have my portrait painted! He made enquiries and arranged for the chosen artist, Mr Fuller, to come to the house.
It was agreed that I should attend Fuller’s studio in town every Saturday afternoon to sit for him until he was finished.
I enjoyed these half-dozen sessions. Sitting perfectly still came easily to me.
I would recite poetry in my head and dream of Will.
And I liked Thomas Fuller, a man in his late twenties.
I knew nothing about him, but he looked like my idea of an artist: dark brown hair, slightly too long, a sensitive face with full, moulded lips.
His gaze might be piercing one moment and soft the next as he did his work.
He only spoke when he wanted me to change position.
If he had to move my head or my arm, my skin burned where he’d touched me and I blushed.
I was quite pleased with the finished picture, when Fuller brought it to Farthington House.
The whole family assembled in the drawing room when he unveiled it in its gold frame and I remember the collective sigh of pleasure that went up.
The deep blue ball gown I’d worn suited my dark colouring and Mother had styled my hair very prettily.
‘I wish I could have my portrait painted, too,’ Bird told Fuller and he smiled and glanced at my father.
‘All in good time, my little Bird. All in good time,’ he said.
The painting joined the other family portraits on the wall of the dining room. I felt very proud.
On my eighteenth birthday, my parents held a party at home.
After the speeches, Will took me aside and at last managed to stammer that he loved me.
I was so happy that I cried. He hastened to explain, though, that his parents thought we were too young to marry.
He was training to be a lawyer and not earning very much.
We would have to wait several years and not announce anything yet.
My tears turned to disappointment, but it couldn’t be helped.
At least I’d found the man I wanted to marry.
I confided in my parents, who approved of Will and were content.
That made me happy. I continued to teach at the school and to see Will whenever he was free.
The one irritation was Bird. She was now sixteen and it was clear she would follow the same path I had.
Finishing school, a season and marriage.
But where I’d been obedient, there was something restless about Bird.
She was exceptionally pretty now, with large expressive eyes and a confident attitude that I envied.
She could usually twist my father round her little finger, but in her last months at school they came into conflict.
That spring, Bird’s abilities at art had become a passionate interest. Wherever she went she took a sketchbook. These piled up in her room. I sneaked a look once. She’d drawn bowls of fruit, children playing, sketches of her friends, and I had to admit that her work was good, very good.
Now she said she didn’t want to go to finishing school.
She pleaded with my father to be allowed to study art and become a painter.
My father was shocked and horrified. Shocked because his favourite child was refusing to do his will.
Horrified because an artist’s life was hardly a respectable one.
I heard him shouting, ‘I forbid it,’ and for once I felt sorry for her.
‘You can take art lessons at finishing school,’ I whispered to her and watched her eyes light up. Despite everything, I missed her in the autumn when she went away to Frinton. The house was too quiet without her humming.
It must have been November when the letter arrived from the school.
I remember my father storming into the drawing room where we were waiting for Cook to call us to dinner.
He demanded to speak to my mother alone and she followed him out.
Andrew and I stared at each other and wondered what had happened.
We soon learned. Bird had been expelled in disgrace. My father drove off in a cloud of oily smoke to fetch her.
When she returned with all her luggage, I was concerned to see how pale and thin she was.
At meals, she picked silently at her food before turning a delicate shade of green and rushing from the room.
It took Cook to explain it to me. My sister was expecting a baby.
Whose baby was not yet known. At first she would not say but only lay on her bed and cried.
I tried my best, but it was Mother who got it out of her.
By this time, rumours had started to spread.
Mrs Collins took me aside one afternoon after school. ‘I hear,’ she said sternly, ‘that your sister is in trouble.’
I wasn’t surprised that she knew – Cook was a terrible gossip – but I was shocked by what Mrs Collins revealed next. ‘They’re saying it’s that artist, Fuller, who’s responsible. Is that true?’
I remember staring at her, feeling the blood drain from my face! Thomas Fuller! For a moment my mind wouldn’t process this.
But Mrs Collins was continuing. ‘I think in the light of this, it would be best, Miss Rutherfurd, if you took a little break from teaching. Some of our parents can be very sensitive about these issues and I don’t want anyone withdrawing their child from the school.’
I was dumbfounded. As though in a dream I collected my things and left. I don’t remember the walk home.
My sister was resting when I burst into her room and confronted her.
I told her what Mrs Collins had said and done and she dissolved into tears and sobbed out her story.
There wasn’t much to it. After Fuller’s second visit to our house, when he’d brought my finished portrait and she’d begged to have hers done, he’d secretly invited her to his studio.
He’d love to paint her, he said, it would be his pleasure.
So she went and took her sketchbooks with her to ask his advice.
Each time, after she’d sat for him, they’d talk about her drawings and discuss new techniques. And one thing had led to another.
‘And I didn’t know that he was m—m—married,’ she cried.
I didn’t want to hear the details. I felt so mixed up.
Angry, filled with contempt, but also stupidly envious that Fuller had taken to my sister rather than me.
Not that I wished to be in her situation, of course, taken advantage of by an older man.
I would have resisted his advances, I told myself!
Later, it was anger I felt most of all, anger at the shame she brought on our family.
And for everything that then went wrong for us.
I blamed Bird for Will breaking off our engagement, though I knew his parents were responsible for that.
There were no more invitations to dances and parties.
No one would ever marry me, I believed. That’s how you see things when you’re only eighteen and your world falls apart.
You can’t think ahead to the future, that maybe things will improve.
It was stupid of me to marry my brother’s friend Walter, I quickly saw that, but he was the only one to ask me and I was grateful at the time.
But I did not love him and treated him with contempt.
Our marriage did not survive. He abandoned me to raise Julia on my own.
Poor dear Julia. I fear she’s suffered from all this.
I’ve kept her too close, trying to protect her from life.
Maybe she’ll read this and forgive me. As for my sister, I should have forgiven her when she was alive.
It’s not good to harbour grudges. But like a bird, she flew away from us, made her own life.
I never thought I’d end my days back at Farthington House, but writing this has helped me. I’ve found a sort of peace and…
It was here, in the middle of a sentence, that Diana’s story ended.