School for Skylarks Read online

  Solomon walked with his strange, stiff gait towards the stuffed armadillo apparently known as Old Alfred, and, with some panache, placed the platter at his feet, rather in the way that the maître d’ at Claridges might present a boeuf en croute. With a flourish he lifted the lid. Lyla watched, astonished. The butler must be as daft as his mistress, for the animal was clearly dead and not in need of any food at all.

  ‘And what food exactly does a dead armadillo require?’ demanded Lyla.

  ‘Old Alfred is not to be neglected. Those are my instructions.’

  Solomon was clearly accustomed to carrying out all manner of things in the line of duty. Lyla watched his face very carefully in case that moustache should disappear or do some other thing.

  Suddenly, and rather surprisingly, Solomon bent down and whispered through a smile, ‘There is, however, no longer any obligation to rootle about in Her Ladyship’s flowerbeds for the bugs and the beetles that Old Alfred so used to enjoy.’

  Lyla smiled because Solomon had the sort of smile that always draws a smile in others, and that made her think how lovely it must be to go about seeing only smiles wherever one went. Nevertheless, everything here was strange and absurd. She would go home. She would go home right away and not waste a minute longer.

  ‘Shall I show you to your room, miss?’

  ‘No, because I am going home – and actually I’m going right away.’

  Solomon dipped his head, and Lyla wondered if he might have been a little saddened by the idea of her leaving so soon. Lyla glanced out of the hall window and hesitated, suddenly assailed by doubt. The hills were sturdier and the valleys deeper than she’d thought; the drive so long you couldn’t see to the end of it.

  It would be a tricky journey to London. Wondering if Solomon might try to stop her from leaving, she walked slowly over to her suitcase. Slowly she bent to take the handle, but still he didn’t come to stop her. Old Alfred, however, was watching her, definitely watching her, as if he knew exactly what she were doing, and had in his life seen all manner of things, and a small girl running away was entirely unremarkable, see if he cared.

  Lyla stuck her tongue out at Old Alfred, grabbed the handle of her case and turned to find that Solomon was at the door opening it for her. Lyla was disconcerted, for the grown-ups she’d come across in stories did not open doors for children to escape through.

  ‘I’m going to catch the train, and nothing you say will stop me,’ she told him.

  But Solomon simply conjured a thing from his pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. A small silver compass.

  ‘From Her Ladyship,’ he said. ‘To guide you to London.’

  Lyla was suspicious and wondered if it were a trick, for grown-ups weren’t supposed to help you run away.

  ‘I shan’t need it as I’ll be travelling by train.’

  Solomon dipped his head in the restrained way, which suggested that if he knew any better he also knew it was his place not to disagree.

  ‘Good day,’ said Lyla, and marched out.

  Halfway down the drive she turned to see if anyone was watching from the windows or perhaps running down the drive after her, but so far no one was. She turned back and noted again the height of the hills and the depth of the valleys and she scowled, for it was difficult for an eleven-year-old child to return herself to London from a place that was so far away from all the other places in the world. By the time she’d reached the gateposts, her fingers already ached and her tummy rumbled, so she paused to rest. She glanced up at the stone griffins, which were, however, too high up on their posts and too grand to notice Lyla, so she rolled her eyes at them, snatched at the handle of the case and marched on, telling herself, It’s all Father’s fault.

  After a while, because her shoes were all wrong and because all suitcases were the wrong shape for being carried, she began to dawdle and to bump and trail the case along the tarmac. Then, after another while, she slumped down on a green verge beside a patch of yellow primroses and sulked. No one cared about her. No one had even tried to stop her. She began to yank at the petals of a primrose, snatching them off one by one.

  It was so unfair. Everything was unfair. She yanked the petals from another primrose.

  The colour yellow plunged Mop into a black mood. Small things could do that to her mother, even things as small as primroses. Perhaps Mop was having a black day today. Lyla bit her lip. On a black day Lyla always stayed close to her mother because she’d be unpredictable, might begin to make lots of calls, and laugh too loudly, then suddenly – and for no obvious reason – begin to cry.

  Abruptly, because such thoughts made her uncomfortable, Lyla stood and marched on. The stone banks were so high you couldn’t see over them to know where you were, but suddenly she found herself in front of the little pavilion with the platform and the large round clock.

  She was halfway home. From now on it would be quite easy.

  After a while she looked at the clock and thought how watching clocks made time move more slowly in faraway places. She crossed her arms and legs several times over and looked about, hoping a station master might materialize.

  The same solitary ewe grazed along the track as though it lived there always. Uneasy, Lyla gazed down the track, first one way, then the other, wondering from which direction the London train would come, and she gazed at the clock, wondering actually if clock hands moved at all in places such as this. Suddenly, hearing the screech and rumble of an approaching train, Lyla leaped to her feet. It approached at a leisurely pace, toot-tooting until the sheep eventually lifted its head and wandered off the track. Lyla picked up her case in readiness, but now that the track was clear, the train was picking up speed and the driver had perhaps not seen her, so she waved and shouted, and as it picked up more speed, she looked on in disbelief.

  The steam gradually cleared and there, emerging from the mist, was Solomon with a pony trap.

  ‘Miss Lyla, just in time for dinner,’ he said, and he didn’t give any sign that anyone was cross with her, nor show any surprise that the train had not stopped. He dismounted to collect Lyla’s case, and she saw again the awkward movement of his legs.

  Lyla scowled. She very much liked the idea of being in time for dinner, but because she’d tried to run away she must also be cross.

  ‘Why didn’t the train stop?’ asked Lyla through her teeth.

  ‘This is Her Ladyship’s private station, but she has no intention of rushing about on trains.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lyla, again through her teeth. Angry tears collected behind her eyes, and blood rose to her cheeks with the rage that comes from having no control over things like trains, or the arrangements that grown-ups made for you in which you had no say. Escape Option One had failed, so now she would have to try Escape Option Two: soldiers and sandbags. She would have to write a letter to the Ministry of Works.

  After a while, because Escape Option Two was actually quite complicated to think about, her mind began to drift, and she noticed that Solomon had no moustache, and because it was disconcerting to have a moustache appear and disappear Lyla wondered whether he might tell her where it had gone and, eventually, she asked.

  ‘Where is your . . . your . . . ?’ She made curling actions with her fingers on either side of her mouth.

  Solomon turned to her. ‘I only put it on to cheer you up, for you looked so sad when Captain Spence left.’

  Lyla, unused to such kindness, smiled at him, and as they entered the hall, being by now very hungry, asked, ‘What time is dinner?’

  ‘Seven o’clock, Miss Lyla. In the Old Hall,’ replied Solomon.

  Lyla gestured about the room. ‘So what’s this meant to be – the New Hall?’

  Solomon inclined his head. ‘Miss Lyla, there are indeed those among us who think this is a rather snappy, up-to-the-minute sort of place. Shall I take you to your room?’ He bent to pick up Lyla’s case.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’ll probably be leaving in the morning or sometime very
soon, but now I do need to go to my room as I’ve an important letter to write.’

  4

  WHITE HARES AND UNICORNS

  Lyla followed Solomon up the winding stone stairs. They emerged rather suddenly on to a broad landing lined with bookcases and portraits and went a very long way along a corridor flanked with suits of armour.

  Solomon paused, and with pride and some sense of occasion announced, ‘The Yellow Silk Room, miss.’

  Lyla caught her breath. A four-poster bed stood in the centre of the room, richly hung with canary-yellow silk. On the walls, painted unicorns and white hares frolicked between silvery trees whose branches and luminous leaves spread upwards across the ceiling like an enchanted glade.

  This was a forgetting kind of room, in a forgetting kind of house, where you might sit about with walruses and unicorns.

  Everything was so different to anything Lyla had ever known. She went about with Mop to shops and galleries, restaurants, theatres and concerts, but since Mop disapproved of the countryside (‘Mildew, darling – it’s all mildew and melancholy’), Lyla had never been further than Henley.

  She thought of her mother’s delicate furniture and dainty trinkets, and of how Mop was too careful about her appearance to go about in overalls, or leave armadillos in the hall. With a plummeting feeling in her belly, Lyla thought of Mop herself.

  After a while she sighed and turned to the window and then her heart missed a beat, for immediately below she saw the high stone wall of what might be a vegetable garden. Walled gardens often appeared in stories she’d read, and she’d always longed to be in one, for they were fairy-tale things; things of promise and plenty; places to fill baskets with pears and plums; places in which to meet secret, special friends and have adventures. Lyla’s hopes ran on. Perhaps there’d be a larder somewhere here too, with rows of jellies and jams.

  She sighed. She was in fact very hungry, and with hunger came anxiety, for in her experience adults did not always remember to provide food. Mop didn’t because her mind was on Higher Things, and that was why Winnie, her housekeeper, had to do the dull bits of life, like meals. Lyla’s thoughts had revolved, as they always did, back to Mop. She must return to her, and that meant Escape Option Two, which was filling Furlongs with soldiers.

  She went to the spacious writing table on which stood an ink pen, a silver ink pot and blotting paper, took a sheet of headed paper and began to puzzle over how one went about writing to important men in ministries and finally picked up the pen.

  To Whom It May Concern

  The Ministry of Works

  Horseguards

  Westminster

  September 1939

  She chewed her pen for a while before writing:

  Dear Sirs,

  I am delighted to inform you that I am willing to make Furlongs and all its grounds available to all the regiments and all the soldiers that may need it. Furlongs is very large indeed and even has several turrets and a butler and a clock tower and would be very suitable for storing sandbags and soldiers.

  Since it would be entirely unsuitable for me to remain in the house when it is full of soldiers, please transport me at your earliest convenience to my London residence, 37 Lisson Square, Primrose Hill.

  Yours,

  Lyla Spence

  Then she added Lady in front of her name and smiled, because now the men in government offices would pay special attention and send the soldiers very soon. She would go now and put the letter in the Mail Out tray ready for first post the next morning, and then find her way to the Old Hall by seven, in case Solomon gave her dinner to a dead armadillo known as Old Alfred.

  5

  WELSH RAREBIT

  She found Great Aunt Ada sitting by the fire, her feet propped up on a petit-point footstool, her hands folded across her lap. She wore a brown velvet smoking jacket and slippers embroidered with galleons. Lyla eyed the moth-eaten jacket and wondered if her great aunt dressed herself in the clothes left behind by the previous inhabitant of the house simply because they were readily to hand.

  Ada was reading a letter that appeared to be from Father, for it was surely his handwriting, but as Lyla entered she carefully folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope, frowning a little as she did so.

  ‘Good, good,’ she said distractedly. ‘You are still here. I am so pleased. Do sit down. Violet will be along shortly too.’

  Violet? Father hadn’t mentioned anyone called Violet. Old Alfred was an armadillo and Little Gibson was a canary so there was no knowing who or what Violet might be at all.

  ’And this dear fellow is Little Gibson, as you know.’ Great Aunt Ada tapped his beak fondly and handed him a cuttlebone from the pocket of her mannish smoking jacket.

  The clock struck the hour, and on the seventh chime exactly Solomon appeared, solemn and ceremonious and silent.

  ‘Ah, Solomon,’ Ada said, as though highly satisfied that her butler should present himself at that particular o’clock.

  Solomon clearly did the same things at the same time every day, and probably had done for centuries, for now he went over to a bookcase, and, with some pizzazz as if he were a showman about to perform a trick, pushed it. Lyla blinked furiously, for a section of the bookcase was swinging open and behind it was a gleaming silver-domed dish that had perhaps risen of its own accord from the nether regions of the house. Solomon placed the dish on the window table.

  At an insistent rattling of the window pane, Lyla was astonished to see a soft pink muzzle at the glass – the muzzle of a delicate, gentle, soft-eyed horse.

  ‘Good evening, Violet,’ said Aunt Ada.

  So Violet was a horse. Well, that explained that.

  Aunt Ada rose, went to the table and lifted the lid of the silver platter.

  Lyla watched hopefully. Welsh rarebit. That was good, but there was only one portion.

  His demeanour most serious, Solomon turned and opened the casement.

  The horse called Violet was so wistful and wise-looking that Lyla felt she might once have been a human who’d been turned into a horse and then cast out and forced, forever after, to peer sadly into the very house in which she’d once lived. That possibility made Lyla feel softly towards Violet, until Violet stretched her neck through the window towards the Welsh rarebit and began to eat.

  Dizzy with exhaustion, hunger and astonishment, Lyla felt a tear trickle down her cheek, but she brushed it aside with the back of a clenched fist and said, ‘I’ll be leaving very soon, you know.’

  Lyla knew she’d been rude, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Oh dear, your father was so happy here, you know,’ replied Ada.

  Solomon had returned to his dumbwaiter, and now there were two very promising silver domes, each on a tray with its own salt, pepper and mustard pots. He placed the trays on footstools before the fire and left the room.

  Lyla finally ate, savouring the Welsh rarebit, which was very, very good. She heard the hissing and crackling of the fire and began to succumb a little to the enchantment of a house in which a butler served tea to dead armadillos and Welsh rarebit to elderly horses, and began to wonder what sort of conversation one might strike up with a great aunt who lived in such a place in such a way. Eventually she said, ‘Sometimes Solomon has a moustache.’

  ‘I believe that is traditional in a lion tamer,’ replied her aunt.

  Lyla looked bewildered, so Ada elaborated.

  ‘Solomon is from Balham, d’you know – a most unlikely product of that borough. His parents died in a house fire. He was only seven, but he joined a travelling circus, became cage boy to a lion cub.’

  Solomon reappeared with a cut-crystal tumbler of whiskey for Aunt Ada.

  ‘Barnum and Bailey. A big top, candy floss, fanfares, roaring crowds – that kind of thing. That’s where you got your brio, your pizzazz, isn’t that so, Solomon? Yes, yes, by seventeen he was a lion tamer, a great success. He and the lion enacted stories from the Bible; put his head into the lion’s mouth, and
so forth. Isn’t that so, Solomon? Yes, frightfully brave.’

  ‘Roy, my lady. He was called Roy,’ said Solomon, his eyes a little misty.

  ‘Quite. Roy. An Asiatic lion, I believe. The jaws of an Asiatic lion can crush the spine of a bull, you know. But then came the war, and Solomon became a soldier-servant – to your father in fact. You know, digging foxholes for Lovell, pressing his uniform, driving him about and so on. Lovell tells me he was very constant, very dependable. And now he’s here.’ Ada glanced at her butler to denote deep satisfaction that this should be the case. She glanced down at the envelope on her arm rest and drummed her fingers on it. ‘Ah well, you see, life takes many twists and turns – puts obstacles in one’s way and so forth. One doesn’t always end up where one thinks one might.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lyla, who’d never known that her father had once had a lion-taming soldier-servant to dig things called foxholes for him.

  Great Aunt Ada’s house was so far proving most unusual, and Lyla began to look forward to telling Mop all about the things that happened in it. One thing though was a little disappointing, and that was the matter of Old Alfred the armadillo not being alive. So, because she did in fact hope there might be others, she asked, ‘Are there any live armadillos in your house, Great Aunt Ada?’

  ‘No . . . oh dear, you see, there’s only Old Alfred, who was a dear companion, like Solomon – very constant, very dependable. That’s what you want: constancy and dependability. These are the things you need in those you choose to love, don’t you think? No point at all in wasting time on those who are not constant in their love for you.’

  The person Lyla loved was Mop, so she thought about Mop, and then, though she didn’t know what to make of Aunt Ada’s words, found that they were discomfiting and somehow causing her toast to stick in her mouth a little. She swallowed before chewing it properly, then put down her knife and fork. After a while, she began to speak in a voice that was high and brittle.