‘The wind is fairly wuthering out there today!’ said Mary as she looked out of the window. She was glad to be inside on a day like this, when the cold wind rushed over the moors and beat against the windows of the house like a wild thing trying to get inside. She hoped that the robin was snug in his nest, and not out hunting for worms today.
‘Wuthering?’ Colin asked.
‘It’s a Yorkshire word, and I think it’s a fine one. What else would describe half so well that lost, eerie sound that the wind makes?’ Mary said.
‘Wuthering,’ Colin repeated, meditatively. ‘Yes, I like that word too.’
They were ensconced in a window seat on the long landing that ran from one end of the East Wing of Misselthwaite Manor to the other. They both liked this particular window as it commanded a fine view of the moors – and of the road from Thwaite Station that crossed them, bringing travellers to the Manor. They were waiting for a glimpse of their new governess. Mary remembered her own first journey across those moors, and how she had thought them bleak and barren. She knew differently now, for she understood all the creatures and plants that lived there, if one looked closely enough to spot them. Dickon had taught her to see them, and she hoped that the new governess might be able to teach her more.
‘Look!’ cried Colin, pointing to the spot where the road crested the brow of the hill. ‘The carriage!’
Slowly, slowly, the carriage wound its way down towards the imposing stone gates, and then through them and up the long gravel drive. They watched closely for the first glimpse of their new governess.
‘There she is,’ said Mary, as a figure stepped down from the carriage, looking about her with a sharp eye. She was older than any of the other governesses had been – perhaps older than Mrs. Medlock, though it was hard to tell from where they sat peeping through the window. She was tall, thin and dressed in charcoal grey, which seemed appropriate – she looked as if all the fire had burnt out of her long ago. Though the wind howled about her and the trees were waving frantically in the breeze, she seemed impervious to the storm. Her bonnet was bound securely to her head, her shawl pulled in close and pinned tightly, and her skirts seemed stiff and starched, as if they were frozen solid. She looked cold and hard, as if winter had arrived with her in the carriage.
For a moment neither Mary nor Colin spoke. They knew, without speaking, what the other was thinking. This was not the governess that they had been hoping for.
‘I don’t think we’re going to be introducing her to Bob Strong,’ Colin whispered, as if he was afraid, even from this far away, that she would be able to hear him.
‘No, indeed. She’s nothing like Miss Lightfoot, is she?’ Mary whispered back. ‘And perhaps it’s for the best. I think Martha might be sad if we introduced somebody else to Bob Strong.’
‘At least Miss Lightfoot was kind, even if she didn’t teach us much,’ Colin said.
The new governess had taken in her surroundings, and now began to walk towards the front door of the Manor. She moved like some kind of long-legged bird, Mary thought. A heron, perhaps, picking, poking and pecking as she stalked along.
‘She’s not using the servant’s entrance!’ Colin said, horrified.
Governesses, in his experience, were servants and did not take it upon themselves to use the main door, the one for visitors of some importance. Nevertheless, this woman walked straight up to the huge oak doors, and they parted to admit her. Just as she was about to step into the house she paused, and looked up straight towards the window where they were sitting as if she had known they were there. The children froze. A long, chilly stare passed between them, before she turned, almost disdainfully, and stepped inside.
‘Well!’ said Colin, trying to sound affronted and grand, but actually sounding rather shaken. ‘Well, bless my soul. Did you ever see the like? A governess who thinks she’s a guest!’
‘I’ve seen women like her before. Plenty of them,’ Mary said. ‘But none of them were governesses.’
They had been friends of her mother’s in India. Smooth, elegant young women whose diamonds sparkled but whose eyes did not. Unhappy women who looked at her with contempt, and told her mother scornfully that they could never endure to have such a child about the house. But they were all dead now, she supposed, dead with the cholera like her mother, and she was more alive than they had ever been.
‘Come on, Colin. I don’t want to stay here any longer. Let’s go to the library and find some books.’
Liz Taylorson 