The changeling

He meant he and my mother had planned it for me. So she had discussed me with him.

“Perhaps next year,” he said.

So I was safe for the time being.

I was glad when he left for London. My grandmother was relieved too. I think she always had it in mind that he was going to take Belinda and me away from her. I might be sent to school, but I was sure he would not want Belinda. Something in the way he looked at the child convinced me that he blamed her for my mother’s death. Pedrek came to Cornwall for the summer holidays, bringing a school friend with him. Of course, the friend did not want a girl to join them. So it was different. Pedrek was a very kind person and always careful of other people’s feelings - he took after his mother in that - so he was aware that I was feeling shut out. He was half apologetic but what could he do? He must entertain his guest. We were all growing up and that was another aspect of change.

I used to go down to the pool often and I would think of my mother and when we had sat there and talked. I remembered how she had asked me to care for the child then unborn. It was as though she had had a premonition of what was going to happen, as though she knew she were going to die.

The pool had meant something special to her and while I was there I would have an uncanny feeling that she was there beside me ... that she was trying to talk to me.

It was at the pool that I first became aware of Lucie.

I was interested in her because no one had believed her mother was going to have her until almost the time of her birth - and no one knew who her father was. Mrs. Polhenny mentioned her now and then.

She said: “You couldn’t find a better mother than Jenny Stubbs, which is a strange thing, her being a penny short in the head so to speak. But she’s nothing short when it comes to babies. Little scrap of a thing that Lucie was ... now she’s bonny; and I reckon it’s due to Jenny. Her sort’s meant to be mothers. A pity the good Lord saw fit to cut her a bit short.”

It was the nearest criticism I had ever heard her utter against the Lord, so she must have felt rather strongly.

My grandmother marvelled too. Mrs. Granger at the farm where Jenny worked said the change in her was remarkable since Lucie had been born. “Quite sensible she is now,” went on Mrs. Granger, “and that Lucie ... Miss Belinda couldn’t be better looked after. Always clean, she is ... always well cared for. I let her bring her here. It makes no difference to the work and I wouldn’t want to lose Jenny. She’s a good worker ... and now she’s got her wits about her, all the better.”

My grandmother said: “The poor girl had a fixation about a child. You see she lost the child she cared for some years ago. She was always simple and now she’s got another of her own she’s satisfied. When she took you away she looked after you just as she’s looking after little Lucie now. I know that Mrs. Polhenny and her kind deplore the fact that the child is illegitimate but if it changes a life like that there can’t be a lot of harm in it.”

In any case I was very interested in Lucie and she obviously took a liking to me. I used to go to the pool on most afternoons and Jenny would bring her out of the cottage and they would talk to me.

She was two years old at the time-a lovely child with blue eyes and dark hair. She would stand close to me regarding me gravely; then she would smile. “She’s took a big fancy to you, Miss Rebecca,” said Jenny happily. Sometimes Leah and Belinda would be with me. The two children were of an age and they would play together. I was amused for, young as they were, Belinda was the dominating one.

I should have liked the children to play more often than they did but Leah sometimes made excuses. When the two little ones were together I had noticed her watching them uneasily. I wondered if she harbored some snobbish notion about Belinda’s belonging to the big house and therefore she should not be playing with a cottage child. I mentioned this to my grandmother who agreed that the humbler classes were far more aware of these distinctions than we were. We only had to consider the rigid protocol of the staff to realize that.

She was glad that I took an interest in Jenny and Lucie. She herself visited the cottage often and made sure there was always plenty of food and comfort there.

The more I saw of Lucie the fonder I became of her and I looked forward to our meetings.

“What will happen to her?” I said to my grandmother. “It’s all right now she is a baby but what when she grows up?”

“I daresay she will do some sort of work in one of the houses ... or farms maybe ... like her mother.”

“I always feel there is something unusual about her.”

“We shall keep our eyes on her and do what we can.”

“She is very bright, you know. As bright as Belinda, I think, only Belinda is more forceful.”

“Can you tell at such an age?”

“I think it shows. I do hope Lucie will be all right.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll keep our eyes on her.”