‘Down here,’ said Miss Cottingham, opening a green door. Before Beatrix had time to have a good look at the kitchen the girls were disappearing down a spiral staircase into utter darkness.
‘This is the dungeon, is it?’ Beatrix said. ‘You not going to tie me up and murder me or anything are you?’ she tried to sound jokey but truth be told she was getting edgy. These rich folks were just too strange.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ she said when she got downstairs. She slapped her hands on her ample bottom. She was no longer hot. In fact she was rather cool and a shiver ran down her arms. She touched the cold rendered walls, she stomped her feet on the floorboards and the girls both said, ‘Shhhh.’ She looked at the soft glow of the electrical lighting that flickered like fairy lights and cast a blue hue that turned the space into a dream.
‘It’s an underground house, walls, floors, doors, the lot.’
Flickering or not, that electrical lighting must have cost a bloody fortune. My God how the other half live! Just wait till she told George about this. He’d never believe it.
She didn’t bother to hide her gawping; she didn’t wait to be invited. She looked into every room, touched every wall and each piece of furniture until the Cottingham girl took her arm and firmly guided her into the only room she hadn’t inspected. Beatrix saw straightaway that this was the nursery. There was a wooden Noah’s ark and two of each of a menagerie of animals on the mantle. There was a soft goat’s hair rug on the timber floor and a pram in one corner, a bloody expensive-looking pram just like you’d expect, chairs in two other corners, and in the last corner was the bassinet. Beth began folding a pile of clean cotton nappies from one basket and putting them in another basket.
‘It was the only way to keep the baby cool,’ said Miss Cottingham. ‘She seems to really feel the heat just like Mama did. So Papa built her an underground house — like they have in Coober Pedy.’
Beatrix tried to take all this in.
‘Mother mentioned you before she passed away and that’s why I’ve called for you. Of course Doctor Appleby comes by once a month now but he doesn’t tell us how to manage the nitty gritty of looking after a baby.’
‘Where’s your father, Miss Cottingham?’ Beatrix asked. She walked over to the bassinet and peered at the sleeping child that was sucking contentedly on her thumb. She was a scrawny little thing, and snuffled as she slept. Asthma, thought Beatrix, sickly and asthmatic.
‘Mister Cottingham’s at work, he’s left all this to me to organise,’ said Miss Cottingham, and she sat down in the big leather easy chair. ‘And please call me Edie.’
‘Oh, I can understand that — him not wanting anything to do with the arrangements for the child. I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Cottingham,’ Beatrix said, trying to sound sympathetic. Of course he hated the child that had caused his wife’s death, she thought. She’d seen the reaction before in other fathers.
‘Edie, please,’ and the girl held out her hand and so she leant over and shook it awkwardly. What a manly sort of girl, plain and wanting to shake hands as if they were about to conduct business like men.
‘The baby?’ Beatrix asked too quickly and immediately worried she’d given the impression that she wanted to grab and run. ‘Her name, I was just wondering about her name.’
‘It’s Gracie,’ said Edie.
Beatrix held out her hands to pick the child up but Edie surprised her by quickly leaping out of the chair and taking the child in her own arms, holding her to her chest and making cooing noises. It was as if the Cottingham girl didn’t trust her with the baby.
‘Now what I want, Nurse Drake,’ said Edie, glancing up from the baby who was now awake and gurgling in her arms, ‘is for you to teach me all you know about infant care. I know a fair bit about medicinal care, but not when it comes to babies, you see,’ and the girl sat down again, her attention still mainly on the baby in her arms, not realising that it was Beatrix who should be getting her attention so they could work out the particulars. Beatrix had learnt her lesson when it came to arranging the care of children, she was going to make sure every detail was sorted before she agreed to anything; she didn’t want Judge Murphy foisting some kid on her permanently.
‘May I sit?’ asked Beatrix pulling up the only other chair in the room, an uncomfortable wooden one. ‘Are you asking me to move in here as a nanny?’ This was better than expected. She could get out of her rented miner’s cottage with its gaps in the timber walls and the leak over the stove that was turning the cooktop rusty. She could move out of her street where the houses were so jammed together she could hear every word Ginny Eales hollered at Colin Eales Senior when he happened to be in town, usually over his wages and why he always misplaced most of them at the Bunch of Grapes on his way home from work. Moving in with the Cottinghams as full-time nanny would be hard on George but she’d negotiate an afternoon off once a month, and on her new wage she and George could go to a hotel. She’d tell him it was quality not quantity that mattered, which would make him laugh if nothing else. Full-time nanny — that’d have to be worth at least two sovereigns a week.
‘Heavens no,’ said Edie, almost jumping in her chair.
Beatrix was nonplussed for a moment, but then she realised. ‘Oh of course — you want me to take the child in to my place. Either way it’s the same cost.’
‘Heavens no,’ said Edie, even louder, ‘we just need someone to
