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by the twins’ ecstatic shrieks, although half-way across the grass Simon turned to shout: ‘He’s not a mister, he’s a professor,’ before flinging himself at his uncle.
‘Very clearly put,’ observed the professor, disentangling himself slowly. ‘Now you can do the same for me and introduce Nanny.’
His nephew eyed him with impatience. ‘Well, she’s just Nanny…’
‘No name?’
He looked at Deborah and she said unwillingly: ‘Farley—Deborah Farley.’
‘Charming—a popular name with the Puritans, I believe.’ His voice was so bland that she decided to let that pass.
‘What’s a puritan?’ asked Suzy.
‘A sober person who thought it wrong to sing and dance and be happy.’
‘Nanny’s not one,’ declared his niece. ‘We’ve been singing and dancing,’ she explained earnestly.
The professor nodded. ‘Yes, and very nicely too.’ He smiled at Deborah who gave him a cool look; the gorgon’s rat trap still rankled.
‘Is Mummy coming?’ demanded Simon.
‘Not today old fellow—Granny’s better but not quite well yet. I thought I’d drop in and see how things are.’ He strolled over to the pram and peered inside. ‘Dee’s asleep— I’ve never seen such a child for dozing off.’ He glanced, at Deborah. ‘She must be very easy to look after.’
‘No trouble at all,’ agreed Deborah airily.
‘In that case perhaps I might stay for tea without straining your work load too much?’ He smiled again with such charm that she only just stopped in time from smiling back in return.
‘Certainly, Professor, the children will be delighted, won’t you, my dears? Mary did some baking this morning, so there’ll be a cake.’
Mary’s welcome was warm and seemed even warmer by reason of Deborah’s brisk efficiency. She wheeled the pram under the nursery window so that she might hear if Dee wakened; removed the twins to be tidied and washed for tea, sat them down at the table, one on each side of their uncle, and went to help carry in the tea tray, the plate of bread and butter and the cake Mary had so providentially baked.
The tea tray was taken from her as she entered the nursery by a disarmingly polite professor. What was more he remained so throughout the meal, talking nothings to her when not engaged in answering the twins’ ceaseless questions. Deborah felt a certain reluctance when it was time to feed Deirdre, but she got up from the table, excused herself politely, cautioned the twins to behave and made to leave the room. At the door she hesitated: ‘I get Dee ready for bed once she’s been fed,’ she explained, ‘so I’ll wish you goodbye, Professor, please tell Mrs Burns that everything is just as it should be.’
‘Oh, I’m staying the night. Did I not tell you? I’m so sorry.’ He sounded all concern, but all the same she knew that he was laughing silently. ‘Mary said that she would get a room ready for me.’ He added silkily: ‘You don’t mind?’
‘I, mind? Certainly not. It is none of my business, Professor Beaufort. I daresay you’ve also asked Mary to cook extra…’
‘No,’ he told her gently, ‘she suggested it. Should I have asked you?’
Deborah went pink; on the whole she was a good tempered girl but today her good nature was being tried severely; besides she had been rude.
‘I’m only in charge of the children,’ she told him, ‘Mary runs the house. Besides I’m only temporary.’
As she dealt with the small Dee’s needs, she could hear the twins giggling and shouting and the occasional rumble of their uncle’s voice. ‘They’ll be quite out of hand—I’ll never get them to bed,’ she observed to the placid infant on her knee. ‘He’ll get them all worked up…’
But surprisingly, when she went to fetch the twins for their baths and bed, they went with her like lambs. Not so much as a peep out of them and so unnaturally good that Deborah wondered if they were sickening for something. She put a small capable hand on their foreheads and found them reassuringly cool and finally demanded to know what was the matter with them.
They exchanged glances and looked at her with round blue eyes, ‘Uncle Gideon made us promise so we won’t tell. Are we being good?’
‘Yes—and I can’t think why.’ She gave them a close look. ‘You’re not up to mischief, are you?’
Meekly they assured her that they weren’t. She tucked them into their beds, kissed them goodnight, and went to her room, where she did her face carefully, scraped her sandy hair back into a severe style becoming to a well-trained nanny, and went downstairs.
Professor Beaufort was stretched out on one of the out-size sofas in the sitting room, his eyes closed. She stood and looked at him; he was very good looking she conceded, and like that, asleep, he was nice; it was when he stared at her with bright blue eyes and spoke to her in that bland voice that she disliked him. She gave a faint yelp when he spoke.
‘You don’t look in the least like a nanny should.’ He observed and got to his feet in one swift movement, to tower over her, beaming.
She fought against his charm; saying severely: ‘I assure you that I am fully qualified.’
‘Oh, I can see that, you handle the twins like a veteran. Tell me—what is your ambition? To get a post with some blue-blooded family and stay with them all your life and then retire to an estate cottage?’
She felt rage bubble inside her. ‘I might possibly marry,’ she pointed out sweetly and choked at his bland: ‘He will be a brave man… Shall we have a drink? Mary told me that dinner would be ready in ten minutes or so.’
She accepted a sherry and wished that she had asked for something dashing like whisky or even gin and tonic. Just so that he would see that she wasn’t the prim, dedicated nanny that he had decided she was. But she did the next best thing; she asked for a second drink and he poured it without comment, only his eyebrows lifted in an amused arc which she didn’t see. She tossed it off smartly so that she was able to face their tête à tête meal with equanimity and a chattiness quite unlike her usual quiet manner.
Professor Beaufort quite shamelessly led her on, his grave face offering no hint of his amusement. She told him about her three brothers, her home in Dorchester, cousin Rachel and only just stopped herself in time from regaling him with some of the foibles she had had to put up with from various parents whose children she had taken care of. Finally, vaguely aware that she was talking too much, she asked: ‘And is your work very interesting, Professor? I’m not quite sure what you do…’
He passed his plate for a second helping of Mary’s delicious apple pie. ‘I study the production and distribution of money and goods.’
‘Yes, but don’t you work?’
‘Er—yes. I have an office and I travel a good deal as well as lecturing regularly.’
‘Oh—do people want to know—about money and goods, I mean?’
‘It helps if they do. The management of public affairs, the disposition of affairs of state or government departments, the judicious use of public money—someone has to know about such things.’
‘And do you?’ she queried.
‘One might say that I have a basic knowledge…’
‘It sounds dull. I’d rather have the children,’ said Deborah, still rather lively from the sherry.
He said slowly: ‘I think that possibly you are right, Nanny. I hadn’t given the matter much thought, but now that you mention it, I shall look into it. Do you suppose that Mary would give us our coffee on the patio? It’s a delightful evening.’
Somehow being called ‘Nanny’ brought her down