Nanny Diaries 2 - The New Litter

Nanny to the Rescue!

"Daphne...we have a problem," Helen Hughes whispered, taking my arm and leading me a little away from the girls, who were sitting in the play area, on the sofas, reading their bibles after a rather late holiday breakfast. "Well, an emergency really...and my dear husband seems to have volunteered your services...if you are willing to help, of course?"

"You know I will do anything I can, Helen...but I already have five girls...if you are talking about adding to the litter?" I grinned, using her Christian name because we were firm friends by that stage. My experience of Meadvale thus far, when my own talents were put forward as a possible solution to an issue, suggested that someone needed a nanny to take on a challenge such as Nicola, Bella or Caris. But I had five already in semi-permanent residence, and that was just about my limit. Helen helped me a lot, but nurslings do take a lot of looking after, and I only had one pair of hands. "And I am not leaving Caris...or Bella...to anyone else."

"Yes...I know...and I told him that...so, he says you can take Caris with you...and Bella, as an assistant...her family are involved too, and she has the necessary skills to complement your talents...but we can't talk here..." She said, urgently, glancing back at the girls.

"Into the playpen please, girls...and I am turning the monitor on, so no nonsense," I barked out, springing into action. Five minutes later, I joined Helen downstairs in her kitchen, where she was pacing around nervously, the skirts of her gown swishing across the floor. "Helen...is something really wrong?"

"Well...it has been wrong for almost twenty years...but we never thought that we would have a chance to put things right." She said mysteriously, showing me to a seat at the kitchen table and pouring us both a coffee. "We had a cousin...Samantha...she was one of the first more modern girls, born to a good family, related to everyone, but her father moved to New York to work, when Sam was fifteen...and they made the same mistake as we did with Nicola I suppose. Not that Sam did anything so terrible...she just fell in love. She ran away at eighteen with a young man called Bradley Durante...they married and had three lovely girls...but she was distanced from the family..."

"Shunned?" I asked, already gripped by the story. I knew what she meant when she said that Samantha was related to everyone. In Meadvale, which was in the end a relatively small and connected community, all the leading families married into each other. Helen herself had more cousins than I had hot dinners, and she was really telling me that Samantha was part of the first congregation, the real founders of the Church.

"No...not really...her parents were quite liberal, and although the elopement hurt them, they stayed in touch...but Mr Durante...well, he was a disappointment. He always seemed to have a money-making idea, but none of them came to anything much. Samantha's parents bailed them out several times, and they were very worried...but Samantha loved him, and she would not leave him..."

"You keep using the past tense?"

"Samantha died...six years ago now...breast cancer, very sudden...and very sad. She was a good friend, Daphne...we were at school together...and her girls were left with that unsuitable man." Helen sighed, close to tears. "Samantha's parents have done what they can to stay in touch, but they never got on with Durante...and he has used his daughters...exploited them if you ask me...to make his fortune..."

"How could he do that?" I asked, not really understanding what she meant.

"You will have heard of them, Daphne...the girls are known in the media as the Bethlehem Sisters." Helen said, just like that, out of the blue. I had indeed heard of the Bethlehem Sisters of course, because I did not live in a hole. To be fair, living in Meadvale, where modern media and culture was rarely an influence, it was possible to let the outside world slip by, but I listened to music, and the radio, and I watched television in my meagre spare time. So, the latest teenage sensations had certainly reached my consciousness. The three sisters were singers and actresses in America, marketed as good Christian girls, a sort of Osmonds for the new millennium, if you like. They appeared on the Bisney channel in the States, initially in a cute, wholesome sitcom, and then in a remake of the Little House on the Prairie, which had shot to the top of the ratings all over the world. And around that exposure, they had released four albums of close harmony singing that had sold millions. They did not do 'modern' music, but revisited classics from the past, all entirely suitable, including carols for Christmas and several folk songs. "But that is not really the problem...as much as the family hates the way Durante is using them, and suspects that he is pocketing most of the money..."