Nanny Diaries 3 - Pride and Prejudice

More of the Same

There is an old saying, when you are in a huge hole, stop digging. My new life in Meadvale was not going as I had planned, or hoped, but the more I tried to do something about it, to give in or move on, the further I fell into despair. I had started out as a nanny, a trusted and respected employee of the Hughes family, who were themselves leading lights in the new traditional renaissance within the Church of Christ the Reformer, or so I thought. Then I had made the big decision to join their church, with Mr and Mrs Hughes as my sponsors, and became a maiden in their eyes, essentially a young unmarried woman who is learning her place in the community and before God, which I really messed up by being so arrogant and selfish, I will admit. (Please see Nanny Diaries 2 – A New Litter for the full story). And that resulted in my guardians, and my parents, who suddenly shared my new passion for the church, reducing me to the status of nursling, despite my age. So, I found myself in my own nursery, with all my new sisters, for over three months, and no matter what I did there, however hard I tried to make amends for my stupidity or even change my mind and return sheepishly to my old life, I just kept falling deeper and deeper into the hole. Hence, after some twelve weeks of misery, I stopped trying. I stopped worrying about it, and thinking about it all the time, and just floated on the surface of my new life, which was a lot less tiring than treading water.

"Daddy says the new Brewster clothing line is selling really well...and not just here." Nicola Hughes commented as we saw another girl in the park play area wearing one of the new outfits our 'sisters' were primarily promoting. It was a church initiative, of course. Henrietta, Georgina and Philippa had been television stars, and singers, before their father was arrested and I helped their grandfather, Benjamin Brewster, get them home to Meadvale and settled in the nursery I would soon join them in. And although he had put a stop to their professional career, there was a lot of interest in what had happened to them, and therefore the church, and they had performed a very successful concert for charity with the Deepdene school choir back in December, using their successful social media channels to keep in touch with their fans and promote their new lives and a positive image of Reformism in general. Which had all been my idea, whilst I was still their doting nanny. But since I had been forced to relinquish control of all the social media activity, the church had built on my initial successes, using my nursery sisters to promote the church, raise more money for charity and sell a range of modest clothing to boot. We had all been photographed for the website, modelling some of the new designs, and as Nicola said we were told that they were selling like hot cakes.

"Some of the designs are too casual for here." I pointed out as I watched the girl in the red and white striped plastic coat getting onto one of the swings. She was about eight, I reckoned from the look of her, and not from a particularly traditional family. Meadvale was the epicentre of the church, and all of the more traditional members, the First Congregation, at least had a house in the village and spent much of their time there, but there were still a lot of people who were more moderate around and about, too. Nicola and I were wearing pale pink overcoats with bonnets and mittens, white wool tights and shiny black shoes, like the traditional nurslings we were. The fact that she was seventeen and I was twenty-two made no difference, in that rare place; we were little girls and everyone was quite happy to treat us as such, until our parents or guardians decided otherwise. "I don't think we even modelled that one, did we?"

"I didn't...do you think you'll be a maiden again next weekend?" She asked as we walked around the edge of the apparatus, on the pavement, half-watching our six sisters playing around on the roundabout. We were holding hands, as was expected, and we both knew that our always attentive nannies would be watching our every move. I glanced back to the café, just thirty or forty metres away, where Miss Davenport and Miss Stewart were sitting at their usual outside table, closest to the fence, and Miss Stewart immediately waved at me. I waved back, like the dependent little girl I was becoming, because she would expect a response.