The Gilded Cage - Finding My Place

Super Nanny to the Rescue

"Hermione...we have a problem," Helen Montague whispered, taking my arm and leading me a little away from our girls, who were sitting in the nursery play area, on the sofas, reading their bibles after a rather late half-term holiday breakfast. "Well, an emergency really...and my dear husband seems to have volunteered your services again...if you are willing to help us out again, 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 nurslings already in semi-permanent residence in my litter, and that was just about my limit. Helen helped me all the time, but nurslings do take a lot of looking after, and I only had one pair of hands, after all. "And I am not leaving Caris...or Bella...to anyone else? I couldn't do that to them?"

"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, who were all studiously pretending not to listen. "Too many flapping ears?"

"Into the playpen please, girls...and I am turning the monitor on...so, no nonsense?" I barked out, springing into action. My girls were rarely left unsupervised, but if they were, they always went into the playpen, and I always switched the monitor on and carried the mobile speaker unit with me. Obviously, it was symbolic. The girls were not exactly dressed for climbing over the wooden bars, but they would all be able to manage it, and the bolt on the gate could just about be reached as well, but they all knew that getting out of it without adult permission would mean a long and rather difficult conversation with my paddle, and the simple act of putting them in it served to remind them that they were just little girls. Nicola pouted a little, as I bolted her in, I noticed, but it worked, because she was becoming increasingly dependent. And five minutes later, I joined Helen downstairs in her warm kitchen, where she was pacing around nervously, the full-length skirts of her gown swishing across the floor. Her demeanour really concerned me. "Helen...is something really wrong?"

"Well...it has been wrong for almost twenty years in all honesty...but we never thought that we would have a chance to put things right." She sighed, rather 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, with my father-in-law actually, when Sam was just fifteen...and they made the same huge mistake as we did with Nicola, but worse, 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 really lovely girls...but she was distanced from the family and Mr Durante was...unsuitable...so..."

"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 of Christ the Reformer.

"No...not really...her parents were quite liberal in those days, I think they liked living in New York and that changed them...and although the elopement clearly hurt them, they stayed in touch, because Sam was their only child...but Mr Durante...well, he was a disappointment all round to say the least. He always seemed to have a money-making idea on the go, but none of them ever came to anything much at all, it seems. Samantha's poor parents had to bail them out several times...and they were very worried about her and the children...but Samantha loved him, and she would not leave him..."