at all loved Dimanche. They couldn’t help it. She was adorable. By the time she was two, she was running up and down the long gloomy
corridors of the big old house, opening doors, turning out cupboards, posting things down the lavatory, investigating dustbins, and doing all the things an enterprising baby should do. Her curly dark hair shone like hens’ feathers, and her round, brown eyes peered out from behind her fringe in a way that made you think of a hedgehog under a bush. Her little fat feet went pitter patter on the stone-flagged floors, leaving behind them a delicate tracery of tiny footprints marked out in whatever it was she had most recently been playing in – mud, if she’d been in the flower beds; sand, if the sandpit; talcum powder, if the bath. It drove her aunt wild. “Clean this mess up!” she’d shout at the unfortunate nanny. “Do it now and do it properly! Lock the child into her room and don’t let her out!”
The better ones would kiss Dimanche goodbye and head for the station at this point. Nobody nice would agree to shutting a two-year-old into her bedroom, after all. The nastier ones would linger on a while, and during these times Dimanche would have been truly unhappy if it hadn’t been for Cosmo the gardener. He would tiptoe up the back stairs with a punnet of strawberries or a bowl of redcurrants in his hands, or a bunch of crunchy carrots, or a tomato warm from the sun. “Look what I’ve got for you, Dimanche,” he’d say. He’d shoo Cyclops away – he couldn’t abide cats because of the way they caught nestlings in the spring, and dug up his flower beds. Then he’d sit down beside Dimanche and feed her titbits, and tell her stories, and show her interesting things from out-of-doors.
He brought her a last year’s blackbird’s nest, all scratchy and rough on the outside, but lined with mud as smooth as satin on the inside. He brought her hairy caterpillars to look at, and snail shells to add to her collection, and sometimes a frog in his hat. If he brought something alive, they would watch it together for a while before returning it carefully to that part of the garden where Cosmo had found it.
Whenever Dimanche was feeling sad, she would go outdoors and look for Cosmo. If he was busy, she’d help him with his work. If not, they’d play together, or sit in the greenhouse while he told her riddles and jokes and played cat’s cradle with green garden string. Cosmo had six twiddly fingers on each hand, instead of five, and this made him particularly good at cat’s cradle.
“Is that old aunt of yours making you miserable?” he’d ask. “Don’t let her! Come and talk to me while I weed the spinach, and I’ll tell you stories from when your gran was little.”
“Can you remember when my gran was little?” Dimanche asked.
Cosmo shook his head. “No. But I’m a friend of Old Tom Shovel the gravedigger, and he knows everything about everything. Especially if your family comes into it. I can’t make out how that aunt of yours comes to be part of your family at all. She’s nothing like the rest of them, from what Tom Shovel says. Funny thing is, she reminds me of somebody. Can’t think who. Here, try one of these plums, they’re ripe as rain.”
Whenever the aunt caught Cosmo talking to Dimanche, she’d dock a day’s pay from his wages, and send Dimanche off to bed, but both of them felt it was worth the risk.
One of the nicest of the nannies got the sack for letting Dimanche make mud pies on the grand stone steps in front of Hilton Hall. Valburga was on her way to the village to buy Cyclops a few treats – pigs’ ears, sheep’s eyes, that sort of thing. She didn’t look where she was putting her feet.
“What is the meaning of this filthy mess?” she roared.
“It’s mud pies, Madam,” the nanny answered. “Children make them. They need to. It helps them to develop, psychologically.”
“Psychological nothing!” Madam roared. “I don’t pay you to develop her psychologically! I pay you to keep her out of my way! You’re fired!”
When she got back from the village she rang London and ordered another nanny. “And send someone suitable this time!” she shouted. “I want someone from a military background. I’ve had enough of namby-pamby nannies with soft ideas about warm milk and nursery rhymes. What this child needs is discipline!”
“We do have one young lady from a military background, Madam,” faltered the lady from the nanny agency. “But Lady Cruddle has reserved her. We’ve got an excellent person from the prison service, but Sir Brigham Brogue wants her for his difficult daughter. In fact, the demand for nannies has quite outstripped the supply for the time being. You yourself have already run through a dozen or so of our best candidates, Madam. To tell the truth I’ve only got one left, and I doubt if she would suit. Her name is Polly Pugh.”
“Send her down.”
That was how Polly Pugh arrived at Hilton Hall. It just happened that she arrived on Dimanche’s third birthday. Not that she would have known this. Dimanche did not know herself, and the aunt would certainly not have mentioned it – but the Sisters of Small Mercies had sent Dimanche, by train, a cherry cake with white icing and three candles, so Polly Pugh guessed. Around the outside of the cake was a circle of little dancing nuns made of fondant icing. In the centre there were golden marzipan beehives, and out of them flew a cloud of tiny bees that spelt out HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAREST DIMANCHE.
“How gorgeous! How scrumptious! How beautiful!” cried Polly Pugh. “What time’s the party?”
“Party, Miss Pugh? There’ll be no party.”
“Why ever not, Madam?”
“My niece doesn’t deserve one. She’s never had one and she’s not starting now.”
Polly Pugh was deeply shocked. She had always thought of nuns as kind-hearted people. She decided then and there that she was going to get the better of this one, no matter how hard it was, no matter how long it took. She made herself a promise, and she kept it.
Dimanche could tell just by looking at Polly Pugh that they were going to like each other. Polly was tall and thin with long arms and legs and a very nice springy way of walking. Her eyes were light blue, large, shining, and beautifully shaped with soft shadowy eyelids, and dark coloured eyelashes that had a little curl at the ends. Her hair was that shade of red that makes you think of silk scarves and traffic lights. She liked to wear pretty clothes on some days and old jeans on others, but whatever she wore, she looked terrific. Like a queen, Dimanche thought. She behaved like one too, if queens are brave and loyal, which is what they’re supposed to be.
Polly Pugh was not afraid of her employer. She knew, because the agency had told her, that they were never going to send another nanny to Hilton Hall, and she let her employer know this – not in so many words, of course, that would not have been polite – but she made it clear that if she, Polly Pugh, was sacked, that would be it. Finito. All in all, Polly Pugh felt certain that she would not be sacked. She felt even more certain that Dimanche Diller was the child for her.
Polly Pugh’s employer encouraged her to take Dimanche away on holiday every summer – provided, of course, that Polly paid for everything out of her wages. Since Polly’s wages were extremely small – all nannies’ wages are, I don’t know why – these holidays were not luxurious. That couldn’t have mattered less. In fact, it was probably more fun that way.
Polly bought a little tent, just big enough for two, and a little stove, and two saucepans, and two mugs and two plates and two knives and two forks. She also bought two sleeping bags and two pairs of gumboots and two mackintoshes, all of which you have to have for camping. For several summers, she and Dimanche spent the month of August under canvas.
At first these holidays were taken by the seaside. Long summer days were spent staring into rock pools, building strange and complicated sand structures,