Gabriella

“Not long ago,” nanny Anna would begin, “there was a little village tucked into a hollow between a hill and a forest, and a little river winding between the houses and the fields. And in the fields there were horses and pigs and cows. The people who lived in the village were poor, but they were happy, because their houses were made of brick and stone and they were safe and warm, and the fields were green all summer long. At harvest time, all the villagers would help to gather in the harvest, and everyone would be well-fed through the winter. And so the village lived peacefully and happily for year after year.”

The first time nanny told me this story, I thought that the story had ended when she got to this point, and I said, “Goodnight, Nanny,” and turned to my pillow. The story as it stood seemed to me to have all the story components that I was used to, and a balanced, natural arc – some scene-painting, a sense of place, and everyone living happily ever after, with a peaceful sun setting over the generous fields. On subsequent tellings, however, I had a sense of the gloomy challenge that was coming to the village, and so I always felt a little sad for the people who lived there, knowing as I now did that their happiness would cloud over and that the sunlit village would be deluged with troubles.

The substance of the story that followed nanny’s prologue is lost to me now, although I still have some fragmentary images in my mind, all associated with the crisp, fresh smell of nanny’s sun-steeped cotton dress and with the play of reddening evening light on the pale wood and plasterwork of my bedroom: I can remember a cruel, rich man in his manor house on the other side of the forest, who took more than his share of the crop; a disastrous flood that ruined the harvest; hordes of starving soldiers returning from the war, marauding across the landscape in the autumn, carrying off what food there was and killing the animals for meat. And I recall the feeling I had, even then, of mingled dread and puzzlement. It seemed so unfair that these blameless people had so much trial and suffering visited upon them, when all that they wanted was to live in peace and wait for the next season to come around.

Sometimes, when I was feeling irritable or overtired, it seemed to me that nanny was somehow partly to blame for this/these unfairness/injustices, especially as there was so much hushed enjoyment in her voice as she detailed the pains and misfortunes, too much deference for the rich man and his damaging, whimsical demands, and too little sympathy for the little boy and girl who drowned, glibly and quickly, in the rain-swollen river, seemingly punished for their perceived naughtiness. And there was something particularly discomforting about the relish with which she told the final part of this often-repeated story, the part whose approach I both dreaded and anticipated with excitement, the part where the horror and fear made me tingle, wide-eyed, in the dusk.

“Late one afternoon, on the longest day of the whole summer,” she’d continue, “a little girl sat alone on the river bank. She had been cruel to her friends, and they had all left her and gone home for their supper and bed. This little girl’s mummy always had to work hard, because the little girl’s daddy had been killed in the wars, and so the little girl knew not to go home until mummy had finished all of her cleaning and sewing for the lord of the manor. All this work made the little girl’s mother sleepy and forgetful, and the little girl didn’t have to be good like the other children.”

I felt sorry for the little girl – especially that she didn’t have a father, like me. I felt close to her. I snuggled my head against nanny’s soft stomach and bosom, trying to burrow in tighter. Nanny paused and breathed deep in the sudden silence and stillness of my room. Outside, the city streets were evening-quiet, and the sun was setting: it was already well below the rooflines of the opposite apartment blocks. Nanny put her arm around me – I remember the feel of the soft, slightly clammy skin of her upper arm against my bare shoulder – while she shifted us both around so that the sun’s afterlight glowed on her forehead. She seemed to stare off into that fading light, looking at something I couldn’t see, while she continued.

“The little girl had been playing on her own on the riverbank for a while after her friends had left, and when she found herself yawning and yawning again, she thought that she would have a little nap under a tree for a while.

“And of course she fell asleep, and while she was asleep she dreamed a strange and frightening dream. In the dream, she woke up under the tree, and it was late. Very late – nearly dark. There were few stars out already, and some thin pink clouds still in the deep blue sky. She felt cold. There was a breeze blowing, rippling across her thin cotton dress and making the branches of the tree sway, the leaves all rustling and looking white in the dusk. The little girl felt chilly and afraid for a few moments, knowing that it would be full dark before she got back to her home on the far side of the village. But she knew the lanes and the fields very well, and she could see by the white glow above the hill that the moon was rising. The light of the moon would see her home safely.