Читать книгу While I Was Waiting - Georgia Hill - Страница 13

Edward arrived the next day, just in time for afternoon tea. Tall and adult, with stubble on his cheek and smelling of the outside world. Beside him Richard looked like the little boy he was desperate to grow out of being. Tea in the drawing room reminded me of the tea parties when I first arrived. We hadn’t had many recently; little point with the boys away most of the time. Much was the same, except that it was even shabbier and the fire a paltry affair. He and Father were getting on famously, another reason to put Richard’s nose out of joint and the aunts beamed with pride at the splendid young man they had raised. Aunt Leonora was especially ecstatic at his return, for he was always her favourite. He didn’t cause the trouble that Richard and I did. He was holding court, with Richard on one side of the couch and Father on the other. The admiring females, including Nanny, gazed on.

‘So, Edward, tell me what you are reading and what is your college again?’ said Father, beaming at a fellow scholar.

‘Natural Sciences, sir, at Trinity.’ replied Edward, with his usual politeness.

My father’s eyes lit up. ‘Splendid, oh how splendid! I must tell you of the moth I have discovered – as big as a saucer and twice as ugly. You must see it. Come, I have brought it with me. Come,’ he said more impatiently, ‘let us find it. I have it in my room.’

The two men left in a flurry of scientific excitement and I felt a sneaking sympathy for Richard, who was left out. He huffed and threw himself back on the couch.

‘Sit up, Richard,’ murmured Aunt Leonora automatically.

‘But I’m bored. Can I have another piece of seed cake?’ Richard’s lower lip jutted in a sulk.

‘It is “may I” and no, you mayn’t, you have had two pieces already,’ responded Leonora, frowning and about to launch into one of her tirades.

‘Why don’t you take Hetty to the library, Richard?’ As ever, Aunt Hester stepped in as peacemaker. ‘We have it open for your Uncle Henry and Edward. Take her to look at the history books. I don’t believe she has seen them.’

This was not strictly true. One of the things Richard and I had always enjoyed was exploring the house, delighting in the many closed-up rooms, playing hide and seek amongst the dust sheets. The library had been a regular haunt and we had discovered many hidden gems: maps of Asia, stories of far-off and long-ago Greece.

I looked across at him; he was sitting up, his blue eyes gleaming. I knew that look. It meant trouble was afoot.

‘What a super idea Aunt Hester, please may we be excused?’ That settled it, such elaborate politeness from Richard could mean only one thing; he was up to something.

The door to the library opened with difficulty, stiff with lack of use. I loved this room; it was one of my favourites. Bookcases lined the walls, double height so that library steps were needed to reach the more remote volumes. Chairs and a chaise longue crowded around the space but were arranged in a careless manner, hinting at the room’s long abandonment. Today, however, the dustsheets were gone. Dorcas, who glorified in the title of housekeeper, when really she was the solitary upstairs maid, had obviously been busy polishing the mahogany bookcases. The woodwork gleamed and the aroma of lavender hung in the air, testament to her hard work. Richard, with an enigmatic look at me, pushed the library steps over to the furthest-most bookcase, climbed up and fiddled with the lock on the top glass door.

‘Richard, you mustn’t. We’re not supposed to look at those books. It is forbidden.’ But I said it half-heartedly and followed him, avidly curious as to what lay behind the protective glass. I stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up. He opened the door and, looking behind us to check for adults, passed down to me a large leather-bound volume. I struggled over to the table with it.

Richard hopped down and pushed in front of me. Saying nothing, he proceeded to open the book at pages obviously well known to him. I stared over his shoulder until I saw what he was laughing at. Then I caught my breath.

The images seemed to me, at that time, grotesque. They were engravings of human forms entwined in unspeakable acts. The men and women seemed intent on doing violence to one another. The men, with bared teeth, fastened on throats thrown back. Hands were clutching parts of the anatomy I did not – had not – known exist.

Richard saw my reaction of horrified fascination and sniggered. ‘This one is the best.’ He pointed to a picture of a man mounting a woman in the way I had seen the bull do to a cow at the Parkers’ farm, until Nanny had pulled me away. She had responded to questions with tight-lipped silence.

‘What do you think?’ Richard asked, watching my face intently. ‘If you marry Ed, that is what he will do to you on your wedding night.’

I backed away, shaking my head violently, clutching my heaving stomach. No man was ever to do to me what I had seen in those disgusting pictures. But even then, part of me was acknowledging the truth of what was being shown to me. Forgotten images were remembered: Elsie the kitchen maid and Robert the under-gardener looking red-faced and untidy when I walked in on them in the empty stables, Edward being teased over Flora Parker until he blushed crimson and hurried from the room, Nanny hushing my questions about the bull.

Information was sliding greasily into place and locking together to make a truth.

‘No …’ I looked at Richard.

He grinned back, ‘Oh, yes. And then your stomach will grow and grow and one day a baby will come out. The chaps at school told me.’ He spoke conversationally and completely without malice.

My eyes filled with tears and I felt sandwiches and cake threatening to return.

‘I say, Hetty, old girl. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ He made a move towards me, concern on his face.

I turned and ran from the library, the scent of lavender polish sticking in my throat.

‘Wait Hetty! Hetty I’m sorry! I just thought it would be a wheeze.’

I found myself in the summer house, the old refuge. It was intensely cold and I could see my breath making clouds in the frigid air. I wrapped my arms around myself and began to rock to and fro.

What was the connection between what had been happening to me and those pictures? At some deep level the links were forcing themselves to be made; there had to be a connection. Was that what it meant to be a woman? If so, I wanted no more of this adulthood. I yearned to be a child. I yearned for my long-lost mother. Tears began to drip down my face and I hid it in my pinafore.

After a time, and when my tears had dried, I heard a sound outside. The sound of footsteps. I froze, willing them to go away.

‘Henrietta – Hetty – are you in there?’

It was Edward. Of all people, I could face him the least.

I stayed still, my face hidden in my skirts, like an animal gone to ground.

‘Hetty, there you are! Richard said you had been taken ill.’ A relieved-sounding Edward came into the summer house. ‘We’ve all been looking for you. Come back to the house, you’ll catch your death of cold out here.’ He sat down on the crumbling bench beside me. ‘Hetty, are you unwell?’

I remained silent, but my shoulders began to heave again. I felt a tentative hand on my arm and shrank away.

I heard Edward sigh. ‘Look, if you won’t come back into the house, shall I fetch the aunts, or your father? Only,’ he paused and then went miserably on, ‘Richard said something about a book? Some pictures? He said they frightened you? If it is what I think it is, I think it better the aunts don’t know.’

I heard no little anger in his voice and raised my wretchedly tear-stained face to look at him for the first time. ‘I saw –’ and then had to stop.

Edward’s face tightened with anger and he nodded. ‘I thought as much. When I get my hands on that little so-and-so I’ll thrash him until he can’t sit down. The little –’ he bit off what he was about to say with another look at me.

I found my voice at last. ‘Richard didn’t mean to upset me. He thought it was a joke.’ I wiped my damp face with my pinafore and shivered.

‘When will that boy ever learn to think before he acts?’ Edward said it softly. He shrugged off his jacket and laid it gently over my shoulders. It was heavy and made of rough tweed, but warm from his body. He cleared his throat. ‘Erm, so, what do you know?’

I looked at him in panic. He blushed and became very busy lighting a cigarette.

‘You know, it really ought to be your father or Nanny or Aunt Hester talking to you.’

I shook my head and hid it back in my skirts.

Edward sighed again, even more loudly. ‘But, as it seems to be me in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps I ought to tell you.’

I sneaked a look at him. He was concentrating fiercely on his cigarette. His nose turning pink with cold.

‘I should quite like it to be you.’ I said in a tiny voice, hardly believing my own daring.

He coughed slightly and put a hand through his hair, making it stand up in comic fashion. ‘Oh Lord,’ he groaned.

‘Please tell me Edward,’ I said, ‘I think it might be better to know it all than some of it. It might make it seem less frightening.’

Edward shook his head.

‘Father always says if one wants to know something one should ask questions.’ I straightened my back and took comfort that Edward’s discomfort seemed even greater than mine.

He gave a little nod, as if a decision had been made and smiled at me through the blue tobacco smoke. ‘And your father is a great scientist, a very learned man. Well, shall we be scientists? Shall you begin with a question, little Hetty?’

And so I did. And Edward, in halting fashion and with many blushes, told me of what to expect on my wedding night. He told me the simple biological facts at first, but then, as he elaborated, I became more and more fascinated, my natural curiosity taking over.

‘But it looked so, so violent in those pictures. As if they were killing one another, not loving one another!’ I thought back to the images with this new information whirling around my brain. It was at once repellent and fascinating.

Edward shifted on the bench and there was a long pause. ‘Well, I understand it can take one like that.’ He looked at the gathering darkness outside. ‘But remember, Hetty, it is for people who love one another very much. And sometimes love takes many forms, sometimes it is passionate. And that passion can seem like violence.’

I looked at him, sitting in the cold, shivering openly and being so brave for my sake. I wondered, perhaps, if he were thinking of the beautiful Flora Parker. ‘Have you, have you ever –’ I began.

‘Good Lord, Hetty, the questions you do ask.’ He lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and made much of flicking away the match. I had my answer. It satisfied me.

‘Richard says I am to marry you and you will take my money to rebuild the house.’

Edward turned, a startled look on his homely face. ‘Richard is a –.’ Here he said a filthy word and the oath came out violently. He sucked deeply on his cigarette and there was a long pause. ‘Sorry, Hetty. Forgot myself. You know our family has little money.’ He gazed around at the shabby summer house, full of hints of lost glory. ‘And it would take a great fortune to restore Delamere. More than you have, I am sure.’ He smiled. ‘If you would like to marry me, then so be it. But that is for many years from now. And we have all the time in the world to decide. Come along, we must go back to the house, they will be wondering where we are and it is bitter in here!’

He held out his hand to me and I stared up at his face in a daze. I had hardly known Edward before today. This strange little interlude in the summer house had convinced me of one thing: he might not be as much devilish fun as Richard, but he was an infinitely kinder person.

I took his hand, not sure if I had just received my very first proposal – and even less sure how I felt about it.