But today Lucy was bright because Laurence was coming. Her hands stopped plying the needles, she rested the shawl she was knitting on the mound of her stomach and she looked into the fire as she said, ‘I wonder what the reaction will be to my not going home for the holidays? Do you think they will believe that I’ve been invited by the family to join them for Christmas in their country house?’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Mr Laurence could explain that away.’ Biddy felt a quickening beneath her ribs now as Lucy, looking at her, said, ‘You know that Laurence is of no blood relation to the family, except very distantly, being the son of Mama’s second cousin?’
‘Yes. Yes, I understood something like that.’
‘May was in love with him you know. She was quite brazen about it. I used to hate her because of that, I mean, being in love with him, because I loved him too.’ She paused now and, her eyes tight on Biddy, she said, ‘I still do. Yet there was a time when I imagined I was in love with—’ After a quick shake of her head she added, ‘It’s dreadful to be of our age, isn’t it? All your values are mixed up: you don’t know what you want, but yet you do; your body burns for what you want while you tell yourself it’s a sin. I was brought up on sin. Until I was eight I never saw my mother more than five minutes a day, and then there would be days, weeks even, when I didn’t see her at all, when she would be on holiday and I was left with Miss Collins, who had been instructed to instruct us, both Paul and me, in all the things that came under the heading of sin, and this included asking for second helpings…greed, bathing oneself without a cover on the bath…impurity, letting one’s mind drift at night … bad thoughts. On, on, and on.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. Did you have anything like that to put up with?’
‘No, never. The only thing I can remember is dropping to sleep while my father read from the Bible. After a twelve-hour day at the farm I wasn’t very interested in what Moses had to say, although I sometimes got my fingers rapped to make me pay attention.’ She smiled now, and Lucy said, ‘Do you know, you were lucky. Servants and such always envy those above them, and they imagine they know all that goes on in the household. They don’t, at least not in the minds of their masters…Biddy.’
‘Yes, miss?’
‘Nothing much escapes you, does it?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, miss.’
‘Oh, don’t be coy.’
‘I’m not.’ The protest was made as if to an equal. ‘Only your saying that nothing much escapes me makes me feel that I’m sort of nosey and I’m not.’
‘I wasn’t meaning it that way. But as Grandmama would say, you’ve got a head on your shoulders. And now I’m going to ask you something. Do you think Laurence likes me…I mean, still likes me, in spite of this?’ She patted her stomach.
It was a moment before Biddy could answer, ‘I…I’m sure he does, miss. He’s always liked you.’
‘What I’m getting at Biddy is, do you think he more than likes me? Do you think he would marry me?’ Biddy put down her knitting and, leaning over, she picked up the poker and pushed a gnarled root into place in the open grate, and now she muttered, ‘I…I couldn’t say that, miss. I’ve got no idea.’
‘You could probe and…and ask him…I mean, not outright, but just gauge his feelings.’
‘No, no, I couldn’t, miss.’ She was standing now looking down on Lucy and she repeated, ‘No, I couldn’t do that. It isn’t my place.’
‘Oh, don’t keep on about place, Biddy.’ Lucy tossed her head impatiently. ‘We’ve been thrown together for months. There’s no position between us now, and never could be again. I…I’ve been turned into a woman before my time, and somehow you were already a woman, in your mind anyway.’ She paused, then asked, ‘Why won’t you do this for me?’
‘Because I couldn’t.’
‘You talk to him. You talk to him a lot and he to you. On his last visit you walked miles with him, alone. You must know how to bring a conversation round to any subject that you like.’
‘That is a personal subject, miss; there should be ways and means of you tackling it yourself.’
‘Like this?’ Lucy again patted her stomach but harder now. ‘I’m…I’m thinking about when it’s all over. I’ll…I’ll need someone; I don’t feel I can carry on alone, not even with you, although you’ve been marvellous.’ She now put her hand gently on Biddy’s arm as she added, ‘I don’t dare to think what would have happened to me if I hadn’t come across you that Sunday. Oh, yes I do.’ Now she was nodding her head. ‘If I’d told Mother I would have been packed off somewhere, into a convent likely. Look Biddy, please. You…you needn’t put it bluntly. Well I know you wouldn’t, but just…well, sound him. Will you? Please. Because I…I need him. I can’t go back home again. Not to that kind of life. I’d die, or do something.’
‘You won’t die, or do something.’ Biddy’s voice was harsh now. ‘You’ll have a baby to see to, and love…’
‘I won’t. I won’t.’
Biddy was thrust aside now as Lucy pulled herself to her feet and, seeming to forget that she had dismissed the difference in their positions just a moment earlier, she cried at her, ‘I’ve told you before. I’m not keeping the child. You with your plebeian outlook. Use your head, how can I? Even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to; all I want to do is get rid of it.’ She now brought her two hands over the sides of her stomach as if she was actually throwing the child from her, and Biddy, also forgetting her position for the moment, said, ‘All right. All right. I know what you’ve said before, but I put it to you, you needn’t cast it off altogether. You can have it fostered and go and see it from time to time.’
‘Shut up! Shut up! I want none of it. Do you hear? I want none of it. Oh, my God.’ She turned away, her hands now holding her head, crying, ‘I might as well have stayed back home.’
In the small hallway Madame Arnaud listened to the raised voices coming from her guests’ apartments. She couldn’t understand a word of English, but a verbal battle is understandable in any language. So when she answered the knock on the door and saw the gentleman standing there, she exclaimed, ‘Ah Monsieur. Monsieur. Welcome. Welcome. You are just in time to stop the altercation.’ And pointing towards the far door, she added, ‘When the weather is bad, tempers are short. No-one quarrels in the summer.’
As she helped him off with his overcoat he listened to the exchange of voices, both high and angry, and he thought, Oh, dear me, dear me. What now?
But before he opened the door the voices had ceased and when he stood in the doorway and looked at them both staring at him, he said, ‘Well, well! No welcome?’
Then Lucy ran towards him, and he took her in his arms and kissed her; and she kissed him, and she leant her head on his shoulder until he gently pressed her aside and walked to where Biddy was standing in front of the fire. Holding out his hands, he took hers and pressed them warmly while looking into her face and saying, ‘Hello, there.’ And she answered, ‘Hello.’ She omitted the Mr Laurence, but said, ‘We didn’t expect you until this evening.’
‘I got an earlier coach and I walked from the village. Well now, what have you girls been up to?’ He turned and held out an arm to Lucy. And she came to him and, again leaning her head on his shoulder, she looked towards Biddy as she said, ‘We’ve been quarrelling, and it’s over you. She said you weren’t at all good-looking and your French left a lot to be desired.’
He was looking at Biddy now—her face had turned scarlet, her mouth was open—and he said softly, ‘Well, she was right in both cases.’ And when Biddy said, ‘Oh, miss,’ he didn’t need confirmation that the quarrel had been of a more serious nature. As for Biddy, she left the room saying, ‘I must see madame about the meal.’
She did not, however, go to madame’s quarters but went along the narrow corridor and into her own bedroom, and there, standing with her hands pressed tight together, she muttered to herself, ‘Equality.’ That last little scene recalled shades of the girl who
had taken the whip across her face on that particular Sunday.
For the first time in all the months she had been here, she wished she were home because what lay before her was two weeks of his presence in the house; and what was more, she had, in some way, to find out how deep were his affections towards Lucy.
And she was to find out on New Year’s morning, 1841.
Two
The holiday had not been without its gaiety. They had all walked together and laughed together; they had played cards; they had even sung together old Christmas songs accompanied by madame on her spinet. And then had come New Year’s Eve.
Lucy had not been feeling well for some days, and on New Year’s Eve she had kept to her bed. The doctor from the next village had been called in and he said it was but a slight malaise. This often happened in the eighth month, all she had to do was rest. So when the church bells chimed from the villages, Biddy, Laurence, and Madame Arnaud stood round Lucy’s bed and drank her health.
After Madame Arnaud left, the three of them sat and chatted for a time until Laurence took his leave after kissing Lucy and saying, ‘It’s going to be a good New Year, Lucy. Just you wait and see.’ Then he said good night to Biddy and went out.
Biddy now set about settling Lucy for the night and when she had finished, Lucy took her hand and asked softly, ‘Have you talked to him?’
‘No…no, not yet.’
‘You will do? Because he goes back the day after tomorrow.’
‘The opportunity hasn’t arisen,’ Biddy said.
‘You’ve had him on your own most of today. Why…why didn’t you speak then?’
‘It’s a very difficult subject to raise.’
‘It shouldn’t be for you, Biddy, your wits are sharp. Try. I must know before he goes back.’
‘I’ll try. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Biddy. And a happy New Year.’
‘And the same to you, miss. Yes, the same to you.’
To her surprise Laurence was waiting for her in the hall and he beckoned her silently towards the sitting-room door. Once inside the room he took her hand and drew her to where the lamp, by the side of the fireplace, was still burning, and standing square in front of her, he put his hands on her shoulders and said, ‘A happy New Year, Biddy.’
She was trembling from head to foot, and the words stuck in her throat before she could say, ‘And…and to you, sir.’
‘Don’t call me sir any more, Biddy. Do you hear?’
She remained quiet.
‘My name is Laurie. And…and you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’ She made a slight movement with her head, and he shook her now, saying, ‘Biddy Millican of the straightforward tongue, don’t lie.’
‘I’m not…I’m not lying.’
His face became straight and he said, ‘No, you’re not lying. You have never guessed then how I really feel about you?’
Again she made a small movement with her head before muttering, ‘No, only the other way about.’
‘The other way about?’ His voice was a mere whisper, and she repeated in no louder a tone, ‘The other way about.’
‘Oh, Biddy.’ He went to pull her into an embrace, but she stiffened and said, ‘Mr Laurence.’
And at this he put in, ‘I’ve told you, no more Mr Laurence.’
‘It’ll have to be.’
‘Why?’
‘You know as well as I do. This…this isn’t right; it can lead nowhere. And you’ve just suggested I talk straight. Well’—she gulped in her throat—‘I’ll do it now. I…well, no matter what I feel, I want no hole and corner affair; I don’t want to end up, in fact I won’t end up like Miss Lucy. So there.’
His hands dropped from her shoulders, his head bowed; then he said, ‘You think my intention is to use you in that way?’
She dared to answer, ‘What other way is there between us two?’
‘The proper way.’ His chin jerked upwards. ‘I love you, Biddy. Do you understand that?’ Again he was holding her by her forearms and his grip was tight. ‘I think I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you and heard you pouring Shelley into the deaf ears of that thick-headed crowd. Yes, right from that very moment. Don’t you know why I haven’t stayed at home for the holidays lately as long as I usually did? Because then I would think, as you are thinking now, this cannot be, this cannot come about. Now I know it can, and it will, even if it means our emigrating, going to another country. I needn’t ask you if you would be afraid to share poverty with me, because you know what that’s like. I don’t. You’ll have to teach me how to handle it, because I’ll have to earn my own living from now on by teaching. That’s the only thing I can do. I…I love you, Biddy. I…I cannot get you out of my mind. When you are in a room, I cannot take my eyes off you. I became more attentive to Grandmama because I knew I would see you.’
She brought out now on a shuddering breath the word, ‘Madam!’
‘Oh…madam. Oh yes, she’ll yell her head off. But after all, what can she do? What can any of them do? I don’t belong to them, although I must admit I owe them a great deal. Well, at least, I owe Grandmama, because if it had rested with the woman I call mama, and even her husband, I might have been a workhouse brat. My mother was of good family, poor, but with a name. And then there is this disease that mama suffers from, religion and prejudice. My father, I understand, was a very ordinary man, and a bit of a scoundrel. He abandoned my mother just before I was born. That’s how I landed up at The Heights. I understand he died abroad when I was six years old, here in France as a matter of fact. I know nothing of his people; and my grandparents, too, are dead. They left me a small sum but I don’t come into that until I am twenty-five. So, may I ask if you will starve with me, Biddy, until that time?’
‘Oh! Oh!’ It was as if the exclamations were easing a pain; and then she fell against him and put her arms about him, and he pressed her to him as if he would never let her go.
When their lips parted, their faces flushed, they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled, and he whispered, ‘Oh, Biddy, Biddy. Oh, my dear. You know you are the most wonderful person I have ever met in my life. Yes, yes, you are,’ he emphasised, pressing her hard to him with each of the last four words as if to stifle any protest from her. And now, her head drooping, she muttered his name for the first time, ‘Laurie,’ she said, and to this he said, ‘Yes, my dear one?’ And she answered, ‘I feel like a traitor.’
He pressed her slightly from him and, peering into her face, he said, ‘A traitor. You? Why?’
‘Lucy.’
‘What about Lucy?’
She turned her eyes to the side and gazed down into the embers of the dying fire before she said, ‘She’s…she’s in love with you. She…she wants to marry you. She hopes that you will feel the same.’
‘Lucy?’ The incredulity came over in his voice. ‘She what?’
‘She’s in earnest, so very much in earnest. And…and she needs someone.’
‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense. This is because of her condition. Now, if it had been’—he pulled a slight face—‘if it had been May, I…I could have believed it, but not Lucy.’
‘Yes, yes, Laurie. She is banking on it.’
‘Then she’ll just have to unbank.’
He now took her hand and pulled her down on to the couch beside him, and becoming serious again, he said, ‘It’s preposterous. I’ve never acted other than as a brother towards her.’
‘Yes, but she knows you’re not her brother.’
‘You mean to say, knowing her condition and after being with that man who is already the father of five children, she would expect me to…? Oh, my goodness me. Never! Never!’ For a moment she thought, Men…their outlook; even if he had been in love with Lucy, as things were he wouldn’t have considered marrying her. She dared to say, ‘What if it had happened to me?’
‘Happen to you? It wouldn’t have.’
‘It could have, if she hadn’t intervened when I was attacked.’
&nbs
p; ‘But that would have been different, that was against your will. By what I can gather, this was of her own doing. She wasn’t raped, she flirted with a middle-aged man. And young girls seem to have an attraction for middle-aged men. Undoubtedly they don’t need much encouragement, but nevertheless, what was needed she supplied. The case is different altogether.’
‘But you are so caring of her.’
‘Yes, yes, I am, because no-one else in the family would be, except Grandmama. If the matter had rested with her I am sure she would have commanded Lucy to have the child there. But she knew the result of such an action on every member of the family. What I’ve done, I’ve done in part for Grandmama. She’s an old dragon, yes, admittedly, but I’m very fond of her. And, you know, there’s one thing in our future favour’—he drew her into his arms again—‘she’s very fond of you.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘as a servant.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ he admitted now; ‘but, she’ll change her tune.’
‘Knowing madam, she never will.’
‘Well, that will be a pity, because nothing, Biddy, do you hear me? nothing is going to come between you and me, ever.’
‘Oh Laurie. Laurie.’ As she leant her head against him he said, ‘How old are you, really?’
‘Eighteen just gone.’
‘Nearly too old for marriage,’ he said, and they both started to laugh. Then his voice becoming serious, he said, ‘What are you going to tell her?’
‘Nothing. Oh’—the word was high—‘oh, nothing yet, not until the baby is born, because she has bouts of depression now…’
‘But you must, you must give her some inkling that my affections are placed elsewhere. You mustn’t let her go on hoping.’
The Black Velvet Gown Page 37
