by Rose Lerner
Tears blurred her eyes. Pitiful, she told herself. Crying over a lousy seedcake. It’s not as if he’ll miss it. His mother will bake off fifteen more tomorrow.
But she gouged out a piece of cake with her thumb and put it in her mouth, its pungent sweetness making the tears leak down her cheeks.
“Would you like a handkerchief?” an adolescent girl in a neighboring bed asked shyly. Her bronze skin, strong nose and deep brown eyes reminded Sukey of Mrs. Khaleel.
Sukey shook her head, sniffling. “I’ll stop crying any second now.”
“What’s wrong?”
She glared suspiciously. “I’m not going to give you any cake.”
“I can’t eat your cake,” the girl said scornfully. “Christian cake always has brandy in it.”
“Not always,” Sukey protested, startled. What difference did that make anyway?
She gave the cake a dismissive glance. “So why are you crying?”
“My husband left me.” Sukey stopped. “Well, not exactly. I suppose I left him.”
“What did he do?”
“He took a swell job and then didn’t want me to live with him. I expect I’m not swell enough.”
“Muckworm,” the kid said. “Can you at least make him send you some of the money?”
She didn’t want or need his money. She wanted him. She needed him. He’d given her a ring that said, Let us share in joy and care, and then he’d refused to let her share in either. And he’d refused to even admit he was doing it! “I don’t need him or his money,” she said sharply.
The girl shrugged. “He cared for money over you. So take what he’ll miss most.”
Sukey looked at her beautiful seedcake with an ugly thumb-hole in the top. “He didn’t care for money over me. That’s not fair. The job’s his father’s and his father hasn’t been well.”
She knew that. Oh, he loved the house, just as he loved his father, but he hadn’t had a nice thing to say about either of them. She’d said he wanted her out of the way, but…
She admitted to herself that it wasn’t the truth. She’d said it to hurt him, because his mind was made up and she couldn’t change it.
This house will eat you alive. He’d said it so intensely. A sharp pain had stopped her breath, to see him so convinced she didn’t belong there. With him. But if she’d paused to think, she’d have seen straightaway that he expected the house to eat him alive.
You couldn’t be happy here, he’d said. You hate it. But really, he couldn’t be happy there. He hated it. That, he didn’t know how to say. If she was honest, she’d understood that all along. But she’d been so angry at his stubborness, his eagerness to get rid of her. He’d made her feel…
Like a child, powerless in the face of her father’s decision to leave. That drowning feeling she’d told him about had poured up her throat, and she’d panicked. But a feeling couldn’t really drown you.
As a seven-year-old girl, she couldn’t understand what was happening. Her father had been half her world and there’d really been nothing she could do. She wasn’t a child anymore. John had treated her like one, but she’d acted like one too. She hadn’t tried sincerely to change his mind. She’d thrown a tantrum and left him, while he begged her to stay and gave her a basket full of cake. And what had she proven? That she was grown now and she could leave too? Did she really think that was news?
Nothing is sure in this world, he’d said when he first proposed. But you had to muddle on anyway. There was one thing she was sure of: John loved her today. He’d said so, and she believed him.
And she’d left him there. He’d tried to save her from the responsibility that was drowning him, and she’d abandoned him to it. She’d said she wanted to be his helpmeet, to take care of him, and she hadn’t tried to help him at all.
He might leave her someday, yes. He might stop loving her and he might die tomorrow—
Sukey was filled with horror. She had to get back to him. She had to get back right away. He could fall down the stairs or be trampled by a horse at any moment and she’d left him!
“I’m going back,” she told the girl. “Is there anything in here you can eat?”
The girl peered into the basket. “Ooh, eggs!”
Sukey let her fill her handkerchief while she buttoned her pelisse and jammed her bonnet on her head.
* * *
“You’re going back to that poky vicarage when you could have all this?” Mr. Toogood was at his desk in the butler’s pantry, so the sweeping gesture (with his uninjured arm) mostly encompassed his notebooks and the big silver chests and china cabinets. Maybe that was all he meant: not the great and beautiful house, but this small headquarters.
“You had the right of it,” John said, determined to be civil, even kind. “I wasn’t fully employing my talents as a valet. I enjoy being a butler. I enjoy having people who depend on me, and on whom I depend. I enjoy managing a household. I only don’t want to be butler here. I want more peace and quiet than that. I’m sorry.”
His father slammed some ledgers on their ends on the table, probably more to make an angry noise than to align their edges. “How any son of mine could have so little ambition!”
“I do have ambition. I want to be the best at what I do. I want to be the best man I can, and the best husband. And I want—” He almost said he wanted to make Sukey happy. But he was more ambitious even than that, his desires more lofty, reaching for all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and not caring that it was sacrilege. “I want to be happy.”
“Happy? Christ spare me your generation and its selfishness. ‘Why is not man a god, and earth a heaven?’”
Ah, they had reached the part of the argument where his father quoted Pope. Wonderful. John’s heart beat faster and his cheeks heated, but he spoke slowly and evenly. “You could have been happy. You still could be. Mother adores you. She wants nothing more than to spend the rest of your lives together in a bit of ease. You’ve both earned it.”
“If I could have been happy here, then why can’t you?” He pointed a finger at John in a familiar I’ve got you there gesture. “You love this house. You love the Dymonds.”
It was easy in an argument to get caught up with winning, and not with sharing one’s desires or speaking the truth. It was awful to watch his father seize on any apparent inconsistency in his speech without acknowledging the heart of what he’d said, and to know that he’d done the same to Sukey. “And I love you,” John agreed. “But I’m leaving for Chichester.” He went to the door.
“Can I give you a piece of advice?” his father called after him.
John turned back.
“If you want to be happy, don’t have children.”
John wished it didn’t hurt.
* * *
As much as Sukey wanted to rush back to John—well, the odds were against his actually getting trampled by a horse in the next few hours. It wouldn’t hurt him to spend a little time missing her. And there was something she had to do first.
She’d always wanted a sister. It had never occurred to her that she already had one. And as afeared and tense as it made her, walking up the stairs and knowing she’d see her father—she knew now that last time she’d been here, she’d closed herself off, packed her heart away in mothballs, so she could pretend she was glad to be there. She wanted to try out really being generous, really feeling things, and see how it went. She wanted to prove to herself that the sky wouldn’t fall.
As she neared the door, she could hear the familiar childhood sound of her father’s hammer. She almost turned around and went back. How could she befriend her sister and lie to her? Could she pretend her own mother was dead? But how could she tell the truth? She had no notion what the girl might think or do, or who might be hurt by it.
She set down the hamper and bandbox and knocked on the door.
“J
uliana, will you see who that is?”
Her sister opened the door. Sukey smiled weakly. The girl’s eyes grew round. “You came back. Dad, Susan’s back!”
There was a clatter, and her dad appeared in the doorway, trying to put his arms around her. Sukey pulled away. “I don’t—I’m sorry, but I don’t know if—”
The girl glanced over her shoulder at her younger siblings. “He and Mum told me the truth,” she whispered. “So you don’t have to be mad at him anymore.”
“The truth?” Sukey felt as if the floor had shifted under her. Was this another lie?
Mr. Grimes nodded. “I told her about me and your mum, and…I told her everything.” He put an arm around Julia, who sniffled and leaned into him.
“Hush, kids, leave them alone.” The new Mrs. Grimes herded her younger children into a corner, with many a worried glance. “I’ll tell you a story.”
“Tell us about the sweating pharisees,” the littlest boy shouted.
Sukey was having trouble breathing again.
“I was so sad after you left,” Julia explained in a hushed voice. “I hoped we’d be sisters, and I was sure I’d made a nuisance of myself.”
Mr. Grimes dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I couldn’t let my little girl be unhappy and not know why. I hope she’ll forgive me someday.” He looked at her with double meaning as he said it, and Sukey felt herself shrinking inwards. Julia couldn’t be unhappy and not know why? What about her? What about all the years she’d spent wondering why he left?
She supposed she could ask him. But she didn’t want to know. Not yet, anyway. Probably he’d say it was something wrong with her mother, and she’d smash his nose in with his own hammer.
“I’m sorry.” She still couldn’t get out the word Dad. “I came to talk to Julia.”
Julia brightened, but she looked anxiously at her father to see how he’d take this.
Mr. Grimes nodded reluctantly. “All right, Susan.”
“And please—I go by Sukey now.”
“Don’t be daft.” Mr. Grimes broke out in a smile. “I’m your dad, I can call you whatever I like.”
“Dad,” Julia said in an undertone.
Mr. Grimes gave in. “Sukey, then, if you insist.”
“Thank you,” she and Julia said together, and Julia smiled at her. “I’m so glad you came back.”
“So am I,” Sukey said. “Or I think I will be, anyway.”
“Can I take your portrait?” Julia made her money cutting profiles out of black card for a penny apiece at the Chichester markets. When Sukey agreed, she ran to fetch her scissors and paper. “When I’m a little older I want to travel to fairs and such,” she confided. “Does the fair come to Lively St. Lemeston?”
“Twice a year. We’re not so small as that, you know.”
Julia beamed. “Maybe we’ll see each other again soon, then.”
Sukey was obliged to hold still to display her profile, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Julia’s scissors pause, her head turning curiously towards Sukey’s baggage. “I thought you were staying at Tassell Hall for a few weeks.”
Sukey sighed. “I had a row with John. I’m going back, though. I only stopped by to… Well, I was sorry for the other day.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Julia said earnestly. “I know Dad was only trying to protect me and the children, but he shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have— I expect he should have stayed with your mum, actually.”
“I wished he had for a long time.” Eyes straight ahead, Sukey had a clear view of seven profiles tacked to the wall: Mr. Grimes and his new family. “But you’re so happy. Happier than we would have been, maybe.”
She’d been furious when John said, I might easily have excused your father’s conduct. But now she could think of a dozen reasons Mr. Grimes might have left. She could see he hadn’t had any money to send, that it wouldn’t have been easy for him to come and visit.
It didn’t hurt any less, but it was less frightening. It felt less like the end of the world and more like an everyday awful thing.
She was still jealous of her sister, who could forgive such a betrayal at once, in the sure and certain knowledge that she was still safe, that her father had only done it because he loved her. She still didn’t know whether to envy or pity that much innocence. Like crossing an abyss on a plank bridge and not even knowing the abyss was there.
“I don’t mind turning out the way I did,” she said, and meant it. But she supposed the world was as full of kindness as it was of cruelty. It wasn’t so bad to expect kindness from people. Maybe it made you turn away from cruelty when you saw it, instead of spending years licking Mrs. Humphrey’s shoes. “I hope you’re not angry with me, for being…”
“Legitimate?” Julia whispered.
Sukey nodded.
“You can move now.” The girl took up a second piece of paper. “I’m not angry with you. I suppose it might matter to a suitor, someday. I’d have to be honest with him. But if I work hard and save up a dowry, I expect he won’t mind too much. Unless he’s stuffy and then I won’t want him.” She glanced at Sukey in alarm. “I mean, not that Mr. Toogood—not that there’s anything wrong with being stuffy—”
Sukey laughed. “Abuse him as much as you like, please.”
Julia smiled at her, beginning to paste Sukey’s profile onto a sheet of white paper.
“What’s the other one?”
Julia flushed. “It’s me. So you can carry me with you. And I’d like to copy yours for our—” She gestured at the wall of profiles. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
Sukey picked up the floppy black outline of her sister’s face. That was her own pointed nose, she realized, her sharp chin. She looked at her father’s likeness on the wall. She could see the resemblance—not as striking as he’d made out, maybe, but undeniably there.
That still made her stomach turn over, but she didn’t mind looking like Julia. “I don’t know. Why don’t you keep it in a drawer for now, and I’ll think about it?”
* * *
“I’ll take you in the morning.” Abe warmed his hands at the kitchen fire. “It’s nearly dark out.”
John thrust a hot poker in a glass of ale and handed it to him. It wouldn’t be so late if you hadn’t dawdled at the pub in Chichester, he thought. He’d been waiting in an agony of impatience for hours, occupying himself with cleaning the plasterwork reliefs as he’d promised his mother, and only prevented from hauling a farm cart out of winter storage himself and bribing one of the younger grooms to take him by his expectation that Abe would be back at any moment.
“I will give you anything,” John said. “The bidding may commence at a guinea, and any bed you like in Chichester for the night.”
“I’ll take you there in the morning. I promise we’ll catch the coach.”
“We might be snowed in by morning. I’ll pay one of the boys to take me if you don’t want to go.”
Abe threw his head back in frustration. “There’s none of the boys left at home trained well enough to drive my horses in the dark in this weather without me watching him. I trow, between you and your wife I’ll have no toes left, and neither will my horses.”
“Abe, please.”
Abe threw up his hands. “I’ll put on dry stockings. But I want a featherbed at the Dolphin, a roast pheasant and a bottle of Madeira.”
* * *
“You can’t possibly go.” Mrs. Grimes blocked the door. “It’s nearly dark out, it’s starting to snow, and you’ll never get a cart this late. You’ll stay here and share with Julia and Lou.”
“Then I’ll walk. My boots are newly sealed.” Sukey would have liked to snap, You aren’t my mum, but tried bribery instead. “Here, you can keep the hamper. There’s a whole seedcake in it.”
“Take the seedcake, Mum,” Lou urged in a loud whisper. Sukey sm
iled, because her ploy was working and because Lou was darling.
A knock came at the door. Mrs. Grimes turned, startled, and opened it. John stood in the doorway, his hat in his hand.
Mrs. Grimes fell back. Sukey’s feet felt nailed to the floor. How had he found her?
Then she remembered she’d told him she was coming here. She stifled a nervous giggle, thinking what would he do if she’d stayed at the inn?
Mr. Grimes pushed himself forward. “Now see here. I don’t know as I’d ought to let you in after you made my little girl unhappy.”
John looked at him, raising his brows slightly, allowing the silence to lengthen and the room to fill with, After I made your little girl unhappy? Mr. Grimes flushed.
Sukey loved him. She ran and threw herself into his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left, and I’m sorry I let you stay. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you. You don’t want to stay there, John, you don’t and I won’t let you—”
“I know,” he said. “I was coming away just now. To go back to the vicarage with you, if you’ll agree to it. Look, there’s my trunk.” It stood on its end on the landing.
Sukey’s family— No, she corrected herself, your father’s new family. But her heart wasn’t in it. The Grimeses crowded in, eager to see what she’d say. “Keep your pointy little noses out of this,” she told them with mock severity and shut the door, leaving her and John alone on the dim landing.
“I mean it,” John said. “We can go and not come back. I told my mother to write to Lady Tassell and ask her to make my father retire. I’m not going to do it.”
She couldn’t stop smiling up at him. “Believe me, I’d like nothing more. But we planned to stay a fortnight, and I expect we’d ought to do it. Just to help at the Hall until Lady Tassell writes back.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
The fun would wear off this particular piece of generosity long before two weeks were up, but just now, it felt wonderful. “I don’t say I’ll enjoy it.” She brushed melting snowflakes from his hair, painfully glad to be touching him. “But that’s all right. Better that than your father falling off another ladder.”
