The Great Lover

by Jill Dawson

  ‘Ah, yes, I did hear something,’ I say diplomatically. In fact, Jacques discussed it with me at length and I’d advised him to have a punt on the taking-up-Ka-as-a-mistress idea. Wasn’t surprised to find dear Ka appalled, but three months ago I didn’t know Ka as well as I do now. Actually, I am impressed that she’s made of stronger stuff at least than the dreadful mad witch Elisabeth. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘that was pretty low of him. Anyone can see you’re not that sort. What a–snake!’

  Ka falls silent. The wood-pigeon finally seems to invade her consciousness too, like a child insistently tooting a paper whistle. The tears have dried; she even gives a hollow laugh. ‘Illogical…isn’t it, that when we feel we can have something at the snap of our fingers we don’t want it, but when obstacles are put in our way…? Funny creatures, human beings, aren’t we?’ she says, to which I agree, heartily glad to return to cheerier mode. I am not used to Ka being anything other than Ka–jolly Ka, making sandwiches for picnics and diligently carrying buckets to put out fires.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe to venture back to the Old Vicarage without fear of being burned in our beds?’ I ask, standing up.

  She says she thinks it is. But later, in my bed that night, I marvel at my own silliness in the Old Vicarage kitchen, grabbing Florence Neeve’s best Indian rug. I picture myself rolling the thing up and flapping demoniacally towards the fire on the chimneypiece. The rug was heavy and didn’t roll easily, the underside rough and reeking of floor-polish and dog-hair. Laddie cowered in the corner, watching me warily, as if I was a madman. As I flapped, more and more flakes of beam and black wood swooped down and showered me like angry bats. Ka and Nellie watched too; the other maids hovered somewhere around the edges. I felt Ka’s eyes on me, and I felt Nell’s attention slip away, turn towards that boy Tommy. It was a horrible moment, when I realised that I seemed to have snared one at the same point that I let another go free: like an eel-catcher opening the trap inexpertly and seeing his prize slip away down the river.

  Not that Nell is an eel, of course. She is a bright country girl and a maid-of-all-work, I chide myself, trying to reel in my maddening thoughts. But she is a prize, and any man, even perhaps the dreaded Tommy, can surely see that.

  Lily’s health is picking up, and Betty has gone to visit her, sending word that she is carrying well, and plumper. My own visit is due Sunday, but learning this news from Betty last night is like a stone lifting from my heart; I attack my chores with vim and vigour, even bursting into song sometimes. I realise from my own gladness that I had feared (without knowing it) for Lily’s life. I resolve to stick firmly to my pact, to give up all thoughts of Rupert, and feel reassured that God will reward me by taking care of my family.

  My heart is lighter than it has been in a while.

  Tommy offers to take me, come Sunday. He brings me a small packet, pink and sodden, and shyly pushes it over the tabletop to me on a morning when Mrs Stevenson is not at home. I peel off the paper to find two beautiful lamb chops. ‘For you,’ he says. ‘For your family in Prickwillow.’ Tommy has freckles and a direct brown stare, and there is no mistaking his kindness. He has not tried to kiss me again but he is watchful and, I suspect, patient.

  So for now the only irritation is sharing a room with Kittie, who loves her secrets and is always gossiping: ‘Do you think he’ll marry her? Which one will he marry, do you think? The prettiest of all is Miss Olivier, not the young one, you know, but the older one, Miss Brynhild–the one with the big hats and the lovely cheekbones. She’s the one I’d pick, if I were a man.’

  I consider for a moment passing on to her the same information about the tastes of Mr Rupert Brooke that I passed on to Betty. That would surely hush her. Rupert himself told me, laughing, of an occasion in Munich where he mistakenly called a gentleman by the familiar ‘you’ (in German there must be a more proper, formal way to address a gentleman you don’t know) and the same man’s hand leaped to his trouser buttons and he was practically on top of Rupert in an instant! Rupert laughs about this, and I smile as I bring him a clean pile of bed linen, and pretend not to be shocked. It is simply understood now, by Rupert and me, that the whole world is in love with Rupert, men and women, and he in love with no one. Oh, yes, he has a fancy to be in love with Miss Noel Olivier, a wish to believe himself in love with her. But, if you ask me, that’s a desire born of frustration, and part of his disguise. He acts like such a Gay Dog, such a Jack-among-the-maids (in his case truly among the maids!) only to hide his true persuasion.

  Tonight, Kittie and I are no sooner lying side by side under the blue satin counterpane than she starts on her campaign: ‘Why would a brainy girl like you, Nell, not think it better for women to have the Vote? Don’t you believe we’re as good as any man, any day?’

  I wonder about this. Father made me feel so strongly that I wasn’t as good as my brothers. Since Kittie asks such a searching question and we’re alone in the darkness I rummage around for an honest answer. ‘I think I do. It’s not that that makes me doubt. It’s–well–some of the speeches I’ve seen in the newspaper. Miss Pankhurst and those others. They talk of men as if they were savage beasts, every one of them wanting to steal us for the white-slave trade. And it’s our job to raise them from their filthy needs, their diseases, that sort of thing.’

  When Kittie says nothing, and I gather from her breathing that she is still listening to me, I grow bolder, and carry on: ‘And then I examine myself and I think–I don’t want to do that. To be as good as a man, yes. But not to–to take care of his soul. Not to be an angel without–without a body of my own…’

  The pillow next to me moves suddenly and Kittie sits up. ‘Why, Nellie, are you saying you have impure thoughts?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ I struggle to change the subject. ‘But…I’m not so sure your precious Votes for Women Bill will achieve anything much for girls like us–we wouldn’t even have the Vote anyways. It’s only for married ladies.’

  ‘And won’t you be a married lady one day? And able to vote then?’

  This startles us both, with a gasp from me, and then a funny little silence.

  ‘I can’t imagine it,’ I finally say.

  ‘Well, isn’t that just like you? You can only imagine your life as it is, wedded to the Orchard, scrubbing and sweeping and running errands from noon till dusk…’

  It’s true. Her words alarm me, because what Kittie calls drudgery is freedom to me. My little room–the first bedroom I’ve not shared with five others; the kindly way Mrs Stevenson lets us eat the broken scones for breakfast, warm and crumbling with butter; the new-pin order of the kitchen; the shouts and capers of Rupert next door, with his constant stream of visitors turning up on bicycles, arms always heaped with books; the snatches of their conversation, the lines from poetry and plays; the ladies in their lovely hats demanding strawberries brought to them at the riverside at their punts; Mr Neeve carefully removing the frames, and the swarm, brown and gold and shimmering in his hands like a field of old fen sedge with the wind rippling through it. How could I give this up and go back to a life like Lily’s, never to see a soul all day besides Mrs Gotobed and wailing little ones? And since it’s not marriage but work that has widened my world, why should marriage hold any charms for me? The others tease me about Tommy, but marriage…doesn’t enter my thoughts. Even Betty has started mooning over the boy who works at the mill, a boy named Jack, who delivers flour to us; a boy with squinty eyes that make me think of a mole, although he is cheerful enough, I suppose, and not a bad sort, and kind.

  While I’m lying on my back beside her, thinking this, Kittie then takes it into her head that she needs cocoa. She sits up again. It’s past midnight, we’ll be up again at six, but she wants us to sneak downstairs and make ourselves some.

  ‘You’ll get us both sacked!’ I whisper, but I’m giggling too, because for all her sauciness, and her want of good sense in the kitchen, I am used to the company of sisters and things are always more gay when Kittie is here.

/>   We take a candle and carry it trembling down the stairs, not wanting to risk the sound of the light switch, which, nine times out of ten, fails to work anyway.

  Kittie finds the Bournville powder and rations us a careful spoonful each so that Mrs Stevenson won’t notice. I help her by washing the spoon and setting it back on the dresser. A mouse flickers past in front of us, making us shriek and cover our mouths. Luckily the fire is not yet out and with a little raking and a small cup of coal, can be made to crackle into life, so that we can set the pan of milk and water atop it.

  We then sit at the kitchen table, smiling at each other, the candle flame between us, ducking its head every few minutes, dancing to some unseen draught. Kittie’s eyes are bright, and though I yawn and slump in my chair, she is so wide awake that I begin to wonder.

  ‘Why did you come back from London, Kittie? What happened there?’ I ask her this when my back is to her, hearing the milk and water rise to the bubble and taking it off the heat to pour into the waiting cups.

  Her face in the firelight is only two big eyes, like a cat’s at night. I can’t read her expression but see from the glitter in them that she is blinking back tears. ‘You heard, I suppose? Mother was so ashamed. She told me not to tell a soul but Grantchester is such a place…I knew we couldn’t keep it quiet.’

  Now, it would be honest of me to say that I haven’t heard, that I don’t know what she is talking about, but my curiosity is so piqued that I keep mum, thinking this the best way to find out. I put the cup of cocoa in front of her with a soft thud.

  ‘It was horrible, Nell. Worse than you could ever imagine. Several times constables and plainclothes men passed their arms round me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public a manner as possible and men in the crowd did it too! My poor chest was black and blue with bruises by the time I got to my cell. And they tried to lift my skirt and called me names you couldn’t dream of hearing…

  Poor Kittie is sobbing now, ever so muffled, so no one might hear. I feel the wretched way I always do when someone cries; I slide the cup of cocoa across the table towards her and am glad when she pauses to sip.

  ‘So many people…I was–terrified. I thought I would never get out! And although I got word to Mother she never would visit me there…’

  Now I understand about Kittie’s absence and sudden arrival back. How sorely we resented it, Lottie and I, the curt way Mrs Stevenson reintroduced her: ‘You know our Kittie, girls, and you know how to make room for her.’ And after that it was all chop-chop and change about and Betty and Lottie packing up their things: Lottie and Betty to take Rupert’s old room while the new tenant is in London and Kittie temporarily reinstalled with me. Mrs Stevenson must have known everything.

  ‘The worst of it was, Nell, there were other women I knew in there, oh, yes, some of our lot, but they didn’t talk to me! They were in separate cells with copies of the Home Beautiful in them–can you believe that? I’m not lying, Nell, I saw them carrying those very magazines! It’s because Lady Constance complained, and nearly died after her prison sentence, but it made no difference to our treatment. And those ladies could call on the Governor whenever they wanted and visit the library or the chaplain…Oh, I thought, it’s fine for them, for when they get out they have homes to go to and husbands to forgive them, but what about me? I thought I’d never get a position again, or the prison guards might just think I was a common girl of the streets and never let me out!’

  ‘But then why must you go on another march next week? Weren’t you talking only this morning about the procession from the Embankment and the white horse that must be found and…Why, surely it’s a terrible risk, Kittie, you might get arrested again!’

  Whatever her reply might be, I am none the wiser as a sudden noise outside makes us jump out of our skins and snuff the candle. We sit frozen at opposite sides of the table, the smell of hot wax sharp between us, listening. All at once I feel the hard wooden chair under my backside, through the cotton of my nightdress, and taste the cocoa on my tongue, and notice my fingers smoothing the grain of the table, my feet shuffling beneath it, dusty and dry.

  Is it a fox? Someone is outside in the garden.

  I’m the bravest, and tiptoe to the french windows to look. Of course I see nothing but glassy black, and when I press my face to the pane, only moonlit lawn and grey rosebushes, poised and still.

  ‘It’s over there, by the two-holer!’ Kittie whispers, her hand on the key, opening the door to get a better look. She’s right: I can make out a figure in the moonlight. A barn owl, silver as a ghost, flies suddenly past it and the figure ducks and lets out a shout.

  ‘I know who that is,’ I whisper.

  Then I hear his voice, and a pebble rattles the glass: ‘Nell! Nellie Golightly–is that you?’

  I twirl round to Kittie, and her look in the semi-dark tells me what mine must be: alarmed, excited, surprised. ‘It’s–Mr Brooke, Kittie. He must need something. I can deal with this. Quick, wash the cups and leave them on the dresser–and go back to bed!’

  Then she gives me a different look entirely. I can just make out the set of her fat bottom lip and the saucy narrowing of her eyes, the direction her thoughts are taking, but before she can speak I say, quickly and fiercely, the wickedest thing I’ve ever said: ‘Kittie. I will keep your secret. I promise to keep it–to tell no one about your time in prison. I can keep a secret sometimes, if I really try. And if I feel sure that you would do the same for me.’

  She is holding the snuffed candle. Her eyes widen, and I know at once she has grasped my meaning. She turns on her heel without another word and her nightdress swishes the stairs as she heads towards our bedroom.

  My hand is trembling, too, as I struggle to open the french window. I’m thinking how well I know his shape, how I can recognise him from the shoulders, which are straight, like coat-hangers, and the loose way his arms hang, the set of his head, the wave of hair sticking up at the crown. I am thinking that despite all I tell myself of his persuasion there is a part of me that beats still, that is not in the least quieted. Just seeing him makes me know my efforts have been hopeless.

  I expect him to be smiling, to giggle and grab my hands, but instead his eyes are glassy and he looks round me, as if there is a ghost behind me. ‘What is it? What is it?’ I say, and his mood affects mine: I feel my fists clench, expecting danger.

  ‘I–I—Come swim with me, Nell.’

  ‘What–now? It’s past midnight. You’ll lose me my position!’

  Looking out into the garden I see that, for once, no dog has followed Rupert from the Old Vicarage, and the lawn is still and black and empty. I peer out at him. He hangs back a little from the house, nervously surveying the windows above him. In the moonlight he is pale as the barn owl in his flapping shirt and white flannel trousers. I realise as I’m doing it that I’m studying Rupert to try and understand what it is about him that is so unfamiliar. He steps forward suddenly, reaching out a hand and dragging me towards him.

  ‘Come on, Nell, you won’t lose your position. If you do, I’ll find you another, I promise. Mother always needs a maid. Hang it, who doesn’t? I want–I need a swim, and I—You know I hate to swim alone.’

  His words are beseeching and his look is angry rather than playful. I’m not afraid of him–I believe a girl knows instinctively which men she should be afraid of–but naturally I hesitate, the request being such a strange one.

  ‘Do come, Nell. I’m all alone…Virginia’s gone…I can’t work–I need to talk!’

  So I fetch a coat–Mr Stevenson’s coat–from a hook on the door to the scullery and once again throw it over my nightdress, and step out on to the springy grass in my bare feet. My heart launches itself at my ribcage like a cat in a basket, with the vivid memory of last time, the hot sense of a person standing beside me, knee-deep in a brown river, naked as God made him, the sun melting his back to honey, and trying to catch a fish.

  The roses are grey and closed for the night. The
night air smells of Rupert to me, and nothing else, and I slip into step behind him, and follow him across the lawn and down the lane. Walking two steps behind him, trying to follow the pale figure of him as a light and a guide, I almost have to run to keep up with him: over the bridge in front of Grantchester Mill and across the meadow until we reach the dam, with the sound of water tipping into the black below.

  Here we stop, breathing heavily, and staring into the deep, blank water, and I acknowledge to myself the one hard fact that, despite my nature, it has taken me so long to face. There is no request Rupert could make of me that I would refuse. Whatever the pledge between me and God, this is the truth. I almost gasp aloud. What foolishness has stopped me knowing this until now? And why, thinking it, do I once again have a small dread sad picture of Father, keeling over in the meadow all snowy white in his veil and suddenly old and finished?

  What would Father say if he was here now and I could ask him about Rupert? Nothing, is the likely answer. I can only imagine his look of surprise and confusion if I raised such a thing. Father’s world was…ordered, where even bees who have chosen to swarm in a cluster in a high tree can be coaxed down into the skep by his soft voice and a little smoke, without even the need of a gentle shake of the branch. But Father’s skill was only with bees. He had nothing to teach me about men, nothing to pass on beyond his limited, silent life, sitting on our front step, smoking his pipe and cleaning his uncapping knife.

  Who on this earth might I ask the strangest question a girl ever formed in her head? When a man favours other men, can he ever have the needle of his compass changed, ever find it pointing towards a girl?

  Could it ever point towards me?

  I’m shamed now by my wicked behaviour with Kittie–pressing her like that, nearly blackmailing her with her secret. At the same time, I pray bitterly that she keeps her word and says nothing, or I’m sunk.