by JH Fletcher
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No!’
He kissed her. She turned her head away. So he kissed her behind her ear instead. The sweet taste of the skin behind her ear … And ran his fingers swiftly down her white neck.
She shuddered, eyes shut, arching her back so that her body pressed against his.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’
‘Sorry?’ He was even closer now. He lowered his lips to kiss the swell of her breast.
‘No, Charlie … don’t! How can I say what I want if you keep doin’ that?’
‘I wouldn’ know.’ Not that her feeble protests stopped him. Soon her shift was pooled about her feet. Her bodice … gone. Hands and lips wove their gentle spell.
‘I’m sorry I was so keen for us to go there,’ she said. ‘But Mary’s really nice. I bet she didn’ know nuthun about it.’
‘Shhh …’
‘Listen to me…’
Fat chance.
Words and sighs as he pressed her to him. Words and sighs as they lay together on the bunk. No words now, only sighs. She hugged him tightly, drawing him closer and closer. Making him one with herself. Herself one with him. Her Charlie. Her husband. Her love.
As for Rufus Grenville and his sneaky ways …
Gone.
It was an hour before Charlie stirred.
‘We better get away from here,’ he said. ‘Before they sue us for trespass.’
But for the moment he remained where he was, lying on his back, feeling the warmth of Sarah’s body at his side and watching the reflected sunlight shimmering on the ceiling above him, while his hand moved gently to and fro on Sarah’s thigh.
‘Keep doin’ that, you won’t ever get up,’ she warned him.
‘I wouldn’ bet on that,’ he said, while his teeth closed gently on her.
And he proved himself right, once again.
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘Shhh …’
Later, when darkness had fallen beyond the cabin window, Sarah cradled Charlie to her breast. ‘You think we done the right thing?’
He raised his head to stare at her with mock amazement. ‘This?’
‘Of course not!’ She slapped him fondly, then was serious once more. ‘I was thinkin’ of Alex.’
‘What about her?’
‘We sent her to that posh school. Why? So she can turn out like Rufus Grenville? Is that what we want for her? So she can grow up snooty, despisin’ her parents?’
‘It’s got nuthun to do with the Grenvilles. We sent her there to give her a better chance than we had.’
‘And if she comes to look down on us?’
‘She won’t. Alex is all right. I bet she’s got ’em eatin’ out of her hand already.’
CHAPTER 66
‘What do we do?’ Griselda asked.
‘Let me think,’ replied Alex.
There was nothing they could do. The window was shut tight and, squinting through the glass, Alex saw that the latch was in place.
‘Whoever did it may still be in the room,’ she said.
‘How do we find out?’ asked Annie.
‘We knock on the glass,’ Alex replied.
‘What if it’s Miss Hetherington?’ said Griselda.
‘How can it be? She wouldn’t lock us out all night.’ Alex took a deep breath and rapped sharply on the glass.
They waited but nothing happened. Again Alex knocked. Again nothing.
‘I bet it was Samantha Wilson,’ Alex said. ‘It’s just the sort of thing she’d do. She must have seen us leaving and locked the window after us.’
‘But what can we do about it?’ Annie was blubbering.
‘Only one thing we can do.’
Alex gave herself no time to think about it. She yanked off her shoe and smashed the glass.
‘In! Quick as you can!’ She hauled up the sash window and shoved them through, one after the other, like popping letters into a pillarbox.
In they went, in a crunching of glass.
‘Help me!’ said Alex, bending to pick up the fragments of glass and tossing them out through the window. ‘Come on!’
‘Why?’ Griselda’s face was a silent wail, and her teeth would have shamed castanets.
‘Just do it!’
Scared of Alex, of Miss Hetherington, of everything, the two of them did it, or at least went through the motions. In the end Alex did most of it — hardly the surprise of the year.
When they were finished they went to bed and slept until the bell, sleep seldom a problem for fourteen-year-olds. After breakfast, spruced up and wearing her much-practised innocent look (Elsie, where are you?), Alex went looking for Miss Hetherington.
She found her in the staff room. ‘Miss Hetherington, may I speak to you?’
‘What is it, Alexandra?’
‘I’ve done something stupid.’
‘We shall go to my study, then, and you can tell me what’s happened.’
They trooped down the corridor, a hanging party of two. In Miss Hetherington’s study the air was redolent of old books, old papers, old woman.
Miss Hetherington settled behind her desk, as into a gun emplacement. ‘Well?’
‘I was fooling around in my room,’ Alex said. ‘I was jumping off the bed, seeing how far I could reach up the wall …’
She wove fantasy out of the disapproving air, building up the story through a succession of climaxes and anticlimaxes, until Miss Hetherington grew restive.
‘Get to the point, Alexandra, if you please …’
‘Yes, Miss Hetherington.’ And on again, words shining in the gloomy room, borne on the wings of imagination —
‘Alexandra!’
To earth once more. She confessed, with chastened face. ‘I fell off the bed, Miss Hetherington. I broke the window.’
After all the drama came the bathos. Which might have been planned.
‘You weren’t trying to climb out of the window?’
Eyes as round as moons. ‘Oh no, Miss Hetherington.’
‘The school does not tolerate truancy.’
‘No, Miss Hetherington.’
‘The rules are there for your own protection.’
‘No, Miss Heth — I mean yes, Miss Hetherington.’
Later Miss Hetherington spoke to Griselda and Annie but did not push for the confession she could no doubt have extracted from them. Instead she satisfied herself with a warning.
‘There are rules. Obey them. Be warned, the pair of you. Take care you are not led astray.’
So they were all right. Reprimanded, but all right.
But it was not all right for Samantha Wilson, for whom retribution waited.
Alex watched Samantha without seeming to do so. At first Samantha was apprehensive, then cautious, then cocky as hell, giving a cheeky grin each time they passed. To which Alex replied with a meek smile. Let Samantha think Alex was scared of her; her time was coming.
A week passed. A month. Several months. There was no hurry.
I shall tie her naked over an ant hill, cover her in strawberry jam and leave her for the ants.
I shall put a brown snake in her bed and listen for the screams.
I shall …
I shall …
Each option was more bloodthirsty and improbable than the last. Alex didn’t have any strawberry jam. She didn’t know where there were any ant hills. She didn’t have a brown snake. Never mind. Something would turn up.
CHAPTER 67
It took almost until the year end, but eventually something did.
It was 11 December 1896, the day before Regency College closed for the long school holidays. This was the speech day Miss Hetherington had mentioned when Alex started at the college. The parents of all the pupils were invited. Charlie and Sarah were there. Because it was the custom, they would first have to sit through the boys’ speech day before the girls’.
In the morning, in the great hall, the headmaster of the boys’ school spoke, the Chairman of the Govern
ors spoke, the clergyman in charge of religious education spoke, while the dusty hours dragged on, and Charlie’s starched collar, once again, cut red ruin in his neck.
There was a gallery upstairs where the girl pupils were herded, to watch their betters, to be silent. They were required to watch but could not mingle.
Alex wasn’t interested once she had found that she couldn’t pick Martin out from the gallery. Some of the girls felt quite differently. There was a rush to grab the front-row seats, stick sharp elbows into each other’s ribs and giggle. They couldn’t see the faces of the boys below them but it didn’t matter. They ate them up with their eyes. Samantha Wilson was prominent among them.
‘Randy little wretch,’ Alex heard one of the teachers mutter to another, and was delighted, repeating the words aloud, tasting them for later.
‘Randy little wretch, randy little wretch …’
There was a pleasing rhythm to them. One or two of those around her picked up the refrain — ‘Randy little wretch, randy little wretch’ — until Miss Dorcas was forced to raise her voice.
‘Alexandra Armstrong, I am warning you. Be quiet!’
So she was, sort of. ‘Randy little wretch,’ she muttered, so quietly that no-one could hear.
Miss Dorcas had recently introduced them to the limericks of Edward Lear. ‘Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the Jumblies live,’ she murmured, but it didn’t sound quite right.
Instead she thought she would make up something of her own. ‘Randy little wretch …’ she began, but then got stuck; finding a rhyme for ‘wretch’ was a problem. So she took consolation in a limerick that Griselda Jervis had taught her, once Griselda had recovered from her resentment at having been led astray.
There was a young lady of Kent
Who said that she knew what it meant
When men asked her to dine
Gave her cocktails and wine
She knew what it meant — but she went.
It was one way of passing the time, while she sat as bright-eyed as a possum under the rafters, her thoughts far away, and the preachers and teachers maundered on in the hall below.
After the speeches, the prize pupils were given their awards, for Latin and Greek, English and Scripture, Mathematics and Science. And for Music.
Sarah clutched Charlie’s hand. ‘It’s Martin!’
So it was. Grown as tall as a weed, but Martin, undeniably.
Charlie grunted. Even here, it seemed, the bloody Grenvilles ran the show.
The woman seated next to Sarah turned to her. ‘I hear that young man is a genius,’ she said.
Meanwhile, up in the gallery, Alex, as still as a stone on the outside, was dancing an animated little dance inside her head.
There is a young fellow called Martin
From whom I’ve no wish to be partin’
The piano he plays
With skills that amaze
And his kisses will show something’s startin’.
Dreadful, abysmal, embarrassing. But Alex came close to choking herself, all the same, with almost silent laughter.
‘Alexandra!’
‘Yes, Miss Dorcas.’
The previous day Martin had been informed he had won the Waldorf Piano Medal for the best student of his year. He had also been told he would be required to play the ‘Waldstein Sonata’ for the assembled and hopefully appreciative parents.
‘I need more time!’
There was no more time. ‘Your parents will understand.’
As if he cared about that. It was the music that mattered, only that, and the fear that his performance might be less than perfect. His parents’ feelings were irrelevant, anyway, because they would not be there. His mother had written to him to explain.
Your father and grandfather have urgent business with Sir Thomas Sutton, a former Victorian cabinet minister and member of the Executive Council, who is here in connection with the affairs of the Clarence Bank, and your father has decided that I must stay to entertain him. However, the Majestic will meet you at Edward’s Crossing and bring you up the river. All of us are looking forward very much to seeing you again as soon as you can get home.
Martin folded the letter, then folded it again until it was very small. He wanted to throw it away but could not bring himself to do so. Eventually he put it in the drawer of his bedside locker and pushed it to the back.
He told himself he hadn’t expected his father to come. He never did come, and hoping had made no difference in the past. His mother had always come. But now she was too busy.
Well, she’d be missing something good, he told himself. Missing the ‘Waldstein’. So be it. He would manage. In fact he’d play even better than he’d have done otherwise. He would prove he didn’t need her, or anyone.
He stayed up all night at the piano. The next day he should have been exhausted but was not.
As he sat at the piano his emotions took fire — but always with discipline! — and his fingers followed. When he’d finished he knew his recital had been up to the standards he had set himself. That was all that mattered; applause from an ignorant audience meant nothing.
After the recital, the pupils of the girls’ school were led away, presumably in case the disease of femininity with which they were afflicted should spread to those of greater account.
The girls’ speech day took place in the afternoon and was a much less grand affair, not formal at all. The pupils assembled in the deserted hall. The air smelt stale, of grandeur unjustly assigned — it seemed to Alex — and of boy.
Miss Hetherington spoke, and prizes were distributed, with none of the ceremony that had been observed in the morning. Nobody said girls were second class but they were and everyone knew it.
But Charlie and Sarah did not know it. They were proud of their daughter, who had won a prize for English, and saw no reason to hide it.
After the formalities were over, the pupils were permitted to mingle with their parents on the lawn outside the hall. Many smiled at each other and did not know what to say. But it was not like that with the Armstrongs. Alex was delighted that Charlie and Sarah had made it, they were delighted to be there, and none of them saw any reason to hide their feelings. They hugged and hugged, while Sarah shed a tear or two and Charlie looked proud and embarrassed in equal proportions, easing his collar constantly.
How earthy! How common!
Samantha Wilson had won no prizes but her wealthy mother patronised the air, wafting in a perfumed cloud and the most elegant of gowns, while Samantha’s smile sliced Alex’s parents to the bone. She had an instinct for the rich and powerful, and knew at once that the Armstrongs were neither. Alex had lied.
As soon as Samantha had the opportunity she eased close to Alex. ‘What did you say your mother’s name was? Lady Jane, wasn’t it? My mother would love to meet her.’
Alex’s eyes flayed her inch by slow inch. ‘I’m so sorry, Samantha, but I’m afraid that won’t be possible. My mother is over-particular about the people she meets. Such a shame.’
Daggers flying in the warm summer sunlight.
It was the one time in the year when the boys and girls of the college were permitted to mingle more or less without restriction — although watchful eyes were no doubt on guard. Alex led her parents through the mob, looking for Martin.
‘Looks like every bastard and his dog’s here,’ Charlie said genially to a man with whom he had accidentally collided.
‘Quite.’ Charlie might have been talking gobbledygook, from the man’s expression.
And then Alex saw him. ‘Martin!’ And she ran towards him.
They hadn’t seen each other for so long. They were at an age when boys in particular were all arms and legs around girls. Sixteen-year-old Martin had his schoolmates about him; he might have been shamed by the appearance of this female. But he wasn’t.
They looked at each other and it was as though they had never been parted.
Except that now, Alex thought, her feelings were stron
ger than ever. They filled her heart and throat and made the words catch on her tongue. Before they had been children, but now …
She could have thrown her arms around him, but did not want to shame him before his classmates.
‘How’s it going?’ she said.
‘Good. And you?’
‘Good.’
That was all. A beginning, certainly, but by no means enough. Alex knew something would have to be done, knew instinctively that Martin thought so too, but what … That was a question.
She was turning away. Just in time, she thought of something. ‘You going home for the holidays?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are you getting there?’
‘My father’s sent a boat to pick me up at Edward’s Crossing.’
She smiled: an open smile, yet with depths. ‘I’ll see you down at the river, then.’
Later that afternoon the headmaster spoke to Martin about going on to more advanced studies in the following year, and what a pity it was that Martin’s parents had been unable to attend so that arrangements could be finalised.
Martin heard barely a word. Not two hours before he had seen Alex at close range for the first time in years. He had even spoken to her, although his tongue had felt as big as boots in his mouth. Their brief meeting had confirmed his feelings. For once his concern was not with music alone but with the fact that Alex had said she would be travelling upriver at the same time as he was. She had run to him; she had smiled at him with her face alight. He was convinced her feelings mirrored his own. For them to travel in separate steamers instead of together was ridiculous, impossible. He had to do something about it, but did not know what.
With one day of the school year to go, Samantha Wilson finally played into Alex’s hands. Alex had not been the only one to talk to a boy at speech day. Samantha had gone one better. She had made an assignation — how she’d managed it Alex couldn’t imagine — and that evening, after dark, Alex heard her discussing it with her friend Claire.
Samantha knew where the door keys were kept. Around midnight she was going to sneak out and meet the boy by the creek. Alex heard the giggles, the sharply drawn breaths, as blood-hot confidences were exchanged and imaginations worked overtime. She stood in the shadows and heard every word.
