‘Don’t you? I think about it all the time,’ he said gloomily. ‘In fact, I’m afraid I might actually die of love before I have chance to find a wife.’
‘No one dies of love. It’s a p-pathetic fallacy.’
‘I might be the first case. I’ll go down in the medical books and my name will live for ever: Haywood’s Melancholy Disease of the Heart. They will paint pictures of me on my deathbed!’
‘You’ll survive. Everyone does. And you’ll marry in God’s good time.’ Frank had such an easy-going, loving nature that I was sure that would be the case.
He stopped in his tracks. ‘You’re very cool, I must say. My father was a curate for a dozen years before he got a Living and enough money to marry. That’s twelve years added on to, say, three at Oxford and I’ve still two more here at school. Seventeen years, Jameson! Seventeen years living like a monk! Seventeen years seeing beautiful girls dance about in front of you and knowing you can’t touch them or kiss them or – anything really. And it might be longer!’
‘And it might be shorter too. You have to consider the law of averages.’
‘What’s average, then? How old is your father?’ he asked, somewhat belligerently.
‘Fifty-six,’ I said sheepishly.
‘And you are sixteen. So he was almost forty when he married. I can’t imagine waiting until I’m forty to do the deed. It’s bad enough thinking about it.’
I’d always avoided thinking about it. ‘Things will happen when they will. There’s no p-point in tormenting oneself. Now let me get on with P-Pliny.’
‘Pliny? Pliny? I give up on you sometimes, John.’ Then his voice took on a teasing note. ‘I don’t think you’ve even tried to kiss a girl, have you?’
‘Well, have you?’ I retorted, recalling that his passions had so far been unrequited.
‘Yes, I have.’ He looked at me triumphantly. ‘I kissed my cousin, Jane Freeman, last Christmas during hide-and-seek. She had very soft, cushiony sort of lips. She was cushiony everywhere, in fact. I thought about her all the holiday.’ He adopted the dreamy look I knew so well.
‘Well,’ I said, emboldened. ‘I kiss my sisters all the time. And there are seven of them.’
‘Oh, sisters don’t count.’
‘And cousins do?’
‘Of course. You can marry your cousin, but not your sister.’
It occurred to me that if kissing my sisters was delightful, perhaps kissing a cousin – or a sweetheart – would be even better. Of course, I had not yet met anyone outside my family whom I wished to kiss. Perhaps I was simply very choosy. Perhaps, like my father and Frank’s father and many hundreds of others, I simply had to wait for God’s good time.
He lowered his voice. ‘What do you think of Gypsy Susan, for example?’
This was a name he had given one of the nut-brown girls. She was not a gypsy at all, but it suited Frank to romanticize her a little. ‘I think she’s rather dirty,’ I said.
‘But beautiful, don’t you think?’
I’d never really looked at her. To tell the truth, I’d never dared to. I’d just been aware of her bold eyes making me drop my gaze to her filthy, unshod feet. ‘I don’t know. Nice enough, I daresay. To other gypsies.’
Frank put his face close to mine. ‘I dare you to kiss her.’
‘Dare not accepted. And if we don’t get this speech of Scipio Africanus translated in half an hour, we’ll be in trouble with the Croc.’
‘You’re too scared to do it!’ He did a little dance of joy.
‘Not at all. It’s just not polite to go around kissing young ladies without asking them.’
‘But supposing you did ask, and she said yes?’
‘Too many hypotheticals.’ And I closed my mind to the topic and went back to my Latin.
But Frank was not a boy to be thwarted. Our next half-holiday, we went walking down towards the river. I could tell he was on the lookout for Gypsy Susan, living as she did in one of the hovels where the people burned sticks for charcoal and did a bit of fishing. There were always old women sitting on broken chairs outside their doorways, waiting for the children to bring back what they had scavenged. The old women nodded at us as they puffed away at their clay pipes, and the children rushed up holding out their muddy hands in begging welcome, but Gypsy Susan was nowhere to be seen. I was greatly relieved. But as we headed back along the woodland path, suddenly there she was, standing in a patch of dry earth under a chestnut tree, kicking a small stone about with her bare feet. I attempted to keep walking, head down, but Frank pulled me by the arm. ‘Here’s your chance!’
‘No!’ I said, wresting my arm away. She went on playing with the stone, ignoring us grandly. She was wearing some sort of dark red skirt, short enough to show her calves.
‘Good afternoon, miss,’ Frank said smoothly, pulling off his hat.
She went on kicking the stone, then sent it skidding into the undergrowth with one deft movement. I watched her graceful limbs and the toss of her black hair as if in a trance. ‘Leave her alone, Frank,’ I said, my voice choked.
‘Would you like to earn sixpence?’ he said to her then. His words were like a shard of glass through my heart as I anticipated his strategy.
She looked up warily. ‘Wha’ fer?’ she said. Her voice was rough and cracked.
‘For being so pretty.’
She laughed. She had bad teeth behind the rosy lips. ‘An’ whar’ else?’ She stood firm, legs set apart, eyes narrowed.
‘Just a kiss. We’ve walked all the way hoping to see you. It’s two miles, you know, from the school. Two miles for a kiss. Thruppence each one. Is that a bargain?’ He gave her his most winning smile.
‘Let’s see yer monay, furst.’ Her speech had a strong local burr.
Frank drew out a sixpenny piece from his waistcoat pocket. She looked at it hungrily. ‘Just two kisses, mind?’ she said. Then, looking at me, ‘Your friend doan’t seem too keen.’
I was stunned. ‘You can’t p-pay her, Frank!’ I said. ‘That’s wrong!’
‘No it ain’t,’ she said, turning on me. ‘You don’t need to poake yer nose in, beanpole.’
‘Well, I’m having nothing to do with it.’ I walked away, shocked at Frank’s behaviour, my head reeling from the look of her taunting eyes, her maddeningly graceful limbs. Once out of sight I leaned up against a tree, my blood racing. All was quiet. Seconds later, Frank appeared, looking rather white and shaken. I thought perhaps she had stolen his money without completing the bargain. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I whispered. ‘P-Paying her – it’s making her a harlot. Kisses should be given freely.’
‘She kissed in a very funny way.’ He licked his lips, doubtingly.
Before I’d had time to ask him what he meant, she came prancing back along the path, her dark mass of hair swinging back and forth. She stopped when she saw us both looking so nonplussed. Then, before I had time to avoid her, she pushed me back against the tree trunk. Her hands were hard, her whole body was hard: bone and sinew rather than soft flesh. I smelled her overpowering sweat, felt her lips up against me, salty and dirty. I closed my eyes, half of me yielding, half resisting. Then I felt her tongue, lithe like a serpent. To my amazement, she tried to push it into my mouth. I gagged and thrust her away in horror. The she laughed again and let me go, and walked off. ‘There y’are, lads – two fer a tanner,’ she called out over her shoulder. ‘I doan’t cheat.’
I spat on the floor, trying to rid myself of her sour smell and fishy taste. I rubbed my mouth and my nose and my cheeks with my handkerchief. I felt I wanted to wash myself, cleanse myself, douse myself for ever in the stream of Living Water, purify myself of this horrid deed.
Frank seemed amused at my antics. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Anyone would think you’d swallowed a frog.’
‘I feel I have.’ I couldn’t help shuddering. ‘Ugh, ugh, ugh!’
‘Her mouth was a bit wet,’ he said. ‘Not at all like Jane Freeman’s. But still.’ He smiled. �
��It was well worth thruppence.’
I looked at him aghast. ‘So you enjoyed it?’
He looked at me. ‘Yes, of course I did. And she has her sixpence. You’re the only one making a fuss.’
I could not tell him how loathsome I thought him, how I felt betrayed by him, how immoral the whole procedure had been. I could not understand how any decent person could indulge in such grossness, and I determined I would never again put myself in such a position. Kissing, for me, would always be confined to my mother and sisters. Let Frank look forward to the marriage bed; I had no such ambitions.
And I have not changed my mind. Even Daniel’s blissful marriage does not tempt me. Even the prospect of begetting children of my own does not shake my resolve. It seems to me that I am supremely suited to be an uncle and a friend; to share a particular part of my life with others, but no more. I should, for example, utterly dislike to give up my life as a scholar, in which I have no one to be responsible for, save myself (and Dinah, of course). When you really love the subject which is your livelihood, no effort is too much. But I would hate to have dealings with a wife, as Daniel does, on the subject of What Shall We Have for Dinner? or Should the Cook be Given Notice? Or Can We Afford a Carriage? It is much more pleasant to know nothing of domestic matters except that I will find a four-course meal waiting for me at seven o’clock each evening, of which I may eat as little or as much as I please, and converse with my curmudgeonly fellow dons in like degrees. I may drink a little brandy without censure, and I may retire to bed as early as suits me. I may wake in the night and thrash around in the bedclothes without disturbance to a living soul except myself. If I have a mind to attend to algebraic geometry at two in the morning, I can do it. This is selfish, I own it. Whereas, in most people’s minds, there is a sofa marked ‘Kindness’ to welcome all comers, in mine there is but one chair, marked ‘Selfishness’, and other people can’t come into it to bother me, because there is nowhere for them to sit. And where most people have a little stool called ‘Humility’, in mine there is a great one called ‘Conceit’, and it is so high that, were you to sit on it, your head would knock hard against the ceiling. Fellows like Smith-Jephcott like to think that is all I am about; that work and self-importance are what I am entirely made of. He is wrong. I have a heart, of course, ticking away like a pocket watch. But I am only tempted to open my heart to children.
12
MARGARET CONSTANTINE
I’d forgotten that I’d taken my drawers off for Mr Jameson. It seems very peculiar, now as I look back – how I’d dared to do it, and what a strange request it had been. I know Mama would have been scandalized, but it seemed natural enough at the time and I wasn’t in any way embarrassed. I always felt safe with Mr Jameson. Yet all the same, I know he’s connected with the dark events that have slipped so completely from my mind. Perhaps Daisy will shed some light on them soon.
I turn the page, and to my surprise, there she is, smiling up at me – Daisy Baxter with her gypsy dress and shorn locks. The photograph is worn and battered, but I smile back, thinking how very young she is. It’s rather foolish of me to imagine such a child will have the answer to a problem like mine. I begin to think I’d do better to put my faith in the Harley Street man.
I close the book. But as I stretch forward to put it down, I catch my reflection in the looking-glass on my dressing table and, not for the first time, I’m shocked to see how different I look from what I expect to see. I’m well-dressed and my hair is elaborately curled, but I’m deathly pale and there are dark patches under my eyes. I’ve hardly slept since my wedding day. And I’ve become so thin that my rings slip off every time I wash my hands. I can’t go on living like this. If only I could remember what happened in those four years between the ages of eleven and fifteen that are such a mystery to me!
I’ve never dared speak of this queer hiatus to anyone, afraid I would be ridiculed, or worse. But the fact remains that I awoke, one summer afternoon to find, quite suddenly, that I had become someone else. At first, I was only aware that my heart was beating rather fast and I seemed to have recollections of some unpleasant encounter. So it was a relief to see the grass and the flower beds and realize I was, after all, sitting safely on the lawn in the vicarage garden. But at the same time it seemed as though the bushes were unaccountably bushier, and the trees taller. And my body felt strange – as if it had suddenly become a great deal heavier. I looked down, and to my surprise, there in my lap was a pair of gloved hands clasping an ivory fan. But the hands weren’t mine – they had elegant, long fingers and were altogether far too grown-up to belong to me. Yet they responded when I tried to move them and wiggled delicately inside their net gloves – gloves of the sort I’d coveted for a long time but had never been allowed to have. And I could see that my body was clothed in a very grown-up silk dress, and had, of all things, a bosom. It swelled out in a confident curve as I looked down, and it alarmed me in no small measure to think how – if it were mine – it could have grown so decidedly large while I was asleep. Then, as I tried to get up, I found my legs were encumbered by layers of long petticoats, and my waist was constricted painfully by something hard and rigid – undoubtedly a corset. It was the most curious thing ever, as if I had sloughed my old skin and suddenly become a different creature.
I looked about myself rather wildly, expecting to see my astonishment mirrored in the faces of others. But although there were over half a dozen people in the garden, nobody took the slightest notice of me, and everyone went on talking and handing around sandwiches and lemonade as coolly as if my metamorphosis were perfectly unremarkable.
Sitting next to me on the lawn was a slight young man, with a dark, serious face and glossy, straight, black hair. He was dressed in clerical black, but was wearing a straw hat with a green ribbon. ‘You’ve been asleep, Margaret,’ he said in a pleasant voice, tickling my neck with a blade of grass. ‘Have you been dreaming? You don't seem quite yourself.’
He was smiling at me in a familiar way, as if we were in the habit of sharing confidences, but I had no idea who he was or why he was calling me ‘Margaret’. Perhaps I had strayed into Margaret’s body? If so, I wanted to be out of it as soon as I could. I didn’t feel at all right in her silk dress and net gloves. I certainly didn’t feel right with her curving bosom and languid limbs. I wanted to be myself again. But who, exactly, was I? I started to panic. I'd thought I was a child called Daisy; in fact, I'd been certain of it. But now, every time I thought of her, the fainter she became in my mind. She seemed to be rapidly disappearing down a long dark tunnel, leaving this grown-up person in her place.
I stared at the young man. It was clear that he knew me well. And it was clear that the people sitting around us knew him, as they left us to our own devices and murmured away in their own conversations. My sisters were looking more than ever like twins in matching dresses, with large sun hats tied fetchingly under their chins. They were grown-up women now, and were paying attention in a very ladylike manner to two young clergymen who lounged on the lawn beside them. One of them I recognized as Papa’s curate, Mr Morton. He was very intimate with Christiana, laughing and smiling with her, and she was returning his smiles in quite a kind way instead of being haughty and sarcastic, as she usually was. Sarah was reading a poem aloud and I knew for sure it was in German, although I had no recollection of learning the language. And there was Mama, sitting on a folding chair, dispensing tea in her familiar way, but looking more anxious than I remembered her, with grey strands threading through her hair. And there in the distance was (surely) Benjy, nearly three foot tall, already breeched and running around in a sailor suit and throwing up the very same rubber ball which Nettie had given me. Running after him and calling out his name was a servant I didn’t recognize at all. But there was no Papa. And Mr Jameson was absent too.
I thought about making a declaration of my strange situation to the assembled company, but I felt too too ridiculous. What could I have said? And what would they have
thought of me? I would undoubtedly be taken for a mad girl, or perhaps they would say – like this pleasant young man – that I was dreaming.
Indeed, the only explanation for all the strangeness around me was that I was still dreaming, and sooner or later, I’d wake up. To hasten the event, I closed my eyes tight and counted to ten. But when I opened them, everything was exactly as it had been before. In fact, it seemed even more real. I could hear the crickets in the grass and smell the roses in the rose beds, and see the long shadow of the cypress tree across the lawn. I could even see the intricate braiding on my sisters’ dresses as they rose to play croquet, and I could hear them laughing delightedly as they swept their great skirts around and clicked their mallets elegantly against the ball. ‘Good stroke!’ someone called out, and ‘Well done!’ Surely I was not imagining that? Then I felt a great thump as Benjy climbed onto my lap, his hot and heavy body crushing my frock and making moist stains on the silk as he wriggled about before leaping up again to chase a tabby cat I’d never seen before. Benjy was real too, smelling of sun and sweat and sugar. Even the pages of the novel lying next to me smelled of warm paper as they turned in the breeze and I stopped them with my unfamiliar hand in its unfamiliar net glove. All the time I was aware of the dark young man as he lay on the grass alongside me, attempting to draw me into conversation. As he spoke, he made a little garland of buttercups which he placed on my head. ‘Made with the best butter,’ he said with a laugh.
Hours and hours seemed to go by during which I said as little as possible. I smiled at the young man and drank the tea he offered, holding the china cup with my new, slender hands and daintily eating the sandwiches that were brought around, thinking – believing – hoping – that at any moment I would wake up and my everyday memories would return and rescue me. My whole head ached with the effort.
Then Mr Morton rose and said he had to get ready for Evensong, and the tea-party broke up. At which point, the young man with the straw hat took my hand very earnestly and said, ‘I’ve hardly had a word from you today, Margaret. Have I done something to offend?’ I hastened to reassure him, saying (in a grown-up voice that seemed quite foreign to me) that I’d foolishly given myself a headache through sleeping in the sun. ‘Take care not to do it again, then,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps use a parasol.’
After Such Kindness Page 18
