The Spider-Orchid

by Celia Fremlin

  I think Hester is out of temper because Miss O. did not say anything about her drawings. Hester does not like having to be in the schoolroom still, now that she is nearly sixteen, but Mamma says she still has a lot to learn, and must go on having lessons with me for at least another year.

  February 23rd

  Hester still very out of temper. She was almost rude to Miss Overton on our walk this afternoon, and I threatened that I’d tell Mamma.

  I would not have done so, naturally, but she is nevertheless being most unkind and unsisterly towards me this evening. She will not give me my music back, I cannot practice without it, and Mamma was very vexed with me. It is most unjust and unfair….

  And so on and so on. The modern Amelia began to skip bits here and there. It was quite interesting in a way, but what about History? What about the Crimean War? The Chartist riots? The publication of In Memoriam? This Amelia Ponsonby might just as well not have lived in History at all, for all the notice she took of it. While children in their thousands were starving to death in the streets, while the great cholera epidemic raged, and Sebastapol was falling, here was Miss Amelia Ponsonby lamenting her Mamma’s refusal to allow her to have a dress made up in figured lilac satinet.

  “I’m not too young for it,” she raged in the pages of her Journal, “and if I am, then so is Hester, too! She’s not ‘out’ yet, she’s only in the schoolroom still, just as I am!”

  Soldiers died. Politicians rose and crashed. Poor harvests plus economic bungling brought destitution to millions; and here is Amelia Caroline Ponsonby forbidden to wear figured lilac satinet.

  And what about all those “hidden secrets of her heart”? Amelia skimmed through the pages … spring … summer … autumn … for her, they slipped by in seconds, but of course her namesake had had to live through them.

  *

  Ah, this was more like it!

  November 3rd, 1854

  … I knew, without looking round, that Mr B. was still there, and so I contrived to leave my prayer-book in the corner of the pew, and I didn’t tell Papa about it till we were outside in the churchyard. He was vexed, but he allowed me to go back into the church for it while he waited.

  Oh, Journal, my Journal, how can I express to you my joy! He was still there! He was stacking the hassocks at the end of each pew, and he saw me! He spoke to me!

  ‘Have you lost something, Miss Ponsonby?’ he asked me, and his voice, though very respectful, was somehow full of a wonderful power, and yet gentle, too. I don’t know what I said, I could scarcely breathe, but I must have answered something, because a moment later he was handing me my prayer-book, with a little bow. He walked with me all the way to the church door, and then he stood there, watching, until he saw me rejoin Papa at the gate.

  O, Posterity, Posterity, if ever you read these words, share with me in my great joy! I did not know there was such happiness in the whole world!

  “Mr B.” Amelia had a little trouble identifying this character, and had to turn back a number of pages before she discovered that he was the new curate, who had taken up his duties at the end of the summer. But from this point on, as page followed page, she never again had to seek out references to him: he featured in every single entry, though often in a sadly negative rôle:

  Mr B. was not there

  Did not see Mr B. at all today. Tried to get Miss O. to come home past the new School building, but she said no, we would be late for tea, and it would vex Mamma.

  This last entry ended with a little prayer:

  O Lord God, who art merciful, I pray you put it into Miss O.’s head to come home from our afternoon walk past the School tomorrow. If you will just do this for me, O Lord, I will be thy meek and humble servant for ever. I will be full of forgiveness and loving-kindness towards all the creatures, even Hester.

  Whether or not this prayer was answered must remain for ever in doubt, for there was no entry for the following day. Nor for the next … nor the next. It was more than a week later before the tale was taken up again:

  November 21st, 1854

  I have it on good authority that tomorrow, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the Choir will be practicing the new anthem, with Mr B. in attendance! I will, I will, I will go with Aunt Sophie at that hour to put flowers on Grandmamma’s grave! He is sure to come through the churchyard, and I will persuade Aunt Sophie to wait there a while, talking about dear Grandmamma, until he comes….

  November 22nd

  I saw him! I saw him! He was talking to one of the choir boys as he came into the churchyard, but he saw us, I know he did, he came right up to us just as we were laying down the flowers. He stopped, and he said something to Aunt Sophie, and I am certain that he smiled at me, but I was too bashful to look up.

  Oh, would that I were bolder! But maybe he does not like a girl to be bold? I would hate to be bold and displease him, so perhaps it was all for the best that I kept my eyes on the ground.

  November 23rd

  Aunt Sophie told Mamma I was a dear, good girl, remembering Grandmamma so lovingly, and so I am to go with her next week, too, when she takes the flowers.

  Oh joy, oh joy!

  Hester would say that these are wrong thoughts, to be taking flowers to poor Grandmamma’s grave in such a spirit of rejoicing, and only in order to meet Mr B. at her graveside.

  But I don’t think they are. When I am a grandmamma, and dead, I’d like my granddaughter to come to my graveside for such reason—because she is happy, so happy, to be meeting someone she loves, and with all those flowers in her arms….

  Christmas. The January snows. For two Sundays running, deep snowdrifts kept the Ponsonby family at home, and so the young Amelia did not see her beloved at all, for two whole weeks. Her heart was broken, she confided to her Journal; she longed for death. Not until January 26th, the day of the Special Service for the Poor of the Parish, would she get a chance to see him again. The days until that distant, magic date were numbered off in her journal like a count-down. Seven more days—six more days—five more days—and so on, down to “one”.

  And then—nothing. The great day, January 26th, comes and goes, and Amelia Caroline Ponsonby records of it not one word. Mr B. is never mentioned again.

  Had the long-ago Amelia grown suddenly tired of him? Had he broken her heart in so dastardly a manner that she cannot bring herself to set his name on paper ever again?

  The subsequent entries gave no clues, though from mid-February onwards the young lady was setting down plenty else. Fittings for dresses; a forthcoming visit to her cousins, the Honourable Ralph and his brother. A pony had strained its fetlock; Papa had been angry when some village children were caught throwing sticks in the paddock. More fittings for dresses.

  Had Mr B. left the neighbourhood, perhaps? Taken another curacy elsewhere? Or had he—disaster of disasters—got married?

  Amelia—Amelia Summers, that is—had at last to face the fact that she would never know. She skimmed through the book right to the very last page, but in vain. Mr B. had disappeared without trace, and forever.

  *

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning by now, and Amelia’s eyes were pricking with tiredness. Slowly, she began to close the leather covers, but as she did so a passage caught her eye that she must have missed. About halfway through it was, still in the era of Mr B.’s glory.

  “O, Posterity, Posterity!” she read, the words dancing before her tired eyes. “Will you not spare a tear for one so young, so innocent, whose heart is broken? I shall not see him now until Saturday! How can I live through the bleak waste of days and hours that separate me from my love?”

  It was impossible to read any further. Amelia was quite cross-eyed with exhaustion. She switched off her lamp and lay back among her pillows, her eyes closing of their own accord.

  *

  … are you there, Amelia Caroline Ponsonby? This is Posterity speaking. I did shed a tear for you, just as you asked, but not at that particular paragraph, which I found a bit so
ppy, actually, though I daresay it was all right in those days. It was the bit about your grandmamma that made me cry, because now you are a grandmamma and dead; and I’m sure you never really thought you would be.

  But the bit that made me cry the most was the happy bit, the bit where you asked Posterity, which is me, to share your great joy—and oh, I did, I did! Because I too have known the rare and wonderful joy of which you write, and maybe that is why I have been able to get in touch with you like this, across all these years: because we are both so happy. Maybe happiness is like that?

  Or maybe it’s because I’m called Amelia, too. Isn’t that strange?

  I wish I knew what happened to Mr B., but I suppose I never shall.

  I hope you had a happy life, and got married and everything. Well, of course you did, or you couldn’t be Dorothy’s grandmother….

  The book slid from Amelia’s fingers, and her mother, hearing the thud from her bedroom next door, tiptoed in just in time to to hear her daughter murmuring drowsily, “I dreamed I was Amelia!”

  Identity-crisis? Ego-disorientation?

  Peggy was thankful, at least, that Maureen Denvers wasn’t here listening, or it would be all round the neighbourhood before the day was out that Peggy Summers was having teenage troubles at last, and wasn’t managing so marvellously as a single parent after all.

  CHAPTER VIII

  SHYLY, AMELIA TOOK a step in the direction of the oval gilt mirror which (to her father’s annoyance) Rita had insisted on propping up against one of the bookshelves, thereby at a single stroke replacing the entire works of Dostoevsky by her own smooth, delicately-moulded features.

  “Well, where can I have it, then?” she’d demanded when Adrian registered his outrage.

  “What about here?” he’d sulkily suggested, “what about there …?” But either the light was wrong, or the plaster wouldn’t take rawlplugs, or it would mean taking down Adrian’s set of horse-brasses; and over the whole discussion had hung like a dark raincloud the fact that Adrian didn’t want the damn thing anywhere. There was a mirror in the bathroom, wasn’t there? And one alongside the shelf in the hall? Well, then.

  Rita hadn’t gone on arguing. She had begun to learn that Adrian’s selfishness was a weapon which, in skilled hands, could often be used against him, and so she just kept putting the mirror where she wanted it, and moving it away again the moment he asked her to, until one of them got tired of it, which of course was him. Quietly, she notched up the victory, and went on to bigger things.

  “There—have a look!” she now said to Amelia, motioning the child towards a chair in front of the mirror on its improvised dressing-table. “Sit down, and tell me how you like it”—and then she stood back, and watched, with a little flicker of triumph at the corners of her mouth, while Amelia turned her head this way and that, tossed the loose hair back and then let it fall forward again; at last allowing a wondering, incredulous smile to spread across her face.

  “Oh … Rita!” was all she said; but it didn’t really need words. They could both see with their own eyes that the sallow, rather small-featured face had been absolutely transformed by this frame of gleaming luxuriant hair, touched here and there with golden lights.

  “A special shampoo for greasy hair, with conditioner,” Rita had ordained, with good-humoured firmness, brandishing the specially purchased bottles and escorting the dazed and as yet reluctant Amelia towards the bathroom. “You see, you first have to rub it in thoroughly—like this—and then … no, not like that! You have to really rinse it, three or four times, until the water runs absolutely clean. And then, if you fancy a few highlights—we mustn’t overdo it, though, you’re very young….”

  The blow-drier, of course, had been part of the magic. Mummy didn’t have a blow-drier at home, and Amelia had never really come across one before, and at first she backed away a little warily. She didn’t want to end up looking silly.

  “My goodness, I couldn’t live without my blow-drier!” Rita had cried—having already proved the point by leaving the thing around here, there and everywhere among Adrian’s most treasured belongings, ever since she came here. “A blow-drier is an absolute must! You see, Amelia, your hair is very fine as well as greasy. It’s difficult hair, and the worst thing you can possibly do with difficult hair is to dry it the way you do—crouched right up against an electric fire reading a book. It dries out all the oils and drains the colour. Now, with a blow-drier….”

  And now, looking in the mirror, Amelia could see that Rita had been absolutely right about absolutely everything. The stringy, damp-looking straggles of mouse were gone as if they had belonged to another life, and in their place fell these new, luxuriant locks which swung as she moved, full of bounce and highlights, flashes of blonde and chestnut setting off the pale, not-quite-straw colour of the whole.

  Amelia could not speak. And when Rita approached with the suggestion of a broad blue band to hold the weight of hair back from her forehead, she just swallowed, and sat like Cinderella with the fairy godmother, letting the wonders happen.

  She was beautiful! Well, practically. What was Daddy going to say!

  She wriggled off the chair excitedly—and then paused, remembering that Daddy was cross. Not very cross, and no doubt she could get him out of it. In fact, she was sure she could, because she knew, in this case, exactly what it was that had made him cross. It had made her cross too, at the time, but then that had been before the magic transformation. It was like looking back on another world.

  It was only an hour ago, actually; or maybe even less. She had burst into her father’s flat a little before two, looking forward to a nice long afternoon of writing, reading and dreaming. She had a small amount of geography homework to finish first, though, and she decided to get it out of the way at once. Unpacking her school bag, she spreadeagled herself in her usual fashion on the carpet, with atlas, text-book and notes in front of her.

  *

  “Now, Amelia”—Rita’s voice had broken into those very first minutes of concentration—“it’s not worth getting out all those books just now. We’re going out.”

  “Out?”

  “OUT?”

  The united outrage of father and daughter would have made most women quail.

  “Yes, out,” repeated Rita firmly. “It’s terribly boring staying cooped up in here like this. And on such a lovely day! Look at it! The sun’s come out! It’s spring!”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Then:

  “Oh no, Rita, please! Daddy and I never …”

  “Oh, now, Rita, for heaven’s sake! I’ve explained to you that on Sundays I have to …”

  “‘Have to!’ To hell with ‘have to’! I tell you, the sun’s shining! The daffodils are out! Why, we could go to Kew….”

  Kew. Kew was near Gunnersbury. And Gunnersbury, according to the fourth-form bush-telegraph, was where Mr Owen lived! Lived, alas, with his wife, but even so they might not spend all their time together. Maybe the wife was boring? Not his intellectual equal? Maybe he sought opportunities for getting away from her for an hour or two? What more likely than that he might decide to go for a walk in Kew Gardens by himself this bright afternoon? Wandering along the paths, musing gloomily, maybe, on the boring domestic scene to which he had so soon to return, he might suddenly chance to look up, and there, stepping lightly alongside a bank of daffodils, he would catch sight of …”

  “My hair!” had wailed Amelia despairingly at this point, “I haven’t washed it for days! How can I go anywhere when my hair’s all …”

  Her father had looked at her in amazement; Rita as a cat looks at a whole roast chicken left miraculously unattended: and that was the way it began.

  The hasty trip to the chemist’s that was always open on Sundays: the earnest discussion with the girl about the exact shade and texture of Amelia’s hair … and then … and then … the magic being set in motion.

  *

  “Daddy … Daddy, look!” she said now, coming a little hesitan
tly round the side of his desk.

  “Look, Daddy, do you notice anything?”

  “Ye Gods!” Adrian’s astonishment was all Amelia could have hoped—perhaps indeed more, for to show himself so utterly dumbfounded at the fact that his daughter was looking pretty could have been interpreted an unflattering.

  Amelia, however, did not interpret it thus. She giggled delightedly, and blushed a lovely rose-pink, thereby unwittingly completing the transformation.

  Her father seemed quite at a loss for adequate comment. “Oh, I say, chicken!” was the best he could manage, and then he swept her into his arms in a great bear’s hug.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were all three in the car, on the way to Kew Gardens.

  *

  They didn’t, of course, meet Mr Owen; but the first part of the afternoon was almost as exciting as if they had. Round every corner of the winding paths he might have appeared; in every one of the hot-houses he might have popped out from behind a great fern. Every heavily-built figure in the far distance might have turned out to be him as it approached; and every swarthy face with horn-rimmed glasses looked, for a millionth of a second, like his face.

  For half an hour—for nearly three-quarters—these joys were sufficient. In front of budding azaleas Amelia posed herself hopefully, her new, wonderful hair lifting in the spring wind; beside beds of narcissus she loitered; and in among the bare, leafless birches of the bluebell wood—no bluebells yet, of course—she wandered expectantly, keeping all the time a few careful paces behind her father and Rita so as to give the impression of being alone. Lightly, driftingly, she stepped between the trees, putting spring into each step so that her hair would lift and bounce against her shoulders. A dryad, anyone of a literary turn of mind might have thought, a dryad dreaming her woodland dreams….