A Beautiful Dare

by Natasha Lester

  A Beautiful Dare

  Natasha Lester

  A short story set in the roaring twenties

  Includes a preview of Natasha Lester’s full-length novel, the deliciously evocative love story, A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald.

  Contents

  Title Page

  About the Author

  A Beautiful Dare

  A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald

  Copyright

  NATASHA LESTER worked as a marketing executive for ten years, including stints at cosmetic company L’Oréal, managing the Maybelline brand, before returning to university to study creative writing. She completed a Master of Creative Arts as well as her first novel, What Is Left Over, After, which won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award for Fiction. Her second novel, If I Should Lose You, was published by Fremantle Press. The Age described Natasha as ‘a remarkable Australian talent’, and her work has appeared in The Review of Australian Fiction and Overland, and the anthologies Australian Love Stories, The Kid on the Karaoke Stage and Purple Prose. In her spare time Natasha loves to teach writing, is a sought after public speaker and can often be found playing dress-ups with her three children. She lives in Perth.

  natashalester.com.au

  Twitter: @Natasha_Lester

  Facebook: /NatashaLesterAuthor

  #KissFitz

  A Beautiful Dare

  A short story by Natasha Lester

  Massachusetts, February 1922

  Evelyn Lockhart scooped porridge into her mouth as quickly as she could and without a care for how she must look; there was nobody in the dining room and, with luck, she could escape before anyone was awake. Her spoon froze by her lips at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  ‘Evelyn, what were you doing this morning? Clattering around like a horse. I was hoping to have a lie-in.’

  ‘Did you have a busy day yesterday?’ Evelyn asked politely, just managing to swallow her sarcasm along with her breakfast.

  ‘Just coffee,’ her mother said to the maid, ignoring Evelyn’s remark. ‘I’m not hungry. Although, now I’m awake so early I might as well eat. Some toast perhaps. Or waffles. Yes, waffles. And toast. Some eggs as well, I think. And don’t forget the coffee.’

  The maid nodded and left to get breakfast for the not-hungry Mrs Lockhart.

  Evelyn finished her last mouthful and was about to push back her chair when her sister came into the room.

  ‘Evie, what were you doing this morning?’ Viola yawned, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Clattering around like a horse,’ Evelyn replied impishly.

  ‘And where are you going? It’s still dark,’ Viola asked, sitting down and holding up her coffee cup, clearly too exhausted from the early start to pour her own. Luckily the maid was there to assist.

  ‘College,’ Evelyn replied impatiently, glancing out the window at the grey February morning that promised nothing but rain, and lots of it. ‘Just like I’ve done every Monday for the past year and a half.’

  ‘Oh, don’t start talking about college,’ Mrs Lockhart sighed, as she pricked her syrupy waffles with a fork. ‘Not at breakfast. Let’s have at least one meal without me having to wonder why I ever agreed to let you go to Radcliffe in the first place.’

  Even though Evelyn secretly agreed that it would be delightful to share a meal where she didn’t have to listen to her mother listing all the reasons why attending Radcliffe was potentially ruinous for her future prospects, she couldn’t resist saying, ‘Literature is very decorous, Mother.’

  ‘Marrying Charles Whitman would be more so,’ Mrs Lockhart snapped.

  ‘Do you know what a man said to me at the Vermonts’ party last week?’ Viola said sweetly. ‘That the saying, Is she a Radcliffe girl, or did a horse step on her face? is quite popular right now.’

  ‘Mind your own potatoes, Vi,’ Evelyn said brusquely.

  ‘Evelyn!’ her mother said.

  ‘She just called me ugly,’ Evelyn retorted.

  Her mother put down her fork. ‘Are people—men—really saying such things?’

  Evelyn pushed back her chair. ‘I’m going to be late.’

  Mrs Lockhart put a hand on Evelyn’s arm, stopping her. ‘Is it true?’ Her voice could have sliced through the china plate in front of her.

  Silence spoke the words Evelyn didn’t want to say. That for a Radcliffe girl to have her face mistaken for one trodden on by a horse was comparatively complimentary when put beside all the other insults—witches, grinds—tossed at the women—the Cliffies—who dared to expand their intelligence.

  ‘Well,’ her mother said. She prodded her plate away. ‘I feel ill. I knew I shouldn’t have had breakfast.’

  Evelyn took advantage of her freed arm to stand up. ‘If that’s all for this morning,’ she said flatly.

  ‘No, it’s not all.’ Mrs Lockhart wiped her mouth and studied her daughter. ‘If young men really are saying such things, then we need to make sure you meet Charles Whitman again before too much time passes. You haven’t seen one another since Christmas, when everyone noticed how solicitous he was towards you.’ Mrs Lockhart beamed at the memory of the praise heaped vicariously on her through her daughter’s success in fixing the attention of the wealthy Charles Whitman.

  Evelyn shifted impatiently and her mother regained her ominous tone.

  ‘If Charles hears that …’ Mrs Lockhart shuddered at the memory of Viola’s words, ‘phrase, he won’t be inclined to give it any credence with the memory of your pretty face fresh in his mind. You know as well as I do that you can be most becoming when you try.’

  Evelyn rolled her eyes but her mother had seized on the idea and was working through it with enthusiasm.

  ‘Perhaps you could engineer a meeting with Charles at Harvard? Yes, that is what you should do. And as soon as possible too.’

  Evelyn was aware that she should just take the chance offered and leave, but her mouth opened: ‘Given that neither you nor Father will allow me to go beyond West Cambridge Station and the Radcliffe grounds, how exactly am I supposed to engineer this meeting?’ she said furiously, unable to believe the hypocrisy of it. She’d been told that if even her little toe so much as inched over the line of impeccable behaviour her parents had established, Radcliffe would be withdrawn from her as swiftly as a finger from a very hot fire. And so she’d been more gratingly obedient for the last eighteen months than she’d ever been in her life, not ever walking down to Harvard, going only to the lectures she’d been permitted to attend, cycling to the station and then catching the train seventeen miles from Concord every day because her parents wouldn’t hear of her living on campus. ‘Or, perhaps I should go for a drive with Charles? That might do it. After all, Radcliffe did just pass a rule allowing us to ride unchaperoned in cars with men.’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ her mother sniffed.

  ‘I’m being ridiculous?’ Evelyn blazed. ‘You don’t want me to go to Radcliffe because it will make me unmarriageable, but now you want me to go to college in order to arrange my marriage to Charles. I don’t think I’m the one who’s being ridiculous. But I am the one who’s going to be late.’

  ‘What does it matter if you are late?’ Viola asked lazily.

  Evelyn froze mid-tirade. ‘Because …’ Because what? What did it really matter if she didn’t learn how to write a sonnet or interpret a villanelle or put together an essay on metaphor? Would the sky fall down? Would anyone’s life be different? ‘Excuse me,’ she muttered, hurrying out of the room, knocking into her father who was just coming in the door.

  ‘Evelyn Lockhart!’ he shouted.

  But she didn’t turn back. She ran into the yard and grabbed her bicycle, hurtling towards Concord station as fast as she could, letting the February chill put out the fire in h
er cheeks and soothe her temper. But no matter how hard the wind blew, it couldn’t sweep away the thought: why was she fighting so hard for something that mattered so little to anyone?

  *

  She only just made the train. In fact, she barely had time to unstrap her books before throwing her bicycle into the bushes and racing down the platform, one hand on her hat and the other clutching her books. She bounded through the door as the train began to pull away, all the while hoping that no one she knew would see her and report her undignified sprint to her mother.

  An hour later, Evelyn reached West Cambridge Station. With one eye on the sky, which was no longer dawn-grey but the colour of thunderbolts, and one eye on the path ahead, she marched on to Radcliffe. She was halfway across the quad when the rain began, pouring down like her mother’s constant disapproval, sharp and stinging, and quickly soaking through her clothes. She was stranded, with as much distance ahead of her as behind, so she began to run again, eyes down, in a ridiculous attempt to keep off the rain that had already turned her blonde hair to treacle.

  BANG! Evelyn ran into something so hard that she fell backwards, landing with a splash in the sodden grass. Dazed, she realised she’d crashed into a person, who was now also ingloriously seated in a puddle the size of Walden Pond and with the breath thumped right out of her too. Evelyn couldn’t help it; after the conversation she’d had with her mother and sister over breakfast, the scramble to catch the train, the sudden downpour and now this—wallowing around on her bottom in the mud like a pig—she began to laugh. What else was there to do when she was wetter than a liquored-up flapper and felt just as woozy from the blow? The red-headed woman on the ground giggled too, and then neither of them could get up because the waves of laughter made it impossible to move.

  Eventually Evelyn regained her breath and reached out her hand. ‘Here,’ she said.

  They pulled one another out of the muck with a squelch, giggling all the while.

  ‘I’m Rose,’ the woman said.

  ‘And I’m Evelyn,’ she replied, grinning. ‘Or Evie, really.’ She took Rose’s arm, literature lecture forgotten amidst the mirth, and they ran for the shelter of a portico, where Evie stopped, reluctant to go on her lonely way now.

  Rose tugged her forward. ‘Come with me!’ she said, her voice shadowed with devil-may-care, eyes shining with the promise that she had someplace thrilling to be.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ Rose hurried on, back into the storm.

  Evie didn’t hesitate; they were already soaked through to their underwear. More rain would make little difference. And she wanted to know—where would this red-headed woman, who’d appeared as magnificently and stunningly as if the sky really had fallen down, take her? For the first time in months she felt carefree and she was still smiling as they dashed on, wet skirt slapping against her legs, exhilarated by the storm, the collision, and the prospect of an uncertain destination.

  At Harvard Square they boarded the subway, taking them away from Cambridge and into Boston. Their clothes trailed threads of water on the floor of the car, which Rose ignored.

  ‘Did you know that Harvard has allowed some women to go to the medical school to take classes?’ Rose asked. ‘They won’t let the women graduate with a medical degree but it’s better than nothing.’

  Evie nodded uncertainly, not sure what that had to do with anything.

  ‘Well, I’m one of those women. And we’re off to Anatomy class.’ Rose smiled triumphantly.

  ‘Anatomy class.’ Evelyn repeated, trying to catch up with the adventure she’d already embarked on. It explained why they’d taken the subway; the medical school buildings were located off the Cambridge campus and near the centre of Boston. But it also told her that what she was doing was death or glory. Her smile faded and her stomach tightened with unease. She couldn’t imagine what punishment her parents would inflict upon her if anyone saw her at Harvard Medical School because, by going there, she wouldn’t just be breaking all the rules; she’d be stepping into another jurisdiction entirely. ‘How many women take the medical school courses?’ she asked, praying for an answer that might reassure her.

  Rose sighed. ‘Of the four women who started with me, only one is left. I think they’re going to stop the program for women. Which is why I need you to come with me. To boost the numbers.’

  One other woman. Apprehension constricted Evie’s throat and she swallowed hard, trying to dislodge it. But all it did was settle in the pit of her stomach. ‘You really go to Anatomy classes?’

  ‘I do,’ Rose said matter-of-factly.

  And then, suddenly, curiosity flared in Evie, an interest stronger than her fears, and she asked, ‘What are they like?’

  ‘Like stepping into Egypt. You can hardly breathe because everything you see and hear is astounding.’ Rose’s hands swept through the air as she spoke. Her whole body articulated an enthusiasm that Evie didn’t know if she’d ever felt in her life. ‘But I should warn you,’ Rose continued. She leaned forward and whispered theatrically, eyes twinkling, ‘All the women who take medical school courses are promiscuous. I’m sure you’ve heard.’

  ‘I have heard,’ Evie laughed. ‘But I never believe what I hear.’

  ‘That’s very wise.’

  Despite the fact that Rose’s words were true—Evie had heard people gossiping ruthlessly about the wanton girls who went to classes at Harvard Medical School even though the school would never allow them to become doctors—and despite the fact that every muscle in her body should be so strained with misgivings that a single movement would cause something to snap, Evie simply asked, ‘Why are you taking me with you?’

  Rose’s smile was pure joy. ‘When I bowled you over, your first instinct wasn’t to check the state of your dress or your hair. It was to laugh. Which makes you a very impressive woman.’

  Evie bit her lip to stop herself protesting, Oh no I’m not.

  *

  When they reached the Medical School buildings on Longwood Avenue, Rose was ready to hurry in, but Evie stopped her. ‘I know I didn’t bother about my hair or my dress before, but do we need to fix ourselves up? We’re drenched.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll prefer us this way. The muddier and drabber the better. Otherwise we’re too distracting.’ Her tone was faux-prim, a mischievous imitation of the condescending professors Evelyn was all too used to hearing. ‘I wonder if anyone in medicine has ever quantified the disturbing effect upon men of having women in a lecture theatre. Or perhaps someone should study exactly why their brains are so easily disordered.’ Rose grinned. ‘It’s funny that I don’t seem to suffer the same affliction, even though I’m surrounded by at least fifty men.’

  Evie dissolved into laughter. All her anxiety fled, replaced by a rush of anticipation that made her cheeks glow. She followed Rose into the building and down to the front of a lecture theatre, where they sat next to the only other woman in the room.

  The professor, a crisply dressed man in his forties, who looked as if he believed that standing behind a lectern gave him an undeniable gravitas rather than emphasising his short stature, cleared his throat and began to speak. ‘We are continuing with Splanchnology today, moving onto the urogenital apparatus, and beginning with the urinary organs.’

  Thus began a lecture, which should have been dull, given that the lecturer was reading from an enormous textbook, eyes fixed to the pages, never bothering to look up or to gesture with his arms, or to acknowledge that there were people in the room with him. But Evie listened attentively, having never heard anything like it before in her life. Who knew, for instance, that in this body she’d lived in for nineteen years, she possessed a urethral crest or a stratified squamous epithelium, or a glans clitoridis. She had no idea what any of those things were, but she noticed the lecturer glance up quickly at the three women in the room when he’d said the last, and that Rose had given him a lazy smile which made him momentarily lose his place.

  Rose leaned over to Evie
and whispered, ‘He’s about to move on to the male genital organs, which is why I brought you along. I think it’s something you might find handy to know one day. And, the more women in the room, the more uncomfortable he’ll be.’

  It all became clear to Evie exactly what Rose meant when the lecturer’s pace became ponderous and he began to shift awkwardly, as if he needed to go to the bathroom. ‘The penis is a pendulous organ,’ he read, ‘suspended from the front and sides of the pubic arch and containing the greater part of the urethra. In the flaccid condition it is cylindrical in shape, but when erect assumes the form of a triangular prism with rounded angles, one side of the prism forming the dorsum. It is composed of three cylindrical masses of cavernous tissue bound together by fibrous tissue and covered with skin. Two of the masses are lateral, and are known as the corpora cavernosa penis; the third is median, and is termed the corpus cavernosum urethrae. If you will turn to page 324 for the relevant illustration.’

  Rose pushed her copy of Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body over to Evie to show her the ‘relevant illustration’. It took Evie several moments to understand what she was seeing. The picture looked like an elephant tusk with one strip of bone pulled back and topped with a beret. She tilted her head, trying to figure out how the diagram related to what the lecturer had said, which she didn’t perfectly comprehend anyway. Then she realised what it was, a fascia diagram, where the parts of a penis had been separated in order to show what lay beneath. She also realised that her fascination with the page was transparent, that several of the men seated behind had noticed her tipped head, her unswerving gaze, and that, from their sniggers, had misunderstood her interest. It wasn’t simply because it was a part of the human anatomy she’d never laid eyes on or even thought about—she’d certainly seen the bulls and rabbits and roosters of Concord putting their organs to good use—it was the language used, the peeling back of layers of clothing and skin to reveal the human form as more than a serviceable thing. What she saw here was artistry, in the way the separate pieces fitted perfectly together to allow for function; there was virtuosity to the body that she’d never before discerned.