The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  ‘Hello, darling. How can I help?’ She was chewing a pencil, her thick dark hair tucked behind one ear.

  ‘Um . . . well, I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Sounds serious.’

  I cleared my throat, momentarily blocking out the sound of the static crackling from the radio. I wished it could all go away, suddenly. That this was a normal day, a normal summer, that I hadn’t woken up. ‘Well . . .’ I sat down carefully on the chair next to her. She was drawing cats, curled and coiled into various positions. ‘Is this going to go on some material?’

  ‘Textile, yes. Think it could be lovely on a cushion.’ Her head was down, still looking at the shapes. Her pencil moved quickly, blocking out the stripes on a curled tail, thickening the sketchy lines of a pair of ears. ‘Simpler . . . must be simple . . . What’s up?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d heard from King’s. About the name change.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’ Mummy shuffled papers and pencils around, peering under her fringe. ‘Here it is. In fact, it’s from the Senior Tutor. He wrote to say Professor Lovibond has left the college, hence the delay as my letter went unopened for several days. I wish I’d known, I’d have written to him. Dear boy. They’re most apologetic about it.’ She put the letter down and looked at me. ‘You’re all set, darling. They’ve amended the name, and they’ve deferred the place for a year. Old Mr Forbes from Letham’s telephoned to let me know, too. Said what with your birthday being the last day of August, and all that – a year’s delay might be wise – apparently they had no problem with it. You need to bring your birth certificate when you go up but that’s fine, we’ll remember that, won’t we?’

  ‘Why’s Lovibond gone?’

  ‘Some illness. Very sad.’ She stared out of the window. ‘To have seen him again would have been so nice.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ I was silent for a moment, lost in thought. ‘Mummy . . . would you mind, a lot, if I didn’t go?’

  ‘Mind?’ I saw her eyes widen. She froze for a tiny second, then gave a small laugh. ‘After all that? If you don’t go, what are you going to do instead? Honestly, Kitty.’

  I shrugged, avoiding her eye. I looked around the room again, and realised what was different. Rory. Normally he was curled up under the desk, head resting on her feet, pretending to be asleep.

  She stroked my hair. ‘Kitty, love, what’s happened? Joss said something odd last night. You’ve been so strange this summer. Is it A-levels? Or Janey coming to stay? Eighteenth birthdays can be a bit awful, can’t they? Suddenly everyone says you’re a grown-up and I don’t think one is ready for them, somehow. I wasn’t.’

  ‘What did you do for your eighteenth birthday?’

  ‘Me?’ She chewed the pencil. ‘Well – let me see. Oh yes, of course. It was Good Friday, I remember that.’ And she stopped short, and said, her voice quiet: ‘We don’t need to go into it. Please, Kitty: will you take the place? I can find something for you to do for a year. I don’t know. Maybe my aunt. I have an aunt somewhere, no idea where . . . She took my father’s side.’ The pencil tapping grew faster. ‘But will you go? Promise?’

  ‘Why?’ I realised how stupid the question sounded.

  ‘You’re asking me why I want my daughter to go to Cambridge. Come on, darling, you’re brighter than that.’

  ‘What did you do on your eighteenth birthday?’ I said again.

  Mummy looked at me. Her pale, pointed jawline was set. The dark eyes flickered with something, then dulled. ‘Promise me you’ll go.’

  I met her gaze, and then shrugged. ‘Promise.’

  ‘Wonderful. Kitty – oh, this is good news. I know it’s the right decision.’ She exhaled, and I realised I too had been holding my breath. ‘Now, let me see.’ She gave a big, beatific smile. ‘Yes. He made me go to church with him. He’d come up specially.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, your father of course. This is my eighteenth birthday, you did ask.’

  ‘Oh – yes. Go on.’

  She laughed. ‘Who else was there? Anyway, the night before, we went to Simpson’s, and I wore my new Biba dress, and he said it was a waste of money. So rude! Then he took me to the cinema.’ She gently tapped the tip of her pencil on the worn table surface. Tick-tick. ‘I was desperate to see Mary Poppins. But we saw A Shot in the Dark – Peter Sellers, you know. Very funny. He laughed the whole way through and then we went back . . . Went back to the square.’

  Tick-tick. ‘Where?’

  ‘My house, you know. Well, Mummy’s house. I had lodgers. It was an absolute pain at times, cooking and cleaning for them, but it was rather fun. At least, when Simon was still there, it was lots of fun.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘We did have some larks. Two art students I knew, a lady seamstress and a doctor. And George Lovibond – but he left some time about a year after Mummy’s death, I think. I’d have sold it, I think, your father was always saying I should. Simon – Lestrange, you know – he wouldn’t let me. He said it was my security –’ Her eyes swam with sudden tears. ‘But he’d lost his job. He had to take another position, miles away. He’d come back on weekends to check up on me. I used to get so cross with him . . .’ She shook herself. ‘What a fool I was.’

  ‘You weren’t, Mummy. Go on.’

  ‘Dinner . . . cinema . . . new dress. So, yes, on the Good Friday, he took me to church. To atone for my sins, you know.’

  ‘Simon did?’

  ‘No! He did.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry. Daddy. Your father did.’

  I was cold suddenly, and shivered.

  ‘To atone for your sins?’

  ‘Well, yes. But by then it was all settled between us, anyway.’ She covered her face with a piece of foolscap. ‘It had to be, he kept saying. It was rather scandalous. I was quite young. Oh, it’s rather embarrassing, telling your daughter about all this. Sex, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was silent for a moment. I could feel my blood, pumping, thudding in my ears, beating faster and faster. ‘Sorry – I knew you were married quite young. That wasn’t the –’ I swallowed. ‘That wasn’t the first time then? Mummy, how old were you?’

  ‘The first time? I was fourteen, the first time. But we were so careful.’ The pencil, still beating on the sticky desk. She looked down at it. ‘He’d come up every few weeks after that, especially when Simon left. And he said it was wrong, that he’d get into trouble. But I – I needed someone. You know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I felt sick.

  ‘Daddy made me see how impractical it all was. The danger of living on my own. I was so scared when he wasn’t there. It felt right, Kitty.’ She looked up, defiantly. ‘It sounds wrong but it wasn’t.’

  I nodded. I wished she wouldn’t call him ‘Daddy’. I’d never called him that. Not ever.

  ‘The night before I was eighteen, we did it again. And we said we’d pretend it was the first time.’ She smiled, gently. ‘He said it wouldn’t be proper otherwise, you know. He was a little older.’ Mummy’s gaze slid out to the lawn, the horizon beyond.

  ‘He was . . .’ I screwed up my eyes, in part to hide my expression. ‘Mummy, the first time though . . . you were fourteen. He was thirty- . . . he was thirty-six.’

  ‘It was all quite proper, as I say. We didn’t tell anyone. He was so kind about it. Even when I wasn’t sure. And he took care of things – you know, odds and ends of Mummy’s furniture, he’d have them valued, give me the money. She had some jolly nice pieces, you know. He knew what he was doing.’

  I tried to speak, but bile was swimming in my mouth, and I had to swallow.

  ‘Anyway, that night Simon suddenly turned up. It was a surprise, for my eighteenth. He’d bought me some gloves. And, well, Daddy was there. Simon – oh, he was very old-fashioned. It was the sixties, after all. But Simon was very angry.’ She rubbed her face. ‘He made a bit of a scene, talked about going to the police – well, I was eighteen, so that was rubbish. But he said some terrible things to Charles – to your father. Charle
s was right to order him out of the house. Daddy, I mean.’ She smiled gently.

  ‘Is that why you and Simon weren’t in touch, all those years?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so. But I had to choose. I wrote to him, after we were married, to say how happy I was. I wrote to him when Charles sold the house for me, to ask him to collect his things. He never came. I did so want to see him. To th-thank him.’ And her voice thickened, and she made a choking sound. ‘Thank him for looking after me. Darling, you’re too young to understand.’

  ‘I’m older than you were, Mummy.’

  ‘Yes, but it was different. I’d seen a lot.’

  ‘How?’ I stopped, and started. My mouth was dry. ‘Mummy – you were fourteen when he – he started sleeping with you?’

  ‘But I’d known him since I was twelve, darling. It wasn’t the same as it is now. And he was a friend of Simon’s. And as he was always saying, I trusted Simon and Mummy trusted Simon, so it meant he could be trusted too. And he was such a help, sorting out the furniture, and making me see I ought to sell the house. And – you know, he always promised he’d marry me. He even took me down here, to show me what I’d be letting myself in for.’

  Her fingers tightened on the pencil.

  ‘You’re never quite sure, are you? But coming to Vanes made me understand he wasn’t – I didn’t like it you see, I was quite young still, and it hurt, the first few times, and there was the business of – well, mess, and being quite quiet, so he didn’t bother me too often. Your father is a gentleman. Old school.’

  ‘Yes,’ I managed to say.

  ‘I don’t like your expression, Kits. We agreed we’d make my eighteenth birthday special. That’s why I remember it so clearly. And the next day, in church, Chelsea Old Church. He told me it was clean now, I was clean. And that we’d be married, really that we would. Oh. Realising I wouldn’t have to live in lodgings any more, that he could sell Mummy’s house for me, that I’d be married to someone who’d take care of all of that.’ She was drawing on the paper now, the pencil circling round, and round. ‘And I did lose touch with Simon, for years, until I bumped into him at the Tate Gallery, about ten years ago. I was up in London for the week, meeting some fabric buyers. I’d just popped in, to look at Ophelia in Room Nine. I’m sorry you don’t know London better, it’s my home, really. I love the Tate, and Mummy and I used to love Ophelia. And he was in the same room. Oh, it was so wonderful to see him. To be in touch with him, to tell him I had a daughter, I’d given her his surname . . . Because Mummy had made him promise he’d look out for me and when – when – when’ – and her face crumpled into a hideous, silent, howl of grief – ‘when I realised what being married entailed, and that your father wasn’t keen on me designing any more, and living quite away from what you know, and so young, I could have . . . done with a friend.’ She nodded, lips tightly pressed together. ‘And Simon, well, he was my friend, and Mummy’s. He was a true friend.’

  Our eyes met, and there was something there, an expression of utter calm, as always. I had never seen her angry, or upset, merely irritated sometimes. What had she done to herself, to stay that way?

  My mind still couldn’t quite grasp the full extent of it. I thought of my father now, hanging around Wellington Square, whistling. Waiting for this girl to let him in. Wanting her to.

  ‘Darling,’ said Mummy, in a low voice. ‘I think we have to change the subject now. Do you understand?’

  ‘I don’t think we should.’

  ‘We have to, darling. Please.’

  Behind the dull expression in the eyes, a muscle twitched. ‘I don’t think about it. I can’t think about it. Otherwise it seems real.’

  She looked down at the twisted, tangled ropes of creeping tendrils she had drawn, encircling the scribbles on the sugar paper. Rescue Sylvia. I stared at her. I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘He shan’t hurt you again,’ she said quietly. ‘No one shall.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Not now. I’ve told you. Do you understand? Will you keep your word and go to Cambridge? Get a degree, get a job, be a huge success, earn a living, be away from here? Do you understand?’ She was close to me. She cupped my chin in her hand. ‘I said, Kits, do you understand?’

  And I did understand. ‘Yes. Thanks, Mummy.’

  ‘Now, let’s enjoy the ceremony, and all be together, and spend the rest of our time with Janey before she has to leave, and it’ll all be lovely.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a Beloved Girl, Mummy. I don’t want to take part in it.’

  ‘Listen. The doctor says if you’re stung and it affects you that you’re unlikely to have the same reaction again.’

  ‘I don’t think he was right,’ I said. Just the thought of it now, the ritual of going into the chapel, made my throat close up. ‘And I don’t want to put the headdress on. I don’t want people watching me. It’s not going to be my house, apart from anything else. I don’t want Joss’s friends there.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought they were your friends too.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Her pencil drew small, looping circles, closer and closer together. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Something happened.’ The pain in my throat from keeping control of myself was an ache spreading out across my whole body, joining up with the other aches, the pain in my vagina, the bruises on my thighs, my breasts, my head.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mummy gently. ‘I see. What – what was it?’

  ‘Giles,’ I said, very softly, and it hurt to speak now, my muscles almost entirely closed up. ‘I don’t want Giles there.’

  ‘Last night after the rehearsal, was it? Joss said he had some people back.’ I nodded again. ‘OK, darling. Did you two have a row?’

  ‘N-not exactly.’

  She leaned towards me. ‘Oh my love. Did – did he hurt you?’

  I shrugged, and bit my lip. ‘A bit.’ Out of the window, I could see birds on the wires from the telegraph pole, sitting, waiting to fly south. I chewed the skin on the side of my nail, praying she would make it right, that she would explain it.

  ‘Right. Oh, dear God. Right.’

  She stood up, and paced to the window. She was saying something, under her breath. Over and over. She looked down, and I knew she was searching for Rory. ‘Did you get away?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, did he come after you? Did you try to run away from him?’

  ‘N-no. I mean – no.’

  ‘There, you see. It can’t be that bad.’ She stroked my shoulder. ‘These things happen, Kitty. All the time. It’s life. It’s part of growing up. I – I learned that, and when I did, I was much happier. Honestly.’

  His breath, hot and rancid, hammy, acidic, breathing wet spray in my ear as he rammed up inside me, again, again, again, and the sharp, sandpaper agony of it, far inside, and at the edge, and on my hips. His face . . . his smile. I cast my mind back over it all.

  ‘He – he hurt me, Mummy.’

  She was very still, blinking a couple of times. ‘Darling, where was it?’

  ‘In – in the pool house.’

  ‘Really? Had you been drinking?’

  I nodded, miserably. I put my hand on her wrist. I suppose I wanted her to touch me. I wanted someone to wrap me up, gently, to shield me, enclose me from it all.

  ‘I think perhaps you shouldn’t have drunk so much, Kitty. It’s been happening rather a lot lately. I – I don’t mean to blame you or Giles. He shouldn’t have gone too far, clearly, and I’ll tell Joss to tell him. But you shouldn’t have gone with him, darling.’

  ‘He – he made me.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘Really? Did you scream? I don’t think so. No. I was reading till late, I heard Joss and – ah, Janey, come in, I think I’d have heard someone being dragged off to be raped.’

  Then she did put her hand over mine.

  ‘It’s very unpleasant, but it happened. Put on a brave face, darling.�
� Her finger strafed my cheek, my chin, and I shivered. ‘It’s like the Collecting. Heaven knows there are plenty of things I didn’t want to do when I was your age. What is it Daddy says at the beginning of the Ceremony? Half for us and half for them, else the Devil take us all. We all have to put up with things we don’t like. It’s part of growing up.’

  Suddenly the old line came to me, one that Sam Red had said last summer, as we walked along the seafront at Minehead idly watching the sunset: normal teenagers, him with a beer and a cigarette, me eating candy floss. ‘It’s better to be preserved in vinegar than rot in honey, Kitty.’

  I looked out of the window. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They’re lighting the incense.’

  ‘A day early?’

  ‘They need calming down. The earlier the better.’

  I realised the humming I was hearing wasn’t the radio, not this time. It was coming from the hives. She drew a line harshly through the sketch of the cats and looked up.

  ‘Just carry on, Kitty. That’s my advice to you. Remember, I’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘Will you?’ I wanted to laugh, I felt almost hysterical. But she said:

  ‘Don’t worry. Haven’t I sorted out Cambridge for you?’ She cleared her throat and swallowed. ‘Trust me.’

  I can’t, I wanted to say, but didn’t. ‘I’ll see you later, Mummy.’

  She had already turned back to her desk, humming to herself now as I left. I thought, but couldn’t be sure, that I felt her eyes on my back, watching me leave.

  Later that morning, before lunch, I went up to Merry’s room, at the top of the house, the other end from Janey’s. It was stifling hot already, not a wisp of a breeze, the sky a heavy yellow, lower than before.

  She was lying on the floor, flicking through a book, which she slid under the bed as I opened the door.

  ‘Hello, darling. What’s that book?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I crouched down and flicked it out before she could stop me. ‘Neighbours Annual 1988.’

  Her face was instantly flaming red. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’