Longbourn (27 page)

James swallowed back the sickness. It was as if there was something spoiling in his belly. Wickham was seeping in everywhere, slipping through the cracks and oozing across the floor, and starting to look as though he’d always be there, and would be got used to, like rising groundwater.

He slid out of his hiding place and skirted round the edges of the yard, keeping out of sight of the window till he came right up beside it. There was a haze of scarlet in the fireside chair. He saw the young officer ease himself to his feet. He saw Polly scamper across the kitchen and hold the hall door open for him, saw the officer breeze across the room, and pass her. He watched the girl, grinning, follow after him, and the door fall shut upon them.

James slammed in through the kitchen door, making Mrs. Hill start, making Sarah turn and smile. Then her smile faded and was gone.

“What is it?”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing—”

“What did he do?”

“Well, he came into my kitchen—” This from Mrs. Hill; but from Sarah, a half-shake of the head—nothing—but then a glance after Polly.

He took in the lay of the land; the women stalled in their work by his sudden entrance, staring at him blankly. But Polly—where was she? He crossed the room in three strides, leaned through the hall doorway, and looked out.

“What is it?” Sarah came over, wiping her hands, and peering out beside him.

They watched as Mr. Wickham, in his pristine scarlet coat, walked side by side with Polly down the hallway. Polly, half-skipping to keep up with his stride, kept glancing up at the impressive figure now in her charge. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

Sarah and James watched together as Polly heaved open the door into the parlour; together they heard the peal of silver bells as the ladies exclaimed at Wickham’s shockingly long absence, and demanded he account for it; as though they were, in that moment, all Penelopes, and he Odysseus returned.

Struggling with the heavy door, Polly bobbed Wickham a little curtsey as he went past her. His hand rested a moment on her slender arm.

“Thank you, Little Miss.”

Then he was gone, and Polly clapped the door shut. Smirking, she flounced back down the hall towards the kitchen. James and Sarah parted to let her past. The door fell closed, cutting them off from the rest of the house.

Sarah saw that the blood had drained entirely from his face.

“What is it?” Sarah asked him. “What’s wrong?”

He watched Polly, who had picked up her whisk and was poking at the eggwhite with it, a dimple in her cheek.

“Is it Wickham? James, what is it? What do you suspect?”

He shook his head, and then just turned away. He darted round the end of the kitchen table, and out into the scullery. Sarah, leaving the almonds unfinished, followed him into the cold damp of the outer room. He had gone straight to the window, and stopped there, looking out. He looked so stricken. She glanced along his line of sight. Outside, chickens scratched at the moss between the flagstones, and nothing was happening at all.

“James?”

A jaw muscle worked, but still he did not speak.

“James. What is it?”

She touched his arm. He looked down at her hand, and then he looked up, and met her eyes. She could not read his expression at all.

“The officer is gone,” she tried.

He blinked at her.

“We are all quite well.”

Then, after a moment, he nodded.

“Are you all right?”

He took in a big shaking breath, and let it go again. He leaned to look past her then, back to the warm light of the kitchen: she followed his line of sight. Polly crossed the doorway with her basin of whipped eggwhite, both arms wrapped around its girth.

Then James just pushed away from the window, and gave Sarah a thin smile, and went back to his work.

… a little change was not unwelcome for its own sake
.

March came—with a gentle hint of spring in the breeze, thick mud in the lane-ways, and a royal rash of purple and gold crocuses across the orchard floor, planted when Mrs. Bennet was a young bride, confident of her future happiness—and Elizabeth was to leave.

She was to go to Kent, where she had never been before, and to London on the way, where she had already been many times to stay with her uncle and aunt Gardiner, and where, now, Elizabeth finally offered to take Sarah.

“I have spoken to Sir William, and mentioned it in a letter to Mrs. Collins, and since neither of them has any objection to the scheme, and indeed Mrs. Collins is quite relieved, since she only has, beyond her housekeeper and a manservant, one little girl to scrub, and indeed says in her letter that she had been concerned how they were to manage, particularly when it came to laundry, if we did not bring our own maid with us, but did not wish to deprive my mother of her help—and everyone knows that the Lucases really cannot spare another body, not since they lost Charlotte’s assistance in the kitchen.”

Sarah set the trunk down on the floor, and wiped her dusty hands on her apron, and waited, since she had not yet the pleasure of fully understanding her young mistress.

“But as we are to travel there in the Lucases’ chaise,” Elizabeth continued, turning a book round to examine the spine, then offering it to Sarah, who took it mutely and without looking, and slipped it into her own apron pocket, “we shall be crammed in quite tight, so mind you pack lightly for yourself, just a small bag, or that old box of yours, if
you prefer. Though I suppose if you had some other little items they could go in a corner of my trunk, which is to follow by stagecoach.”

“I am coming with you?”

Elizabeth lit up. “Oh, did I not say? It is not quite the wide world, Sarah, dear, but it is the best that I can do for you for the time being. We shall pass through London, and stop there one night on the way, and we shall stay there again on the return, and that should be of interest, and if nothing else it will be a change of scene.”

Sarah sank down on the trunk, and then was obliged to remove the book from her pocket, as it dug into her thigh. London. Kent. That this should happen now, when it was not simply a delight. It was as though Elizabeth had said, We are off on our travels, and you may come, but you must leave your leg behind.

“Are they near the sea, the Collinses?”

“No. I suppose they are somewhat nearer than we are here. You shall have to travel on the rumble-seat, so you must wrap up well and pray for good weather.”

Sarah nodded. She looked down at the book in her hands. It was
Pamela
, Volume II.

“Do you not like my little scheme?”

She glanced up. Elizabeth looked puzzled, and a little hurt. “Oh, I do, miss, I really do. It’s just a surprise, coming now, all of a sudden like this.”

“I was not sure of it, till I heard from Mrs. Collins. I thought that you would be pleased.”

“I am, miss. I am. Thank you.”

Elizabeth nodded, and murmured her acceptance, and returned to her books. Sarah watched her for a moment, her head bent, her gaze thoughtful, as she considered which volumes to take with her and which must be left behind. Sarah wondered what it could be like, to live like this—life as a country dance, where everything is lovely, and graceful, and ordered, and every single turn is preordained, and not a foot may be set outside the measure. Not like Sarah’s own out-in-all-weathers haul and trudge, the wind howling and blustery, the creeping flowers in the hedgerows, the sudden sunshine.

March is a terrible time for the cleaning of boots; worse even than the depths of winter. In March, gentlemen and ladies start to sniff the air like rabbits, and decide it is fine enough to risk a morning walk. A turn about the park might even be taken after dinner; nicely shod feet slither oblivious in mud and mire, while their owners try to get a closer look at a clump of pale wild daffodils, marsh marigolds, or violets turning their tiny perfect faces up towards the spring sun.

James had the Bennets’ boots lined up in a row, in diminishing order of size. He had brushed the dried mud off one small pair, and was now rubbing down the leather, scooping a rag into the greasy dubbin-pot and smearing it onto the instep, the toe, the cuff, then buffing it hard with another rag. He whistled under his breath, beautifully absorbed. She sat down beside him, and he noticed her. He did not look round, but his eyes creased, and she had come to know that this was how he sometimes smiled.

“You’re almost out of dubbin,” she observed.

He nodded.

“I’ll make you some more when I get the chance. There’s that old ewe that died yesterday, she’s to be boiled down for tallow.”

She picked up a boot—one of Elizabeth’s, delicate and prettily made, but all stuck and clabbered with mud. Elizabeth’s were always the worst. Sarah pushed off clots with a thumb, peeled away flakes of dried mud, turning the boot round in her hands.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I used to have to do all of them, before you came.”

His eyes creased again, and he started up his whistling once more, low, and breathy, and familiar.

“You know she’s off?” Sarah asked.

“Miss Elizabeth? Yes.”

“She said I could go with her.”

“Oh yes?”

“She said, London, and then Kent.”

He paused, and then nodded. “You’ll like that, I should say. You’d like to stretch your wings a little. Do you good.”

He tilted the little boot in his hand, examining the toecap, the little buttons, the delicate curve of the instep. The brown leather had a dull sheen to it now, like an old conker.

“But,” she said, “six weeks, it is to be. More or less.”

He turned to her, and simply smiled. “I shall still be here when you get back.”

They were collected, early on the day appointed—so early that the cockerel was still doing his pieces from the pitched roof of the henhouse—by Sir William and Maria Lucas in their chaise. The party was to journey the twenty-four miles to Gracechurch Street that morning, stay there overnight, and be with the Collinses the following day.

Screened from view by the blue leather calash, James hitched Sarah up onto the rumble-seat on the back of the chaise, his hands gripping her waist. It was not really a seat as such, but the platform where a groom might stand and to which, now, beside her, the overnight bags of the travellers were lashed. Her feet dangled. She touched her bonnet into place, and then tucked the skirts of her pelisse in under her thighs, so that the hem might not trail and catch. James cast an eye towards the heavens.

“I think it will stay fair.”

“Yes.”

“And the worst of the mud will miss you.”

“I shall be quite all right.”

James passed a baggage-strap behind the post, and fastened it around Sarah’s waist, buckling her safely in. He had to lean close in to do this. The scent of him—leather, horse, hay—the angle of his cheekbone—she would keep the memory with her.

“It’s not far, London,” he said.

“I know. You told me.”

“Sorry. I’m insufferable.”

She shook her head. Then tilted it, smiled. Maybe. A little bit.

“You’ll be there by midday.”

He touched her cheek with a rough fingertip. Then he stepped away, his face gone blank, avoiding Mrs. Bennet who was bustling around the carriage, calling out superfluous instructions, making her second daughter, waiting to be handed in, flush with irritation.

Mrs. Bennet was, she’d informed Mrs. Hill, entirely resigned to the marriage of Mr. Collins to Charlotte Lucas, but the picture she was
now confronted with—proud father and excited younger sister off to visit the newlyweds, with one of her own daughters cast in the role of the spinster friend—was simply too much to bear. Sir William’s affable demeanour she found particularly provoking. When he bowed to her from inside the chaise, and commented favourably on the day, she would not hear of it being pleasant at all.

“I am afraid the London road will be terribly dirty after all this rain.”

“What trouble is a little mud when we have a nice cosy little chaise, and good friends waiting at the end of the journey?” He waved her concerns away. “We’ll take good care of your dear Lizzy, don’t you worry.”