The Education of Bet (16 page)

"Do you need any help?" he offered.

I thought of what that would be like, having James help me undress. Curiously enough, it was not an unpleasant thought. But no. I had survived being exposed to Mrs. Smithers. I could not be so lucky twice, never mind the impropriety of it all.

"That is all right," I said. "I can manage. Now, if you would just..." I indicated the door with a nod of my head.

"Oh, right," he said, smiling for the first time since my return. "My roommate who is too shy to take his clothes off in front of anybody. Still, are you sure you don't need me to—"

"Go, James. Please."

He went.

But, oh, how a part of me wished that he could stay.

***

October turned into November turned into the early dark days of December.

After the fencing incident, I had become something of a pariah among the other boys. It was as though my physical humiliation had been so great, in no small part because of the spectacularly public nature of it, that the others feared proximity to me might cause them to catch the same disease. Even Hamish and Mercy avoided me in the initial aftermath. It would have been nice to think they did so out of shame at having gone too far and because they did not want to hurt me any further. But somehow, I did not think this was the case. Rather, I believed they feared their own exposure. Hamish had managed to do so much damage to me because Mercy and Stephens had distracted the fencing master. But they might not be so lucky a second time. And it would reflect poorly on them if they were caught physically damaging a boy who had already been so ...
accidentally
injured.

Although they were careful to avoid me, I was not careful to avoid them. Indeed, I actively sought them out. I did this for two reasons: one, revenge for my own sake; and two, revenge for Little's sake, for they had steadily increased their efforts against him.

And so, whenever we were waiting in line to enter chapel or some such place, I made my way to a position behind Hamish and Mercy and elbowed them hard in the ribs or kicked them in the backs of the knees. Then I dropped back into the crowd before they could see me.

Through it all, James remained by my side. He never explained his newfound allegiance to me, but I suspected it stemmed from his guilt about not coming to my aid more forcefully during the fencing incident. So after I dropped back into the crowd following my meager assaults, he assumed my position in line, meaning his was the face Hamish and Mercy saw when they whirled around. It left them frustrated at not being able to fight back; for some reason, they were still intimidated by James. And James was with me one Saturday night when I got it into my head to replace the beer in Mercy's bottles with vinegar that I'd borrowed from Mrs. Smithers.

"The looks on their faces!" Back in our room later on that night, we laughed at the outrage that followed hard on their usual manly swigs.

And James was with me the following night when we scrawled Mercy's and Hamish's names on the outside walls of Proctor Hall, coupled with the most vile of epithets.

And James was most definitely there with me the night before Christmas holiday when we stole into their room in the dead of night, doused the slumbering Hamish and Mercy with buckets of water, and shouted, "For Little!" before racing back to the safety of our own room and breathlessly locking the door behind us.

We collapsed onto our individual beds, laughing, as we listened to the drenched scoundrels' muted curses as they twisted the doorknob. Those curses were no doubt muted because they did not want to rouse Mr. Winter, whose rooms were closer to ours than to theirs and who would not be pleased if awakened, no matter what crime had been committed against them.

"I never would have guessed that first day when I met you," James said, "but I shall miss you over the Christmas holiday."

There was genuine puzzlement in his voice, and I wondered at this. Lately, I'd noticed a warmth in James toward me, and it did not seem to be just because of our newfound camaraderie as partners in crime. It almost seemed—dare I say it?—that he had a sort of attraction toward me, in his looks and in his deeds. But no sooner would I catch a glimpse of such a thing than he would withdraw, as though confused by his own behavior, his own feelings.

I, of course, was not at all confused to find my feelings toward him growing. Daily, he seemed more and more attractive, and not simply because he was so handsome.

But I could say none of that.

"Yes," I finally said, "I suppose I shall miss you too."

***

Grangefield Hall looked much smaller than the last time I'd seen it, more than three months earlier. But then I wondered: Had the place somehow shrunk, or had I managed to grow larger?

Of course, at least for that first week of my three-week holiday, I was returning to it as Will Gardener. Perhaps that was what made the difference.

It was not just the building that looked so much smaller to me. The old man, who had loomed so large to me not so very long ago, looked smaller now too. More shrunken than I remembered him being, more infirm as well. I worried for the first time: What if something truly awful happened to the real Will Gardener while he was off on his adventure? True, the letters I regularly received from him indicated that he was happy enough and well enough, as much as someone could be in the military. But it was hard to tell what was truth and what were lies. Surely I could not keep up my charade forever, even though I was determined to keep it up at least through the holiday break. But what if the real Will Gardener was injured or, worse, killed? What if something happened and the old man never saw him again?

"Uncle," I greeted him solemnly, feeling the responsibility to succeed in my impersonation more keenly than I had before. Previously, I'd wanted to carry it off for my own sake, so as not to be caught out. But now I wanted to carry it off for his.

"My boy," he said warmly, holding out a gnarled hand to me.

"It is good to be home," I said.

As I spoke the words, I realized how true they were. It was a relief to be away, at least for the time being, from the problem of Hamish and Mercy. It was a relief to be free of the responsibility of Little. It was even a relief to be free of the attraction I felt toward James, and of his for me. I wondered briefly, wildly: Could James like boys? In a way that was, well, contrary to my liking of him?

I shook off those thoughts as the old man indicated I should take a seat beside him.

"Tell me," he said, "how things have been going for you at school."

That sense of relief once again flooded me: relief that, at least for now, rather than having to fool five hundred boys, I had to fool only one old man.

And a handful of servants.

I arrived so late that first night that I did not see any of the servants, but I did not have to wait long for a problem to arise.

The biggest servant hurdle came the following morning, just as I was waking for the first time in Will's spacious bedroom, in Will's spacious bed.

I opened my eyes to the sight of Wiggins, Will's manservant, puttering around the room. In my long journey home in the carriage, alone this time, I had given great thought to how I would behave around the maids now that I was Will: the need to combine an air of entitlement with a basic casual geniality, even a little harmless flirting. But I had forgotten all about Wiggins, perhaps because he had only ever belonged to Will's world, and not at all to mine.

Wiggins was old; ancient, really. Wiggins was so old, the maids often joked that he had been the old man's manservant when
he
was a child.

"I have drawn your bath, sir," Wiggins said, finally noticing that my eyes were wide open. He came to attention at the side of the bed as though waiting for something.

"That is, er, good," I said, holding the sheets firmly at my neck. "Thank you."

Still, he stood. Honestly, he was so old, it was a wonder he didn't tip over as he swayed there.

"Is there something more?" I asked.

"Of course, sir. I am waiting for you."

"Waiting for me? To do what?"

"Why, to get out of bed and get into the bath." He paused, as though trying to remember what came next. "And then I will help you get dressed."

Well,
that
certainly wouldn't do!

"You know what, Wiggins?" I said, forcing a smile. "When I am at school, I do not have the luxury of a manservant, let alone one as efficient as you. The sad truth is, I am used to doing certain things for myself, and I should like to go on doing so now that, er, I am practically a man."

Wiggins looked scandalized. "But you never felt that way when you returned from school before."

"Well, I do now," I asserted vehemently, feeling very masculine.

Wiggins looked worse than scandalized. He looked confused. "But if I am not helping you dress, what shall I be doing?"

"You will be a man of leisure, Wiggins!" I announced, feeling most beneficent.

"A man of leisure?" Worse than scandalized, worse than confused, he now looked horrified. "You mean I am to be put out on the streets after all these years?"

Oh, dear. Now
I
felt dreadful.

"Of course not, Wiggins," I hurriedly reassured him. "You are too valuable for that. We could never survive without you. But you deserve, I think, a respite from work after all your years of service."

"And what shall I do with this ...
respite?
"

I tried to think what Will would suggest. "Why, you will flirt with the maids!" I said brightly.

The idea obviously appealed to Wiggins.

"But don't think it'll be like this all the time," I called after him as he hurried to depart. "You never know when I might change my mind and need your services again," I cautioned genially, thinking that if—
when
—Will returned, he would want his manservant back.

Of course, later in the day, when I went down to breakfast and came in contact with the other servants and saw their skeptical looks as they regarded me from behind the master's back, it struck me for the first time: What had Will and I been thinking? Yes, at school, where they were simply expecting
a
Will Gardener but not a
specific
Will Gardener, I'd been able to fool people. And yes, I'd been able to fool poor Wiggins, who was very old and somewhat dotty, and even the master, who was practically blind. But it didn't matter that Will and I shared several physical similarities; I was
shorter
than Will, shaped
different
than Will. How had we ever imagined we could get away with this?

And yet we
did
get away with it. The servants never let on, despite their occasional skeptical glances in my direction, for the old man seemed unaware that anything was out of the ordinary.

Did the servants, I wondered, recognize me beneath my disguise? And more important,
why
didn't they say anything to the old man?

Then I understood: like Will, like me, they simply did not want to cause him any grief.

We were all willing to do whatever we had to in order to keep him happy—except, on Will's and my part, forsake our dreams—and he was happy, happy to have first one and then the other of his children back home with him.

***

"It is odd, Elizabeth," the old man said, for now I was Elizabeth again, the first week of Christmas holiday having passed, "is it not, that Will left for a week to stay with school friends just before your arrival? You two have always been so close—like brother and sister, really—I would have thought he would stay at least long enough to say hello."

What was really odd was having to get used to a corset again after so long without one. The dratted thing was driving me mad! Although it
was
nice not to have to bind my breasts for a week. And it was really nice that, as rare luck would have it, my week as Bet coincided with my monthly bleeding, so that for one month I would not have to contrive anything to do about
that.
On the other hand—there were so many other hands now!—it was all I could do to keep myself from striding manfully across rooms. I'd grown rather used to striding.

"It is odd, sir," I allowed now, "but it is also not odd."

"How do you mean?"

"Perhaps Will told his school friends that he would arrive at a certain time, and perhaps, further, Will has now matured enough that little things like—oh, I don't know—
punctuality
have grown important to him?"

"That doesn't sound like Will at all."

I had to admit that it did not. Why, right at that moment, Will was probably late for whatever battle he was supposed to be fighting in or at least drumming during.

Still, I felt as though I had to defend Will's honor. Or was it my honor now? Sometimes, it was all so confusing.

"But didn't you notice any changes in Will during the week he was here?" I asked.

"Changes? What sorts of changes?"

"Well, it's just that, in his letters to me at least, he really does seem to have grown up quite a bit. All he ever talks about now are his lessons, how important they've become to him, how proud he wishes to make you. Did you see none of that while he was here?"