The Great Lover (12 page)

And so I have Begun, and at last have ‘copulated’ with someone, and how surprising that it should be Denham Russell-Smith (but how much easier to find a willing
boy
than a willing girl and to feel a curious private tie with Denham himself). Here I am now–it is greyly daylight and I’m left with the chief worry of the sheets. Oh, the horrors of life with servants: how much they know about the life of the body that we’d rather keep from everyone, even ourselves. The contents of the chamber pot, the state of the sheets and our underwear, and a dozen other indignities I dread to consider. Well, I’ve done my best and scrubbed and scrubbed, but let us hope that for once the dear dark Nellie slept peacefully throughout, and comes to an entirely innocent conclusion…if such a thing is at all possible.

January 1910

Rupert’s father is ill. He has gone to his mother’s home to be with her and there he has been for days now. I can’t quite picture the home he describes because it seems his mother lives in the school, the same one in Rugby that he went to, and no school I have ever been inside could be a place where anyone could live. It is a school full of ‘charming boys’, Rupert says. A charming boy was staying with him in October last year, a boy from his old school called Denham Russell-Smith.

I have heard of such things. That is, I didn’t know that I knew but that night, coming late and tired to bed, after staying up to finish the washing-up and put away all the plates, I saw candlelight flickering under the door, heard the bed squeaking in Rupert’s room. An unmistakable sound, and a giggle too. I stopped dead on the landing–I remember asking myself, Was there a girl with him earlier in the day? I was surprised to find myself trembling and a hot, fierce, stabbing feeling shooting through my body. It was a relief at first when I thought, No, only that young man, the smiling, jug-eared, bouncing sort of man, the one who had been at school with Rupert and turned up unexpectedly. He was like a friendly Labrador, bouncing and cheery, and Rupert said casually that Denham was an old friend and going to be staying in the Orchard and would I mind awfully making up a bed in the little box-room that was not often used?

I had done this gladly, so why, then, were the two of them now in Rupert’s room, and why were the bed-springs squeaking like that, in such an unmistakable, rhythmic way?

So I stood there, trembling, fixed to the floor like a blob of
wax, and I tried to move away and I tried not to listen, because it made my heart twist so, and then as the grunts and squeaks rose, my hands flew to my ears and I suddenly managed to wrench myself away and ran to my room and flung myself face first into my pillow and sobbed and sobbed, a choking, stifling kind of sob, because Kittie was sleeping her log-like sleep beside me and if she woke she would ask unbearable questions.

In the morning Rupert wasn’t there for his breakfast, and neither was the boy Denham. He had already left, taking his bicycle with him. I knocked on Rupert’s bedroom door, but there was no reply, so I went in. The sheets had been stripped and heaped on the floor. My first thought was to glance behind me at the open door, and when I was sure that no one was there, I closed it. It was a grim, cold girl who glanced at their bloodied stains, not the wretched, wild-hearted girl of last night. On waking I had gathered up my old self and tried to steel myself, so here I was: facing those hard facts yet again. Such a silly effort Rupert had made to scrub them. My shock on seeing those sheets sprang my body hot first, then cold. It was one thing to hear sounds, and wonder and imagine. Another to see such stark evidence. I sat on his stripped bed and, once again, tears fell.

I tried to say to myself, Nellie, so it is. Give up your silly daydreams and admit that not only is he not for you he’s not for
any girl
.

I don’t think I persuaded myself. The way he kissed me out there among the bees, the way he looked at me as if he knew me, really saw me and knew me, Nell, the girl I am, kept floating back to my mind; and then I felt such a rising pain that I almost ran to the garden in fear of vomiting. How could it be so? What made a man–do something like that? My poor education in such matters and my lack of anyone to ask meant that all day I went about my duties in a state of punishing bewilderment. Mrs Stevenson asking more than once, and not with a smile, if I was sleep-walking. The only thing I was grateful for was that
Rupert was nowhere to be seen. I did not have to bump into him, nor face him, until I’d laundered the sheets and left them to flap in the weak autumnal sunlight while I placed clean ones on his bed and a whole day had passed.

There was no mistaking the gratitude and embarrassment in Rupert’s eyes when he did finally pass me and I could not see how it could ever be easy between us again. First there was the problem of the kiss. And then the worse one of my knowledge of his shame and him knowing that I knew. What could be said? I felt dreadfully sorry for him; sorry for his sickness, too–how much shame and misery it must bring him I could hardly fathom. Truth be told, I struggled to accept that such a
tendency
exists, and I didn’t want to know any more about it than had already been forced into my thoughts.

That was months ago, now, we’ve had a whole general election and the government nearly voted out, then in again, since then.

I took to my work and did it with such vigour that Mrs Stevenson made me chief among the girls, and rewarded me with an extra shilling a week. And then in January, Rupert’s father, a master at his old school, was sick, and so he’s gone to Rugby to be with him, and I won’t see him for weeks on end, and I’ve vowed to put him out of my mind. His kiss–I told myself it must have been some sort of experiment. Perhaps he’d never kissed a girl before. But then, confusingly, he always spoke as if he felt great affection for Noel Olivier…Hadn’t he ever kissed her? Was it all a sham? Maybe he wanted to know if kissing me would, if it wouldn’t–what’s the word?–disgust him too much? (And did it disgust him, I wonder, for how could I tell? The feel of his mouth, and the hardness of his teeth, and the warmth and the feel of his little tongue are vivid with me just the same.)

There was only Kittie to talk to about my discovery, and I didn’t dare. She did ask me several times, in a leading sort of way, why was I so pale, and was I pining after somebody? But
for all her chatter and sweetness, I didn’t know if I could trust her. And this morning, waking up at six, I find my doubts are founded. Because something dreadful has happened. Kittie has gone.

The place where her hot snuffling shape usually is is flat, with the blue counterpane smoothed over it. Now first I think, Well, fancy that! Kittie up first, and maybe making up the fire in the kitchen…So I tiptoe downstairs, pulling on an old sweater over my uniform, looking forward to the warmth. But, no, she’s not in the kitchen, nor nowhere to be found. And when I run back to our room, I discover that her things are all gone–the little brown bag she arrived with, the skirts, the blouses, the combs and pins for her hair, the tiny bottle of Mischief she so loved. Only her uniform remains: when I peep under the bed, there it is, stuffed in a dusty corner.

Mrs Stevenson is speechless with fury when I tell her. She only paid us last night, and Kittie must have taken her wages and left in the early hours of this morning, while we all slept.

‘But where can she have gone?’ Lottie asks, casting her eyes on the larder, where the tins and bottles have been taken from the shelves in readiness for ‘a thorough set-to with the mop and scrubbing brush’, which now she will have to do alone.

‘Oh, there’s no doubt where the silly girl has gone. Wasn’t she always talking about it? Wasn’t she always poring over the paper and listening to those silly speeches? What did she say yesterday? She was reading the paper about Lady Constance Lytton disguising herself as a seamstress to prove that working women were treated differently by gaolers—’

‘I don’t understand…’ wails Lottie, stupidly.

‘She must have caught the train from Cambridge to London,’ I say. Understanding is dawning on me, too. ‘She has gone to offer her services to the Suffragists.’

‘And for what, for what?’ Mrs Stevenson keeps repeating, gazing in despair at the unwashed pots and pans and the piles
of tins removed from the larder and stacked on the kitchen floor. ‘So she can end up in prison, and starving herself, so that women might–what? Might put a cross on a piece of paper that makes not a hap’orth of difference to any of our lives…or behave in vile ways and ruin the girl’s chances of ever finding a husband!’

Mrs Stevenson’s angry words ring round the kitchen. Lottie bursts into tears. ‘Poor Kittie!’ she says. I glance sharply at her. Why is her voice full of such doom-mongering horror? Kittie’s not dead.

‘Well, no point standing around, Lottie. Let’s get started on the larder. Fetch me a bucket of water,’ I say brusquely, hoping to starch her up some. In truth, I’m angry too. I suddenly remember Kittie’s look as she was reading the paper yesterday morning, the hot way she insisted ‘See, Nellie–you’re wrong. The Suffragists
do
care that there should be no distinction between us and them. Look at Lady Constance Lytton! Disguising herself as Jane Wharton to show that prison guards treated her roughly when they thought she was a poor working girl—’ and pressing her finger down on the paper to show me the article. I didn’t trouble to read it. I told her to get on with her task. Now I wish I’d read the look in her eyes a little better, seen what she was about.

Rupert said once to Miss Darwin that something that never ceased to amaze him was the respect women had for men, even hopeless men, as if the men had the same power over them that they are said to have over horses or, indeed, as if women see men as bigger than they truly are. That was a day in summer, and as he was saying it, Kittie was bringing over the dish of strawberries. I know she heard him, and I noticed how her hands trembled as she placed the bowl in front of him. Because–this is the ridiculous bit–for all her hot talk, Kittie was sweet on him, and definitely thought of him in exactly that way. For sure, that’s the real problem between men and women. That we don’t see one another in the proper way–that women do reflect men back at twice their natural size.

Well, there’s nothing for it but to get on. Lottie sets to at last with the bucket and mop, and I light the stove in the kitchen, ready for the first batch of scones. The linoleum is icy beneath my feet so I make haste to get the coals burning–taking care not to smudge the stove’s gleaming surfaces, after Kittie and I spent most of last night black-leading it, at Mrs Stevenson’s request. Poor Kittie, I think with a stab, seeing the black-leading. All that horrible work for nothing.

Then I put my shoes on and run over to the Old Vicarage gardens to check the bees before breakfast. There is a crusty frost underfoot and the trees in the orchard are stripped and ghostly in the green morning. Once Mr Pudsey Dawson makes me squeal by appearing from behind one of them in the early-morning fog exactly like a green ghost. The bees are fine, with enough candy to last the rest of winter. The mouse guards are safe too, with no signs of interference.

Mrs Stevenson out of the room, I snatch a cup of tea and a piece of bread, put an extra log on the fire and pull my pen and paper from my apron pocket to write Betty and the littlies a note to include with my wages. Outside I hear the sound of rain dripping from bare branches on to fallen leaves, like twigs snapping. ‘I hope the littlest are all attending Sunday school,’ I write. ‘I hope you are remembering to feed the bees over the winter.’ Outside, the sky hangs low like a sodden woollen blanket. ‘I hope you have remembered to put the mouse guard on so that mice can’t steal the stocks.’

I know that Betty took some ten pounds of honey to Ely market, and still has beeswax candles and soap to sell, but this can’t possibly sustain the whole family until the late-spring months when there will be new honey at last. So I get to thinking about Sam, the eel man, who is mentioned frequently in Betty’s letters. Sam has made himself very useful to our family for many a long year now. Having no boy of his own he takes Edmund
with him on the punt and two Sundays ago they came back with a whole brace of swans. I know that Betty cooks for him, and helps with the eel-hives in return for whatever Sam might be able to drop into the pot from his time on Cowbit Wash: fish, wildfowl, eels. I have not been able to visit as often as I intended: this winter has been a harsh one, with often impassable roads, so I begin wondering, reading between the lines, if Sam has moved in with them, but as I’m not there to take care of things, I don’t see it as my right to ask. Stanley and Edmund need a profession, and handling a punt-gun is good learning for a boy. Still, I can’t help but wish they spent more time in school.

A picture of Stanley then, with his blond curls and his rosy, skinny little naked body being bathed in front of the fire, brings a catch to my throat. I remember how he uttered not a word when he saw Betty and me trundle Father in like that, his body sprawled across the wheelbarrow, the only way we could think to move him, and how he edged closer to Father, reaching out a little finger to touch his arm once, and then burst into tears.

This is a troubling memory because it brings back queer details of the hours after Father’s death. How while he lay on the kitchen table, dressed in his best clothes, now so thin and empty and cold, just like a basket of ribs, with nothing inside it, I searched frantically among his things. How few things he had! But I was all haste and mayhem, turning up handkerchiefs, balls of string, beeswax candles, socks, muslin circles for jars, a lock of Mother’s hair. What was I searching for? I worked with a sense that Father was behind me, listening and watching, and I wheeled round in terror when I heard a tread in the kitchen, relieved to find it was only Betty, weeping deliriously into her apron.

Suddenly, sitting down with a plonk in Mrs Stevenson’s dining room, I feel certain at last that I know what I sought. I realise I was looking for a message: a note from Father. A card, a line, a letter, a gift that would tell me. Explain. What he thought of
me, why he had brought me into this world. What his life–forty-two years of it–was
for.

Foolish, I know. I hardly ever saw Father write a word, and know that his skills with pen and paper were slight. Thinking this over, I sit in the dining room, staring out at the frosted lawn where Rupert usually sits among the roses, fiddling nervously with the lace doilies, my mind tick-ticking over it, querulous and unsettled. My eye falls on a leaflet that Rupert has left on the table, and I begin unthinkingly to read the lines staring up at me: ‘Is Poverty always the Price of Idleness? Why a Man might be Poor through no Fault of his own…’

I wonder, then, if this is my message, at last. Rupert’s leaflet about Mr and Mrs Webb and the Poor Law reform. How bitterly I’ve regretted not being born into a home of books and schooling, a home where my Brains would be treasured, where I would not hear every day that I should ‘keep my strange ideas to myself’ or that I was ‘too clever by half’. Before I came to the Orchard and met Rupert, I could barely imagine how such a home might be. And yet a young woman like Gwen Darwin is evidence that some households might welcome even a girl’s wit and cleverness and not punish her for it.