Wasp (11 page)

Hummingbird nods. ‘I know it’s easy to say, but don’t let the past haunt you. Memories can stick in your thoughts and turn sour. If my mind starts to cloud, I think of horses. One of my regular clients owns a fine stable and I often go riding with him. We all find our own way to survive the snarling demons of our past. You will too. Very quickly. Don’t be a screamer, Kitten. It will do you no good at all.’

‘A screamer?’

‘Some of us talk freely about the people we once were — strictly within the walls of the House of course, for a client must never know anything, not even the real name of his escort. Other girls don’t talk so much, but you can read their past in their eyes or in the set of their face during an unguarded moment, perhaps as they sit by the fire or sup a hot drink before bed. Sometimes these ones will smash crockery or beat themselves. Broken items are discreetly repaired or replaced, and bruises heal. So long as we behave like angels with our clients the Abbess will overlook our tantrums.’

‘She said I was to work as a maid.’

‘And so you shall. You need time to get better, to put a little meat on your bones. Light duties first. You’ll have an easy time of it. Now, if we’re finished with the inquisition, I’ve had a long day and am feeling snoozy. Eloise won’t make this bed, the lazy French sow. She says I rumple the covers too much. What does she expect me to do, sleep on the floor?’

Beneath the friendly chaos is a nice enough room. Pale pink walls, white plastered ceiling with elegant cornices, a thick rug and burgundy curtains.

‘She seemed impertinent for a maid.’

Hummingbird stares at Beth for a moment. ‘Well, hark at Miss High-and-Mighty. What were you before you came here? Daughter of a duchess?’

‘No, I looked after well-born children and I’d have felt the end of a strap if I’d spoken to my betters like that.’

‘So you’re Eloise’s better, are you?’

‘No
 . . . 
I mean
 . . . 
What I meant
 . . .
’

‘Understand, Kitten. Even the girl who helps Leonardo sweep the manure out of our stableyard is higher in the scheme of things than you are right now. Eloise used to be a Masque, just like I am, and that scar on her cheek was where she used to wear her Emblem.’ She taps the picture on her face with a forefinger. ‘It’s not a lifetime job. Afterwards we’re grateful to still have a home and a bit of work.’ Hummingbird stands and grabs a corner of the quilt. ‘Now, please help me. Between the two of us we’ll have it done in no time.’

‘I don’t even know if I shall sleep. I can’t believe this is happening.’

‘The first night is always the worst. Some newcomers settle quicker than others. I’m sure you won’t prove difficult.’

Beth snatches up the other end and together they manage to force the bed into a semblance of tidiness. Satisfied, Hummingbird pulls her shift over her head and lets it fall in a linen puddle to the floor. Beth is startled at the girl’s nakedness. She has an absolutely beautiful body, like a porcelain sculpture. Her skin is clear and fresh. She seems to know no shame at all. Sweeping back the coverlet she climbs into bed and pats the pillow beside her.

‘Snuff out the candles before you get in.’

Beth moves like a ghost from flame to flame, extinguishing each with a puff of breath. The fire in the hearth has already smouldered to ashes. She is conscious of the rustling of her linen dress as she tiptoes across the rug in the dark.

‘Not going to take it off?’

‘No.’

‘My, aren’t you a shy one.’

‘I’m cold. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve been cold all my life.’ She slips between the covers. So smooth and clean against her limbs. Yet her mind is a buzzing nest of thoughts. The strange words Hummingbird had used. Masque? Emblem? What did it all mean?
Not a bawdy house?
Beth doesn’t know what to believe, though it couldn’t be any worse than the Comfort Home.

Could it?

An arm slides around her waist.

‘You are beautiful,’ Beth sighs.

‘So are you.’ Hummingbird’s voice whispers into her neck. ‘You would not be here otherwise. Now go to sleep. Everything will be better in the morning.’

I won’t sleep,
Beth thought.
I’ve gone from a stinking mattress to a soft bed and I can’t believe it. How can I possibly sleep?

But sleep she did.

A Sense of Injustice

‘A fish is swimming in your pond. Come and see.’

‘Nothing lives in the pond. The gardener cleared it out weeks ago.’

‘No, a fish. A trout perhaps.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Then Alice and I shall catch it. Our shawls will serve as nets. It’ll make a fine supper.’

‘You can’t take anything from my garden. It’s theft.’

‘You said there’s no fish. How can we take what isn’t there? Come, Alice.’

‘Wait.’

Anna Torrance surveyed her two visitors. Both were smiling, but Anna’s eleven-year-old mind knew that their eyes didn’t match their tucked up mouths. On arriving with their parents, Alice and Emma’s excitement had been real enough. While the adults took tea Anna had shown the girls her pony, her wardrobe of London clothes, her watercolours. She had played the spinet, then stood in front of her father and his guests to sing. Her efforts had brought the girls’ mother out in tears. ‘A nightingale,’ she had gushed. Her own daughters were clumsy on the keyboard and sang like frogs.

‘Take the girls for a walk around the garden,’ Anna’s papa instructed her. ‘I have business to discuss with their father.’

Anna dutifully took her cue. Papa often invited people to the house. Always these visitors wanted something. Often they left happy, other times not.

In the grounds, Anna pointed out the expensive topiary, the rosebeds, the greenhouse with exotic, out-of-season flowers. Somewhere along one of the perfectly straight gravel paths the dregs of her visitors’ enthusiasm slipped away and they began whispering behind Anna’s back. She had taken them to the pond with its sculpted fountain and was on the way back to the house when she finally rounded on them.

‘Stop whispering. Stop keeping secrets from me.’

‘Why shouldn’t we?’ Alice said.

‘You’re at my house, in my garden.’

‘It’s not your house, it’s your father’s.’

Anna became aware she was digging her nails into her palms. ‘Tell me what you were talking about. My father’s bank could reduce your parents to paupery if he wished.’

So now she had returned to the pond, peering into the water for the fish which, like everything else on the estate, she considered hers. The dark water was drawn from the gizzards of the hills. At its deepest it would not have passed her knees, even at the height of the spring rains, but it was black as a stone-clad cistern.

A hand caught her between the shoulders, propelling her forward. An entire world of cold crashed into nose, mouth and ears. Shock bubbled the breath out of her lungs. Trying to regain her feet, her soles slipped on the stonework that lined the pond and she crashed into the water again, backwards this time. The other girls stood watching her. All pretence at dignity was gone. Anna’s hair lost its moorings and, in a cascade of pins, slopped around her cheeks. Her bonnet floated off like an upturned basin, ribbons trailing. Half blind with pond water, she slithered to the other side of the pool, grasped the stonework with a flailing hand and managed to climb out. Shaking her skirts, she set off across the grass towards the house without a glance at her tormentors. She was aware they were trailing her. That was good. Father wouldn’t have to go looking for them. She could picture the looks on their faces.

Anna didn’t cry, in fact she hadn’t been much hurt at all. In a sense that was a shame because it would make it so much worse for them. Her mind was focused, her thoughts fixed. Impinging on her sense of purpose was the realisation that her bonnet was still floating in the pond. That didn’t matter. Father would get her a new one.

Her feet carved up the distance to the house. Arms swinging, she strode across the flowerbeds, dragging thorns and petals in her wake. The other girls had to hurry to keep up.

The outside door to the drawing room hung open. Soft voices chattered into the afternoon air. She walked in from the terrace, dragging a filthy trail across the carpet. Father was seated in an armchair opposite the hearth. A glass of Madeira and some papers littered the table beside him. The girls’ parents sat on the couch, laughing at some jest Father had made. At sight of the wet apparition in front of them the humour died in their throats.

‘They pushed me,’ Anna said. ‘Into the pond.’

‘She slipped,’ Alice said behind her. ‘We didn’t touch her.’

Father regarded the girls, then his daughter. Something rippled across his features, then settled.

‘Anna, go back around the house to the kitchen and have the maid wash you,’ he said. ‘Then change for supper. I don’t want mud on my carpets.’

‘But—’

‘Go, Anna. Now.’

She ran back across the terrace. Instead of heading towards the kitchen she clambered through her father’s open study window and landed on the rug in a slither of soaked petticoats. From the desk she grabbed a fistful of pens and tried to cut her dress, but the crow quills broke in her angry fingers. Discarding them, she pulled at the satin bows on the front of her bodice. Her hands, greasy from the pond, slipped on the material. Both hem and petticoats offered similar resistance.

She slapped herself across one cheek, then the other. Pain, sharp and honest. She hit herself again, harder. Beside her father’s inkpot sat a decanter. She pulled off the top, put the neck to her lips and glugged down the dark liquid. Fire split her belly and ripped up her throat. Nose and mouth seemed to fill with hot embers. She forced herself to drink more.

Mr Torrance, always sceptical of his daughter’s capacity for obedience, found her sprawled and puking on the floor. He carried her to the kitchen and held her at the basin while Cook tipped jugs of bitter-cold water over her head. Hours later, when she woke in her bed with a dry mouth and her head cracking open, he came to see her.

‘I’ll run away,’ she told him.

‘You’re already gone.’

‘What happened at the pond wasn’t my fault.’

‘Aye, it was.’

‘They pushed me. You’ll have them punished.’

John Torrance’s voice was tired and age-cracked. ‘No, daughter, I shall not.’

‘Are you saying I’m to blame?’

‘Not to blame. Lost. I thank God it’s not the same.’

‘I hate you.’

‘Aye, that is true enough.’ He rose from the bedside chair and brushed down his knee breeches. ‘Perhaps you have good reason to. But you can’t fight the entire world.’

Table Manners

The door thumps open. Curtains swish. Dull light leaks into the room. Beth opens bleary eyes and spies the outline of a mobcap and apron.

‘Well, what a pretty sight you two make,’ the maid declares. ‘Perhaps I leave you to it,
oui?
Let you doze on your idle backs until noon while the rest of us have work to do. You would like that, no doubt.’

‘Eloise,’ Hummingbird mutters, half buried under the quilt, ‘I swear they should have caught and killed you before you ever lifted a foot off French soil.’

‘Then what would you do,
mes enfants?
Drown in your own clutter? Starve to death because you could not stir yourselves to climb outside your warm bedcovers? And now that you are finally awake I suppose you want me to bring you a nice hot dish of tea to heat your tender bellies?’

‘If it’ll break your heart, don’t bother,’ Hummingbird says, sitting up and stretching.

‘Then you’ll go and tell the Madame Abbess that I am neglecting you, that I am cruel to her darlings?’

‘What can be crueller than this? It must be midnight, if that.’

‘It is well past seven. The sky is thick with clouds just as your head is thick with nonsense. Now, I shall bring in a fresh ewer then go and fetch the tea. Be sure you are up and clean by the time I get back.’

She ducks out of the door, reappears with a jug and sets it on the dresser. After favouring them both with a look that could slaughter a cow she leaves, muttering.

‘I don’t believe she ever sleeps,’ Hummingbird says, yawning. ‘I think she spends the whole night pacing the corridors devising new ways to torture me. Now you’re here she’ll be doubly delighted. Two souls to curse instead of one. Come on, Kitten. No warm fire for us this morning.’

Hummingbird whips the quilt away. Cool air gusts up Beth’s bare legs. ‘Ow!’

‘Eloise isn’t averse to pouring water over people who can’t drag their feet out of bed. Don’t tarry. I want my breakfast, and the sooner you’re taken care of, the sooner I can eat. Take off that dress and I’ll sponge you down. Maybe a quick splash on the face to wash the sleep out of your eyes.’

Beth shivers on the rug while Hummingbird rubs the sponge over her. The ewer water is warm and rich with the scent of herbs. Her skin tingles. Despite herself she giggles. When had she last done that?

‘Ticklish, are you?’ Hummingbird dabs the end of Beth’s nose with the sponge. ‘There, finished. Dry yourself then put on your smock and slippers.’

Beth towels down and dresses while Hummingbird cleans herself. No sooner have both girls donned their day gowns than Eloise reappears with two steaming dishes of tea. She gives a grudging click of approval and puts the drinks on the table before leaving.

Hummingbird pats the rumpled quilt. Beth sits and swallows the drink handed to her, savouring the heat on her tongue. ‘When I awoke this morning I expected to find myself back in the madhouse,’ she confesses.

‘Then you saw my ugly, sleepy face and knew you had,’ Hummingbird laughs.

‘No, this is different. I don’t think I’ve felt so comfortable in such a long while.’

During her time at Russell Hall she’d taken breakfast at seven o’clock every morning in her room. In the madhouse the days had blurred into each other, the fights and squabbles seemingly possessed of their own regularity.

Hummingbird eyes her over the rim of her tea dish. ‘Well, I’m afraid the comfort can’t continue, at least for a while.’