‘Showers? Lill, what are you talking about?’
‘What are you talking about? I still don’t have a clue. You look at me as if you’re not sure whether I should be confessing my sins in a month-long session, or thanking God on bending knees for escaping the jaws of hell. What’s the matter with you?’
Ella bit her lip, hesitating. Whatever was biting her butt, it was something not easy for her to say.
‘Did… it happen last night?’
‘It? What it?’
‘You know! It!’
‘No, I don’t know “it”. I would be happy to make the acquaintance of “it” and shake its hand, but only after you’ve explained to me what “it” is.’
‘Well… it is… it! You know! It!’
‘Thank you for that elucidating explanation, my dear little sister.’
Ella bit her lip again. ‘Just… just tell me… what happened last night. Please.’
I groaned. ‘I’m not actually very sure, you know. My memory of last night is a little vague.’
‘Oh.’ Again that lip-biting. This apparently came as an unpleasant surprise to her. No wonder. When you were about to preach to somebody about the grievousness of his sins, it’s preferable that the sinner still remembers them. It saves quite a lot of confusion.
‘Well… when you came home last night, you were intoxicated. Do you remember that?’
I pressed my hand to the left side of my head. The ache was particularly acute there.
‘Oh yes. I remember that.’
‘And I undressed you and put you to bed. Do you remember that, too?’
‘No. I think I might have been unconscious at the time. That sort of thing usually impedes my memory a little.’
Ella was immune to sarcasm. It was a very useful skill at times.
‘And before that, my dear sister? Do you remember anything of what passed before you returned home?’
‘It’s all a little hazy,’ I said evasively. My quota of good lies had already been used up for the day. Plus, my head wasn’t feeling its best today.
‘You went to see him, didn’t you?’
I blinked in confusion. ‘Him? Him who?’
‘You know perfectly well who I mean! You went to see him! The young man you have been seeing.’
‘Oh, him!’ Right! I had given Ella some vague hints about Mr Ambrose hadn’t I? She thought he was an admirer of mine. Sometimes it was really hard to keep track of one’s own lies and fibs.
‘Don’t try to deny it,’ Ella told me, looking up at me with those big, blue, sincere eyes of hers. ‘You went to see him, and he… and he… oh Lilly!’
Suddenly, her arms were around me and she was crushing me to her with all the force she was capable of. Luckily, she was no Patsy.
‘I can’t bear it any longer! Please! Simply tell me, Lill! You have to tell me! I won’t judge you, I promise! I know you would never, before marriage… Not willingly! Just, please! Please tell me! I mean… he… you… did he… did you… did the two of you…?’
My eyes went wide. Abruptly, it began to dawn on the excuse for a mind stuffed into my aching head what exactly Ella was talking about.
‘No! No, no, nonononono! No, not ever! Never! Not in this lifetime or a thousand others, or if I were a bee and he a spring flower full of yummy pollen! No, no, nonononono No!’
I shook my head so vigorously my brown hair bounced around like chocolate come to life, and I was in danger of head-butting Ella. I didn’t care! The idea of Mr Ambrose and me… doing that - well, it was too horrible to think about!
Really? Are you sure about that? asked a little voice at the back of my mind.
I told it to shut up.
Ella pushed me away a few inches, just enough to be able to look me in the face. Hers was shimmering with tears.
‘Really? Are you sure?’
She sounded eerily like that little voice in my head.
‘I think I would have noticed, Ella. I wasn’t that drunk.’
‘Oh. Um… well, good.’
We stood there for a few moments, not knowing what to say - then Ella suddenly pulled me against her and started sobbing again.
‘Hey! I told you! My virtue is safely under lock and key!’
‘I know!’ Ella wailed. ‘I’m crying from relief!’
‘Oh. You could have fooled me.’
‘Shut up!’
‘If you insist.’
‘Never do anything like that to me again!’
‘All right. Next time I get drunk I’ll be sure to be much more promiscuous.’
‘Oh Lill! Shut up!’
I could count the number of times my little sister had told me to shut up during my lifetime on the fingers of one hand. Anne and Maria were doing it constantly, but Ella? If she was being bossy, I really must have upset her. Tentatively, I put my arms around her and pulled her close.
‘What did he do to you?’ She sobbed.
‘I told you. Nothing,’ I soothed, patting her head.
‘I don’t mean that! I mean what else happened to you? What about the drink? What did that vile man make you consume?’
‘Ella, it’s not like that. He didn’t make me, I…’
‘Don’t you dare defend him!’ Letting go of me, she stared up at me, her face wet with tears. ‘You didn’t see yourself last night. You didn’t see what had happened to you. Oh, Lill!’
‘Ella, I…’
‘I know you love him-’
O really?
‘-but you can’t defend what he has done.’
Don’t intend to while you’re glaring at me like that, trust me.
‘I thought he was good for you, Lill, I thought he loved you, but a man who can do that to a girl is not worth a grain of feeling. Please, Lill, I know it must be painful, but try to rid yourself of those feelings. They will only hurt you. He will only hurt you.’
I felt almost like laughing. Poor Ella! If she only knew that all her concerns were for nothing. If she only knew that there was no special man in my life, certainly no man who could do anything to hurt me.
An image of Mr Ambrose’s hard, chiselled face flashed across my inner vision. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so much like laughing anymore.
‘Please, Lill! Won’t you try to forget him? For me? Please?’
She looked so forlorn, so torn apart by anxiety. What could I do?
‘Of course.’ Tightening my arms, I pulled her towards me. For some reason, tears started to prick my eyes, too, and as our cheeks touched as we hugged, our tears mingled. ‘I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t you fear. Everything will be all right. Everything will be just fine.’
‘Oh Lill!’
‘Shh.’
Gently, I held her in my arms and rocked her from side to side until her sobs had subsided. The Rocking made my head ache, but seeing her like this made my heart ache, and that was far worse.
Reaching around me, Ella gently stroked my hair.
‘I… I’m sorry. I know I’m asking a lot of you. I know it can’t be easy to give somebody up, when you feel about them this strongly.’
Feel strongly? Did I feel strongly about Mr Ambrose? I had, on more than one occasion, wanted to take him by that short, shiny black hair of his and slam his head into a wall. But those probably weren’t the kinds of feelings to which Ella was referring.
‘Yes. It will be very difficult to stay away from him.’ Particularly since I want to see a pay cheque from him at the end of the month, and he isn’t going to cough it up if I’m not there, doing my job. ‘Almost impossible. But I’ll try.’
And I’ll fail. But you don't need to know that.
‘Oh Lilly. Thank you!’ Once more, she hugged me with a ferocity I would not have suspected could fit into her small, slender form. ‘It may cause your heart terrible agony now, but you will see, it is for the best.’
She let go of me. Relief was shining out of her still watery eyes, but it was mixed with apprehension.
‘You won’t blame me for
this, later, will you?’ she asked fearfully. ‘You won’t say I was terribly harsh and robbed you of your love? Please, Lill, I couldn’t bear it if you thought that of me. I’m only trying to look out for you. And it’s not as if I don't understand what you’re going through. I and Edm-’
Her lips clamped shut, and her eyes widened in shock.
I knew perfectly well whose name had almost escaped her mouth. Immediately, my headache was pushed to the back of my mind, my attention focused. Could it be that not all her tears were for my sake? Was she afraid of her approaching elopement? Had she found out when it was to take place? Dread flooded my chest. Imagining my life without my little sister… it was a barren prospect.
‘Oh, you don't need to worry about anything like that,’ I said with an airy wave. ‘I know you were only giving me good advice - stay away from men. And why not? They are all beasts, anyway, the whole lot of them.’
Ella’s cheeks flushed. ‘Some are not so bad. A few can be really nice.’
Probably in particular if their names began with ‘Edm’. But I didn’t voice my thoughts out loud. Instead, I said:
‘I won’t ever start to hate you, Ella. How could I? You’re my little sister, the one who has always been there when I needed someone to talk to, or to undress me because I was passed out drunk…’
‘Lill!’
‘You get my point. I could never, ever hate you.’ I gave her a final hug - and inspiration struck me. ‘I will heed your advice,’ I continued. ‘But you must promise me something in return.’
Curious, Ella looked up. ‘What?’
‘You must promise me to learn from my example. Never do anything rash or improper where a man is concerned. Never. Promise me.’
What little colour there was in Ella’s ivory face drained away as if she’d seen a ghost.
‘I…’
There was hesitation in her voice. I never would have thought it possible. Ella hesitating, where honour and propriety were at stake? Blast! Things with Edmund had to be even worse than I had suspected. Or better, from his perspective. But I wasn’t very inclined to see things from his perspective at the moment.
‘Promise me,’ I said, putting emphasis on both words.
‘I… Lill…’
Behind us, there came an interrupting knock from the door. I wasn’t remotely as pleased about this as I had been the last time.
‘Yes!’ Ella called in an eager voice. ‘Yes, enter!’
Slowly, the door opened, and Leadfield stuck his bald head into the room.
‘Breakfast is served, Miss Ella, Miss Lilly.’
Ella was out of the room before I could demand her word again.
I remained alone in the room where she and I had slept, laughed, cried and simply spent time together for years and years. For the first time, I asked myself whether, soon, I would be alone here.
Toilet Secrets
Eventually, I followed Ella out of the room and down the stairs. The torturers weren’t far away. They were waiting to pounce on me on the landing.
‘Finally! There you are!’ Eve was in front of me like a flash. ‘What have you two been talking about in there? Never mind, never mind, I have more interesting questions right now, I can be nosy about Ella later. You have to tell us now! Tell us everything about how the heck you managed to get up on that platform!’
My mind was still on alcohol-induced headaches and back-garden romances. I couldn’t find a single, plausible lie to put forward. Maybe I should just tell them the truth… but no! I couldn’t. Out of my mad visit to a financier’s office some weeks ago had arisen a real chance for me to forge myself a life of independence. I couldn’t risk that by telling Eve. I loved her dearly, but she had the loosest mouth this side of the Thames.
Bloody hell! What can I do?
‘Excuse me?’
We all turned to look. My aunt was standing a few steps below us, an expression on her face that could have been used to pickle cucumbers.
‘Will your friends stay and join us for breakfast?’ she asked me, letting her cool gaze sweep over the group of girls around me. ‘They didn’t say they were coming beforehand, but I’m sure there will be enough boiled potatoes for three more people.’
For the first time in my life, I would have liked to kiss my aunt.
‘Oh no, Mrs Brank,’ Patsy said hurriedly. ‘Don’t exert yourself on our account. I, um… had a very filling dinner yesterday. And we were just leaving, weren’t we, girls?’
‘Oh yes,’ Eve nodded quickly. ‘We were. Most certainly.’
‘What?’ Flora, who was a bit slower on the uptake, asked. ‘But I thought we… ouch!’ She winced as Patsy stepped on her foot. ‘Yes, of course we were. Just leaving, right now.’
‘Come along, girls.’ Like a general gathering her troops, Patsy waved the other two to her flanks, just in case any boiled potatoes or disgusting bowls of gruel would suddenly launch an attack. ‘We’ve got places to be. And as for you-’ At the bottom of the stairs, she turned a final time and gave me a significant look. ‘We'll have a talk with you later.’
Oh dear. It didn’t seem as though I was off the hook. But at least I would have time to think up a convincing cover story. With relief, and with thankfulness for the fact that I and the girls were fast friends again, I watched Patsy and the others depart.
‘Well?’ my aunt snapped. ‘Why are you standing around gawking like that? Come down to breakfast, or do you expect the rest of us to wait for you?’
‘No, Aunt, I do not expect that.’
‘Then come down! The potatoes are already getting cold!’
If they had been served with Leadfield’s usual speed and alacrity, they had probably been cold long before they reached the table. Yet I didn’t say anything, simply followed my aunt down and to the breakfast table.
Everybody was already seated, apart from Uncle Bufford, of course. The head of the table, where he was supposed to sit, remained conspicuously empty, as always. My aunt could have sat there, but she preferred not to, as a demonstration that my uncle was grossly far behind in the performance of his social duties. Sometimes I wondered whether before we had come to his house, he had already had the habit of dining up in his study, or if that habit had developed to avoid an overdose of female company.
‘Sit,’ my aunt told me, as if I were a misbehaving puppy - which, when I came to think about it, probably was exactly how she thought of me. I took my place at the table directly opposite Ella. She didn’t meet my eyes.
Leadfield started limping around the table, doling out potatoes as he went. The potatoes turned out to be still lukewarm, not cold as predicted. Yet this overwhelming culinary advantage didn’t much increase my motivation to dig in. It seemed that, along with the headache, the inability to eat potatoes was another symptom of excessive alcohol consumption.
Maybe it wasn’t just restricted to potatoes, either. I didn’t feel as if I could have eaten much, even had there been a roasted pheasant in front of me. Any pheasant in the room would have been squashed, anyway, by the elephant in the room that was Ella’s and Edmund’s secret plan. She didn’t know that I knew she was going to flee, and I didn’t know when she was going to flee. I only knew something had to be done about it.
Again, I tried to catch her eye. She kept her gaze firmly fixed on her plate of potatoes as though they were the most fascinating work of art she had ever seen. I knew for a fact they were not. She liked going to the museum or to art galleries, and not to look at potatoes.
I hated seeing her like this, anxious and uncertain. I wanted her to be carefree and happy. I wanted him out of her life. And yet… a tiny part of me suspected that having him out of her life would not exactly contribute to her happiness. She cared for him, and he for her, probably. It was the one thing that had prevented me from going to him and threatening him with exposure, or just disclosing his conduct to his parents. They had to be together to be happy. Yet I couldn’t just let them run off together. I knew Ella, knew the value she p
laced on honour and propriety. The scandal would follow her everywhere, it would ruin her life.
Still, the alternative… her marrying that nincompoop Sir Philip…
I shuddered from head to toe. She would drown in flower bouquets and be forced to look at that silly grin and over-large nose for the rest of her life. What a hideous prospect.
‘It is a beautiful day, today, girls,’ my aunt initiated the conversation with a glance out of the window, her voice cheerful, which probably meant that she had momentarily forgotten both me and the plate of potatoes in front of her. ‘The sun is shining, for a change. Do you have any special plans?’
‘Maria and I planned to go out for a picnic with the Hendersons,’ Anne piped up. She shot a sideways glance at Gertrude. ‘Want to come? Young Master Charles Henderson will be there, and I’m sure he would be enchanted to meet you.’
She giggled, and not in a nice way. I knew it, because I prided myself on having brought the art of nasty giggling to perfection.
‘No, thank you,’ Gertrude replied quietly, not looking up from her plate. ‘He is five years younger than I, if I am correct. And I would much prefer to stay at home and work some more on my needlework.’
‘I’d like to come,’ Lisbeth put in, her eyes shining eagerly.
Anne chose to ignore that.
‘And the rest of you?’ My aunt’s eyes went from the window, through which sunshine streamed into the room, to me. Her expression soured. ‘What do you plan to do, Lillian?’
My hand, in the act of piercing a piece of potato with my fork, froze in mid-air.
Hell’s whiskers!
What did I plan to do? Up until a second ago, I had planned absolutely nothing. But in the back of my mind, I knew what I had to do, whether I planned it or not. It was a weekday. A workday. If I wanted to keep my position as Mr Ambrose’s private secretary, I would have to go to work. I would have to face him, after everything that happened last night.
But… nothing happened last night, right? It was all just my imagination. The more… intimate parts, anyway. Not real. Imagination. Only imagination.