The Great Lover (24 page)

Tommy–the butcher’s boy–has dashed for the Brigade, borrowing someone’s motorbike. Good, practical, bear-like Ka attacks the beam, sloshing water at it and then running to the mill stream at the bottom of the garden again to fill another bucket, until with a foul, sizzling smell the flames start to die down and the kitchen is full of maids from next door (Nellie silent and–could it be?–amused) and Mrs Stevenson saying, ‘Oh, these old houses!’ and Florence Neeve answering her, ‘There can be no doubt we were all Lying in Danger last night!’ (She means that the chimney beam has been smouldering all night long, which is patently not true.) And all the time Ka and Nellie appraising one another in that way women have and Tommy arriving back to announce, with glorious cheer, ‘The Brigade is on its way!’

I don’t like the way he looks at Nell, that young man.

I feel, of course, faintly ridiculous and undoubtedly irrelevant. (There is something particularly galling about the British Working Man that makes one feel this way when one is attempting to do something male and heroic around the ladies.) Tommy wears no shirt, and one cannot help observing that his chest is golden and glazed like a good apple pie. And that he and Nell giggle together and she seems to be very well acquainted with him.

Infuriating. I am still smarting from my recent brush with Tommy’s equivalent in Dorset–men who made no mystery of their contempt for Dudley and me, whatever our intentions. My eyes keep returning to Nell. How well does she know this fellow?

My nose is covered with smuts, my shirt is blackened and hanging out from my trousers, and my besocked feet are grey
and soaking wet. I catch sight of Mrs Neeve glancing at me and nudging her son, Cyril, and with a dignified sniff, I decide I can be most useful by returning outside to my writing.

As I go I hear Mrs Neeve say firmly, ‘Ooh. That was a Danger Closely Avoided.’

Sheepishly, I pick up the notebook from the grass and sit back down in the deckchair. And there suddenly is Nellie, hurrying, scurrying, with blackened beams and detritus to a bonfire near the sundial.

‘I trust you weren’t hurt, child?’ I ask her, leaping up and offering to help.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

She doesn’t look at me but wipes at her sooty hands with dock leaves and tries to rub the soot from her dress. I move to help her, taking my handkerchief from my pocket, but from the corner of my eye once again I see Ka approaching–God, does the woman have clairvoyant powers?–with her unmistakable swinging stride.

‘Ehm–when you’ve a moment, Nellie, would you be so kind as to bring us some apple cider? We’ll take it in the Orchard gardens rather than here, if you prefer.’

‘Yes, Mr Brooke,’ Nellie says simply, and if she feels offended, there is no sign of it.

Ka, recovered from her exertions, comes to join me under the apple trees, selecting a tree furthest from the house and pulling out a deckchair after thoughtfully doing the same for me. Absently I brush some of the white crust of bird droppings from the wooden frame with my handkerchief.

‘She’s pretty, isn’t she?’ Ka says.

‘Who?’

‘The maid, of course. Nellie. The one you said was a bee-keeper’s daughter.’

‘Is she? I hadn’t noticed.’

Ka plumps herself down in the deckchair, leaning her head
back and stretching her legs beneath her skirt, while I search for something to change the subject.

‘You didn’t turn up to Gwen and Jacques’ supper party, Ka. I was relying on you.
More
of our circle joining up and abandoning us single folk…Didn’t we pledge never to do it? Married people make me sick. They suddenly have secrets–it’s like being a child outside one’s parents’ bedroom!’

Her face tells me that I have departed the frying-pan and plunged into the fire.

Hurriedly I carry on, ‘Ah, well, they will be safely on their honeymoon by now…Virginia Stephen is coming to stay here next week. How do you rate my chances at getting Virginia to swim naked in Byron’s Pool?’

To my horror, a large tear rolls down Ka’s face and she succumbs to a gulp and then a full-blown sob. She lifts her pince-nez to wipe at it with her fingers but another soon follows and she can only close her eyes and cover her face with her hands.

‘Ka, Ka–what have I said? I’m sorry, what is it? Don’t you like Virginia? But you know she and I are practically cousins, have been friends since childhood…’

Ka shakes her head, giving me to understand that this is not the source of her pain at all. I feel for my handkerchief again as Nellie arrives, puts the tall glasses of cider in front of us with a napkin for each, and turns soundlessly away. I know she has seen Ka’s tears. I wonder at the light she will cast them in, but there is nothing I can do about it. When Nell is out of earshot I leap from my chair and hurry to Ka’s side.

Ka shoots one glance at the bird-stained handkerchief and, with a wet laugh, pushes it away. ‘No,’ she says, sniffing. ‘No, not Virginia, nothing about that…’

‘What then, dear Ka? It’s surely not Jacques and Gwen…I can’t understand it! You turned Jacques down…’

‘Yes, yes, I know. I’m foolish and–and it makes no sense! But when you mentioned their honeymoon, and I thought of
them in Churchfield House, in Lulworth–the very place he proposed to me!–it was only then that I minded…not the marriage, no, not that. But more–well, what you said about feeling excluded. That’s the part that hurts. Being excluded from a friendship with both of them. And then Jacques’ suggestion to me, his marvellous
solution
…You heard, I suppose?’

I
am
listening, I swear I am. But there is something else going through my mind, as Ka leans forward, the large green baubles round her neck glinting in the sun and tinkling like a mountain goat’s bells…I see the deep place between her breasts, and the tear-streaked cheek suddenly appears downy and young. And my attention is diverted by a wood-pigeon cooing away incessantly in one of the trees and the departing figure of Nell disappearing between them; so that I miss a little of what she is saying…

‘Ah, yes, I did hear something,’ I say diplomatically. In fact, Jacques discussed it with me at length and I’d advised him to have a punt on the taking-up-Ka-as-a-mistress idea. Wasn’t surprised to find dear Ka appalled, but three months ago I didn’t know Ka as well as I do now. Actually, I am impressed that she’s made of stronger stuff at least than the dreadful mad witch Elisabeth. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘that was pretty low of him. Anyone can see you’re not that sort. What a–snake!’

Ka falls silent. The wood-pigeon finally seems to invade her consciousness too, like a child insistently tooting a paper whistle. The tears have dried; she even gives a hollow laugh. ‘Illogical…isn’t it, that when we feel we can have something at the snap of our fingers we don’t want it, but when obstacles are put in our way…? Funny creatures, human beings, aren’t we?’ she says, to which I agree, heartily glad to return to cheerier mode. I am not used to Ka being anything other than Ka–jolly Ka, making sandwiches for picnics and diligently carrying buckets to put out fires.

‘Do you think it’s safe to venture back to the Old Vicarage without fear of being burned in our beds?’ I ask, standing up.

She says she thinks it is. But later, in my bed that night, I marvel at my own silliness in the Old Vicarage kitchen, grabbing Florence Neeve’s best Indian rug. I picture myself rolling the thing up and flapping demoniacally towards the fire on the chimneypiece. The rug was heavy and didn’t roll easily, the underside rough and reeking of floor-polish and dog-hair. Laddie cowered in the corner, watching me warily, as if I was a madman. As I flapped, more and more flakes of beam and black wood swooped down and showered me like angry bats. Ka and Nellie watched too; the other maids hovered somewhere around the edges. I felt Ka’s eyes on me, and I felt Nell’s attention slip away, turn towards that boy Tommy. It was a horrible moment, when I realised that I seemed to have snared one at the same point that I let another go free: like an eel-catcher opening the trap inexpertly and seeing his prize slip away down the river.

Not that Nell is an eel, of course. She is a bright country girl and a maid-of-all-work, I chide myself, trying to reel in my maddening thoughts. But she
is
a prize, and any man, even perhaps the dreaded Tommy, can surely see that.

Lily’s health is picking up, and Betty has gone to visit her, sending word that she is carrying well, and plumper. My own visit is due Sunday, but learning this news from Betty last night is like a stone lifting from my heart; I attack my chores with vim and vigour, even bursting into song sometimes. I realise from my own gladness that I had feared (without knowing it) for Lily’s life. I resolve to stick firmly to my pact, to give up all thoughts of Rupert, and feel reassured that God will reward me by taking care of my family.

My heart is lighter than it has been in a while.

Tommy offers to take me, come Sunday. He brings me a small
packet, pink and sodden, and shyly pushes it over the tabletop to me on a morning when Mrs Stevenson is not at home. I peel off the paper to find two beautiful lamb chops. ‘For you,’ he says. ‘For your family in Prickwillow.’ Tommy has freckles and a direct brown stare, and there is no mistaking his kindness. He has not tried to kiss me again but he is watchful and, I suspect, patient.

So for now the only irritation is sharing a room with Kittie, who loves her secrets and is always gossiping: ‘Do you think he’ll marry her? Which one will he marry, do you think? The prettiest of all is Miss Olivier, not the young one, you know, but the older one, Miss Brynhild–the one with the big hats and the lovely cheekbones. She’s the one I’d pick, if I were a man.’

I consider for a moment passing on to her the same information about the tastes of Mr Rupert Brooke that I passed on to Betty. That would surely hush her. Rupert himself told me, laughing, of an occasion in Munich where he mistakenly called a gentleman by the familiar ‘you’ (in German there must be a more proper, formal way to address a gentleman you don’t know) and the same man’s hand leaped to his trouser buttons and he was practically on top of Rupert in an instant! Rupert laughs about this, and I smile as I bring him a clean pile of bed linen, and pretend not to be shocked. It is simply understood now, by Rupert and me, that the whole world is in love with Rupert, men and women, and he in love with no one. Oh, yes, he has a fancy to be in love with Miss Noel Olivier, a wish to believe himself in love with her. But, if you ask me, that’s a desire born of frustration, and part of his disguise. He acts like such a Gay Dog, such a Jack-among-the-maids (in his case
truly
among the maids!) only to hide his true persuasion.

Tonight, Kittie and I are no sooner lying side by side under the blue satin counterpane than she starts on her campaign: ‘Why would a brainy girl like you, Nell,
not
think it better for
women to have the Vote? Don’t you believe we’re as good as any man, any day?’

I wonder about this. Father made me feel so strongly that I wasn’t as good as my brothers. Since Kittie asks such a searching question and we’re alone in the darkness I rummage around for an honest answer. ‘I think I do. It’s not that that makes me doubt. It’s–well–some of the speeches I’ve seen in the newspaper. Miss Pankhurst and those others. They talk of men as if they were savage beasts, every one of them wanting to steal us for the white-slave trade. And it’s our job to raise them from their filthy needs, their diseases, that sort of thing.’

When Kittie says nothing, and I gather from her breathing that she is still listening to me, I grow bolder, and carry on: ‘And then I examine myself and I think–I don’t want to do that. To be as good as a man, yes. But not to–to take care of his soul. Not to be an angel without–without a body of my own…’

The pillow next to me moves suddenly and Kittie sits up. ‘Why, Nellie, are you saying you have impure thoughts?’

‘No, of course not!’ I struggle to change the subject. ‘But…I’m not so sure your precious Votes for Women Bill will achieve anything much for girls like us–we wouldn’t even have the Vote anyways. It’s only for married ladies.’

‘And won’t you be a married lady one day? And able to vote then?’

This startles us both, with a gasp from me, and then a funny little silence.

‘I can’t imagine it,’ I finally say.

‘Well, isn’t that just like you? You can only imagine your life as it is, wedded to the Orchard, scrubbing and sweeping and running errands from noon till dusk…’

It’s true. Her words alarm me, because what Kittie calls drudgery is freedom to me. My little room–the first bedroom I’ve not shared with five others; the kindly way Mrs Stevenson
lets us eat the broken scones for breakfast, warm and crumbling with butter; the new-pin order of the kitchen; the shouts and capers of Rupert next door, with his constant stream of visitors turning up on bicycles, arms always heaped with books; the snatches of their conversation, the lines from poetry and plays; the ladies in their lovely hats demanding strawberries brought to them at the riverside at their punts; Mr Neeve carefully removing the frames, and the swarm, brown and gold and shimmering in his hands like a field of old fen sedge with the wind rippling through it. How could I give this up and go back to a life like Lily’s, never to see a soul all day besides Mrs Gotobed and wailing little ones? And since it’s not marriage but
work
that has widened my world, why should marriage hold any charms for me? The others tease me about Tommy, but
marriage
…doesn’t enter my thoughts. Even Betty has started mooning over the boy who works at the mill, a boy named Jack, who delivers flour to us; a boy with squinty eyes that make me think of a mole, although he is cheerful enough, I suppose, and not a bad sort, and kind.

While I’m lying on my back beside her, thinking this, Kittie then takes it into her head that she needs cocoa. She sits up again. It’s past midnight, we’ll be up again at six, but she wants us to sneak downstairs and make ourselves some.

‘You’ll get us both sacked!’ I whisper, but I’m giggling too, because for all her sauciness, and her want of good sense in the kitchen, I
am
used to the company of sisters and things are always more gay when Kittie is here.