Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

9. Before

Before

It follows that an order of nuns who named their school the Immaculate Conception Convent should be violently opposed to sex outside marriage, and quite possibly within it. Sister Ignatius, our current headmistress, has demonized it enough over the years that we are predestined either to develop lifelong sexual hang-ups or—as in the case of my sister—set upon a trail of wild promiscuity the moment we are set free. Rumor has it a sixth former did fall pregnant not so long ago—she was hustled out of the school before the pregnancy had even begun to show.

The head takes us for religious studies every Monday, last lesson of the day.

“Elizabeth.” Sister Ignatius snaps out my name but, at first, I am too lost in thought to react.

My body has been aflame since the last time Gabriel and I were together, there is no other word for it. I have kissed a few boys but never one who connected me to this sharp and insistent desire. I long now for things never imagined before, I think of him undressing me, of his fingers trailing across my skin, of our bodies pressed together, of more. There is an ache I have that was not there before, as if I have been catapulted into a foreign universe; where previously lust did not exist, now it’s all there is.

“Elizabeth Kennedy!”

“Yes, Sister?”

“Would you stay behind after class, please? I’d like a word.”

When the rest of class has filed out, I stand beside Sister Ignatius’s desk, waiting.

“I hear you’re thinking of applying to Oxford?”

When I told my English teacher I was hoping to read English literature at Oxford, she cautioned me against it. Oxford was not meant for “girls like me,” she said. She didn’t elaborate, but I caught her drift.

“That’s right.”

“The school would be very proud, I’m sure, to have one of our girls there. You’re bright enough, so long as you apply yourself.”

This is unexpected, I can’t help beaming back at her.

“The school will help you however we can.” The nun nods to signal the end of our chat. “Hurry now, Elizabeth, or you’ll miss your bus.”

My head is full of Gabriel on the bus journey home. On Saturday I am spending the whole night with him and it’s hard to think of anything else. I have told my parents I am staying at Helen’s. I don’t like lying to them but I know my mother would worry if she knew the truth. She’d tell me it was too soon.

When we arranged it, Gabriel said: “Please don’t think I’m planning on taking advantage of you.”

I thought, but did not say, Oh, I hope you do.

I am so lost in thought I don’t notice someone sitting down next to me until a voice says: “Hi, Beth.”

It’s Frank Johnson. For once, not sitting in his usual place at the back of the bus with his friends. I do like Frank. He always seems more grown-up than the other boys my age. We see each other at the parties of school friends or the annual village hop, and he always asks me to dance or offers to fetch me a drink. For a while, I’d hoped our easy friendship might develop into something else.

When Frank was thirteen his mother died from a bleed on the brain.

She’d been helping with the afternoon milking when a cow kicked out and caught her full thwack in the temple. Accidents happen frequently on farms, everyone knows that. What shocked me was how Frank was back on the school bus the following day.

We’d had art that afternoon, two hours of sticking pressed flowers onto porous blue paper. Most of the girls had brought in daffodils from their gardens but I’d taken the trouble to plunder bluebells from the woods. When I got up for my stop, I passed by Frank, white-faced and silent in his seat. I took my picture out of my satchel and handed it to him, no words needed. I remember his look of surprise, then the merest hint of a smile. We have been friends ever since.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Frank says, and my heart dips with dread.

This thing I wanted, daydreamed about, in fact, for weeks and months, has come too late.

“I think you know what it is.”

I do, oh, I do, and I want, more than anything, to stop it from happening.

“Beth.” My name again, the beginning of a speech I fear Frank has rehearsed.

“I have waited far too long to tell you this. I think about you all the time. Seeing you on the bus is the highlight of my day. It would make me so happy if you would let me take you out this weekend.”

Frank has delivered his speech without looking at me, his eyes held just out of reach of my own. But now he does look, and he sees instantly my expression of regret.

“Oh,” he says. “It isn’t what you want? I don’t know why I thought it was.”

I put my hand onto Frank’s arm, my fingers splayed on the cheap black material of his school blazer. His hand is clenched into a fist, a scattering of black hairs between his wrist and his knuckles.

“It’s just—I’m sorry—I’ve met someone.”

Frank looks heartbroken. “I left it too late.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

I want to make it better between us, to find a way of bringing back some light into his handsome, healthy face.

But Frank gets up and heads to the front of the bus. And when the driver stops, he gets out, miles from home, as if he cannot bear to be near me for a moment longer.

For the rest of the journey, it’s Frank who is the headline in my thoughts, my heart churning at the thought of his long walk home and the burning humiliation he must have felt to get off the bus. And beneath this, a gnawing sense of regret or remorse or confusion that I might have thrown away the chance of something great.