Chapter Seven #2
‘A flood?’ Arabella’s eyes are two dark points of contrast as she takes in my sodden appearance, my mud-spattered nightgown. Lingering on my bare arms and shoulders. I feel suddenly exposed, bashful in a way I haven’t been since childhood. I cross my arms over my chest.
‘I’ll put her in the kitchen,’ Tom says, this silent exchange completely passing him by.
‘The kitchen?’ Arabella takes a few more steps down, hand hovering over, but not quite touching, the banister rail. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tom, there are plenty of empty rooms. Put her in Charlie’s. It will be nice to have the company.’
Tom hesitates. Glances over at me. Arabella’s eyes still on me as well, watching for my response.
‘That’s very kind, Arabella,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
Arabella twinkles a smile before turning back up the stairs. Tom shrugs and beckons me to follow.
Charlie’s room is a couple of doors down from Arabella’s.
‘It never used to be,’ Tom explains, as if concerned for what I will think of the Lascy family’s morals.
‘When she was younger, Lady Lascy was in the other wing with her parents, but we had to shut that off after it got too expensive – during the war – and she moved over. It was only ever meant to be temporary, but …’ He trails off as we reach the door, standing to the side so I can enter ahead of him.
At first, the space seems eerily empty, but then I work out it’s just that Charlie’s room is furnished to a normal level, unlike the rest of the house.
There is the definite sense of a young man’s tastes about it – dark wood furniture, school trophies on the windowsill, a framed set of medals over the headboard – which suggests Arabella has left it as it would have been when her brother was alive.
A portrait of boyhood interrupted first by war, then death.
The bed is made up with dark woollen blankets, a paisley-patterned counterpane folded at the foot.
A threadbare teddy bear nestles against the pillows.
I try to remember which brother was Charlie.
The one with the horse, I think. The motorist. First his car, now his bed …
‘Here you are, then,’ says Tom. ‘I’ll fetch those clothes up for you in a jiffy. ’
While I wait for him, I turn to look out of the window over the dark, bedraggled gardens. Rain still pattering outside, although perhaps a little softer now, a little less biblical in its wrath. My breath fogging the panes like a creeping ghost.
Tom brings me up a nightshirt, a towel and cloth, and a jug of hot water. When I pour this last into the washbasin, the steam rising off it is heaven. Moves me almost to tears.
Once he’s gone, I struggle to remove my damp garments.
The cold has transformed my hands into rigid claws, digits turned a bloodless white.
I know better than to plunge them straight into the heat – a sure way to get chilblains – so just dampen the flannel and run this over the worst of the mud.
Catch a glimpse of myself in the large mirror that hangs opposite the bed.
I look a sight: a bedraggled, half-drowned stray.
Once I’m about as clean and dry as I’m going to get this side of morning, I pull Tom’s nightshirt over my head.
It’s a shabby old thing, the fabric soft with pink stripes faded from wear.
A little large on the shoulders and short at the hem for me, but comfortable enough.
As I’m struggling to fasten the buttons, there’s a light tap at the door and – before I can answer – Arabella pokes her head in. I only just have time to clasp the shirt closed over my breasts. Heat rising in my face.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ says Arabella. ‘I wanted to see that you had settled in.’
‘Yes, thanks. It’s very kind of you to let me stay.’ I think I’ve already said this.
She tosses her head. Her hair, worn back in a long braid to sleep, swings to and fro with the movement. ‘The least I can do. What’s the point in all this space, otherwise?’ Her eyes rest on my discarded clothing on the floor, and she chuckles quietly to herself.
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that Charlie would have quite liked to have a young woman in his bedroom.’
I try surreptitiously to do up a button, but still can’t get my fingers to cooperate. ‘I would’ve disappointed him, I think.’
‘Hmm. Well, not to look at, at least.’ She steps full into the room, nodding down at my fumblings. ‘Do you need help with that?’
‘I’ll be fine once I’ve warmed up. The blood goes from my hands, that’s all. It’ll be back in a tick.’
‘Here, let me.’
She closes the space between us and – as if it’s the most normal thing in the world – reaches out to fasten my shirt.
Caught off-guard, I’m stuck still as an animal lit in the approaching beams of a car, feeling more than watching her fingers move graceful and quick over the buttons.
Her face is angled down so I can see the crown of her head; the pale, unsteady line where her hair parts.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been this close to another woman.
The moment stretches out, thick and elastic as toffee.
I hardly dare breathe. ‘There you go,’ she says softly, as she closes the collar.
Knuckles brushing for a moment against the skin of my throat.
She must surely feel how my pulse is rushing there, more violent still than the waters outside.
I don’t know myself if it’s in fear or misguided excitement.
She steps back a tread. Then, just when I think it’s over, she takes one of my icy hands.
‘Poor old Vee,’ she tuts, chafing it between her own.
‘I’m used to it,’ I tell her. Can’t think how else to respond, made stupid by the turn of the situation.
Arabella brings my hand up to her mouth and exhales. Her breath hot and humid against my skin. When the blood begins to flood slowly back, I can’t help but wince, the deep joint-ache no less painful from years of familiarity.
Seeing the colour return to my flesh, Arabella finally releases her grip on me. ‘Better?’
‘Thanks,’ I nod, shaking out my hands.
She’s already drifted back to the door, but she turns to look at me as she exits, her expression perfectly straight. ‘Sleep well, Vee.’
After a minute or so, I realize I am still standing in the middle of the room, dazed.
I hurry to tidy up my things, comb out my hair.
The interaction repeats over and over in my mind.
Arabella seen in a new light. Was that really nothing remarkable to her, or was there more to it?
And, if so, could her previous advances also have been about more than a search for friendship?
But maybe this is all the product of my own imagination; one-sided desires projected outward …
I climb into Charlie’s bed, elbowing his teddy bear aside as I go.
Listen to the weather prowling round the window.
Wonder if Arabella has fallen back to sleep yet.
Still feel her fingers at my throat, the last thing I think of as I slide into unconsciousness.
The dawn is flat and grey when I wake, a bank of clouds in the sky and the sun not yet over the horizon.
Distances look confused, shadows falling where they shouldn’t and dimensions not yet rendered in full.
An alien effect, made worse by the sheet of groundwater clogging the lawn, its surface ruffled by the breeze so all reflections are oddly disjointed, refracted.
My cottage looks small and miserable. The front door still open, like a gut-wound exposing its organs to the air.
An ache in my joints, my temples and chest. Can’t breathe through my nose. I hope it’s not the start of a cold.
In the light of day, I take a quiet look around Charlie’s bedroom.
His clothes are all still in the drawers, neatly folded.
Pressed suits hang in the wardrobe, as if waiting for him to step back into them.
I run my fingers over tweeds, flannels, silks.
Glorious materials. A startled moth whizzes past my face.
There’s a damp patch on the ceiling. If I squint, I can see a ghoulish sort of face in it.
There must be a leak from the roof above.
A set of bookshelves under the window hold old annuals and comics: a childish selection, the kind of thing I used to beg Dad to buy for me.
We rarely had the money, so Dad would make up his own stories and tell them to me instead.
I take one down and thumb it open. Recognize Ally Sloper, his bulbous red nose and bristled eyebrows – a character I haven’t thought about since before the war.
The real plots never involved quite so much socialist messaging as Dad’s versions.
I’ve always looked up to his political convictions, though he didn’t make it easy for me and Mam.
Many of the men who were denied military exemption were offered a non-combative role instead: building, cleaning, stretcher bearing.
Dad refused even that. Said it would be helping the war effort all the same.
I didn’t disagree in principle, but it was hard to stay proud of him when all our neighbours looked down on us for it, seeing me and Mam either as traitors to the nation, or as pitiful victims of a thoughtless man.
Then there were the money troubles: we had barely a whisper of the allowance that families of fighting men received.
The strain of it on Mam. Her hair was full grey by the time he returned.
Still, he wouldn’t have been the man we loved if he had given in.
A stubborn streak that Mam always complains I’ve inherited.