Chapter 24 A Chip Off the Old Block #2
“My younger daughter, Venetia, is eight or nine. I haven’t got any sons yet.
But I’m not concerned. Some men set great store by perpetuating the family name, don’t they?
But why should I care? I’ll be dead and gone.
” He laughed, and Elsie laughed, too. She liked the way he talked to her, as if they were on equal terms and she understood the world as he did.
He refilled her glass, and she drank. It gave her a queer sensation of blurriness, of recklessness.
I haven’t a care in the world, she thought.
Why am I always griping and complaining?
“I’ve no brothers or sisters,” she said. “My mother said having me put her off the whole enterprise.”
“Did she really? How rude of her. Still, you wouldn’t like having brothers, I’m sure. Little boys are ghastly creatures. I ought to know, I used to be one.”
She smiled. “Mammy asked God not to send her any more babies. Why don’t more people do that, I wonder? Then there wouldn’t be so many unwanted children in the world.”
“Well, my dear Elsie, I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as all that. God cannot always control husbandly zeal, unfortunately.”
She must have looked confused, because he said, “Girls like you are taught, I take it, how babies are made?”
“Kissing?” she said uncertainly. She’d gathered there was also nakedness involved but was far too shy to say so.
“Well done, yes, that’s certainly a part of it.”
He refilled her glass again, and she sipped. She felt relaxed and very tired. “I’ve been at work since eight o’clock this morning,” she announced. “And I only had a sausage and a tomato for lunch.”
“You poor child. You must be exhausted. Go and have a rest. There’s a bedroom in there.” He pointed at some gilt-patterned doors. “Have a nice lie-down before you clock off for the evening. Don’t worry, I’ll clear things with your superiors downstairs.”
Elsie stood up and hiccuped. “You’re ever so kind,” she murmured, moving toward the bedroom.
The bed was huge, covered in a pink satin quilt with a mauve pleated skirt to the floor.
She took off her shoes and lay down. As soon as her eyes were closed, she drifted off to sleep.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she became aware that Charles had removed her pinafore and was unbuttoning the front of her dress.
When she resisted, sleepily, he said she mustn’t get her uniform creased, that was all.
Except then he lifted her arms above her head and pulled off her vest, followed by her bloomers and stockings.
She shut her eyes, hideously embarrassed, as he ran his cold hands all over her body.
To her astonishment, he put his face between her legs and started biting and sucking.
She quivered with terror and shame. But she only cried out and began to struggle when he shifted himself upward, so that his face loomed over hers, and moved in a manner that caused her unbearable pain.
“Shh,” he said, rocking back and forth with a violent rhythm, leaning on one elbow and holding her down with the other hand. “Keep still, there’s a good child.”
He was covered in spongy amber hair, like an orangutan. She’d had no notion men’s bodies were like this. As the wooden bedhead drummed against the wall, the pain increased in ferocity. Elsie sobbed, wondering what she’d done to deserve it.
Charles kissed her face. “You’re a dear little virgin, aren’t you?”
His breath came in ever more rapid gasps.
Sweat dripped onto her face and stung her eyes.
She thought she might be sick.
All of a sudden he yelped as if in agony and slumped onto a pillow, still as a corpse.
She wondered if he had died. But then she felt the disappointing thump, thump of his heart.
She pulled herself out from under him and stood up to gather her clothes.
Elsie never went back to the hotel after that night.
To placate her father, she got a new job the very next day.
It was easy; she saw the help-wanted notice in the window of Maud’s Tea Rooms and Confectioners, marched in like she owned the place, and told Maud she’d been a waitress at the Savoy and that Mr. Edwardson, the head floors waiter, would provide a reference.
He had seen her after, face tear-stained and puffy, hair a mess, a bruise beginning to show on the side of her neck.
Despite his entreaties, she wouldn’t—couldn’t—say what had happened.
Only that she was resigning. He must have felt pretty guilty, because in a letter to Maud he called her an exemplary employee he was sorry to lose.
Maud and her sister, Phoebe, were already in charge of two waitresses, Nellie and Orla.
Elsie made three. Everyone was nice, but Orla was her particular friend.
She was twenty-five, with shingled hair, and had worked in all sorts of places, including on a Cunard cruise ship.
Some evenings she took Elsie home to her room in a big house near Victoria Park, and showed her how to pluck her eyebrows and draw kohl pencil around her eyes to look like an Egyptian.
Orla, who’d been engaged three times, said that what she didn’t know about men would fit on a postage stamp.
Elsie accepted the spirit of this claim while wondering at the metaphorical logic.
On Christmas Eve, Elsie and Orla were left to close up early.
After the last stragglers had gone and Orla bolted the door, she sat down with a sigh and rubbed her ankles.
“My veins are starting to bulge,” she said mournfully.
“Just my damn luck, eh? My legs are my best feature, too. Everyone says so.”
Elsie, who was dragging a wet cloth across the tables, said, “You want to wear compression bandages. My mum swears by ’em.”
“What, and look like an old granny? No thanks.” Orla reached in her pocket for her cigarettes. “Sit down, Els. Have a cig.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Elsie, accepting a Woodbine.
Orla lit it for her with a grave look on her face. “Els, we’re good pals, aren’t we? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you needed my help with anything?”
“Like what?” Elsie puffed on her cigarette, enjoying the whirling-head sensation.
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way. But have you noticed you’ve put on a bit of weight?”
Elsie laughed. “Is that it? I’m not offended. I’m growing into a woman, that’s all. Mum even told me it was time I got some brassieres. I must say, they do give you a nice secure feeling. But d’you reckon I ought to stop eating sweets? I don’t want to turn into a big elephant.”
“What about your monthlies? You haven’t missed any, have you?”
Elsie frowned. “How do you mean?”
“Girls, when they get to a certain age, start bleeding regularly, don’t they?”
“Bleeding? Where?”
Orla looked even more worried, and started talking about wombs and the body getting ready for babies, and the womb lining falling out when a baby didn’t start growing. It sounded absurd to Elsie. But Orla was the most knowledgeable person she’d ever met, so it had to be true.
“Does it happen to all girls, though?” The only time she’d seen blood in her underclothes was after the unspeakable night at the Savoy.
“Well, yes, eventually.”
Elsie considered this. “And then once it starts, it happens every single month?”
“Unless you’re going to have a baby. And that would be because you’ve been to bed with a man. Elsie, is it possible you’re going to have a baby?”
Elsie stubbed out her cigarette, put her hand over her mouth, and ran to the toilet.
“Please, please, don’t tell Dad,” begged Elsie, tears running down her face.
“It’s not something we can keep secret,” said Mrs. Shaughnessy, who was sitting on the edge of Elsie’s bed. “Orla’s right, you’re showing. I don’t know how I didn’t notice, except you’re still just a little girl to me. Oh, Elizabeth, how could you? How could you let this happen?”
“But, Mammy,” sobbed Elsie, “why did you never tell me? Why didn’t you tell me the things men do? I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to stop it happening.”
Mrs. Shaughnessy tutted sadly. “You ought to know better than to let a boy get you alone. I hope I’ve taught you that, if nothing else.
” She frowned. “What’s his name? I’ll go and talk to his mother.
We might be able to get Father Donaghy to marry you if we do it quickly.
You’ll have to wear a loose dress, but goodness knows you’d not be the first girl who—”
“But I don’t want to get married. I can make it go away. There are things you can—”
The slap came so fast Elsie didn’t see her mother lift her hand. “If I ever, ever hear you say anything so evil in this house, Elizabeth Theresa Shaughnessy, you’ll get more than a slap, is that understood?”
Her cheek tingled, and she tasted blood; a back tooth had loosened. “I’m sorry, Mammy. Please don’t hate me.”
Mrs. Shaughnessy stroked her daughter’s hair. “My poor little one. It’s all going to be all right. We’ll manage, just you wait and see.”
Elsie began having nightmares. She dreamed of a monster growing inside her, a half-human, half-animal creature whose tentacles spread through her limbs and wrapped themselves around her insides.
Every night she woke up as she was about to choke to death.
She became terrified of sleep, so she stayed up reading library books.
She read Jane Eyre and Great Expectations twice through, marveling at the depth of emotion and drawing strength from the triumphing of Jane and Pip.
The days ran together dully as she grew fatter and sleepier, dragging herself around and mindlessly eating leftovers off customers’ plates, until one evening in late January, Maud told her not to come back.
“We can have another look at the situation,” she said, not unkindly, “when you’re through this difficult patch. ”
Elsie nodded numbly. If left alone with her thoughts all day, without work as a distraction, she knew she’d go mad.