I’ll Bring You Buttercups. Elizabeth Elgin

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СКАЧАТЬ of Montpelier Place. Stables, indeed, and Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton a lady born!

      But perhaps it was one of Miss Julia’s jokes. You never knew when to believe her and when to take what she said with a pinch of salt, for she was always teasing or laughing, though once she had given up her tomboy ways she would grow into a very beautiful lady. Miss Julia was fair-to-middling now, but mark Cook’s words, those beautiful bones of hers would come into their own before so very much longer, and there’d be young men killing themselves for love of her. And when, Cook had plaintively demanded, was the girl going to get herself wed? There was nothing Cook would like better than a wedding at Rowangarth, now milady’s mourning was over, with dinner parties beforehand and such a wedding feast that the skill of Rowangarth’s Mrs Shaw would be the talk of the Riding for years to come; the yardstick by which all other wedding feasts were measured!

      Alice smiled down at the blue jacket, shook it gently, then draped it on a chair-back. Blue of any shade suited Miss Julia; it seemed to shade her grey eyes and make them look larger than ever. Julia Sutton’s eyes were beautiful, and her brown hair waved softly so it was a pleasure to dress and hardly ever needed hot tongs.

      Alice wondered if she should press her long scarf, for didn’t folk say it could be draughty on that Underground railway, and mightn’t it be wise if she were to tie down her hat?

      She sighed, wishing the trip on the tube train had never been mentioned, though it was safe as houses she was assured, with people riding on the Underground every day of the week. And what Miss Julia said was doubtless correct: that she would be glad that she had done it. It wasn’t given to many around Holdenby to ride on a tube train, even though Alice didn’t think it natural to burrow beneath a city like moles.

      Carefully she carried the costume upstairs, laying it over the bed with the blouse, then took out a clean chemise and drawers and black silk stockings. Later, she would help Miss Julia to dress, pulling and tugging at her corset laces from the back until the girl cried, ‘Enough!’ and was satisfied with the shape nature had never intended her to be. Corsets, said Julia, were the very devil, and one day women would refuse to wear them, just see if they didn’t! It was good, Alice smiled, that the dress of servants was far less bothersome; good that her shape was her own.

      Closing the bedroom door she took the narrow, twisting stairs to the attic in which she slept, thinking of the costume in finest grey flannel she had been given.

      ‘Take it, for I’m sick and tired of black and grey!’ Julia Sutton had said when her mourning for her father came to an end. Children were luckier than their elders; needed only to shut themselves away in drabness for one year, not three. ‘And take this black skirt, if you’d like it, and these white blouses!’

      Alice had gratefully accepted such bounty, for were not grey and black the colours servants wore, and mightn’t it be fine, now that she and Tom were walking out officially, to have so beautiful a costume to wear for him; to walk proudly at his side in, with pink satin roses on her hat?

      Tom. Thomas Dwerryhouse. Her cheeks pinked just to think of him; to think how she missed him and loved him and how very much she wanted him to kiss her. And though she was enjoying every minute of her stay in London, she wouldn’t complain when they boarded the train for home. And meantime, there was Miss Julia’s shoes to polish, and her own boots too, and a meal to prepare before their evening outing.

      Life was all rush and bustle. Life was wonderful!

      They walked through Hyde Park in the direction of Marble Arch and Speakers Corner, looking like young ladies of quality, Alice thought with delight, with Miss Julia stepping daintily because of her fashionable long hobble skirt, and herself in the grey flannel and a flower-trimmed hat.

      ‘What a beautiful evening, Hawthorn. It’s much warmer here than at home.’

      It was, Alice had to admit, with none of the northern sharpness in the early night air. It was a perfect evening in every way, because even if they did find a meeting and even if the police got wind of it, they’d just take to their heels and run, wouldn’t they, laughing at the fun of it, though sad that it would be one adventure that neither would ever dare speak about when they were back home again. But Rowangarth and parental authority were a long way away, and this was a May evening in London, and they still had a week to run before they must leave it all behind.

      She wondered what she would say to Tom after so long apart, and he to her. Maybe, though, there would be no need for words; just a whispered ‘Hullo’, and she closing her eyes and lifting her chin, the better, the sweeter for him to kiss her. It was, she thought happily, so nice to stroll companionably at Miss Julia’s side and daydream of Tom.

      The sooner a woman took charge of her own destiny, Julia reasoned silently, the better; though if the men who ruled their lives had anything to do with it, she would wait long and maybe in vain, for even though a woman was now allowed by law to keep her own money when she married, she still belonged to her father in her youth and to her husband in marriage. A woman, she frowned, was allowed no opinions of her own. Politics was men’s business.

      ‘I think here will do nicely.’ She stopped at a bench on which they could sit and wait and later stand so they might miss nothing of the speakers, if any speakers arrived, that was, and were not discovered by the police – which they almost certainly would be. ‘And all this is our own fault, Hawthorn,’ she fretted. ‘We are our own worst enemies. We come into this world precisely made for the bearing of children, and men take advantage of the fact!’

      Women, she reasoned, died too young, worn out by too many pregnancies. ‘You must have no more babies,’ doctors would warn, but women were never told how, for birth control and the advocating of it was illegal, and those women who campaigned for the vote were still dependent on the indulgence of a government made up entirely of men. And men were afraid that a vote would give women an undue advantage, for weren’t there far more women than men? To allow a woman such a weapon would be nothing short of madness; a surrender, some even went so far as to say, to bitchpower.

      ‘And I’ll tell you something else, Hawthorn. Until women can have babies when they want them, if they want them, we’ll never get anywhere!’

      ‘Miss! Don’t talk like that,’ Alice wailed. ‘You’ll get us locked up. Having babies is what women are for!’ Who ever heard of a man having a baby? ‘It’s what the good God intended us to do!’ It was as plain as the nose on your face, and nothing – not even giving a woman two votes – would change it.

      ‘Did He now? Intended us to be wives and providers of heirs. And to scrub and clean, too, and be grateful to some man for putting a ring on our finger? A servant for life, that’s what you’ll be, and me not so much better!’

      ‘But, Miss Julia, that’s what I am. Being a servant is all I’ve ever known and I – I think I shall like very much being married,’ she hesitated. ‘I want to marry Tom.’ She could think of nothing nicer, in fact, than having her own home – her very own home – and being beholden to no one. ‘Yes, I do.’

      ‘Tom? You haven’t got a young man,’ Julia gasped. ‘Oh, not Dwerryhouse? But, Hawthorn, they’re all in love with Dwerryhouse!’

      ‘Then I’m the lucky one, aren’t I? Because Tom and me are walking out seriously. On the night milady went to Pendenys – that was when he asked me. And I said yes, so those others had better find someone else to be in love with!’

      ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so glad for you, I truly am. You lucky girl! Are you really in love? Really and truly, I mean?’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ