by Molly Pohlig
* * *
“So I thought it only proper that we have this little, shall we say, mother-daughter chat before the upcoming occasion,” Catherine said, nodding at a gentleman who was strolling in the opposite direction, and Iseult realized the conversation had been not only rehearsed, but staged. She would not have been surprised if her aunt had even arranged for the too-bright sunshine.
Beatrice became a twinge in Iseult’s neck at the phrase “mother-daughter,” and Iseult stumbled slightly on a tree root. Her aunt shot her a glance, peeved that she could not orchestrate every detail of the scene. Iseult felt that she was expected to offer an apology at this juncture, but she wasn’t sure of the etiquette of apologizing for a future unknown sin, and she waited for her aunt to enlighten her.
“Your father has suffered such bad luck,” her aunt said daintily, “with your mother’s untimely passing, and having to raise you alone, and of course he is all at sea when it comes to delicate discussions with his daughter!”
Beatrice’s presence softened at the mention of Mr. Wince, while Iseult’s hardened.
* * *
and what about me and my suffering, having a father who never even tried? must i hear a lecture advocating that he be pitied for it?
sweetheart hush and listen perhaps she will have some guidance
* * *
Iseult resolutely crossed her arms tightly over her chest, a pose she knew her aunt loathed, and Catherine’s posture bristled in response. This conversation was becoming more like a battle, and the change in the air was sensed by Mrs. Pennington, who drew closer, like a reinforcement battalion.
“All I mean, Iseult, is to remind you of your duties toward the man who has raised you, in terms of decorum. If your mother were here, surely she would do the same,” Catherine said icily. Iseult’s neck grew warm, but was it placation or a warning?
Catherine stopped suddenly, grabbing Iseult’s elbow, and Mrs. Pennington, following too close behind, bumped into them. The three (four) women stood in an uneasy huddle. Catherine gripped Iseult’s forearms, which were still crossed like armor across her body. She had a queer, searching look that Iseult had not seen before. “I am not saying that you have to be happy about it, I am not saying you have to agree with him, but I am promising you, child, you will only make it worse for yourself if you continue to go against him.”
Mrs. Pennington wrapped an arm around Iseult’s waist and said gently, “She’s right. You know she’s right.”
Usually Aunt Catherine discouraged the closeness between Iseult and the housekeeper, but even Iseult could see her aunt soften visibly, touched perhaps by an affection that she herself only pretended to feel for her niece.
* * *
you know they don’t care for you don’t love you as i do they are being kind to you now but how long do you think that will last it only suits them right now to be kind iseult don’t forget
* * *
Standing in silence on this beautiful sunny day, Iseult looked between the faces of the two women, and, more than anything, despite good intentions, misguided or otherwise, love or something like it, she felt her toes gripping the edge of a ship’s plank, and she was about to be pushed off, and she would fall alone.
* * *
The morning before the dinner, she had an appointment with the dressmaker. Mr. Wince was not to be budged from the black (he had never felt that Iseult had truly suffered enough from Beatrice’s death, certainly not as much as he himself had; he did not see how her peculiarities and indecencies and bad manners counted as suffering) but after some heavy pressure from Mrs. Pennington, he admitted that perhaps a small amount of adornment might go toward making Iseult look brighter. She had been sallow of late. Nerves, surely? He made sure that the cook provided a good deal of red meat in her diet, as rare as she could make her eat it. (Mr. Wince was unimaginative enough to never have even suspected the presence of a wide ledge underneath the dining room table. Iseult was an expert at secreting near entire meals on the ledge, and then removing all evidence before it was noticed.)
Mrs. Pennington always accompanied Iseult to the dressmaker to oversee alterations, but some problem arose with the vol-au-vents. Everyone had begun to trust Iseult more and more over the past months, and thus she was sent on her way alone, only to discover Aunt Catherine there waiting for her. Iseult’s heart, which had buoyed slightly on the short escape, plunged downward again.
Iseult assumed her usual meek position on the dais while Aunt Catherine and the dressmaker lamented her figure, her complexion, her hair (although Iseult didn’t see what that had to do with anything).
“Can’t the shaping here”—Aunt Catherine gestured vaguely to Iseult’s midsection as she spoke—“be made more flattering?”
The dressmaker frowned, pulling the fabric this way and that. There was precious little that could be done, so a heaping basket of jet and obsidian beads was thunked on the floor next to the dressmaker’s podium. One by one, gaudy trinkets were sewn on, and Iseult twitched each time the needle approached.
“Now, don’t you worry, Miss Wince, I’m sure I’ve not pricked anyone with my needle in years!” Iseult didn’t bother to explain that the twitches were more an ecstasy of hope that she might. It wasn’t too long before the ordeal was at an end, and Iseult was undressed and redressed and left alone in the waiting room to attend to her vanity. She stood idly before the full-length mirror and contemplated her disappointing figure, swamped in her skirts. She was aware of her mother’s voice.
* * *
iseult you mustn’t go tonight mustn’t mustn’t. mustn’t go.
and how do you propose i escape? i’ve been told already i mayn’t play sick, and would be propped up at the table with the ragingest of fevers. i’m afraid i must go and i’m afraid i must behave.
but you can’t you can’t i know you. when you’re like you are you are like to be unlike yourself. if you could only find a way to calm. if you could only find a way.
i know a way, mother, but i don’t know a how. i’ve no access to what i need. they may trust me but i am still watched hawklike and they turn out my pockets when i come in the house.
… just the pockets?
* * *
Beatrice fell silent. The day was hot and still and Iseult was aware of her face moving through the air as she turned her head to look around the dressing room. There was the usual array of ladies’ niceties: brushes and ribbons and pins and powder puffs. And pins. A pink satin pincushion all stuck with pins. She knew that she had to leave directly or she would be missed, and that she would have to think of a hiding place fast, but the thought was there and not to be denied.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Aunt Catherine asking if everything was all right, and so there was nothing to do but follow the instructions.
“I shall be ready in a moment.” Iseult put on her best confident voice, which could be convincing, especially when she was engaged in the pursuit of relief. She hoisted two armfuls of skirt up to her elbows and stuck her right foot on the armchair by the dressing table. The black boot was laced high and tight, so she had to be quick, and she couldn’t be fussy. Her eye had first been caught by the lovely gold sheen of some immense safety pins, but she realized with regret that there would be no room. There were, however, a number of evil-looking hatpins. All with a bit of tarnish, none of them quite straight anymore. Iseult grabbed the lot, wormed a finger into the small gap between her right boot and her ankle, and shoved them in.
* * *
She made it out of the dressmaker’s shop without a word, just nodding as her aunt answered the requisite questions. Yes, it’s all fine, yes, someone would be along to pick up the dress later, yes, put it on Mr. Wince’s account. Sometimes it is best to be known as strange, because then a little extra strangeness doesn’t raise any eyebrows. After a hug and a kiss and an exhortation to be good, Aunt Catherine bustled off back to her own life, and Iseult managed to walk naturally, if mechanically, out of sight of the shop
and into an empty mews, where she leaned against the brick wall and let out the breath that she had been holding.
She didn’t dare peek. There was no time. She steeled herself for the short journey home, a course of shallow steps and shallower breaths, and off she went.
* * *
When Iseult arrived at home, the Catastrophe of the Vol-au-Vents was still in full swing, and Mrs. Pennington was standing in the doorframe giving what-for and plenty-of to the girl from the market. Iseult slipped through practically unnoticed. She gritted her teeth for the stairs, and before she closed her door, she called out to Mrs. Pennington that she would take a nap and preferred not to be disturbed. She locked the door.
Collapsing into her mother’s chair, she gingerly lifted her skirt. The only sign that something was amiss was a tidy row of pinheads lined up along the boot’s edge, and a bubble of blood. Iseult slowed her breathing and began to unlace, pausing for a little gasp now and then. After what could have been quite some time or mere moments, the lace was completely out (Mrs. Pennington would be furious, but no time to worry now). She eased the boot off with infinite care, keeping her foot as rigid as possible.
She looked. She reached out to touch her foot, then thought better of it. The stocking was a total loss. Each hatpin had ripped its own hole in the stocking, and the holes were destined to grow worse with their removal. She tore at the black silk so she could at least see better what she was working with. Four of the pins were stuck in right behind her ankle. The fifth had gone rogue and bitten into the slightly fleshier part in front of her ankle. Blood was trickling, but the deepening color of the surrounding skin showed that there was more in store once she stopped using her foot as a pincushion. Of course the thing now was to avoid a mess. She pulled two handkerchiefs from her pocket (she liked to be prepared, in case) and pressed both neat squares over the entry wounds. With a surgeon’s steady hand, she approached the pins. With as little fuss as possible, she simply grabbed them and jerked them free.
After stanching the blood, Iseult peeked under her makeshift bandages. One handkerchief was soaked clean through, but the other was hardly wet. And only a syrupy trail oozed from the wounds themselves. She replaced the sodden fabric with the cleaner one, and from her pocket she fished a hair ribbon, which she secured round her ankle. She laid the offending stocking on her bed; she would tell Mrs. Pennington something about a tree branch in the lane, which would of course not be believed. She put on a fresh stocking and arduously relaced the boot.
It was murderous. It was torture.
It was wonderful.
5.
As much as they tried to stay positive in the lead-up, both Mr. Wince and Mrs. Pennington grew increasingly anxious, as Iseult seemed to shrink to something less than solid, although more than gaseous. But only just.
The day of the dinner, Iseult refused to let Mrs. Pennington into her room at all, saying over and over that she “required solitude.” Panic seized the good housekeeper’s heart, but Iseult’s voice was free of the crackling quality it had when things were about to go irrevocably wrong, so she didn’t push it. Mrs. Pennington busied herself with the preparations for the evening, but it was still with a sense of unease that she huffed her way up the staircase when it was time to get Iseult dressed.
She was about to knock when the door swung open. Iseult stood in the doorway in her dressing gown. Smiling. Iseult usually had to be coaxed into her dressing gown. She almost never smiled.
“Well come on, let’s get me ready!” Iseult pulled Mrs. Pennington inside and rushed her off to the closet with such haste that the housekeeper was too delighted to detect the slightest hint of a limp.
Iseult was quickly laced and dressed in the newly enhanced dress, and she didn’t even complain, as they walked over to her dressing table, that the beads clacking together on her lackluster bosom would probably give her a headache by the first course. She didn’t object when Mrs. Pennington forced the French wires with sapphires through her earlobes, even though they were heavy as sin. She didn’t grimace when her hair was swept too far forward on her forehead, giving her what she considered a slightly simian appearance. Why make a fuss when she felt so very fine?
Distracted by what he perceived as a glaring ink stain on his shirt cuff, Mr. Wince was also not in a state of mind to notice Iseult’s limp as she descended the stairs. He only noticed that she smiled, which on the one hand was exactly what he wanted. On the other:
“My dear,” he said in a low tone, as if there was anyone else who could hear, “perhaps when you smile, you could temper your enthusiasm slightly. That right incisor will be considerably less noticeable with an expression less expansive.”
* * *
dear he doesn’t mean it he’s being helpful do as he says you know that tooth has always driven you mad
you are the one who has driven me mad, mother. i cannot tell what you would have me do, shall i please them all and land us a husband? or repel them so we are locked in here forever?
* * *
Iseult’s mother was silent only when Iseult was truly required to make a decision. When Iseult knew her own mind, she couldn’t get Beatrice to shut up.
Iseult took her father’s proffered arm and eased her smile down so her upper lip masked the offending tooth. The thought of knocking it out with a doorknob or a bookend flew across her mind like a bird skimming water, but it didn’t settle, just kept flying. She stepped more firmly on her right foot to strengthen the clarity of her mind.
* * *
Truth be told, the evening was horribly dull. But the sort of dull that qualifies as a success. No one said the wrong thing. No one spilled anything. Nothing was broken. No voices were raised, and offense was neither given nor taken. Nor was there a single interesting observation or conversation. It was deadly, and afterward Mr. Wince asked Iseult to join him in the study.
* * *
Iseult was not fond of the study, it was strictly her father’s purlieu and so she was only given access when she had behaved exceedingly badly, or exceedingly well. The room was dark and oppressive, and you could tell that Mr. Wince had been told that this was what a man’s room ought to look like. He himself always looked uncomfortable in it—but he looked uncomfortable everywhere; even in his sleep he looked vaguely preoccupied.
But there they were, Iseult and her father, seated primly in the two armchairs before the fire. Although there was no natural way to sit in the hard, high-backed chairs, sitting there was preferable to being across from each other at the desk. They sat at the desk when Mr. Wince was displeased, and there Iseult could see the portrait of her mother looking at her sidelong. Beatrice couldn’t have been more than seventeen. She wore a dress that bared her shoulders, and the sight of her creamy, unblemished neck always filled Iseult with rage, then remorse, then self-pity. No. It was not a nice place to sit.
Mr. Wince had gone to the trouble of securing for Iseult a glass of sherry, which she held by the stem as if it were on fire. Mr. Wince himself swirled around a ridiculously large snifter of brandy, as he had seen other men do.
(They were more alike than either one of them would have been able to fathom. They had both suffered a great loss that haunted them daily, and neither knew how to come to terms with it. Neither of them felt at home with other people, preferring their own solitary company, although they both thought it might be nice to get rid of that as well. What an absolute dream. To be alone, but without oneself. But they could not speak of such things.)
“My dear”—in saying that, he always sounded like an actor who knows he won’t get the part but must audition anyway—“you did your mother and me proud this evening. I must say that I had my doubts, but you were the perfect lady. I do believe a few of the gentlemen were … taken with you.”
No one relishes hearing a parent voice a compliment about them that they do not themselves believe. But the night had gone so well, and Iseult wanted to end it without any bother, so, under cover of her sherry glass, she gave that
pesky incisor a lick so her lip would slide right down. She turned to her father with a demure smile and said, “How kind of you to say so, Father. I do hope that you’re right. They all seemed rather—”
wretched?
“—rather —”
unworthy?
“—rather, well, rather—”
moronic.
“Exactly.”
“Hm?”
“Em, exactly the sort of gentlemen that I would want to be … taken with me.”
Iseult’s father had had a good deal of brandy. He patted her hand clumsily and, without looking at her, said, “Your mother would have been so pleased with your performance. Goodnight, my dear.”
Iseult rose and placed the sherry glass on the mantel, suspecting that her father wasn’t aware of how apt the word “performance” was. “Goodnight, Father. Sleep well.” He was practically dozing already, so there was no need for the farcical exchange of goodnight kisses. Iseult limped from the study, and Mrs. Pennington met her at the door.
“Well, how did it go? I think it might have been a success!” Fresh as a daisy at any hour, she was.
“It was … Yes.”
Mrs. Pennington could tell that Iseult had pulled down the shutters on the evening, and that she would have to wait until at least tomorrow to get anything out of her. So she prepared Iseult for bed in silence, except that Iseult said she could remove her own stockings, thank you very much. This was no more rude than Iseult usually was, so no notice was taken.
* * *
Iseult huddled in front of the window, where there was enough light but not too much. It was raining, and when the weak moonlight hit her mother’s chair she could see the raindrops chasing each other spastically down the pane. She pulled off her stockings and stuck her bare legs out before her, pale as piano keys.