Suddenly Marion said aloud, “I hate my mother, but I love my father and I wish I were with him in London. He has a mistress there, but I don’t care. He never sleeps with my mother now. He is going to take me to Milan one day with him. He has promised. I hate it here and I wish I were home so I could go to dancing school with my friends. Our teacher is from Paris and is a friend of my father’s.”
All this was announced in the darkness as if she were reciting the words to an unseen audience. I didn’t know what to say and so turned on my side and went to sleep.
The next day Marion asked me who lived in the great house at the edge of the village and whether we might walk by it together. She was afraid to go alone because of the dogs. That afternoon we walked by Easton House and, standing near the gate, looked down the avenue of elms, which then were so much smaller than they are today. Marion asked if anyone her age lived in the big grey house and I said no, only the squire, who was to be married soon. Marion was excited by this and asked if the bride-to-be was pretty, and I said she was, because I had seen her carriage many times passing through the village. This was true, for Mr. Walter’s mother was a beautiful young woman.
Marion decided she could tolerate me, though in her peevish humours she could be cruel and was given to outbursts of quarrelsome rage, while I in turn treated her with a cold reserve, which vexed and puzzled her. I would not rise to an argument, though sometimes in conversation I would use words she didn’t understand. “Augment,” I would say. “It means to make greater, Marion. To increase.” I was happy enough to see that this provoked her wonderfully, the colour rising in her pretty throat.
One rainy afternoon I suggested that we read a play together. This was rash, even dangerous, for if she told her mother, Aunt Sarah would soon find out and demand to know about the playbooks. But I had a good hiding place for them in the rafters of the house and no torture yet devised would force me to reveal its whereabouts. Though it might prove troublesome, I could not resist the urge to show how well I read to this pampered girl from London with her maidservant and her dancing lessons. I guessed that reading was unlikely to be one of her strengths and I was right.
I chose Romeo and Juliet and, without revealing how the story ended, outlined the plot and assigned the roles, giving myself Romeo, Mercutio, the Nurse and the Friar. I told Marion she could be Juliet, who was the most desirable girl in Verona. Marion liked the idea of being a beautiful girl in Italy, where her father bought his hats. I expected all this to go badly and it did; Marion could scarcely get through a line without fumbling a word or marring its thought.
“If they do see me, they will murder me.”
“No, no, Marion. She is thinking of her lover, not herself. She fears that danger will befall Romeo if he is seen at her balcony, and so says, If they do see thee they will murder thee.”
“My beauty is as boundless as the sea.”
“No, the word is bounty. My bounty is as boundless as the sea.”
“Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud, / Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, / And make her hairy tongue more hoarse than mine.”
“Airy tongue, Marion. The word is airy, for Echo’s voice resounds throughout the air as any schoolchild knows. Do not speak of hairy tongues, for it is foolishness itself.”
“This,” she cried angrily, “is the silliest stuff that ever I’ve read.”
“Hardly read, I should say. Misread is the truer word.”
“It’s a silly pastime anyway, reading plays. Mother says only fools and whores attend playhouses.”
“But gentlemen from the Inns of Court as well,” I said. “And courtiers from Whitehall who favour velvet caps for themselves and laces and ribbons for their ladies.”
Marion looked at me closely. “How would you know?”
“My mother once told me. She worked in your father’s shop. She often heard the customers talking of the playhouses.”
Marion could not disguise her smirk. “Your mother told you, did she? I thought she was my nursemaid.”
“She was for a time, and said you were insufferable. Mewling and wailing over nothing. But she also worked in your father’s shop.”
“When she wasn’t at the playhouse, I suppose,” said Marion.
Flushed with triumph I had overspent my purse, and so between us that afternoon I called it but a draw. Yet I had other matters on my mind that summer: my fourteenth birthday was fast approaching and I knew my aunt was eager to be rid of me.
One July evening, perhaps a fortnight before Lammastide, I was summoned to the parlour, where she and my uncle were waiting. Uncle Jack looked grave and worried and Aunt Sarah was forcing a smile, and I knew I would hear something adverse. My aunt told me she had been speaking to a Mr. Trethwick, who was looking for a servant girl. He lived in a farmhouse some three miles beyond Woodstock on the Hensington Road with his elderly sister, who was feeble-minded. He had spoken to Aunt Sarah after church about me, wondering if I were yet of age for service. When told that I soon would be, Mr. Trethwick said that though I was small, I looked a good strong girl who could help in the household, since his sister was growing difficult to manage with age. I had seen them in church on Sunday mornings, the sister nodding and smiling as she held on to her brother’s arm. John Trethwick was in his late middle years, a severe-looking man with a squint.
Uncle Jack was against my going; he said Trethwick, though cheerful enough in company, was a flint-hearted man and still close to every penny he’d made; none of his neighbours liked him, for he’d quarrel over an inch of dirt between boundaries. As for his sister, there was more to her than just nodding and smiling; she inclined, it was said, to fits of rage. Both brother and sister had lived together alone fifty years. And where does that leave the mind? said Uncle Jack. John Trethwick, my aunt argued, was a Godfearing man who never missed church and was always pleasant in conversation. I would be in good hands.
“Sarah,” said Uncle Jack, “you see the man only at the church door on Sundays, when he bears a friendly face to all. At home he lives behind all that.”
But my aunt was not moved by his argument and said that when I came of age she would take me herself for an interview.
That night I lay awake listening to Marion as she muttered in her sleep, while I imagined life with the Trethwicks in their farmhouse. I saw a winter night with the rain beating against the windows and the old woman by the fire, her brother telling me it was time to take her to her room and undress her for bed, the farmhouse stale with the smell of soiled underclothes and old bodies and dust that had gathered over years.
All this made me want to know more about those who spent their lives serving others. I pitied Margaret Brown and the way she was treated by Marion and her mother. I wanted to like the girl, but I found it difficult. She had little to say on her own behalf and her meekness repelled me. If I found her peeling onions for dinner or mending an apron by the fire while the others were out, I would ask about her life before she entered service. She had but brief answers to any questions. What of her family? I would ask.
“Oh, yes. I have a mother and father, and brothers, one sister.”
What of them? I would say, for I wanted images so I could picture her life before service with the Boyers. But she would add nothing.
“What is your father’s work?”
“My father, John Brown, is a cob, Miss.”
“And what’s that?”
“A water carrier, Miss.”
“Yes. And what else about him?”
“He is overfond of ale, Miss.”
“And what of your brothers and sister?”
“What of them, Miss?”
I would leave her then to her mending, for I could find no spirit in the girl and this filled me with an obscure anger. Was the serving world filled with such people, and how could I be a part of that world?
That Sunday at church, I carefully watched the Trethwicks across the aisle, the old man’s heavy-lidded eyes closing now and then, even under the l
oud hectoring of Littlejohn’s war on pleasure. Beside him, his sister’s ever-restless eyes were looking this way and that, the nodding, smiling face a study itself in madness. I vowed I would run away before I placed a footstep in their household. I would go to London and find my father. I would have to walk and I imagined it would take at least a week. That meant living rough, avoiding vagrants and thieves. Could I carry enough food for a week? Would I need a weapon, a small dagger perhaps? What would I do when I got to London? How would I start the search for my father? It was a foolish dream, common enough no doubt among unhappy children, but something at least to cling to when compared to life with a miser and a madwoman. Even as a child I was never much for praying, but perhaps that morning I asked God for help.
My fourteenth birthday came and went and was but lightly regarded, and only by my uncle, who gave me a shilling. But his better gift was his news that John Trethwick would not need me until after the harvest. Uncle Jack surmised that the old man wanted to spend his money only on field hands in August, and so I was reprieved; moreover I had a shilling to put with my playbooks in the rafters and time to think further on my plan.
My bedmate, Marion, was growing more irritable under the slow pace of country life and the heat of the sun, which was ripening the corn. She took up her dancing in the afternoons to beguile herself, and I have to say she was both graceful and adept, though I never told her so. When she asked if I wished to learn some steps, I declined, as I knew her game; she wanted to place her skills at dancing beside mine, which were negligible. She was in poor humour most of the month and getting on the nerves of everyone, including her own mother and my aunt, who asked me to amuse her as best I could.
One afternoon I took Marion into the countryside. She insisted that Margaret Brown come with us, as she wanted the girl to pick some flowers that might dress the night table by our bed. I took her first into the woods to what was left of Goody Figgs’s cottage, telling her along the way that a witch once lived there. Saying all this, I felt disloyal to both Mam and the old woman, for she had been Mam’s friend and was certainly no witch. But I wanted to impress Marion, who was interested in such things as witches and goblins and expected each village in the country to have at least two or three. Yet she was not much affected as we walked around the charred ruins where the smell of an old fire still clung faintly to a half-burned bedpost and a broken joint-stool.
She was peevish that day, Marion, and told me that her courses were on their way, and though she knew I had not yet had this experience, she insisted on asking me whether I too felt out of sorts at their onset. I said it made no difference to me, and she smiled, for she knew I was lying. We went by the river, now shallow in the summer heat, and I showed her where the bream lay in dark pools beneath the willow trees. I said we might catch a fish for amusement. If we lay on our stomachs and slowly moved our hands through the water, the bream would rise and we might tickle their bellies to entice them. But Marion said it would soil her skirt; already her stockings were torn from the brambles, she said. Margaret Brown was sitting apart from us on the edge of the meadow, where she had been gathering cornflowers and hysop. These poor flowers lay beside her in a clump, already wilting. Marion walked towards the girl while I lay by the river’s edge to watch the fish. I could hear Marion scolding her.
“This country living is making you more stupid every day. Look at those pitiful weeds you’ve gathered.”
When I looked back, Marion had taken off her broad summer hat and was shaking out her long hair. She said her stockings were soiled and it was hot in the sun and she hated this place with its cowpats and flies. I was enjoying her tantrum as I lay staring into the dark, still water, studying a fish near my hand. I was gently stirring the water above it while Marion ranted about her stockings, blaming Margaret Brown; apparently there were holes in the stockings and this was Margaret’s fault. As I listened, I must have stirred the water too quickly, because the fish disappeared, and when I got up I saw Marion standing over the girl with an alder switch in her hand.
“What were you thinking when you laid out these stockings for me?” she demanded.
Margaret Brown said she was sorry.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Marion cried. “It’s the only word you know. Get on your hands and knees. You want beating.”
I walked towards them. Margaret Brown was now on her hands and knees in the long grass, and Marion had pulled up the apron and dress. The girl wore no petticoat and I could see the pale, narrow back, the ridge of her spine. There was so little to her. Marion began to flail at that back, soon raising welts as the blows struck. When she finished she was panting and looked flushed. She handed me the alder switch.
“You may have ten strokes on her. I shall count them.”
Startled, I asked why. “She has done nothing to warrant a beating,” I said.
Marion was beside herself with rage. “Why, why, why?” she screamed. “Because she is a stupid, lazy girl who wants beating. That is why.”
Her outburst sent a flock of meadowlarks soaring into the hot blue sky, to settle finally in another part of the field. Without realizing it, I was holding the alder switch and looking down at Margaret Brown and those reddened welts, a kind of mad handwriting on her pale back. I felt appalled by Marion’s cruelty, yet I was also repelled by the terrible resignation in the kneeling girl. Was she born to endure such punishment without complaint? For a moment I had the greatest urge to strike her. I wanted to feel what it was like to hurt someone who could not hurt back. I may even have raised that alder switch—I can’t remember now—but I did not strike her and that at least is in my favour, even if my thoughts were shameful.
I told Marion I was going back to the village, and they followed me as we crossed the field and no one said a word. But from that afternoon on, I sensed that the enmity between Marion and me had deepened. Perhaps she was ashamed that I had witnessed her cruel tantrum, or perhaps she was merely tired of me and her long confinement in the country. We didn’t speak to each other until the next morning, when I had washed some clothes and was spreading them on the grass to dry.
Marion came out of the house and stood watching me and said, “May I ask you a question, Aerlene? I know you are angry with me, but I want to be your friend as well as cousin. I want to get to know more about you.”
I looked up at her and I knew she was lying. She would never claim a bastard as her cousin. Still, I asked, “What is your question?”
“Do you ever think about your father?”
I felt my heart quickening. My father? What was she on about with my father? I stood up, wiping wet hands on my apron.
“The other day,” said Marion, “I heard Auntie talking to my mother and she said your father was either a farmhand or some idler your mother met in London. Did she ever tell you who he was?”
I walked past her carrying the clothesbasket and said nothing. I was determined not to be drawn into argument lest I say something I might regret. I knew that a part of me longed to tell her that my father was a writer whose plays were performed in London playhouses, and a greater man by far than Philip Boyer, a seller of bonnets and ribbons. But I could prove nothing and would only look foolish in the telling. So silence and carefully chosen words uttered with foresight would be my weapons in our little war.
Yet she was cunning, Marion. I give her that. Cunning and capable of surprise attacks, sweetly voiced, the innocent inquiry that was meant to unsettle. I might, for instance, be nearly asleep when she would whisper, “Auntie says the farmhand had no tongue. Is that really true? And you such a clever girl with all those words in that head of yours. I think it more likely to have been the London idler, who was perhaps a man of words and passed that on to you. The subject of fathers and who bred us is important, Aerlene. We should talk about it.”
I guessed she had rehearsed these little speeches before delivering them to me in bed. When she grew tired of harping on my father, she turned to my name. One night I was certain she was asl
eep, so even was her breathing, but I was startled anew by her calm clear voice out of the darkness.
“Aerlene is an odd name, is it not?” I feigned sleep, but she continued, “I have never heard it before.”
Then nothing more until two or three nights later when I had forgotten all this, didn’t she begin again as though she had just left off this conversation.
“What does the name signify? I wonder. Of all the Christian names, why did your mother choose Aerlene?”
Another night she would wait until I was nearly asleep and say aloud, “Let’s play I Spy, Aerlene.” The minutes would pass and sleep would draw closer and then the damnable girl would say, “I spy with my little eye, something that begins with e.”
And I might finally say, “Go to sleep, Marion. I am not interested in your games.”
“Very well,” she’d say. “I’ll play alone. I spy with my little eye something that begins with e. And it is an elf. Auntie has already told me that your name means ‘elf’ in some heathen tongue. She said that your mother used to go to the woods and talk to ravens and toads, and was friends with the witch whose house was burned down by young men from the village. That was the place where you took me the other day, was it not?”
It is not easy to share a bed with someone you dislike enough to hurt, and I knew I was capable: Marion was older and taller, but at the time I was something of a hoyden, a sturdy, little brown nut of a girl with a temper. If need be, I knew I could thrash Marion, and as I listened to her it became an ordeal not to pinch her arm or strike a blow across her brow. Yet I was rescued by language; words saved me from behaving like an ill-bred wench in her cups. Words, I decided, must be used, and not as battering rams in an argument, but rather as allies in defence of order. I chose the word forbearance, a favourite of Uncle Jack’s, and he had ready need of it in his wife’s company. But also I liked the sound of the word in my mouth, its three-syllable iambic heft, for bear ance.
As I listened each night to Marion’s prattle about tongueless men and London idlers who might have fathered me, I summoned up forbearance, imagining a bear valorous and stolid; and in my mind’s eye I saw myself riding to sleep on the back of that bear in the middle of a word.
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