by Lucy Tilney
“That’s enough, thank you, William. I have no idea how these stories start. Lydia has only gone to London to spend a few days with Uncle Edward…”
“Lydia has ruined us!” cut across Kitty.
“Speak for yourself,” replied Elizabeth firmly.
“I am sorry but she speaks for me too,” said Mary, “Our uncle may be forced to end my employment. Gardiner and Phillips is a family firm and must be seen to uphold family values and, if you want to know how the whole town knows, Lizzy, ask Pen Harrington’s mother.”
Jane paled and Elizabeth took a deep breath. Mr. Collins looked from one to the other and for the first time in his life considered the better part of valour. Mercifully he then decided his cousins were the most ungrateful females to whom he had ever had the misfortune to minister so, gathering up his hat and gloves, he assured them wordily of his fervent desire to pour the balm of Christian consolation into their maidenly bosoms before leaving them to whatever peace they could find.
Elizabeth closed the door behind him with a sigh. Under other circumstances, his offer might have made her laugh but the thought, no, the certain knowledge that all of Meryton (and as good as all of Hertfordshire) knew that Lydia had relished unsanctioned physical relations with a man-made laughing impossible. She fervently hoped no-one else would come to offer sympathy however well meant if they were going to triumph let them do it at a distance.
She returned to the sitting room and found Jane alone. For a few minutes, they sat in silence, Jane sipping tea and fighting tears, and Elizabeth most inexplicably still thinking of Mr. Darcy and how his fastidious nature would be so disgusted he would cross the road to avoid her now as she had once tried to do with him.
“It’s true,” said Jane after a while, “the world and her aunt will know the last detail and Mary is quite right about Mrs. Harrington; she is Mrs. Purvis’ sister, after all, and after the high-handed way mother has been treating her for years Mrs. Purvis would have no reason to keep our secrets.”
The door opened and Mary returned with her knitting. “Kitty has run after Cousin William,” she said, “let’s hope he’ll be so busy condoling with her that he won’t have time to visit every gossipmonger between here and Stevenage. I suppose at least we can at least trust him to keep his hands off her maidenly bosom.”
Elizabeth thought of pointing out that Mary herself could have been more circumspect in her remarks during his visit or, that as William could hardly take Kitty to the rectory alone, that he’d have to take her to the Copper Kettle with six other tables and at least twenty anxious ears but, finding no comfort in the potential for discussion, she merely volunteered to go to the kitchen if anyone wanted yet more tea.
Professor and Mrs. Bennet returned a week later with Lydia who to the disgust of all her sisters was merrier than they had seen her for months. The only blight on her mood was her father’s instruction to tell people she had visited family when what she desperately wanted was to tell all her friends all about Georgie.
After a stonily silent dinner, Jane and Elizabeth retreated to Jane's room where the elder voiced the fear the younger couldn't.
“Lydia couldn’t be… pregnant, could she?”
Elizabeth who had just made herself comfortable on the dressing table chair with her feet on the blanket box sighed and got up.
“As you were brave enough to say it, I shall be brave enough to ask it.”
Lydia had gone to ground in the room she had once shared with Kitty who had moved into a guest room citing her desire to keep certain things a surprise for her wedding night. She was lounging comfortably in her new Christmas pajamas with tea, chocolate, a magazine, and Mary’s cat. Elizabeth sat on the ottoman.
“Lydia, part of me wants to go round the mulberry bush about this but part of me can’t bear to.”
“Go on then, since when did I need to be coddled with euphemisms?”
“Have you considered the possibility you might be pregnant?”
There was a pause before Lydia started laughing, “Oh, Lizzy, how old fashioned you are! Of course, I’m not pregnant. He used dreadnoughts.”1
Jane would have died, thought Elizabeth, in fact, I can’t quite believe I’m sitting here upright and in my right mind hearing my schoolgirl sister talking about contraceptives.
“Have a piece of chocolate and stop looking so grim. You spend too much time with Aunt Marianne. You will not believe how short she was with me, every time she opened her mouth she preached and it was with a very ill grace she took us to do some shopping and she even scolded Uncle Edward for giving me an extra guinea, Lord, it was worse than being stuck with Charlotte for an afternoon! Did you know Harold Watkins broke it off with Mary for Ellie Purvis and Mary’s as sour as a lemon about it but what did she expect from a gormless twit like Harold? I told her I’d find out if Albert had any friends and she threw a fit and now neither she nor Kitty is talking to me. Want some chocolate?”
Elizabeth stood up feeling her temper begin to fray. “Lydia, I don’t want chocolate, I don’t want to hear our aunt criticised, I don’t want to hear your opinions on anyone, and who on God’s green earth is Albert?”
“Albert Mooney, he’s the chauffeur at Netherfield. He’s a darling and awfully handsome.”
“Charles Bingley’s driver?”
“Yes, Lizzy, you know what chauffeur means,” she popped a square of chocolate in her mouth and winked.
“And what exactly have you been doing with Albert Mooney?”
“A little bit of this and a little bit of that but I saved myself for George. And I’m getting my pains so the dreadnought worked. You’re not going to be an auntie yet.”
She put another record on the gramophone and Elizabeth staggered back to Jane’s room where she passed on the good news.
1 Trade name which became slang for condom.
AN UNWANTED HOLIDAY
Elizabeth returned to London feeling like a yoyo long enough to fill her aunt and uncle in on what Phoebe and Gilbert were no doubt withholding. Of Mr. Darcy, there was not a whisker. He had not 'happened’ to be around Shoolbred's when she went for flowers, nor was he buying a paper outside the Oxford Street tube, nor was he to be found simply taking a stroll anywhere in Mayfair. Elizabeth was not surprised.
Marianne gave her indefinite leave from the office (if she put articles in the post) until she could bring Jane back to London with her which was very kind but after the first day back at Longbourn, she began to wish she could chloroform Jane and wheel her to the station.
“When will dear Wickham be in touch? We need to make arrangements,” said Phoebe peevishly for the umpteenth time.
“He will, he will, he had to tie up some business. Sounded perfectly tiresome. I told him to get it over with and then we’d have some more fun.” Lydia lolled on the sofa with a copy of ‘The Confidential Companion’ feeling envious of the Honourable Lotty Bellamy who had run away to Paris with her beau.
Elizabeth stabbed her finger and watched the blood ruin the linen. This needlepoint might be her worst yet but if she didn’t keep her hands occupied she might do violence to one of them.
“Mother, I know this is not what you want to hear but I know George Wickham well. He’s almost twice Lydia’s age and he has a lot of girlfriends, you must realise he is not going to marry her.”
“I realise nothing of the kind, Miss Lizzy. Perhaps you are jealous.”
Elizabeth’s patience snapped, she threw the needlepoint on an empty chair and stood up.
“I’m going back to London. You can send my invitation to West Hampstead.”
Professor Bennet was in his study packing his briefcase. He too intended to escape to his rooms in Peterhouse.1
“Come in, Lizzy, come in, and close the door. I can’t bear the whining. Your aunts have both tried to explain to your mother the likelihood of this Wickham chap marrying Lydia is infinitesimal but so is her brain.”
Somehow, and exactly how she couldn’t determine, her father persu
aded her to ‘hold the fort’ for him for a few days and to ‘have a little chat’ with Lydia whose fretting about school had been exchanged for complaining about attitudes not progressing as fast as she thought they should.
“I daresay one day there will be flappers living glamorous, independent lives in Meryton but it may take a while,” said Elizabeth when the time for the ‘little chat’ came, “but meanwhile there are just a lot of nasty old women of both sexes getting their smalls in a flap.”
“I’ll be ancient by then,” replied Lydia dolefully, “and it isn’t fair. It’s none of their business what I do.”
Elizabeth shrugged, “Middle-class people don’t like change and people who upset the apple cart and herald change scare them. They talked about me when I got a job, remember? They want settled lives where nothing ever happens. A house with grounds or a villa on Marigold Terrace, the golf club, the bridge club, a plump bank account, and holidays in the Lake District. There is no room in that world for girls like you. Do you realise the gossip has got so bad that Uncle Edward is counselling father and mother to return to Cambridge because life in Meryton will never return to normal?”
She waited while Lydia’s brain ticked over.
“What about granny?”
“Luckily granny’s friends are more forgiving but our mother is having to come to terms with apparently having no real friends beyond Lady Lucas and her own sister. Mrs. Sommers walked out of the Copper Kettle when she walked in yesterday and she’s devastated.”
Lydia watched the now silent gramophone record revolve for a moment and flopped back on the bed, “Jessie Sommers had to get married, hmmmm, and did you hear about Elsa Brereton and her trip to France with Pansy Knowlesworth? Apparently, poor Elsa needs spectacles because she mistook Pansy for a boyfriend but they kept it sort of quiet and Elsa’s marrying some dimwit and Mr. Garner is always going on business trips with his secretary and everyone knows the churchwarden at St Julian's was…”
She trailed off when she saw Elizabeth's face, “I only did what everyone else is doing.”
Elizabeth remembered Grandfather Gardiner saying that Meryton was so like Sodom and Gomorrah he was only surprised all the lamp-posts weren't all made of salt, but it was perhaps not the best thing to share with Lydia quite then. She tried to explain hypocrisy and pointed out to Lydia that she was not one of the bright young set in London nor was she Nancy Cunard and even Elsa Brereton had been married off to silence rumours.
“What will happen to me if our mother and father move to Cambridge?” she said after a long and intensely awkward silence.
“I don’t know. Cambridge has bigger fish to fry than the Bennets but, still, it’s not that far. People will still know what you did and a whole townful of young men will think you are easy.”
For the first time in years Lydia’s cheeks reddened and Elizabeth took the opportunity to push the plan she had formulated in which Lydia asked Uncle Edward to use his contacts to get her a job in another place.
Lydia’s lip quivered. “Work? I’m only sixteen.”
“Sixteen was old enough to loll around in a hotel bed with a man you’d only just met!”
The ‘little chat’ ended badly.
They took long walks to get out of the house but Jane would not talk about Charles. On one occasion they were shunned twice in the village and cut by Mr. Stoughton and Myrtle which, Jane remarked was perhaps the lowest point of the whole thing, being snubbed by a pig. They were still laughing for the first time in weeks when they saw Kitty scaddling2 down the drive hat and gloves in her hands pursued by ear-shattering shrieks from the house.
Elizabeth peeked into the white-panelled morning room where a few of Grandmama Bennet’s blue and white Staffordshire plates decorated the walls and the same patterns worked on a score of needlepoint cushion covers told the visitor of Phoebe’s twenty-seven years of work as a married woman. Her work-box lay open on the floor and a scattering wools, scissors, and needle-books suggested it had been given a good kicking. Phoebe herself, her hair askew and delicately applied rouge streaked with tears, was slumped on the sofa rasping into a paper bag. Lydia perched sullenly on the other end.
The moment Elizabeth entered the room her breathing had a miraculous recovery.
“I am so angry with you, Lizzy. I think for all our sakes you should go back to London and stay there! I told your father what would happen if she went to London but he never listens to me where the good of you girls is concerned. George Wickham was your friend and now look what has happened!”
She pushed away Jane’s offer of a phial.
“Aye, take this and take that! Nerve tonics, tisanes, salts, headache powders… that is what I am reduced to! Old before my time and worn out with worry. Lizzy, how could you?”
Elizabeth leaned against the door. This could become a long afternoon.
“Mummy, this is nothing to do with Lizzy. I met George at the golf club dance on New Year's Eve, Lizzy wasn’t there. Besides you liked him yourself, you invited him to dinner and Kitty’s birthday party.”
Phoebe ignored Lydia and held out a newspaper for Elizabeth who took it reeling from George socialising in her family home without saying a word to her. Lydia took it back.
“In the Announcements, it says, Mr. G Wickham and the Honourable Miss King. The engagement is announced between Mr. George Wickham of Mayfair and Mary, eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Edmondsbury of Whitefields, Dorset.”
George had promised to charm Miss King and he had obviously had.
“Before you say anything. The gilt has worn off the gingerbread that was George and I am tired of hearing about it.”
Lydia stalked out and Elizabeth, realising that the fiction of ‘Loose Lizzy’ introducing George to her innocent little sister was not likely to be easily shifted from her mother’s mind, followed her. On the first landing, Lydia turned, “I don’t want any more lecturing. I’m full up.”
“I can’t say I want to spend more breath on a girl who’d turn her family upside down for a man she wasn’t even in love with,” retorted Elizabeth.
“For pity’s sake, Lizzy! Perhaps I’ve done them a favour or do you want Harold Watkins, Mr. Stoughton, and Cousin William for brothers-in-law because that’s what’s on the buffet here.”
Lydia dived into her room slamming the door and soon Fanny Brice could be heard singing My Man. Elizabeth who normally enjoyed irony went into her own room and put a pillow over her head.
Edward Gardiner succeeded in persuading his brother-in-law to move the family to Cambridge before Phoebe had a breakdown. They decided that especially now that it was known that Lydia had boasted to Pen about only wanting thrills and wasn’t even deceived by false avowals of love, that it would be better for the family if Phoebe was removed from the scene of humiliation.
The misery of losing her childhood home and knowing it would be let to strangers until William inherited made Elizabeth sick with grief. She wandered around her favourite places trying not to cry. Stupid Lydia’s fault. No, her parents' fault for never having taught Lydia to think seriously. She took a deep breath and for the first time thanked God that Kitty had spent the last eighteen months thinking about nothing more than boring Cedric Morris.
When she got home she found Jane in the still room making lavender bags and putting dried herbs into jars and boxes to take to Cambridge. Jane was more precious than Longbourn and whatever happened in all this mess she would not pay.
“You have to come to London, Jane. It matters not whether you marry or end a spinster, there is no life at all for you here now. And surely you don’t want to be cooped up in a house in a street in Cambridge.”
Jane managed a smile. “Not really, Lizzy, but our parents need me.”
“Forgive me, dearest Janey, they do not. They will only use you to avoid each other, as terrible a thing as it is to say of one’s parents, they never should have got together; mother should have married Mr. Bunting, then she would have remained in her own sphere, and f
ather should have stayed a bachelor don but as they won’t divorce their only hope for honest and happy lives is to learn to live together without us as go-betweens and barriers.”
“Kitty and Lydia will be there.”
Elizabeth chuckled ruefully, “Lydia is utterly self absorbed and Kitty has all the sensitivity of a steaMr.oller. I don’t know what Lydia will do but Kitty will get right on the business of finding a beau in a town brimming with future doctors and lawyers. She’ll be in the seventh heaven.”
“Do you think poor Lydia’s reputation will follow her?”
“Goodness, yes, it’s only twenty odd miles away but she wanted to be the Scarlet Lady of Longbourn so now she must live with it.”
“Oh, that is unkind!”
Elizabeth stripped a couple of stray lavender stems and crumpled the flowers into her pockets, “I don’t think so. Lydia is a bundle of animal passions with the brain of a two year old. She is her own worst enemy and, frankly Jane, after the horrors of imagining her violated and dead, then retrieving her from that hotel in Brighton and seeing father age ten years overnight I have no sympathy.”
Jane slowly arranged the lavender bags by the colour of their ribbons. “Oh, Lizzy, I don’t know. What would I do in London? I will feel so guilty.”
Elizabeth shook her head, “Jane, do you honestly want to be with them when you’re thirty-five and then forty-five?”
Jane dithered. It seemed wrong to act solely in her own best interests but even she had to admit the thought of another ten years, let alone twenty, with her parents was unbearable. In fact, as she laid the lavender bags neatly one by one on top of the jars of herbs she admitted to herself she would leave in ten minutes if she could.