by Jo Baker
Sarah did not know where to put herself, or what to say. She felt hot. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetheart.”
They walked on together, silently, through the rough grass.
“Mr. Bingley, Senior, God rest him, brought me back here,” he said, after a while. “He was always very fond of me. And of my mother, too, though he left her there. I was just a boy.”
He proffered the smouldering cigarillo. She looked at it, uncertain. He jerked it closer: Go on. Out of shyness more than anything else, she took it off him, and tried it at her lips. The smoke was treacly and rank; it turned into a lump in her throat. Coughing, she thrust the cigarillo back towards him.
“You have to practise.” He patted her back. “Don’t suck it in like that.”
She nodded, feeling sick. They continued on along the path, and his hand lingered on her back, where the stays stopped and the shoulders were just thinly covered by her shift and dress.
“Tell you a secret?” he asked.
“Go on, then.” Her head was spinning.
“I’m going to set up my own tobacco shop one day. Only the very best, oh yes indeed. Only the very finest Virginian tobacco.”
He stopped in his tracks; she had to turn back to him. He stood there, brilliant in that shabby little wintery wilderness. He examined the neat scroll of the cigarillo, turning it between dark fingers. Then his face broke into one of his miraculous smiles, and he looked up at her.
“They can’t ever get enough of it, your proper London gentlemen. Men of that calibre, they love their tobacco almost as much as they love their sugar.”
She felt suddenly giddy with it all: the novelty, the transgression, the thrill of his difference; the way that all awkwardness with him had seemed to dissolve and drift away with the tobacco smoke. She took the cigarillo from his hand, to show that she approved of him and his tobacco and his grand plans, and was herself a creature of his ilk, and willing, as he had said, to practise. This time, she huffed the smoke out into the air with a shade more composure.
He said something that she did not quite hear.
“Mm?” She peered at him through narrowed eyes.
“She going to give you grief?”
He nodded over towards the edge of the wilderness: Mrs. Hill was marching up towards them, arms swinging, face like a quince.
“Oh, good Lord.”
She fumbled the cigarillo back into his hand.
“Trouble?”
She nodded, prickly with terror. How on earth could she excuse this to Mrs. Hill? She turned to go.
“We could go walking out,” he said. “When you get your afternoon off.”
She flashed him a look, half fear, half delight; then she gathered up her skirts, and raced back to Mrs. Hill.
Fortunately Mrs. Hill required no explanation or excuse. Indeed, she offered Sarah no opportunity to give one. She just met her with a cuff round the back of the head—“Ow!”—then a shove at the small of her back, which sent her staggering towards the house.
“Missus, please—”
“Don’t you ‘missus’ me! When I think—with Mr. Collins in the house, and the Bingleys! And you out where anyone might see—”
Mrs. Hill gave her an extra shove to impel her up the front steps, then she grabbed Sarah’s arm and dragged her through the door, and into the vestibule.
“Fetch the Bingleys’ things. They’re leaving.”
“They’ve not stayed long.”
Mrs. Hill’s voice dropped to a hiss. “I was calling you, Sarah, and you were not here. I was so ashamed. Now get on with your work. Jump to it, girl. Quick as you like.”
Quick as I like, Sarah thought, is actually a good deal slower than I am going now. But her cheeks burnt with misery, at the thought of shaming Mrs. Hill.
The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family.
With the departure of the Bingleys the heavens opened, and there followed such a succession of bad weather as prevented the ladies from walking out at all.
It also prevented Sarah from sleeping; the rain clattered on the attic roof, and pattered on the little skylight, and burbled in the guttering, and whirlpooled down the drainpipes. Polly snored through it all, arms flung back and wide above her head. Sarah lay awake, thinking of Tol Bingley; his twining smoke, his dark eyes, his hand warm on the top edge of her stays.
The rain also fell on the stable roof, and dripped, and dripped, and dripped, somewhere off outside the lamplight’s glow, outside the realm of James’s book. It distracted him; he found that he turned the pages without reading the words. He was obliged to mark his place, throw on his coat and tread into his boots, and go out into the streaming night with a storm lantern and a ladder, and climb up onto the stable roof, and listen, in the drenching rain, for that particular drip amongst all the other drips. He found the loose slate and slid it back into place; this would serve until a dry day and daylight, when the job could be completed properly.
And Mrs. Hill, stark awake at her window while her husband wheezed behind her, looked out across the puddled yard, at the moving storm lantern that seemed fringed around with crystal where the raindrops caught the light, and watched James climb the ladder up onto the roof, and watched him fix the loose slate, and watched him climb safely down again, and watched until he had carried the ladder back into the stable, and watched the door shut on his light, and watched the light return to his window. Inside, he settled down again to his solitary night.
When his light went out, she realized that she was cold, and drew her shawl tighter around her, and went to her bed, and knelt beside it, and said her prayers silently to herself. And when she had said them through once, the rain drumming on the skylight above, she said them through again, shivering, her lips shaping the unspoken words. She held each phrase for a moment in her thoughts, to try to give it full and proper attention. There was so much to be thankful for: there was pleasure in her work, in the rituals and routines of service, the care and conservation of beautiful things, the baking of good bread and the turning of rough, raw foods into savoury and sustaining meals. There was pleasure, too, in the little clutch of people that she now had clustered around her. If she could but be certain that they would continue in this manner, that James would settle, that Sarah could be made to see sense, that Polly would become steady and useful; if she could but know that this would tend towards continuance, and not towards dissolution, then she could be quite content.
And yet, and yet, the feeling still could not quite be quelled: there was also the fact of her, herself. Would she, at some time, have the chance to care for her own things, her own comforts, her own needs, and not just for other people’s? Could she one day have what she wanted, rather than rely on the glow of other people’s happiness to keep her warm?
Work, Mrs. Hill knew, might not be a cure for all ailments, but it was a sovereign remedy against the more brooding kinds. With Sarah buried deep in a drift of gowns and petticoats, harried by demands for miracles of rejuvenation and embellishment, she would have little time to daydream, and was conveniently hidden away from that troublesome mulatto.
He was, thankfully, less present in the kitchen than of late. The rain, and the pre-existence of a significant social engagement in the near future, meant there was a temporary falling-off in communication between the households. It was a pleasant sensation, Mrs. Hill felt, to be locked up tight and snug at Longbourn. The rain streaming down the windows, the countryside beyond sheathed in grey, the roads awash, the footways mired, no one approaching the place, no one leaving: it was like the Flood, and Longbourn was their ark; whatever happened to the world beyond, they few were safe inside.
But it was a temporary situation at best. It could not be for ever.
And so Sarah must be spoken to: behaviour of that kind could not be ignored. But how to speak on such a subject without risking damage to the girl’s innocence? Innocence was a sheet of pristine glass, a screen from the
harshness of the weather; one slip and Sarah would do terrible, bloody damage to herself, and others, and the glass would be all in pieces on the floor.
Best to keep it simple. Simple rules for a simple girl to follow.
“I forbid you to see that mulatto man again.”
“What?” The girl’s face was gaping shock. “You mean Ptolemy? Why?”
“Do I really need to tell you? Really?”
Her lips pressed tight, Sarah nodded.
“You were smoking, Sarah. You were out walking the grounds—not your grounds, need I add; your master’s property—when you should have been at your work. And with this man—a—a stranger to us here, and quite unknown. You could be dismissed for less, and fined, into the bargain. When I think of the harm it could do, to the reputation of the household—”
Mrs. Hill folded her arms under her bosom, conscious that she could stand up to only about three-fifths of what she was saying. Conscious, too, of her husband looking up from his work, and James coming in from the hall but halting on the threshold, and of Polly sloping off into the scullery before anybody could start blaming her for anything, and realizing that this much should have been allowed Sarah at the very least: that she be scolded in private.
Because Sarah was bristling now; she rolled her shoulders, planted her feet, rearranging herself. “And when he’s sent here?”
Mrs. Hill did not like this. The defiance. She bristled too. “Absent yourself.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows, and just looked at Mrs. Hill.
“What do you expect me to say?” Mrs. Hill’s voice rose with her temper. “Do you think I should give you permission to make an exhibit of yourself? To make us all a laughingstock?”
“So I can’t even have a friend? Is that what you are saying?”
“He is not your friend.”
Sarah hesitated. Then she nodded. “Will that be all?”
“If you will take heed and mind it, I think that it will do.”
Sarah curtseyed. Biting her lip, she turned to get on with her work, since it was all that she was allowed to do. She carried the teapot through to the scullery, poured the slops into the bucket for mopping floors with, straining out the dregs and slapping them into the stone jar where they were kept for sweeping. She fumbled them, scattering wet leaves.
Her hands shook. She wiped them on her apron, then rubbed her face, her calluses scratching against her cheeks.
Whatever was done with bad grace was done badly: how often had Mrs. Hill told her that?
Back in the kitchen, Mrs. Hill was frowning over her sponge cakes, which had not risen, and looked like biscuits. She only meant the best for Sarah, but of course the girl would not see it that way: she could not. She did not know what she was risking.
When Sarah brought Mr. Collins his hot water the following morning, he was already awake, and sitting up in bed. She was just going to set the heavy jug down on the washstand and slip out—there were four more of these ewers to convey to the other bedchambers, and of course one did not speak unless required to do so—but he cleared his throat and asked her, with an unconcerned air, and as if apropos of nothing, “Have they been brought up very high, the young mistresses, would you say?”
“Sir?”
“It turns out that they have nothing to do in the kitchen, which is something of a concern, and a surprise, if I may say so; but I think they must have some responsibilities about the house, some actual work to do. A family of this size, with Mr. Bennet’s income, I don’t see how they could all be idle. Or, indeed, what good it would do, to bring up a child to be of no practical use to herself or anybody else.”
He busied himself fussily with the sheets across his lap. He looked like a little boy.
“They are kind and sensible, clever girls, sir,” she said. It was true in some measure of some of them.
“But are they biddable?”
She hesitated. Nobody ever bade them do anything that went against their own desires, so it was hard to say; but still, she hated to disappoint him. She nodded.
He brightened. “And Miss Elizabeth: is she an active, useful kind of person? She would be able to make a modest income go a good way?”
Sarah tilted her head. She wished she could be more encouraging. Think of Mary; that might be the most helpful, and kindest, thing to say. In interests and temperament, and degree of personal loveliness, Mary and Mr. Collins were a far more likely match; but if he could not see that himself, it was not her place to point it out to him.
“It is a matter of some importance. You must speak your mind to me, child.”
Elizabeth did have Sarah making over her evening-gown for the Netherfield ball. And she was always fashioning flowers and headdresses out of offcuts for herself. Not a bit of twist or a slip of Persian or a scrap of Irish ever went to waste.
“They are thrifty,” Sarah suggested. When it came to matters of their own adornment, this was true. They were obliged to be.
He grasped this eagerly, hitching himself more upright in the bed. “And Miss Elizabeth, is she as amiable as she seems to be?”
Elizabeth’s hair curled naturally, which was vastly in her favour. And they being of a similar age, and having grown up alongside each other, Elizabeth always had an ear for Sarah, and an interest in her, and a book to lend her; but Elizabeth also had a core of ivory, and Mr. Collins should really realize it for himself, because there was no way on earth that he could be told, not by Sarah, that Mr. Collins would never do for Elizabeth.
“Miss Elizabeth is as amiable as anyone could wish her to be.”
He nodded again, rubbed his hands together, and seemed satisfied; heaving back the covers, he swung his legs out of the bed. His feet padded pale and bare across the carpet; he tugged back the curtains and gazed out, and seemed to have forgotten that she was there. Sarah remembered the billowing dust as she and Polly had beaten the carpet that he was standing on now, the choke and sneeze of it. Then she remembered the heavy ewers waiting for her in the scullery, their water cooling.
“Sir?”
He turned, looked at her, startled but benign.
“Sir, might you advise me, too? As a man of the cloth, I mean.”
He fluffed himself up like a winter bird at this. “What troubles you, my child?”
“I work hard.” She shifted on her feet. “I try to be good. I do as I am told.”
“Well, you do your duty then, and that’s just as it should be. Work is sanctified and sanctifying. Consider the Parable of the Vineyard.”
She nodded, though uncertain. That story was about being as well rewarded for doing very little as you were for doing a great deal: it always made Sarah feel dispirited, and hopeless.
“But what about Martha?” she asked. “From Martha’s story don’t we learn that there must be pause, that there must be time to listen and be still, and to learn.”
“Ah, yes—” His eyes narrowed at her.
“And what about the Lilies of the Field, that neither toiled nor spun nor did anything very much at all?”
“Yes, yes, but—you must see that to work is your duty, and like all of us you will find satisfaction in doing your duty.”
“But it does not make me satisfied—” Sarah wanted to stamp. “It makes me feel tired and sore, and though I work so hard, it seems I cannot even take a moment, even a moment’s pleasure, but I am scolded, I am found to be in the wrong.”
“Pleasure?” Mr. Collins moved towards her, eyes wide now. He smelt of bed, and hair-oil and bad teeth. “Have you committed some error, my child?”
Sarah took a step back. She had run away with herself, and now was far beyond what she had intended.
“I’m sorry, sir, I should not have spoke.”
He stayed her with a soft hand. “What error is it, child? Upon your soul. You must tell me.”
All that had been done and seen and thought and felt, since James’s arrival in the household—the collision with the barrow, the chalky disks and spirals in his bag,
his spare clean room; Tol Bingley and daydreams of Vauxhall Gardens and Astley’s; the dark and dirt of the back lane in Meryton, the soldier’s naked skin and his cries; the dizzy sick feeling of tobacco smoke—it all came down upon her at once, and was too much, was far too much to make sense of and explain and offer up to Mr. Collins, tied with a neat bow.
“I spoke to the neighbour’s footman.”
He recoiled, his features squashing up together in a frown. “Is that all?”
She nodded.
“Just—spoke?”
She nodded again.
“Well, I expect that must be necessary from time to time.” She watched as his thoughts shifted and fixed. “Did you experience an unwonted pleasure in speaking to him?”
She’d experienced something; that much was certain. But what she’d felt had not been an unwonted pleasure. It had, perhaps, not even been pleasure at all, but, rather, the dawning realization that pleasure was a possibility for her.
“Not unwonted, I don’t think so, sir.”
“Well then,” he said, “you would be better speaking to the housekeeper, I think, than to me; it seems more a matter of domestic discipline, than a religious or moral concern.”
He waved her away, and turned back to the window, looking out across the wide green lawns, the shrubberies and woods of his inheritance. As she was leaving, Sarah lifted his chamber pot out from underneath the bed, and carried it out, her head turned aside so as not to confront its contents too closely.
This, she reflected, as she crossed the rainy yard, and strode out to the necessary house, and slopped the pot’s contents down the hole, this was her duty, and she could find no satisfaction in it, and found it strange that anybody might think a person could. She rinsed the pot out at the pump and left it to freshen in the rain. If this was her duty, then she wanted someone else’s.
… the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy.
Sarah sewed by the window. Elizabeth and Jane talked low, their heads close together by the fire; they were sewing too, wrapped in their dressing gowns and shawls, the firelight glowing through their hanging curls.