by Jo Baker
It was Monday, the day before the ball. Sarah had a blister on the soft flesh between her index finger and her thumb, where the flat-irons had worn the skin away. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the minnow-dart of her needle through muslin, the drag of thread through the open weave.
Wickham, she heard, and Wickham and Wickham and Wickham. It sounded like the clack of knitting needles.
The wind buffeted the chamber window; outside bare branches rattled. The shrubbery beyond was glistening and wet, and all the gravel walkways were pooled with rainwater; the little wilderness was sodden, and the sky low and laden with clouds, and the wind just brought more clouds, more rain. It matched Sarah’s mood—grey, with no glimmer of better things to come, now that she was forbidden to see anything of Ptolemy Bingley.
Then the door slammed back, and Lydia tumbled into her sisters’ room; she could not, it seemed, be trained to knock. There had been no opportunity for her to run off any of her natural ebullience for days: confinement to the house was a perfect torment for her. Lydia needed to be taken out for a wild gallop; she needed someone to throw sticks for her to chase, poor love.
“No morning visitors, no officers, no news, nothing! Lord! I don’t know how I shall bear it.”
She flopped down on her sisters’ bed, kicking her feet against the patchwork. All pent-up and fiddly-idle, she picked up a length of pink ribbon and ran it through her fingers.
“Put the ribbon down, please, Lydia, you’ll spoil it.”
She pulled a face, let the ribbon slip and coil onto the quilt. “You two have done well, hiding yourselves away up here, out of Mr. Collins’s way.”
“Lydia! That’s not true. We’re working.”
Lydia shrugged, kicked off her slippers and trod into Jane’s dancing shoes, which were lying out on the floor.
“Oh, it’s only Sarah to hear, and she’s as good as gold, she won’t tell a soul, will you, Sarah?”
Lydia flashed Sarah a grin, making Sarah smile back. Then she turned her feet this way and that, appraising the shoes. “Anyway, I’m not staying down there to be read sermons to, and that is that.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then Jane said gently, “He follows Papa into the library, you know.”
“And that,” said Elizabeth, “is trespass indeed.”
“There, you see! Even Papa tries to escape the dreary fellow, so I don’t see why I should not. Lord! What a bore he is. I don’t know how anyone can stand him.”
Sarah peered closer at her sewing, her lips pressed tight: Mr. Collins could not help his awkwardness. He could not help where he had come from, or what chances nature and upbringing had given, or failed to give, him. And if he did not know the by-laws of the household, it was because nobody had told him; he was expected to intuit them, and then was blamed for his failure.
“Papa never receives company in there.”
“If he can help it, Papa never receives company at all.”
“Yes, but the library. My goodness.”
Sarah glanced up at the pretty, plump faces, so delighted with their own daring; she was transported back to that morning before Michaelmas, to the cold hallway and the smell of urine, and the tangled voices coming through the firmly shut library door. Mrs. Hill was allowed in there, she thought, though obviously Mrs. Hill did not count as company.
Lydia sniffed, kicked her heels, swinging Jane’s shoes out in front of her. “Mr. Collins is his cousin, so if anyone must suffer the fellow, it should be Papa.”
Then she peered harder at the shoes, as if somehow struck by them. She looked up.
“Did we order new shoe-roses?”
Every gaze now turned to the dancing shoes dangling from Lydia’s toes. One rose hung loose, ragged and greyed, its sorry state a testament to Mr. Bingley’s enthusiasm for dancing with Jane at the Meryton ball. The other one was gone.
“Oh goodness, did we?”
“I didn’t.”
“Nor I.”
“Did you mention it to Mother?”
“No.”
“We must have some left over.”
Jane went to the dresser, opened a drawer and began to sort through its contents, a frown on her pretty forehead.
There were, indeed, shoe-roses, but they were of such varying vintage, colour and degree of wear, that only two sets could be made of them. One pair was blue, the other yellow; and even then, the yellow pair matched only in the loosest sense of the word. They were much the same size, but were conspicuously different shades: one was lemon and the other was, as Lydia observed, more of a custardy colour.
Whilst all this was going on, Sarah sat, and sewed, and kept her eyes on her work. She was listening to the wind in the chimney, aware of the way it made the fire shudder and the light dance, and feeling her skin already beginning to tighten in the expectation of cold.
“I shall need pink ones to match my dress,” Lydia said.
Sarah closed her eyes. She let a breath go softly. She looked up.
“Big as cabbages! Big as you can get, anyway. You know the shade of pink, like my good muslin. You can take the sash with you if you like, to get as close a match as you can. Thank you, Sarah. You are good as gold, you know.”
Sarah set her sewing aside.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, with a sorrowful glance at the misted window, and the rain beyond that spattered it. The panes shook in the wind. “I’m afraid the shoe-roses will have to be got by proxy.”
It was a slow, reluctant trudge along the turnpike, the rain coming down with a drenching fullness that seemed to cut her off from all the world. The umbrella soon let water through, and drips gathered on the inside and fell heavily on her shoulders, the damp penetrating to her skin. Her skirts became weighty with water. For the time being, there were no carriages, which was a blessing.
She tried imagining herself striding down a London street, paved, and lined with glowing windows. Then she was wandering along a glimmering arcade, which was warm and bright and dry. She dawdled at displays of fancy bonnets, glossy jewels, and mountains of confectionery. But then there was a lady walking ahead of her, and the lady—who was, it seemed, Elizabeth all grown up and in a fancy orange spencer and bonnet—handed her a package, and then another, and then a bandbox, and heaped more and more parcels on top of it, and when Sarah tried to refuse the packages and hand them back, grown-up Elizabeth scolded her for being clumsy and not paying proper attention.
Then the mail-coach came thundering up, startling her awake, making her leap the ditch and press up against the dripping spiky hedge. The coach tore past, the horn blaring, a flurry of hooves and wheels; it sprayed up behind itself a fountain of mud that spattered her from head to foot. She wiped her face and hands with her sodden handkerchief. She bent to dab at her skirts, but then just gave up: what was the point? She was stupidly wet; a spray of mud made little difference now.
In Meryton, the haberdasher spread an oil-cloth for her to stand on. The fire made her skirts steam.
Wet to the skin, she stood for a half-hour, while the haberdasher and the haberdasher’s boy made up six pair of shoe-roses, in the required colours, bringing the different ribbons and braids over for Sarah’s approval, so that she did not trail her wet and mud across the nice clean shop. She nodded at everything she was shown, profoundly unconcerned by the differences in shade and texture. The ladies could like the shoe-roses or they could lump them. Indeed, she would rather like it if they lumped them. She rather looked forward to their having to lump them.
Other, dryer customers came and went, having just stepped out of their conveyances or popped down the street from their houses in the town. They left their umbrellas dripping at the door, and looked at her with that particular combination of sympathy and amusement that the soaked seem always to elicit in the dry.
The finished shoe-roses were wrapped in tissue, then brown paper, then canvas, to keep them safe. She took the package under her arm, and set off back into the murk.
She had just
passed the toll-house and slipped round the turnpike, when she heard a carriage approaching behind her, and the coachman addressing the keeper, then the click and chink of a coin tossed and caught, and the call of thanks. The fastening rattled, and the hinge creaked as the pike was swung round to let the carriage through.
She gathered up her skirts and stepped back out of the way, up against the wooden palings of the fence. More mud hardly signified now, but she could do without getting flattened in the bargain. She glanced over her shoulder to watch the carriage approach.
The lamps glowed warm in the grey afternoon. The keeper leaned on the pike, hat sodden, a sack over his shoulders. The coachman clicked his tongue, flicked the reins, and the coach rolled forward. She recognized the livery; and she felt a flicker of—what—excitement, unease … guilt? Because there was Ptolemy. And she was supposed to absent herself from Ptolemy. But she was stuck there, back pressed against the rough fence, and the state that she was in, oh Lord—the coach trickled past her: warm horseflesh and supple leather, then a glimpse through the glass of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, beautiful and bored inside. And then the footmen, up on the footplate, in their rain-streaked greatcoats and tricorn hats. Tol Bingley saw her, and he tipped his hat, making the water pour from its brim.
He spoke a quick word or two to the other footman, who nodded in reply. Then he turned back to Sarah, and beckoned. Eyebrows up, he hooked his fingers back towards himself, then gestured at the perch where he was standing: would she like a lift?
It all happened in a moment: she stepped forward; he reached down and she reached up. He grasped her arm above the elbow, and she was lifted into the air. One foot found the step, and the other was on the ledge, and then she was perched on the end of the footplate beside him; he was all warmth and old smoke and wet wool and substance.
“Light as a feather!” he puffed.
She laughed, glanced sidelong at him, anxious.
“Hold on here.”
She grasped the handrail, her raw hands beside his neat gloved ones.
The coachman, with a complicit half-glance back, snapped the reins again, and the horses broke into a high-stepping trot, and the movement of it flung her backwards, and Tol’s arm came around her waist to hold her steady.
The wind was on her face, and the wet wrapped itself around her. The horses surged along with easy strength, and the roll of the carriage made her sway against him, hip to hip. The ground blurred with speed. It was an elevation indeed, from the clinging misery of the mud.
Landmarks—the hay barn, an ancient witchy oak with its limbs broken back to stumps, a stretch of bog—were reached and passed before she knew it. So this was the luxury of speed, the ability to compress the world into folds and slip through them like a needle. Already the Longbourn crossroads emerged from the rain, and grew close. The carriage slowed.
“Just hop down as we make the turn.”
She turned to him, eyes wide. “You’re not stopping?”
He gave a sympathetic half-shrug. “They can’t know I’ve been picking up strays.”
She glanced down at the blurring ground: she would break her leg, her neck; she’d break something. She felt him fumble for her arm again. He gripped it just where he had before, above the elbow.
“Now,” he said. “Step off.”
The horses slowed as they skimmed the bend, but they were still going far too fast. She could not step off.
“Now, Sarah. Now.”
She stepped off.
For a moment she was dangling, and the ground was hurtling by. Then her feet hit the road, and he let go of her, and she was running, stumbling to catch up with her own speed. The coach was away; she staggered to a halt.
Looking back over his shoulder, Tol Bingley tipped his hat to her again, and she raised her hand to wave. Then the coach made the turn and he was gone.
She trudged up the village street, huddled into herself; it was like a poke of hot chestnuts to carry with her, the knowledge that she had done this. She had done what she had been forbidden to do, and she had got away with it unseen, and nobody at Longbourn would ever know! She was so wrapped up in gleeful contemplation of her misdeed, that she did not notice the figure on the high path through the fields, who stood in a sodden coat, watching her from beneath a dripping hat brim.
He had watched the coach slow and make the turn and, with a lurch of fear that she would be hurt, her small figure detach itself from the back of the conveyance, and stumble along a little way, and come to a standstill, apparently unharmed. He had watched her wave after the disappearing carriage. He watched as she wandered up the village street, slow and dreamy, as if this were a sunny day in May.
Only when she had passed through the main gates, and was out of sight, did he turn and stride back to the house.
He was in the kitchen when she came downstairs in her dry clothes, the wet ones bundled up in her arms. She went straight through into the scullery, where he heard her sloshing them in a tub to soak away the mud. She came back through wiping her hands. She had missed dinner; the kitchen was in chaos: she did not seem to care. She seemed somehow outside it all now, and unconcerned.
He set out the coffee things. He wondered if she’d notice that his cuffs were damp, his wrists goosepimpled, that he had an outdoor chill about him. He gave her a long assessing look, taking in the fresh-air flush of her cheeks, the bright sheen of her eyes, thinking how lovely she was, now that she was happy. But she gave him only the briefest of glances.
“Will you take those up to the drawing room when you go?”
She dropped the package on the kitchen table and peeled off the outer layer of damp canvas.
“Of course.”
And then a moment later, when she had begun to sort through the muddle of fine china and kitchenware, he asked, “So, what’s in it?”
He lifted the haberdasher’s parcel, and set it on the tray between the coffee cups.
“Hm?”
“The package. What’s inside?”
“Shoe-roses,” she said.
“Shoe-roses?”
“Shoe-roses. Roses for shoes.”
“I don’t understand.”
She puffed impatiently. “Dancing shoes, they have to have roses on them. You fasten them on.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To look pretty.”
He raised his eyes to the heavens.
“What?”
“Only, if they send you on a fool’s errand in foul weather again,” he said, “you come and find me, and I’ll go instead.”
She planted her hands on her hips, her eyes brilliant.
“And why must you dictate what I may and may not do?”
He held up his palms. “I didn’t mean—”
“What if I want to go? What if it is a pleasure to me to go? What if I do not want you to poke your nose in where it’s not wanted?”
“I meant no harm by it,” he said. “I would not deprive you of any pleasure.”
He bowed, lifted the tray, and left the kitchen.
Sarah was left with the unwelcome sensation that she had spoken unfairly, and that Mr. Smith had unluckily reaped what Mrs. Hill had sown.
James had no intentions; he could not afford to have any; he could not afford to rope another person to his saddle. All he could do was keep his head down and get his work done. Which was why this stirring in him, the prickle of desire in his belly, the twist of jealousy there too, was so very unwelcome indeed. It must be quashed; it did not, after all, mean anything. It was a shame: that was the most that could be said of it. A shame to have to turn his head away, when he would very much prefer to look; a shame that Sarah would of course go and fall in love and it would not be with him. But the sorrow of it came as something of a surprise: he should by now have been perfectly accustomed to doing what he did not want to do, to letting things happen that he did not want to happen. But this? No; he could not reconcile himself to this. The idea worried at him as a dog worries at sheep:
he knew it would not kill him to see her happy with someone else; these things were not fatal, no matter what poets and novelists liked to pretend. He might not like it, he might not like it one little bit; it might make his chest constrict with something very similar to fear, but it would not kill him; he knew perfectly well that it would not.
It was with all this in mind that he set to drying up the coffee cups. It gave him the opportunity to be near her, her sleeves rolled back on bare and downy arms, as she rinsed the fine china. Polly crouched like an imp on the scullery floor behind them, polishing the lined-up dress shoes and muttering bad-temperedly under her breath. It was all perfectly innocent; Sarah could not imagine that because he dried the cups that she had washed, he meant to impose upon her interest in any way.
His nails, she noticed, were like pale moons—and she was distracted by the movement of muscle in his forearm as he twisted the cloth inside the china—but he remained as silent as a stone. Then she remembered Tol Bingley’s arm around her waist, the rain prickling her skin, the miracle of speed, and how he noticed her, how he paid her those attentions, while nobody else in all the world ever paid her any attention at all. She dipped another saucer under the water, and turned it over, and lifted it out dripping, and handed it to James, and wondered how far Tol Bingley had gone on that day, and what he might have seen from the back of the Bingleys’ carriage. If she unpicked the distance of her own day, the back and forth to Meryton, the up and down of stairs and the pacing along corridors, if you unravelled all that, how far would it reach? Would it go those twenty miles or so to London? Or even further, through the twisting country lanes, to the sea?
James worked on with deliberate slowness, drying each cup and saucer to a squeak, staying next to her, enjoying her frown, her stubborn silence. This doggedness, this bloody-mindedness: it charmed him in a way that he could not quite fathom. When he had offered to go to Meryton in her stead, she had rounded on him, sparking, self-possessed, glinting steel; she had been brilliantly bad: What if I want to go? What if it is a pleasure to me to go?