by Jo Baker
Mrs. Hill was still a moment longer. Then she reached out and tweaked the letter out of Polly’s hand.
“I’ll take that.” She knotted her shawl sturdily around her. “Sarah—”
“Yes?”
“Let me know how you get on.”
In the post office, Mrs. Hill handed Jane’s letter to the postmistress, who looked it over, and frowned.
“That’s ill wrote, that is. Where’s that going to? Is that an L? Is that Derbyshire? Is that to Lambton again?”
Mrs. Hill nodded.
“I can hardly make it out. I won’t vouch for that making its way there straight. Why two letters there today, anyway?”
Mrs. Hill was not in much of a position to judge the quality of the script. She was used, however, to the postmistress’s spinning of fine threads into substantial yarns of gossip, and did her best to snap her line of thought straight off.
“Oh, you know how it is, with sisters, when they are close.” She shrugged. “They do need to keep up their confidences, don’t they?”
“Secrets, eh.”
“No! Not secrets. They are good girls, my young ladies are.”
“Ah yes,” said the postmistress, leaning forward on the counter, resting her bony frame on her folded arms. “Yes, yes, of course they are, the Bennet girls, aren’t they? But that’s only half the point now; the other half is the young fellows, and you can’t be certain there at all.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you? You’ve not heard of the accounts left unsettled all over town, the gambling debts? Or that there’s barely a tradesman’s daughter who has not been”—here she dropped her voice to an insidious whisper, leaning so close that Mrs. Hill could almost taste her eggy breath—“interfered with.”
Mrs. Hill stiffened and stepped back. “I think that kind of talk is best left unrepeated—”
“Now, Wickham, that great favourite of the Bennet misses—”
“—because that kind of talk, it reflects well on no one; not the officers, nor the tradesmen, and certainly not the daughters, or, indeed, on the folk who do repeat it—”
“Well, I hope you are not suggesting—” She pushed herself upright.
“—because I always say, ‘Let them without sin, let them cast the first stone.’ ”
“Is that right, Mrs. Hill?” The postmistress folded her arms under her meagre bosom, with the manner of someone clinching an argument. “Is that what you say, now, is it, Mrs. Hill?”
No, she would not pass it on. It would help no one to hear it; it would only serve to worsen the general distress. So Mrs. Hill kept mum all that day. The postmistress was a wicked gossip, and knew nothing about anything, and everybody knew it. But that would not stop the story being repeated, and smoothed with handling, so that it seemed to acquire a patina of truth. One thing was certain, though: Mrs. Hill would not contribute to that handling. She would not gossip.
She would, however, partake of something of her mistress’s grief, though in quieter measure. Mrs. Hill had changed Lyddie’s nappies, wiped her snotty nose, had nursed her through colic and croup and chickenpox, all those childhood illnesses—and she was still just a child, a girl with a brown birthmark on her calf, a sweet tooth, a bold eye and an infectious laugh. Mrs. Hill felt at once desperate for her, and furious: what a poor, poor bargain she had made of herself.
When Mrs. Bennet began to stir and fret again, Mrs. Hill put an extra drop of laudanum, and then another, into Mrs. Bennet’s water, and helped her drink the mixture down, and she soon became quiet. Mrs. Hill stroked the faded ringlets off her mistress’s face, and then left her to attend on the gentlemen. She was a wearying, anxious being, was Mrs. B.; she was always so eager to solicit interest in her sufferings. But if her husband had loved her as a husband should—contentedly, generously, and without reserve—would she then have found it necessary to keep on seeking proofs of love, only to keep on being disappointed?
When she responded to the library bell, she found Mr. Bennet crumpled in his chair; Colonel Forster stood upright by the fire, an elbow on the mantelpiece, a picture of frustrated vigour.
“Will you pack for me?” Mr. Bennet asked.
“You are going to London, then.”
“Epsom, first, which is where they last changed horses. I shall speak to the postillions, and then … go onwards.”
“To find Lydia.”
“They must be married. I must make him marry her.”
Mrs. Hill nodded. “A week’s worth of linen?”
“I will find a laundress there, if my stay is prolonged beyond that.”
Her throat aching, Mrs. Hill dragged her old bones up to his dressing room, and packed his shirts and stockings and neck-cloths and included with them a sprig of rosemary, so that when he pulled out a clean shirt in whatever London lodging he happened to wash up in, the little scented twig would fall out, and cause him to remember, and consider the gap between what he was prepared to do for Lydia and respectability, but was not prepared to do for others, whom he had also professed to love, at other desperate times.
When Colonel Forster emerged from the library, Sarah was instantly at his elbow, pocketing her duster. He had a lost, enquiring air, so she dared to speak first.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Ah, yes. I was looking for the, eh, necessary—”
“Round the side of the main house, sir, and across the gravel. This way, here, let me show you.”
“There’s no need, no need, I can find my way.” He brushed past her.
“Sir—”
He stopped, glanced back.
“Sir, we had a footman here, sir, you might remember. James Smith, his name was; he had dark hair, and hazel eyes, and he was about this tall …” She held up a hand, marking the air beside her, six inches higher than her own head. And for just a moment she had conjured him up—the length of him, the curve of his arm, the angles of his face—the urgent elastic pull towards him that made her unsteady on her feet.
The colonel frowned. “What?” he asked. “What did you say?”
She brightened: a ripple of hope. “Our footman here, James Smith, sir, he left the night you left for Brighton and I—”
“What is this you are asking me?”
He came up close to her now; she was faced with his red coat, gilded buttons, braid. He smelt of horse and sweat and smoke.
“Sir, thank you, sir. If you have seen anything of him. If he was in … in company with you, or—”
“What do you take me for?”
“Sir, Colonel Forster, I—”
“That, when a young lady under my protection—puts herself in peril, that I would have the time, or the interest—”
“Sir—”
“That you dare solicit my assistance?”
“Sir.”
“You forget yourself.”
“I am sorry, sir.”
She muttered it at her feet, so that he would not see her face.
Back in the kitchen, she picked up a cream dish, held it at arm’s length, and let it fall to the floor. It crashed into shards, which scattered and span across the stone flags. Then she got out her broom, and dustpan, and began to sweep the pieces up. If the old blusterer had known anything, he would have told her, wouldn’t he? He would have enjoyed telling her.
The colonel himself, as much astonished as offended, marched away down the hall, and stepped out through a side door into the summer day. He wandered around a while, looking for, and failing to find, the necessary house: Polly passed by some minutes later, with a basket of peas from the kitchen garden, and saw him pissing in the shrubbery.
In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on …
Rooms were hushed and had a breath-held air; there were too many obvious absences about the place. Though they did their best to make things normal for the Gardiner children, it was clear they were aware that something was wrong, the poor little things: they
went about with puzzled, placatory expressions, uncertain as to how they were at fault.
Mrs. B.’s sister, Mrs. Philips, stayed some days, and Lady Lucas called to offer her support. All other visitors were deflected by Mr. Hill at the door.
The Gardiners returned from their travels with Elizabeth, who was pale and fatigued; no doubt it was moving, all this sisterly distress, but somehow Sarah could not manage to feel for her quite as she should: Elizabeth had not a word to say about the footman, Mr. Smith.
Relaying trays to and from Mrs. Bennet, running into Meryton to leave or collect letters, brushing past the neighbours and the neighbours’ servants in the street, all of them looking for a nugget, a crumb, some little thing to help sustain the lumbering gossip-golem that Lydia’s actions had conjured into being, and all the time with the loss of James gnawing at her: this had all become quite normal.
“No one even mentions him at all now,” she said, one day, to Mrs. Hill. “He may as well have never been here at all.”
“That is certainly not true.”
“But he was somebody. He was.”
“Sarah, I know.”
“But you won’t do anything.” Sarah pushed back her chair. “I’m going looking for him.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It makes perfect sense. I’m going to go round all the villages, and knock at every door—”
“No, Sarah.”
“Someone will have seen him. I can just keep on going till I find that person, and then—”
“Sarah. You cannot. You must not.”
“I have to—” Her voice cracked. “I cannot bear—”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid!” Mrs. Hill slapped her hand down on the table, making Sarah jump, and the crocks rattle. “You have no idea at all yet what you can bear!”
Sarah stared. Mrs. Hill breathed, calming herself.
“Look, Sarah. You have a home. You have work. You are safe and warm and fed. And you are spoilt—no, no, hear me out—you must be, if you don’t value any of that. But if you leave now, you’ll have nothing, not a bean. You’ll just be one of the multitude of young folk out of work, wandering the roads, and who will take you in then? You couldn’t come back here, after you’ve broken your word to your master, and left in the middle of your term. You won’t even have a good word from him then, no one will give you a character. You’d be throwing your life away.”
“But,” Sarah said, “what about love?”
“I love you. Polly loves you. Mr. Hill does too.”
Sarah nodded. She looked away, eyes brimming. Mrs. Hill reached out and touched her hand.
“You forget, honey; these are bad times; these are lean years. The troubles, they don’t touch us here; they never have yet. But if you leave, sweetheart, I am afraid that you’d just … disappear.”
Sarah rubbed her forehead. “I must do something.”
“Do what I do.”
“What is that?”
“Work,” Mrs. Hill said. “And wait.”
Sarah’s chin crumpled, her head in her hands. It was not to be borne.
“But, you see … He knows where you are, if you are here. He will write to you, I am sure he will; or he will come back and find you … if he can.”
Jane and Elizabeth confided with each other in anxious virginal huddles, whispering over letters, scandalized by the gossip that was now leaking back to them, despite Mrs. Hill and Sarah’s best efforts to stem its flow.
“I don’t know why everyone is so hard on Mr. Wickham,” said Polly, while she and Sarah were picking raspberries. “He was nice.”
“Do you think so?”
Polly pulled a face, popped a raspberry into her mouth.
“Well, it’s not like he locked Lyddie up in a trunk, is it! She wanted to go, because he’s nice.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘nice.’ ”
Polly ignored this. She pushed raspberry canes aside, exploring deeper into the bushes to get at the fruit.
“He would’ve bought me sweets, you know.”
“Is that right?”
“He wanted to. All I had to do was be sweet to him first.” A pause, thoughtful; then: “What do you think he meant by that?”
Sarah looked at her a long moment, and then she shrugged. “I don’t know, Polly.”
She turned away, and lifted a sprig, and bent to hunt for berries. Whatever happened with Lydia, at least Wickham would not be welcome here again, at Longbourn.
Mr. Bennet returned from London without his daughter: Lydia was not yet discovered. Mrs. Gardiner took the children home: her husband was to continue the search from their home in Gracechurch Street. But the worst must be prepared for: Lydia would be found debauched, unmarried and abandoned, and come upon the town, or she’d be living under the protection of another man. A retired life in a distant farmhouse was the best that could be hoped for, given how far along the primrose path Lydia had already skipped.
But this cause was not to be abandoned, no matter what the inconvenience, no matter what the expense. This child was to be recovered, no matter her condition on discovery. It did not seem to matter that the girl had made her bed, and leapt eagerly into it; she would not be obliged to stew in it for ever. If she could be detached from her debaucher, she would still be supplied with a home, a companion, an allowance. To live out her days in some quiet, comfortable place would perhaps be a torture to her, but it was an unattainable luxury to others.
There were hushed voices, swollen eyes, curtains drawn against the sun. This is what it will be like when Mr. Bennet dies, Mrs. Hill thought, though then the family could quite reasonably expect their neighbours’ sympathy, and not their thinly veiled contempt.
And Mr. Bennet had become suddenly quite old; he was worn out by all the exertion, and by the endlessly circling blame and guilt. The evening of his return he hid in the library and rang the bell for Mrs. Hill.
All he wanted was to hold her hand. She let him.
“I am sorry,” he said.
She nodded. This was something, after all those years.
“It is enough to know they are discovered, I have seen them both—”
The Bennets surfaced, gasping from grief. Lydia was found and then shortly afterwards, in London, was married to Mr. Wickham; the thing was managed with such dispatch that it was to be hoped that people would conflate the rumour of the elopement with the fact of the marriage. In the kitchen, they had a bowl of punch to drink, in honour of the event.
“How much do you suppose it would have cost, to fix up the thing like that?”
Mrs. Hill glanced up from her sewing. Her husband was seated on the other side of the ashy fire, with his cup of punch balanced on the armrest. He had been, between sips, chewing a leather strap with his remaining back teeth, to soften it, preparatory to tackling it with an awl.
“A small fortune, I should think,” she said.
“I heard, ten thousand pounds.”
Her sewing fell into her lap. “Money like that—”
“Half as much. A quarter. A tenth. A hundredth.”
She shook her head.
“Could be comfortable,” he said. “Could be happy as a pair of pigs in muck with just a hundred pounds, we could, the two of us.”
She smiled, a real natural smile, not one of her pretend ones. He had not seen her smile like that in … well, he could not think how long. He returned the smile, all gaps and gums. It had been a hard and stony furrow she had been obliged to plough, the poor creature.
“What would we do with it?” she asked. “What would we find to spend a hundred pounds on?”
He whistled. “Oh, what wouldn’t we? Wine and parmesan and an upholstered chair for each of us. A silk scarf and comfits for you, and two ounces of tobacco every blessed Friday for me.” He laughed. “We would invest it wisely, not like some people I might mention.”
Polly called over from the kitchen table, where she and Sarah were buffing the pewter: “Things will be back to n
ormal, then, I suppose.”
“Mm?”
“With Miss Lydia married. Things will go back to how they were before, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Hill said. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Mrs. Hill could feel the ripples of Lydia’s actions spreading and becoming fainter. Things would, as Polly said, go back to how they had been, or at least some semblance of it. As with Lydia, so with James, though their circumstances were so different: everyone would just keep on keeping on, pretending that nothing much had happened, and the pretence would become habitual, until, eventually, the lie would seem more real than the truth. There was no footman now, there had not been for a while; Sarah was right—he was never mentioned any more; it would soon become as though he had never been.
Having softened the leather, Mr. Hill was now repairing the tack, with his stitching-awl and thread. He squinted fiercely down at it, his old eyes straining, the lower lids falling slack and pink.
“And Mr. and Mrs. Wickham, they won’t be back here now ever, I suppose?” Sarah asked.
“Oh no, I shouldn’t think so,” said Mrs. Hill. “Not after that. The master would never allow it.”
“I will not encourage the impudence of either, by receiving them at Longbourn.”
Some people can, it seems, be redeemed. The blots on their characters can be sponged off, and though the mark might never be gone entirely, it can pass unnoticed by all but the keenest-sighted, or those who already know the stain is there, and know where to look for its traces. These people can pass muster in a crowd, or amongst strangers; they can be made good enough again for everyday use.
Little Lyddie pressed a bare and grubby hand into Mr. Hill’s old thin one; a gold-and-diamond ring glittered. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright as he helped her down from the coach, and she seemed very much the girl that she had been. He was reminded of the farmyard ducks, the way they gabbled and jostled, the way that water beaded up and rolled right off them. He did not know what to say, but it hardly mattered, since she didn’t pause long enough in her chatter to let him speak.