Longbourn

by Jo Baker

  It was not bad. It was far better than could be expected. But it was not enough.

  “… you must be very happy.”

  It was a shock—an actual bodily shock like a fall or a stumble, or walking into the edge of a table—to see Ptolemy Bingley roll into the park, that bright morning in March, the day before Lady Day.

  Sarah’s needle dropped from her grip, swung a moment on its thread, then slipped and hit the floor. She stood up. The Bingley carriage wheeled down the drive; Sarah’s breath misted and then faded from the windowpane. There was no mistaking him, even at such a distance. Not his colour, but his bearing, his stature marked him out amongst the other men. She saw, too, how the daffodils were dragged sideways by the wind, and the bare branches tore at the sky, and the clouds bundled up and were teased apart above. The year had turned, and she had not noticed its turning.

  Behind her, in the room, the clock struck the half-hour.

  “Are they here?”

  Sarah glanced round. Mrs. Darcy had turned in her seat at the dressing table.

  “Believe so, ma’am.”

  Her mistress got up and came over to the window. Sarah moved aside to make space. Together, they watched the carriage approach. Sarah had known that the Bingleys were coming—this was a long-anticipated visit—but in her mind’s eye Ptolemy had been weighing out tobacco in his gleaming shop in Spitalfields; she had even conjured up a pretty, plump young wife for him: she had assumed he would be happy, but had thought of him as quite, quite gone.

  “My India shawl, Sarah, if you please.”

  Sarah moved away from the window, slid open a drawer. “Which one, ma’am?”

  “One of the new ones.”

  Sarah lifted out a cream cashmere shawl, its ends worked with twining leaves and flowers; her thoughts were quick. The Bingleys’ visit was to be of a fortnight’s duration: two weeks of anxious dinners in the servants’ hall, and nervousness at corners, and in corridors. Ptolemy would avoid her too—it would no doubt be uncomfortable for both of them, but then it would be over. At least, it would be over for now, but who knew what would follow after, down all the years to come?

  “I am glad that Jane is come to see me.”

  Sarah smoothed the cashmere over Mrs. Darcy’s shoulders. There was a woman far away who’d worked this cloth, and, stretching, had gone outside into the warm air, and wandered amongst leaves and flowers just like these, under trees that were alive with birds.

  Elizabeth turned from the window; she was bright now. “Well, come along then.”

  “Madam?”

  “Come downstairs, make haste. You will wish to welcome Jane.”

  When Mrs. Bingley spotted Sarah, standing in line with the other servants in the blustering March wind, she greeted her warmly, and kissed her cheek, and said she hoped that she was happy, then continued on up the steps, and went into the house, her arm linked through her husband’s, and her sister’s arm hooked through the other, and did not wait to hear Sarah’s reply.

  Sarah gathered up the small possessions abandoned in the coach—the gloves and reticules and books—and carried them indoors; as she climbed the steps she watched Ptolemy from the corner of her eye. He was busying himself with the luggage, and conversing only with his fellow footmen, and she did not once catch him looking over towards her. She had no idea if he expected to find her here. It was going to be awkward until she spoke to him, but then it could hardly be otherwise afterwards.

  In the event, it was all over and done with more swiftly than she could have hoped. Sarah spoke to Ptolemy that same evening—for they dined fashionably late at Pemberley; it was nearly six o’clock before the family sat down, it was only once they were served that the servants ate—when she found herself seated beside him at dinner in the servants’ hall. She was fiercely conscious that she was being observed by Mrs. Reynolds, who was a stickler for proper conduct, and by Anne, who was always looking for intrigues and passions, and by Lucy (if that was indeed her name), who always seemed to be looking for trouble, and by a stable boy, who had taken to turning up whenever Sarah happened to be downstairs in that part of the house, and smiling, and talking to her, while she blushed and failed to understand his thick accent, and he hers.

  When she had finally mustered the courage to enter the servants’ hall, Ptolemy was just drawing out a chair to seat himself beside one of the prettier maids; the only place remaining was to his left. Sarah, hesitating on the threshold, had considered for a moment the possibility of turning and running back to the sanctuary of Mrs. Darcy’s dressing room, but it was not to be attempted—everyone would see, and everyone would know, and so this must be faced. She drew in a breath, and let it go, and marched across the bare flags towards him. He glanced up at her approach, stiffened, and then looked away, turning to his pretty neighbour, and saying something that made the girl’s eyes widen, and her cheeks dimple.

  So Sarah found herself sitting right beside him, by his shirtsleeve and collar and his canary waistcoat, and the twist of his nape, and the back of his head, while he kept his attention fixed entirely on the young woman to his right, who blushed now, and stammered a few ungainly words. Sarah had been just the same, she realized—confounded and thrilled to be noticed by a man like him—when he had first come to Longbourn.

  After a while, the conversation fell away, as it must, there being so little in common between him and a country girl like that. Sarah was, for a time, obliged to reply to the stable boy seated near her, which was an ordeal all of its own, because he had nothing to tell her that was not about himself, and his old pa, and the horses, and she could make out only one word in three. Then they too fell into silence, though there was, all around them, a fug of chatter, cutlery on china, chewing, scraping chairs when a bell was rung and someone must go and answer it. She lifted a hand to her hot cheek, her food untouched.

  Ptolemy spoke softly, under cover of the general noise; he did not look at her. “Are you well?”

  “Quite well,” she said. “Thank you.” Then, after a moment: “And you?”

  He nodded.

  Then he turned back to the young maid, and asked her if she had had anything to do with the cooking of the beef, because it was excellent, and he had never had such good beef anywhere before, not even in London town itself. It was a valiant attempt, but this topic, too, soon flagged. He was left looking into space, and rearranging his cutlery.

  “I did not think to see you here.” She spoke quietly. “I thought you would be all set up by now.”

  “Oh, you know me.”

  She turned to look at him now. He was staring straight across the room, at a row of headless hares that hung by their back legs, dripping blood into the dishes set out below.

  “Keeping my options open,” he said. “Keeping an eye out.”

  “I wish you all the best of luck, Mr. Bingley.”

  He huffed a breath, half shook his head: she thought for a moment that he was going to accuse her of cruelty, of destroying his hopes, his happiness. But he just turned his head, and looked at her. His eyes were still beautiful, and black as coffee, but now they were swimming wet. When he spoke next, it was hardly above a whisper.

  “I didn’t want …” he said. “When I heard you were here, I thought that when I saw you, I could make you feel something. Hurt you. But—”

  “Mr. Bingley. I am sorry, I—”

  He shrugged. “But it’s not your fault.”

  She folded her hands together in her lap. She looked down at them.

  “That footman,” he said. “Smith.”

  She swallowed, tried to clear her throat, but then all she could manage was a nod.

  “And you are quite fixed upon him. No one else will do.”

  Her face felt sore; she could not look up.

  “I have given up all hope,” she said.

  He plucked at his white gloves. “Have you?”

  A slow blink; she nodded.

  “But if you knew where he was? If you had a chance
of finding him?”

  “Mr. Bingley. Ptolemy. Please.”

  “But it would matter to you, more than all this”—he wafted a hand, taking in her work, the servants’ hall, the house beyond—“more than anything—”

  “I think—” she said, and then swallowed, and steadied her voice. “I think that he is dead. But I do not know.”

  “What if I told you, that I do know.”

  She looked round at him. The noise and bustle, the other servants, the kitchen, Pemberley—everything—reeled away and all was silence, and stillness. Just his dark eyes fixed on hers.

  “Tell me.”

  “He’s alive.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Or he was, a few days since.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  His jaw set, he looked at her a moment longer, and then he turned away. And as he spoke, his hand brushed the tablecloth, gathering up crumbs into a heap, then sweeping them out again.

  “We were crossing the sands from Ulverston. Just a few days ago, this was, on our way here, at the end of their tour of the Lake Country. And he, the footman from Longbourn, Smith; he was crossing the sands, only he was going the other way, heading north—”

  “You saw him.”

  “I saw him. He was with road engineers—a whole troop of them, and all their gear, a trail of wagons crossing the sands. It was just a moment, as we were passing, but I knew it was him, and he knew me too. It was just a moment, and then we were past and gone.”

  Her hand came up; it covered her mouth.

  “Well,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

  After a moment, she touched his arm. “You are quite, quite certain it was him?”

  He looked down at her fingers, dimpling the white cotton. “I am. I knew him. I am sure.”

  Then he lifted his arm, so that her hand fell away from him. He turned, and cleared his throat, and addressed himself to his other neighbour again, and did not look at Sarah any more, and they never spoke again.

  Lady Day. A day of engagements and dismissals, of endings and beginnings; a day when change is woven into the very fabric of the creeping hours; a day that demands the totting up of accounts, the consideration of what has been bought and sold and at what cost; a day when one is obliged to consider if any of it was worth the price that has been paid.

  Mrs. Darcy’s desk had been drawn out from the window into the middle of her parlour. She was already seated behind it, in a sober day-dress and draped shawl. The servants waited their turn at the door, lined up in decent silence. The mistress looked beautiful and nervous and tired. She had a ledger open in front of her. Mrs. Reynolds stood a convenient distance away, should assistance be required. This was, after all, just a first attempt.

  The accounts of previous quarters were all in Mrs. Reynolds’s precise hand: Mrs. Darcy’s handwriting was by no means as neat, but she worked conscientiously at it, the tip of her tongue poking out while she pored over her sums, and wrote out names; she smiled as each servant made their mark, and as she bestowed on them their small stack of coin. Elizabeth was doing her very best, Sarah could see that. She was being what she was required to be.

  The weight of Sarah’s pay dipped her hand; she bobbed her curtsey.

  Elizabeth gave Sarah one of her lovely smiles; jewels glittered on her fingers as her pen moved to make the tick in the Paid column. She made the downstroke for the tick, and Sarah’s lips parted, and she spoke.

  “Forgive me, madam.”

  Mrs. Darcy’s smile settled in, patient. “Yes, Sarah?”

  “Madam. I hope it won’t inconvenience you too much, but I wish to make an end of this.”

  “To make an end?”

  “To cease employment here.”

  “But—” Mrs. Darcy’s smile stiffened now. “Why?”

  “Is there a problem, madam?” Mrs. Reynolds moved closer, peering in.

  Mrs. Darcy lifted up her hands. “She wishes to leave!”

  Mrs. Reynolds turned on Sarah: “Are you not well-treated? Are you not shown every kindness here?”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “Yes—you are all very good to me indeed.”

  Mrs. Darcy sat back; she shook her head.

  “Is the work not light enough for you? Surely,” Mrs. Reynolds asked, “this is the most comfortable situation you have ever found yourself in, and are ever likely to?”

  Sarah nodded. This was certainly true.

  Mrs. Darcy seemed amazed, and quite perturbed. “You are not wanted back at Longbourn, perhaps? Does Mother want you, or Mrs. Hill?”

  “Even if they did, they should have applied to you first, madam.”

  “Are you perhaps”—and with this, Mrs. Darcy’s countenance darkened, and she leaned closer, and dropped her voice, as if even the possibility of this was shameful—“somehow, unhappy? Are you … homesick?”

  “Yes,” said Sarah, “yes, I think I am.”

  She persuaded the stable lad to give her a knapsack in exchange for her old wooden box, so that her belongings would be that much easier to carry. The poor fellow was inconsolable that she was leaving, but thrilled to have her ask a favour of him. He muttered incomprehensibly when he handed it over, and she kissed his smooth cheek to thank him.

  A path skimmed the grounds behind the house; it then rose towards the western edge of the park. From there, it climbed up through the woods to join a packhorse route, which trailed out over the hills, heading in a direction that was generally agreed to be northwesterly. Sarah could follow that, from one town to the next, as far as Chester. And from Chester, she could take the long flat road to Lancaster, and thence to the sands, which she could cross on foot to the north country beyond. The Bingleys’ coachman volunteered this last nugget of information, having driven this road himself so recently. He looked at her like she was fit for Bedlam, though: a young girl like her off on the tramp, choosing the cold and the empty road and all its dangers over ease and safety, and Pemberley.

  Alone in her room, she tried the knapsack on her shoulders. Without the box to weigh them down, her little things seemed to weigh almost nothing at all.

  There would be others out there, on the tramp. There always were, around the time of hiring fairs and quarter days; these great tidal shifts and settlings of servants around the country. She would find some other women and girls to travel with, and go in company as far as they were going.

  Mrs. Reynolds opened the attic door without knocking.

  “The mistress wants another word.”

  In the morning room, Mrs. Darcy was sewing something tiny and white. She dismissed Mrs. Reynolds, but did not move from her seat in one of the pair of winged armchairs by the fire. She looked a little pale, and nervous—her hands gripped her work, and for a moment she just looked at Sarah and did not speak, and then she looked away, and said something so quietly that Sarah could not hear it. Uncertain, Sarah waited where she was, in the middle of the complicated carpet. Then she saw to whom Mrs. Darcy had spoken: Mr. Darcy was sitting in the chair opposite his wife; it was only when he leaned forward, and spoke a word in reply, that Sarah saw him; he had been hidden by the high back and wings of the chair. Now, he rose from his seat, like a statue come to life.

  Sarah shrank. Fixed for the first time on her, his gaze made her dwindle to the size of a salt-cellar. He strode briskly up, stopped just a shade too close; she had to fight the urge to take a step back, to get a better angle on him, to make more space between her and his flesh. But she stayed put, and held her head up; she set her eyes on his starched cravat—they washed very white at Pemberley—while he studied her in a puzzled, faintly irritated manner, as if she were an unconsidered household item that had abruptly ceased to function, and on which he now found himself obliged to have an opinion.

  “My wife had expected to keep you with her at this time.”

  Sarah addressed herself to his cravat. “I am sorry, sir, to go against her expectations.”

  “I expect you to remain with her.�
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  “I am afraid that I cannot.”

  “You cannot?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Am I not a good master? Is she not the best of mistresses?”

  “I think you must be, sir. Both of you.”

  “Well, then. Sense dictates that you stay.”

  “No.”

  He loomed closer. “This is your answer?”

  Sarah squared her shoulders. “You have had it already, sir: I cannot stay.”

  “But you are wanted here.”

  This from Elizabeth, who was getting to her feet, then came across towards them. She moved slowly, without her former elasticity of step. She seemed somehow weighted now.

  “You are so good with little ones, Sarah. You always were, with my sisters, even when you were just a girl yourself.”

  Sarah looked again at the sewing, still clutched in Elizabeth’s hand. A tiny thing, a newborn’s cap. There had been no rags to soak and scrub from her, Sarah recalled; not for these past months. If she had thought about it at all, it was to think that it must have fallen to somebody else to clean them. But it was clear now that Mrs. Darcy was expecting her first child—her skirts skimmed the cusp of her belly; her breasts, where they rose above her bodice, were full and veined with blue. She was facing her first confinement, and with all the usual fears. Sarah felt a tug of sympathy, but—

  “My staying here will not really help you, miss.”

  Elizabeth would just have to go through it; every breeding woman did. If she survived this once, then she would just have to do it all over again in the full knowledge of its horrors—and then again, and again, because a man like Mr. Darcy would need his sons.

  Endure and pray, that was all that could be done.

  “I can’t help you, miss. I am sorry.”

  “Madam,” Mr. Darcy said.

  “Madam, yes.”

  “You are determined, then?”

  Sarah risked a look straight up at his big handsome face, the meat of him: the sheen of cheekbone and nose, the gloss of eyes, the smooth rubbery flesh of his shaved lip. He was descended from a race of giants; he must be.