by Lisa Berne
“The text should have read ‘No innate principles,’ but perhaps it was a typographer’s error. Hugo, shall we go for a swim once we’ve had our dessert?”
“A dreadful idea,” said Aunt Verena, who wore an old-fashioned lawn fichu and over her graying blonde hair a lace cap of severe design which only accentuated the stern handsomeness of her face. “Don’t you remember that custom officer’s child who nearly drowned last fall?”
“Yes, Aunt, but the waves were rough and Tom had been warned to stay away, only he didn’t listen. They’re not like that today.”
“It’s dreadfully unfair that girls aren’t supposed to swim in the ocean.” This from Gwendolyn, her pretty face gone sulky.
“There are bathing machines,” remarked Aunt Claudia, whose slender hands showed faint splotches of color as she gestured in the air, as if outlining the shape of those famously bulky conveyances. “In places like Brighton and Margate.”
“Oh, I’d love to try that,” said Mrs. Penhallow. “Cook says the butcher’s wife told her they’re hoping to bring some to Seascale.”
“That’s fifteen miles away,” objected Gwendolyn. “And it doesn’t help me today. Hugo, mayn’t I come with you and Bertram?”
“Oh, but dearest, you promised to go with Aunt Verena to visit Mrs. Quent,” Mrs. Penhallow said. “Poor old soul, laid up like that with a summer’s ague. She’s had a terrible time of it.”
“Aunt Verena won’t mind if I go to the beach with Hugo and Bertram.” Gwendolyn looked appealingly across the table. “Will you, Aunt?”
“Yes, I will. A promise is a promise.”
“Oh, but I want so much to try swimming.” Gwendolyn clasped her fingers together at her breast and somehow managed to make her blue eyes twice as big. “Please, Aunt? I’ll go with you another day.”
“You needn’t try your wiles on me, missy.” Verena was unmoved. “I told Mrs. Quent yesterday you were coming with me next time, and she said how much she was looking forward to it.”
Gwendolyn looked between her mother and Hugo, but getting no response from either of them, dropped her clasped fingers and replied rather sullenly, “Very well then, I’ll go. But I still say it isn’t fair.”
Just then Señor Rodrigo squawked and said, “Thar she blows,” as if to herald Eliza’s return with dessert, big bowls of strawberries and raspberries, a pitcher of cream, walnuts and raisins, and a platter of light, delicate rolled wafers.
Mr. Mantel exclaimed over the bounty, and Claudia said, bringing together her delicate, paint-splotched hands, to make a little temple of them on which she rested her chin: “Summer agues are dreadful, aren’t they? I had one last August, and I do believe that’s why the influenza laid me so low in November.”
“That may be, but if you’ll recall, I told you not to go wandering about when the wind changed in October,” responded her sister with a frown. “Yet you insisted on taking your easel to the shore.”
“The light on the water was so beautiful. The waves were shimmering . . .” Absently Claudia accepted from Verena a bowl of fruit and cream. “The colors, my dear. The greens and grays! I had to try and capture them.”
“Eat your dessert,” Verena said. “Every drop of the cream, mind you.”
Obediently Claudia picked up her spoon, and the talk drifted on, shifting into a discussion of modern medicine and thence to some of the really interesting diseases Hugo had seen while abroad as well as Mr. Mantel mentioning his theories about bodily manifestations of what he termed soul-sickness, a complicated metaphysical topic which evoked a veritable storm of questions from Gwendolyn and Bertram, and it occurred to Katherine that she might well have had some of her own, if only it weren’t for the bees inside her, which roiled and stormed, swarmed and raged, and she clenched her fingers on the napkin in her lap, half-wondering if emanating from her very pores was a low, revealing buzzing sound.
It seemed to take a long time until dinner was over. “Well, Gwendolyn,” said Verena briskly, standing up, “get your bonnet and let’s be on our way,” and Aunt Claudia meandered over to talk to Señor Rodrigo, and Mr. Mantel was telling Hugo about a subscription to a relief fund he was organizing, and Hugo’s mama was looking anxiously at the dessert Katherine had been unable to eat (so full as she was already with bees), and then an idea flashed into Katherine’s head. Abruptly she pushed back her chair, put her napkin on the table, said “Excuse me, please,” and left the room. In the passageway the dogs were patiently ranged and they all got to their feet as she came in. But she didn’t stop, she went on to the stairs and up them, to the wide landing, and down the long private corridor that led to the room she shared with Hugo.
She went inside, shut the door, and went to a trunk that she had yet to unpack. She crouched down and flung open the lid.
Chapter 16
Hugo had watched Katherine leave the dining-parlor, looking so determined, so fierce, that he stood up and took a long step after her, pausing but briefly when Bertram said, “Hugo, shall we go to the beach?” He replied, “Perhaps a bit later, Bertie,” clapped him on the shoulder, and continued on his way.
At the closed door to their bedchamber, he paused again and knocked upon it.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
“What do you want?”
“May I come in?”
A silence. “Are you sure you want to?”
“Yes.”
Another silence. Then: “Very well.”
Hugo opened the door and went in. Katherine was sitting on the floor, in her hands her old steel-framed corset and a small pair of scissors. Here and there, between the metal ribs, the fabric had been cut apart. She looked up at him defiantly; he said curiously, “What are you doing?”
“I’m destroying this ghastly thing.”
“I didn’t know you still had it.”
“I forgot all about it till just now.”
“Ah. May I sit down with you?”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
Katherine pushed aside a little box to make room for him, and he sat next to her on the wood floor. “What’s in that box?”
“It’s a sewing kit my mother must have had packed before I left Brooke House. Even though I hate sewing almost more than I hate this corset.” She jabbed at the fabric and cut another jagged wedge between the ribs. “Oh, Hugo, I’m so angry.”
“About what?”
“About everything, it feels like.”
“Well, you have plenty to be angry about.”
She cut another wedge, then looked up at him. “Do you think so? Really?”
“My God, yes.”
She studied him intently. Her dark eyes were brilliant, alive, in her white face. “The funny thing is,” she said, very slowly and deliberately, “it’s not about the money being gone. It’s a relief, it really and truly is. I was at the beach the other day, it was sunny out and I could see the fools’ gold glittering in the water. And I thought, that’s all it was, the Brooke money—fools’ gold. Goodbye and good riddance.” She drew a deep, deep breath. “But it’s just that—oh, God, Hugo, that letter from my mother—I still feel that what I did was right, to get rid of all the money, but I’m also still angry. So angry. I feel like—oh, as if a rug’s been jerked out from under my feet. Have you ever felt that way?”
“Of course. After Father died, I was grieving, but I was angry, too. Furious at the world. A common reaction, I daresay, when things happen beyond our control.”
“How did you get through it?”
“For a while I simply shut down. Wouldn’t even look at a book, or write papers or whatever. Once I stole a horse and tried to run away. It got bad enough that eventually the headmaster wrote home about it. Then Grandpapa wrote me a letter that helped.”
“What did he say?”
“For one thing, he and Mama both agreed I could leave school if I wanted to. It gave me a choice, you see. For another thing, he said that it’s his firm belief th
at we’re never given more than we can handle. And that he had faith in me. That’s all. He’s never one to force his views. But it was enough to help shift me—help me climb out of the hole, bit by bit.”
Katherine was silent for a while. She looked down at the corset and then back up at him. In a low, small voice she said, “Do you have faith in me, Hugo?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m strong?”
“Yes, I do. Life’s been hard to you in a lot of ways. But it hasn’t broken you. And it’s made you who are you are today.”
Katherine had been looking at him with that same intentness, and now she lowered her gaze again to the corset. “Do you think it’s stupid of me to destroy this?”
“No.”
She cut another wedge of fabric, but with less violence now. Then she paused. “Hugo.”
“Yes, Katherine?”
“On a more practical note, I can see how these steel bands are going to be a problem.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
Hugo thought for a few moments. He said, “Do you remember my tin soldiers?” He watched as her dark brows drew together and then cleared as she answered, and with just the tiniest lilt of humor in her voice:
“Oh, Hugo, I do remember! We pretended they were Vikings, and gave them a burial at sea.”
“That’s right. I made a little raft for them, you made a fire out of yellow and red paper, and we let them sail away.”
“Let’s do that. Can we? Right now?”
“By all means.”
Katherine scrambled to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, they stood side by side on the broad sandy shore. The sun, a great orange ball in the sky, was slowly making its way down toward the horizon and a little breeze played around them, rippling the hem of Katherine’s gown and sending her curls softly aflutter. Never had she looked so lovely as she did now, Hugo thought, in her simple cream-colored dress, and her big dark eyes sparkling. In one hand she held the old steel corset.
“Are you ready, Hugo?”
“I am.”
She lifted it up. “Goodbye, you dreadful thing,” she said, and with a tremendous heave she sent the corset flying into the ocean. It splashed, then bobbed gently in a receding wave. With satisfaction Katherine said, “The tide’s going out.”
“Yes. Shall we sit?” He had brought with them an old blanket which he’d spread on the sand, and together they went to it and sat down, Katherine keeping her eyes fixed on the corset as it drifted away. The sun sank a little lower and sent its warm orange-gold radiance more fully upon the ever-shifting sea.
“What are you doing?” It was Bertram, standing next to him. “What are you looking at?”
Hugo hesitated, not wishing to intrude upon Katherine’s privacy. But she said calmly:
“It’s an old corset of mine, Bertram, which I wanted to get rid of. Do you see it there? All gray and sodden?”
Bertram stared. Then he nodded. “I see it. Why didn’t you put it in the rubbish heap? Wouldn’t that have been more efficient?”
“Because I wanted the ocean to swallow it up. I’m symbolically doing away with my old life. The cage of my old life.”
“Do you mean that although the end result is the same, this method is more pleasing to you?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
Bertram nodded again, and Katherine added, “Would you like to join us?”
“Is there room for me?”
“Absolutely,” she said, and moved aside, toward the edge of the blanket. Hugo brought himself closer to her and Bertram sat down next to him, folding his long thin legs underneath him as might a Buddhist monk. The three of them sat in companionable silence for a while, shoulder to shoulder. Dreamily Katherine said:
“I wonder where it will end up. Do you think it might make it all the way to Australia, or Japan?”
“If it doesn’t sink,” said Bertram, “the Gulf Stream is more likely to carry it to Iceland or Norway.”
“Yes, of course,” answered Katherine. “The North Atlantic Drift. I should have thought of that.”
“There was a very interesting article in the Popular Journal of Knowledge which describes Juan Ponce de León’s sixteenth-century discovery of oceanic circular currents,” Bertram said, and soon he and Katherine were discussing wind patterns, the Gulf of Mexico, gyres, and hurricanes. Hugo said nothing, only listened, and faintly, very faintly, he smiled.
Late that night, into the darkness came her voice, softly. “Hugo.”
He stirred at once. Drowsily: “Yes, Katherine?”
“Do you remember once telling me—no, suggesting to me—that I should be who I am?”
“Yes, at that inn. The night before Surmont Hall.”
“That’s right. And as we were leaving the Hall, your Aunt Henrietta said to me, ‘To thine own self be true.’ How curious—like bookends to our visit there.” She gave a long sigh. “I’d like to be who I am, Hugo, but I don’t know how to.”
“You’ll find out.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes.”
She was silent for a while. Then: “I hope you’re right. Can you do something for me?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Would you mind opening the windows very wide? I want to hear the ocean.”
“Of course.” Hugo got up, did as she asked. Into their room wended a silken breeze, cool but not unpleasant, and the sounds of the sea, too, rumbling, murmuring, lapping at the shore, steady and rhythmic, eternal and unchanging. “Is this what you want, Katherine?”
“Yes. Will you come back to bed?”
He did. And she said:
“Will you make love to me?”
“You want me to?”
“Yes. I’m sad right now, and also scared. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting you. If you know what I mean?”
“I think I do,” Hugo said, and then Katherine drew close to him. Gently he kissed her, gently he touched her here, there, everywhere, and wordlessly she opened herself up to him. In turn he gave himself to her, quietly, tenderly, without hurry, with a passion that for them both rose and built and crested; afterwards they slept close together, sheltered underneath the warm bedclothes as the cool breeze of night swirled into their room, and the eternal sounds of the ocean played on.
He was deeply asleep when this time she said into his ear: “Hugo.” He opened his eyes to see, in the soft gray light of dawn, Katherine sitting on the side of the bed, already dressed and a warm shawl around her shoulders. He smiled, stretched, said, still sleepily, “You’re up early.”
“Yes. I’m going down to the beach. I want to make sure the corset is really and truly gone. Would you like to come with me?”
“Of course.”
And in a few minutes they were back on the shore. Hugo had let the dogs come with them, and all six of them—another one had recently joined the household, a puppy Gwendolyn had found, half-starved, on her way back from Mrs. Quent’s house, and brought home with her—all six of the dogs, despite their various infirmities, romped together on the sand.
“Do you see it, Katherine?”
“No. It’s gone forever. On its way to Iceland.”
Hugo laughed. “Or Norway.”
“Yes. Oh, Hugo, look.” Katherine stooped, picked something up. She held it out to him. A piece of sea-glass, cornflower-blue, rounded and translucent in the morning light. “I used to love collecting these.”
“I remember. This is a rare piece, too. This blue color.”
“Yes. It’s like the color of your eyes. I’m going to keep it. Are you ready for breakfast?”
“Very. Shall we go in?”
“Yes.”
And together they went inside, the dogs frisking happily at their heels.
“Ma’am?” said Katherine, and Hugo’s mama looked up, saying in her soft, pleasant way:
“Come in, Katherine. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Actually, ma’am, I was wondering if there was something I can do for you.”
“For me?” Mrs. Penhallow smiled. “Thank you, my dear, how very kind. There’s nothing, really. Although—I’ve been sewing these gowns for the girls at the charity home. So many are needed! Would you like to help with that?”
Katherine repressed a sigh. Of course it would have to be sewing. She said, “I’ll be glad to, ma’am.”
“Oh, that would be lovely! Do come in, please, and sit next to me here.”
An hour later, having wrestled with two big rectangular lengths of heavy cotton, unpicked half a dozen irregular seams, twice sewn two armholes backwards, and several times pricked her fingers till they were bloody, Katherine did sigh, looking at the wrinkled mass in her lap and then over at Mrs. Penhallow.
“Ma’am,” she said, “do you suppose there’s anything else I might do to be helpful?”
Mrs. Penhallow glanced up, her gaze going to the mangled would-be gown which Katherine ruefully held up for her inspection. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a seamstress.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m sorry, I should never have asked you.”
“Rather, I should never have said yes.”
Mrs. Penhallow laughed. “We’re not all born to embrace the needle. I like it, but that doesn’t mean you must.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Is there anything else I can do?”