What Dad Wanted

I followed her into the house. The smell of hospital met my nose and I listened to the gasp and pump of the machinery that was keeping the old man alive in the room that was now his final resting place.

She was in the kitchen. The kettle was singing. It was one of those white plastic rapid-boil things, shaped like a jug, perched on a base that allowed it to swivel. Through the plastic window in the side, I could see the beginnings of bubbles forming on the element at the bottom.

I put my bags down on the floor.

She was putting teabags into mugs; one for me and one for her.

“I can do that,” I said.

“No,” she replied, “it’s fine.”

She moved past me to the fridge and as she opened the door I said, “Let me,” but she ignored me.

I stood waiting to feel welcome. I knew it wasn’t likely to happen, but all the same I waited.

The mugs were white and wide. The shape of them reminded me of the red and white plastic mugs in the picnic hamper that our parents had had since the early ‘60s. The mugs were made from cheap porcelain and the white was almost grey, the glaze poor. The kettle boiled and snapped itself off. She poured the boiling water into the mugs. I was still standing, my bags at my feet.

“So how long does he have?” I asked.

She stirred and lifted out the teabags, one by one, depositing them on a small dish kept specifically for that purpose.

“Not long. A week. A month at most.”

“And the doctor is happy with him being here?”

“Yes. It’s what dad wanted. The Macmillan nurse comes every day.”

“So you have help, then.”

She had put milk into each of the mugs and now handed one to me. She didn’t have to reply, I knew it was the wrong thing to say as I said it. Her expression was blankly hostile.

She sat on one of the wooden chairs. She didn’t invite me to sit, so I remained where I was, standing in the kitchen like a child summoned to see the head teacher.

She sat with her legs crossed away from me, her shoulders curving her round so that her back was beginning to show. She stared through the kitchen window at the snow that lay on the garden.

“Is it alright if I sit?” I asked.

“Suit yourself,” her shoulder said to me.

I pulled out the chair closest to me. The legs scraped on the tiled floor with a sound that was the big brother of fingernails scraping down a blackboard. I sat.

I watched steam rise from the surface of my tea. There was an oily film floating on top, as though the mug hadn’t been washed properly, or washed in dirty water. She was taking the hospital-at-home theme too literally. I blew against the liquid, causing a mini tsunami to rise up and then subside repeatedly with each exhalation through my pursed lips.

I took a sip and scalded the roof of my mouth.

The room where Dad now lay was just down the hallway from where we were sitting. I imagined him propped up on pillows, linked up to machines by tubes and wires. She had probably set the room up so that he was facing the window; so that he could look out on the street.

I remembered him sitting in his chair, one hand clamped around the remote, newspaper dangling from the other, sleeping as the news droned on. That same room, with the green draylon suite and the coffee table inlaid with tiles. Back when it used to be a living room.

“His stomach looks like a beach ball,” she said, still not looking at me. “The tumour is so big that it looks just like someone stuck a beach ball under his skin.”

“Can’t they cut it out?” I asked.

She looked at me then. “No,” she said. “They can’t.”

I looked down at the mug of tea sitting on the table in front of me. She got up abruptly and opened one of the drawers. She pulled out a coaster and slapped it onto the table, catching the side of the mug and making the copper brown liquid slosh from side to side.

“Don’t put your mug on the table,” she told me, “it’ll leave a ring.”

I lifted the mug and slid the coaster under it.

I thought about asking if I should go in to see him. It felt like I ought to go in there. The thought of it made me feel sick. I wanted sleep. It had taken four hours to get there, driving non-stop along the motorways in the snow and the dark. Fat flakes had drifted into the beam of my headlights like cartoon ghosts wearing startled expressions.

I knew I should go in to see him, even though he would be sleeping, or drugged, or comatose. It was my filial duty to stand by his bedside and let him know I was there. Just in case he decided enough was enough in the night, and died thinking I hadn’t cared.

I looked at the mug sitting on its coaster. When I looked up, she was staring at it too. She looked small and deflated. Crumpled, even. The instinct that told me to go into the death room also wanted me to get up and go to her, give her a hug, tell her lies like “It will be alright,” but I resisted it.

I remembered when we were younger, playing in the back yard; some adventure that had gone wrong, because she had fallen and grazed her knee. She had cried without wanting to and I had let her. With her hair tied back, she looked like that same child. Her face in its sleepless grief was falling backwards in time and she seemed to be that same child trying to be brave but crying all the same.

“I’ll go and unpack,” I said.

I stood up and picked up my bags, taking them upstairs, refusing to look at the closed door that separated the living from the good-as dead.

I took my bags into the spare room. The covers were turned down on one of the beds and clean towels were laid out on the other one.

I put my bags beside the towels and left them there. It was too soon to unpack. He might go in the night and then there would have been no point in unpacking. I wanted to deny my presence in this house for as long as I could manage it.

My sister sat silently downstairs. I lay on the bed still in my overcoat and shoes, on top of the turned down covers. I wondered if she slept at the kitchen table. If she did, it would be sitting upright. No laying your head on your arms leaning over the table for our Karen.

My eyes closed and I could feel sleep threatening to overwhelm me.

I forced my eyes open wide, like I used to as a child. The lightbulb was an energy saver and I could hear its faint electrical crackle as I lay under its weary light. I kept my eyes open as wide as I could until they began to hurt. I blinked, feeling the dryness of my over-exposed eyeballs drag against the inside of my eyelids.

I didn’t want to go downstairs, but I knew that I had to. It was two in the morning. The house was silent but for the hiss and click of the respirator and the crackle of the lightbulb.

She was still sitting where I’d left her, but the cups had been rinsed out and left to dry on the draining board. I rested my hands on the back of the wooden chair and looked at her. She seemed a long way below me as I stood there wondering how to speak to this woman; this stranger. My sister sat and stared at the coaster where my mug used to be.

It was wooden and round with a cork inlay. The lip, I remembered, made your drink spill if you put it down the wrong way.

“These used to have a special stand,” I said, picking it up. “It had three rods poking up from the base to hold them in place.”

I was looking at the coaster as if it was a miracle of modern science.

Karen said nothing. Just kept staring at the table.

I sat down.

“So,” I said. “I suppose we’d better talk.”

She sort of laughed through her nose; a single derisive snort.

“Do you need any more money?” I asked.

“Does he have everything he needs?” I asked.

“I’ve got money,” I said. “I can help out.”

She sat silently staring at the surface of the table. She was smiling cynically, her lips twisted slightly at the corners. Only the balance of her top lip stopped it becoming a sneer.

“He doesn’t need to suffer,” I said. “We can make sure he’s comfortable right up until the end.”

I felt like I was talking about a pet, some dumb animal, not my father.

“Honestly, Kaz,” I told her. “If there’s anything he needs, anything I can get, just say.”

She looked at me and her eyes were black and hollow like distant storms brewing on the horizon.

“Is that how you sleep?” she said. “You buy yourself peace of mind?”

I didn’t need to answer. There was nothing I could say. I knew what she meant. I’ve always had this knack of coming in right at the last minute, just as the final scene is being played out, and mopping up the credit for things not my due. And I do sleep easy.

All of my deals turn on a well-timed injection of cash.

“Better get some sleep,” she said. “The nurse gets here at eight.”

“I think I’m too tired to sleep,” I replied. “I’d rather sit up and talk.”

“Not you,” she said. “Me.”

“Oh. Of course. Yes.” I paused. “We can talk in the morning.”

She left the room without another word.

I carried on sitting at the table, playing with the coaster. I listened to her footsteps on the way up the stairs and the creaks of floorboards as she moved around her room. Our parents’ old room.

After a while her movements ceased and all I was left with was the hiss and click of the respirator again. I found myself wanting a drink, but not knowing what drink I wanted. I thought about tea, and then thought about fruit juice. The smallest drop of water fell from the lip of the tap into the sink, and the noise made me wonder if it was water that I wanted to drink.

I didn’t want to think about what was behind the door of the living room. I had stopped thinking about my dad as a who. He was already a what to me by that point. A shell of a man being eaten from the inside out by tumours. For all I knew, underneath that thin covering of skin, there might have been nothing left of the man who had raised me. His body might have been taken over by an alien life form using his body as a host, waiting to conquer the world.

Somewhere far away was a whole other existence in which he was still him. Still that tall man with the big hands who relied on the youthful me to hand him a spanner at just the right point, telling me that I could read his mind.

I spun the coaster on its edge, hoping to make it twirl like a coin, but the edge was too thick and it just clattered down back onto the surface of the table.

Soon, I thought, I would be an orphan.

Years ago, I remembered, I had made an orphan of myself.

The house was different in almost unnoticeable ways. When I drove through the streets towards it, I expected to feel the same as I always did the first moment I stepped back through the door. But it wasn’t the same house.

It wasn’t just the addition of the hospital smells and the whirring machinery. It was in the colours of the walls, the lightness of the carpet, the new cabinets in the kitchen.

My sister had emasculated the place. The house that I remembered in shades of green and brown had become a paean to blond wood and vanilla tones. The reek of quick sale hung about the place.

And why wouldn’t she want to sell up as soon as he was gone? Who would want to carry on living in a place with memories such as were contained here? Even without the shadow of death clothing it in sadness, this was not a happy home.

I let the coaster fall to the table one more time, then stood up and began opening cupboard doors. I knew what I was after when I saw the bottle of rum. I pulled it down and poured a measure into a glass. In the fridge I found cola that made the sugar in the rum froth up and leave a scum on the surface of the drink.

I took a large gulp still standing at the fridge, then turned and sat back down at the table, taking both bottles with me.

Yes. This house was not a happy home. Her choice to stay was something my brain refused to comprehend. I had fled these walls as soon as I was able. I took my fortunes elsewhere and wrestled them into a life that, if it didn’t bring me total joy, at least didn’t wrack me with pain. The echoes of childhood were stored in a tin box at the back of my memory.

The man who lay dying in the room down the hall once roared through this kitchen, wearing my sister’s cardboard witch’s hat. It had been Christmas, the time of year we all loved to hate, or hated to love, or something that wasn’t enjoyment. He had downed almost a pint of whiskey; the bottle bought surreptitiously from the off-licence up the road; he had left the house to buy cigarettes. He had downed half the bottle on his walk back home.

His hat, he thought, was a set of horns. He imagined he was a bull. He charged at the wall and the cardboard point crumpled on impact. He bellowed and my mother wept silently, seated at the table where Karen had been sitting before. My sister, ten years old, had stood in her nightgown in the doorway. She had come downstairs to see what the noise was.

Our father had flung the hat at her.

“It’s crumpled,” he had slurred. “Sorry.”

My mother had gone to my sister and taken her upstairs, one arm wrapped around her to protect her. When I asked her, later, as adults, if she remembered that night, she had said no.

The hat had been left on the floor where it fell and I, fifteen and at the beginning of my adult strength, had been left to face my father. He had staggered towards the hat, but his balance was poor and he stumbled forward. I jerked forward to catch him and he had raised his arm, beginning to swing his fist as though to hit me. His reactions were too slow, and pinning his arms within mine had been easy. Dragging him to the living room and putting him onto the couch had been harder.

In the morning, he hadn’t remembered a thing.

That same man was lying a short walk away from me. I could hear the artificial breathing of the machine that was keeping him alive.

I finished the first drink and poured myself another.

In a lot of ways, there was little difference between us. I had no wife or children to bully, but I had the same sense of a life unfulfilled. I had the same taste for liquor that switched on and then off again as frustration rose. I had the same need to withdraw from the world by whatever means possible.

Sitting at the table, I thought about my own kitchen four hours away. The empty house and the privacy of my life on pause until my return. I swirled the booze in the glass and drank some more. God knew when I would be back in my own place, at the centre of my own life again.

From what Karen had said on the phone, it wouldn’t be that long; but I knew what a stubborn bastard the old man could be, and I didn’t count on being out of there much before a week was up.

It was cold. I was still in my overcoat, but the warmth from the central heating was fading. I stood and went over to the boiler, searching for the control. It was on the wall beside it, and I pushed the button that would bring the heating system to life again.

I stood in front of the boiler, listening to the rush of the gas and the sound of the burner, my posture that of a man standing before a log fire warming his hands. The noise of the gas burning covered over the sound of my dying father’s mechanised lungs.

I listened as the radiator in the kitchen began to tick, the fluid inside it heating up, the metal expanding slightly, unnoticeably, radiating heat into the room.

The ticking of the radiator speeded up, and it seemed to me as though it were ticking my life away. I shuddered. I had the feeling that I had grown so cold that I would never be warm again.

I remembered my sister at fifteen lying on her bed sobbing because our father had rubbed the make-up she was wearing from her face with a face cloth soaked in scalding hot water. I had been home for the vacation, still teenage enough to feel disaffected by sudden proximity to my family again, but adult enough to know that I didn’t have to choose this as my life. I was wrapped in pseud’s clothing and too disdainful of suburban family life to offer any sort of comfort to my sister.

I was beginning the process of becoming an orphan.

Mum dying a year later helped me on my way. Karen passed all her O-levels, trying to make her dead mother and her absent father proud; proving to herself that I was not the only genius in the family.

I wasn’t anyway. Our family doesn’t possess any geniuses. I think, though, that in not choosing the same career as Dad, I was supposed to be something better than what I am.

Standing in the kitchen, waiting to become warm again, I listened to the sounds of fake living in the room down the hall, and I wondered whether, even in death, he still felt disappointment.

I wondered if he even knew that I was there.

My sister slept on upstairs while I drank my way through her rum. The man I had never wanted to be and yet seemed incapable of avoiding lay dying only a few metres away from me.

If there was one thing that I knew I could do, it was beat him at his own game.

It took my whole life to walk those few metres from the kitchen down the hall, past the room that contained the swollen body of the man I had already killed years ago.

I stood in front of the fuse box, high up on the wall by the front door. I was tall enough to reach up and pull the clear plastic cover down on its hinges. I flicked the switches methodically, breaking each circuit in turn until I found the one that silenced the machinery up the hall.

It took only a few seconds to end it.

I left the switch flicked down.

I left my bags on the bed in the spare room.

I left five hundred pounds in cash on the kitchen table.

I left my sister with a life she was free to live as she wished.

I left the house a legitimate orphan.

It’s what Dad would have wanted.

© J R Hargreaves January 2007

She would have laughed

The skin on her torso was soft beneath my fingers.

We had bought takeaway from the local Balti house. The saffron had stained the skin on her fingers and placed a ring around the washing up bowl.

The saffron painted an aura of yellow around the edges of her thumbnails that fascinated her. She had laughed to see it there and spent a lot of the evening wondering why she couldn’t wash it away.

And later, the skin on her torso and on her back was soft and firm; pliable beneath my fingers.

The dishes soaked in the yellow washing up bowl that was filled with suds and hot water, leaving the saffron ring at the top of the water, staining the plastic of the bowl that needed replacing anyway.

She lay face down on the bed and I ran my hands over the skin on her back, feeling its pliability beneath my fingers. I wanted to massage the life back into her tired bones.

We had eaten the takeaway sitting on the orange sofa in her orange living room. We drank wine and watched the tv. She made conversation about nothing, laughing at the tv show we were watching, filling the room with her voice.

There was nothing I could add; nothing I could say. I ate my curry and drank my wine and the sound of the tv and her voice washed over me. I didn’t want silence, but I had no way of breaking it, so I was grateful for her efforts.

There were things on my mind. I affected a certain air that let her know there were things on my mind and that led her to fill the awkward silence that threatened to grow between us.

The truth was that I was bored. I wanted a way to end this.

She cleared away the dishes and filled the yellow washing up bowl with water and bubbles. She wiped the kitchen work surfaces clean of the stains left by the saffron. She put the dishes to soak and poured more wine. I asked for water and she brought it; a tall glass filled with clear liquid and fizz; the bubbles stung the back of my nose and cleansed my jaded palate.

She sat back down beside me on the sofa. She sat with her back against the arm, her legs crossed like a genie, the better for her to look at me. I kept my profile towards her. I felt her eyes on me; I knew the way her face would look; I didn’t have to see it, so I didn’t turn my head.

When she spoke, her hands moving rapidly to emphasise her point, drawing symbols in the air that said more than the words coming from her mouth, it was her hands that I watched. I didn’t need to see her face.

She talked about nothing; her recent trip to New York; the tumult and stagnation of days she had spent at work; the frustrations of her life. She filled the air and left it empty. There was something on my mind, but I couldn’t speak it.

The bottle of wine was on the coffee table in front of me. I poured more into our glasses. I wanted to forget, but I couldn’t let this go.

A siren sounded in the distance. Police or ambulance; who knew? Who cared?

I looked at her and she was crying.

“Just let me have this,” she said.

I couldn’t move. There was nothing I could offer her. She wept, a silent shaking weeping, head bowed and hands folded in her lap. There was nothing I could do. The usual clichés had no meaning.

She stood and told me that she was going to bed.

I sat and drank more wine.

I listened to the sounds from upstairs. The way she moved from room to room. Running water and brushing teeth. Dropping the cotton wool pads stained with her redundant makeup into the metal bin in the bathroom. Her face being splashed with water, its coldness an attempt to calm the puffiness brought on by the tears. I heard the silence that I knew accompanied the removal of clothes. The click of light switches being flicked. The silence that meant she was regarding herself in the mirror.

I drank to try to forget, but I couldn’t let this go.

Her skin was soft and pliable beneath my fingers as I pushed my hands against her back and tried to massage the life back into her tired bones.

Face down on the bed she lay, still and quiet, allowing my hands to roam her back. I sat across the backs of her legs. I pushed the t-shirt she slept in up towards her neck and bared the skin of her back. She was not naked.

When the silence had stretched on, I left the wine on the table in the living room. I went up the stairs to where she lay face down on the bed. She had not even climbed under the covers. She lay in t-shirt and pyjama bottoms on top of the duvet, on top of the bed.

Her face was turned away from me, towards the window. Her arms were bent at the elbows, raised slightly at shoulder level. Her legs stretched out behind her, the toes pointed downwards.

I sat across the back of her legs and pushed her t-shirt up. I placed my hands against the small of her back, fingers out towards the waist. I pushed my thumb up the channel of her spine, counting the notches the closer I came to the neck. I pulled my fingers down across the skin from her shoulder blades to her waist. Her skin was soft.

Her breathing changed. I felt her body relax. I unstraddled her and pulled her body over. She opened her eyes and looked at me. All the tiredness in the world was in her eyes. I pushed her t-shirt up and ran my hands along the smooth skin of her torso. I pushed her t-shirt up over her head so that she lay there, topless on the bed before me.

She looked at me the whole time, the tiredness of death in her eyes. The stillness of death on her face.

I placed my hands around her neck and pressed my thumb against her windpipe until her lips went blue and her eyes slightly bulged and the pressure of my fingers against the softness of her skin left a necklace of rose petal bruises.

She struggled only once. She raised her hands to grip my upper arms. I thought of actors who fake strangulation by the one who strangles pulling away while the one strangled tries to pull them tighter. She did not seem to be pulling away, and I wondered if we had the trick of it wrong.

The skin on her torso was soft beneath my fingers. I lay beside her for a while, wanting to apologise, stroking the softness of her skin.

I wanted to let this go and eventually I left.

The dishes were still soaking in the washing up bowl; the saffron placing a yellow ring around the plastic.

She would have laughed to see it.

© J R Hargreaves January 2007

The Gown

Dorothea woke. The room was in half darkness. The morning light was making the blinds at the window glow with a twilit eeriness. It confused her and she had no idea of what the time might be.

She lay still in the bed. As her mind awoke to the fact that this was another new day, it began to register what she was feeling. Dorothea initially poked at the feeling gently, as she used to poke with her tongue in the space where a tooth used to be; tenderly checking that feeling was still there; wondering if the jelly-like rawness would meet her touch or whether the broken skin was beginning to heal.

She checked her spirit for feeling and what she found was a sorrow that wrapped itself in resignation.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. There wasn’t supposed to be any comeback, any sense of sorrow. The sadness in the pit of her stomach was the point where it all ceased to matter. The sadness had no name.

The fingers of Dorothea’s mind had denied itself the curious pleasure of poking and prodding at what had happened until now.

In the wildness of that stormy night, she had been occupied. The concentration needed to navigate the short distance through the wind and the rain from the Bensons’ back to home had meant that her mind was unable to register the sadness fully.

In the days that followed, she had avoided the thought that hung at the centre of her being.

The Worth dress still hung from the door of her closet where she had placed it days ago. She had undressed herself that night. She had dismissed the maid as soon as the gown was unhooked, so that she could shrug it off and regard her new found form in the mirror.

The body that she had always taken for granted looked different, reflected there in the mirror. Her eyes had seen the curves and hollows of it, the places where his fingers had touched her skin.

She could not see the place inside that had wanted more; the place that had ached with a longing she didn’t really know but had recognised immediately. Lying in bed now, Dorothea knew that it was a place that needed to be touched, and that there was no doubt that it would be.

This, she thought, was what made her sad; that her innocence had ended and she must be a woman now. She saw that she was in competition with her sisters, and she understood that they would be the losers. Something in Rex’s eyes had communicated itself to her soul and brought her to life. The innocence of childhood was gone and the business of living had begun.

Dorothea looked again at the gown hanging like a shell, a skin sloughed off, never to be part of her again. The gown, although it had created an effect that night that spoke of maturity and womanhood, was too childlike for her now. She knew that she would never wear it again. The colour and the pattern of the fabric had a demureness that didn’t match her newly discovered persona.

Her aunt, on the journey back home, huddled into their overcoats inside the carriage that was battling against the wind and the rain, had understood the difference in her, she knew.

The following day, Elspeth had drawn close to Dorothea and murmured to her that they would go shopping in the city; that she would buy Dorothea a new wardrobe; something more suitable to her age.

“I think you’re a little too old now for pinafores and wool stockings, don’t you?” Elspeth had said to her at lunch, as Dorothea watched with new eyes her parents and sisters seated at the table with them.

It was as though she had never seen them before in her life.

The silence of her bedroom and the distance of days led Dorothea to think again about the soirée. The excitement in Rex’s eyes and the way it had over-ruled his hesitation had stirred up a similar excitement in Dorothea, but hers was an excitement tinged already with regret. She had felt the sadness of understanding, without really knowing, that this was how it would be; that the romantic stories that had fed her imagination of how it should be were nothing more than lies and wishful thinking.

Staring now at the ceiling with unfocused eyes, Dorothea lay in her bed and placed her hands on her body. She felt the weight of her hands through the thinness of her nightgown and remembered the electricity of Rex’s touch through the pale yellow, flower-sprigged silk of the gown.

There was a tap at the door.

“Come in,” Dorothea said, not moving in the bed. She continued to stare at the ceiling and hold her hands against her body.

Her maid opened the door and came to stand by the bed. She carried a silver tray on which was placed a small white envelope.

“It’s a message for you, miss. Your aunt advised that I should bring it straight up.”

Dorothea removed her hands from her body and sat up in the bed. She gazed steadily at the maid whose eyes met hers. Neither girl flinched under the other’s gaze. Dorothea took the envelope from the tray.

“Thank you, Milling,” she said. The maid curtseyed and removed herself and the tray from the room.

Dorothea opened the envelope. A calling card that was familiar in its style and form lay coldly inside. She drew it out. It was a card that she had seen Minette hold many times. Cream and heavy with a gold edge and Rex’s name in brutal black type.

She turned the card over. His cursive hand had left its imprint on the back.

“I must see you.”

Dorothea felt nothing in response other than a long cold certainty that this was how it would be. If she thought about it, she would probably have expected her stomach to flip; the nerves and excitement brought on by the attention of an older man should have registered with her more naively.

He had come to the house, as usual, the evening after the soirée in order to sit in the parlour with Minette and her parents. Dorothea had seen him briefly as he removed his hat, coat and gloves in the hallway. At the moment he handed the items to Barker he had looked directly at her, and then he was gone, into the parlour and polite conversation with the sister he didn’t want but would have to marry.

Dorothea looked again at the gown; thought again of Rex’s touch, his hands pressing urgently against her frame as his mouth pressed urgently against her forehead and then against her lips. She pushed her mind further back into memory, to the thought of her excitement as she was dressing. How different she was then. How stupidly excited to be dressing as a woman, although still a child; how excited at the thought that she would be out and among people older and wiser than her.

How little she had known.

She left her bed and crossed over to her writing desk. She drew a sheet of paper from a drawer and placed it square on the writing surface in front of her. She opened the ink well and caught the first metallic tang of the ink, sharp on the inside of her nose. She took up her pen and dipped it in the ink. She wrote.

“Today. The Park. Eleven.”

She folded the sheet once and placed it inside the envelope. She wrote Rex’s address on the outside. Then Dorothea rang for her maid.

“Miss?” Milling asked, standing at Dorothea’s side a few moments later.

Dorothea hesitated. She was unsure of what she wanted to ask of Milling. Again the gaze that stretched between the two girls was uncompromised by awkwardness or superiority. They were two people and Dorothea understood that Milling was complicit.

Dorothea had instinctively known while writing that to send her response with the other letters and cards that would leave the house this morning was too much of a risk. She had to find another method.

“Milling, I have a letter here for Mr Van Klempf. I do not wish it to go with the other letters this morning.”

Dorothea paused. Milling was non-committal in the way that she listened.

“I would like you to take the letter to Mr Van Klempf’s house later today, and explain that it got left behind by mistake this morning.”

Dorothea held the letter out to her maid. Milling took it silently and bobbed briefly.

“Thank you, Milling,” Dorothea said.

“Yes, Miss,” Milling replied and pocketed the envelope. Just before she left the room, she drew the blinds and allowed the morning sunlight to flood into the bedroom.

After the other girl had gone, Dorothea remained seated at her writing desk for a little while, gazing into the distance.

She didn’t want to turn and look at the gown again. She knew that she should put it away, or return it to her aunt, but something made her wish to leave it where it was; a trigger; a memory; a person, perhaps, in its own right.

The dress was not loyal to her, she knew that. The dress had seen too many things to be loyal to anyone.

She thought of the excitement she had felt, not only at being permitted to go to the soirée, but at the chance to wear an adult dress.

The gown had been made some fifteen years earlier for her aunt. Dorothea realised that Elspeth could not have been much older then than she was now.

She remembered her hands fluttering around the primrose silk as her maid attempted to adjust and pin the gown to fit her body. Dorothea had watched the process in the mirror, admiring the way the gown flattered her shape, swaying her hips slightly to hear the rustle of the silk and see the way it made her body look.

Milling had grown impatient with her.

“Please, miss,” she had said through a mouthful of dangling pins, “stand still a minute, won’t you?”

Dorothea had only complied when Milling had pricked her with a pin.

As Milling pinned the silk so that the silhouette of the gown began to resemble something more modern, Dorothea’s aunt had come into the room.

“Oh, stupid girl! What do you think you are doing?” she had cried, rushing across the room, her skirts swishing.

The maid had stopped what she was doing and both she and Dorothea had looked guiltily at the older woman. Neither one had been sure to whom the aunt was speaking, and both assumed it was her.

Elspeth had swept Milling aside and begun to manhandle Dorothea’s bodice, neatening the line of the bustle and narrowing the skirt of the gown.

“It must be tighter,” she had said, pulling and fitting until Dorothea had thought she would stop breathing.

“Aunt Elspeth, you are threatening to cut off my circulation,” Dorothea had told her aunt indignantly.

Her aunt had ignored her. When she had discovered that Dorothea’s father expected his youngest child to attend the evening event dressed as a polite sixteen year old should be, Elspeth had mocked his conservatism. She had announced that Dorothea would have her old Worth gown, remodelled and brought up to date.

Dorothea’s mother had expressed concern. She worried that Elspeth would turn the child’s head. Dorothea, sitting on the stairs where she could hear the conversation in the parlour, had smiled.

She had listened as her father had said, “Let her have her project. I believe the harm has already been done.”

Charles Henderson was of the opinion that Elspeth, who was his wife’s younger sister by a dozen years, had been the indulgence of his father-in-law. This was an opinion that he voiced regularly, and yet Dorothea knew that he loved his sister-in-law for her spark and vitality.

A frequent stair-listener, as a child Dorothea had listened to the debates that fell into weighty silences then rose back up again into the heat of passion that flowed late at night from her father’s study. She understood that her father enjoyed something about Elspeth that, had he been a different man, he might have chosen over the stability of his social standing and his reputation.

He had married the correct sister for the purpose of his life.

Dorothea turned from her writing desk to look again at the yellow gown hanging from the door of her closet. She tried to imagine her aunt at eighteen in that dress, but couldn’t. The colour was all wrong; chosen, no doubt, for its demureness. Dorothea felt instinctively that her dark haired aunt would have managed to corrupt the sweetness of the fabric in much the same way that she, Dorothea, had done those nights ago. The certainty of the way in which Elspeth held herself; the way her chin was firm, her gaze determined, her intelligence shone from her eyes and challenged the casual enquirer; Dorothea knew that the gown would have been remade as something else while it clothed her aunt’s body.

She remembered the way that, shortly after their family had entered the Benson house, Rex had spied Minette from the drawing room and walked purposefully to greet them. He had exchanged greetings with her parents, spent time bowed over Minette’s hand and gazing into her eyes, bowed politely from the waist to Hetta and tried to hide his surprise at her own appearance. The pause in his normally smooth conduct was minute, but Dorothea knew it was there.

“Mr Van Klempf,” she had said, nodding her head to him.

“Dorothea,” he had said. “You look lovely.” Then he had turned towards her aunt who had been watching the exchange. “Miss Mackenzie,” he said, his formality returning as though Dorothea’s appearance had never disturbed it.

“Mr Van Klempf,” her aunt had replied, offering her gloved hand for him to take and kiss, smiling knowingly at him.

As Minette had taken Rex’s arm and he had led her into the drawing room, Elspeth had glanced at Dorothea and smiled.

“He’s quite right,” she had said. “You do look lovely.”

Dorothea stirred herself from her reverie, got up from her writing desk and walked over to the closet. She took hold of the dress and opened the closet door. She suddenly needed to have the gown out of her sight. She looked at the shelves and the hanging space; at the new clothes that her aunt had bought for her to replace her childish garb. She looked for a place to put the gown and stuffed it, without care for the fabric or the gown itself, as far back in the closet as she could send it.

She was angry with Rex for wanting her. She was angry with herself for enjoying it and for wanting him back. And yet she knew that it could not be any other way. Rex had too many hopes pinned on him by his family and by hers. His marriage to Minette, as the eldest of the Henderson girls, would be advantageous on both sides. With no sons to pass his business on to, Dorothea’s father needed to ensure its continuation as well as provide for his daughters after he was gone. Rex’s family had money. Rex was intelligent and ambitious. Control of the Henderson empire would be the making of him, as he knew.

Dorothea thought of the life that her eldest sister would lead and knew that she did not envy her. She moved away from the closet and stood instead in front of the mirror. She regarded her body, pulling back the thin fabric of her cotton nightgown the better to see the shape that was developing. She was no longer the slim-limbed child. At sixteen, Dorothea had curves and a body that, clothed in the right garments, she knew would turn men’s heads.

She wondered whether her sisters, at twenty two and twenty four, had similar thoughts about their own bodies. She wondered if Minette knew the power that her form could have over Rex. If she did, then Dorothea knew that Minette would understand that Dorothea’s body was the more dangerous. At sixteen, Dorothea instinctively knew that.

She pulled her nightgown over her head and looked at her naked body. She placed her hands in all the places that Rex’s hands had touched her through her clothes. She pressed down where she had felt him pressing against her, at the place where the ache of longing now resided.

The pressure of her fingers against her body felt good. She closed her eyes and moved her fingers, feeling her back arch, feeling her desire grow. She stopped, unsure of what it was that she was doing, and allowed her body to relax. She opened her eyes and looked at herself again in the mirror. The pupils of her eyes were large and black. She turned from this view of herself and busied herself with undergarments. She brushed out her hair and regretted sending Milling on her errand before she remembered to ask her to help her dress. She washed at the stand, pouring out water into the basin and sponging her body methodically. Then she clothed herself in the cottons of her undergarments and chose one of her new outfits to wear; a simple skirt and blouse in cream and taupe.

She made her way to the breakfast room. Her father was seated at the table reading the morning newspaper. He glanced up at his youngest daughter as she entered the room.

“Good morning, papa,” Dorothea said.

“Good morning, child,” her father responded.

Dorothea helped herself to breakfast and poured coffee from the still warm silver pot.

“What are your plans today, child?” her father asked from behind his newspaper.

Aunt Elspeth entered the room before Dorothea could answer.

“Charles,” she said. “Dorothea.”

“Good morning, aunt,” said Dorothea.

“Elspeth,” said her father, lowering his newspaper and smiling at her aunt.

Her mother entered and moved elegantly to kiss her husband good morning. Dorothea, lost in the bustle of family, concentrated on eating her breakfast. She had no wish to be involved in the conversation of her elders and siblings, much preferring to wander among the thoughts she was beginning to allow herself.

Her sisters appeared and teased her gently about her new stylish appearance.

“Our little Dorothea is growing up, isn’t she father?” Minette said laughingly to Mr Henderson. “She is quite the stylish catch, and soon you will have more eligible young men knocking at the front door.”

“And I shall send them all away again until she is much older,” their father retorted good humouredly, joining with the laughter of his eldest girl.

“You should be careful with that approach,” Aunt Elspeth said, buttering toast and not looking at anyone. “She might just cause a scandal.” She looked up, then, directly at her brother-in-law. “If the mind takes her to do so.”

Dorothea looked up from her own food in time to see her father blush slightly under Elspeth’s gaze.

“Well,” he said. “I don’t think that would ever be the case.” He returned to reading his newspaper, accompanied by stifled giggles from Hetta and Minette. They loved to tease their father, and to join in with their aunt’s teasing of him.

It seemed to Dorothea that neither of her sisters understood the true nature of Elspeth’s teasing. They seemed not to sense the dark undercurrent that threatened to break the surface at any moment and send this entire family establishment tumbling and crashing into confusion.

Dorothea could feel the rhythm of her aunt’s demeanour towards her father. She imagined her father’s hands against Aunt Elspeth’s body the way Rex had held his hands against hers. She was shocked by the sudden revelation, and looked around the table to see whether anyone had noticed her; if they had noticed any form of change come over her.

She looked at her aunt last and found her gazing calmly at her. The woman and her niece looked at each other steadily while the conversation and the eating of breakfast continued around them. Neither of them smiled, but it seemed to Dorothea that both of them understood.

Still looking at her aunt, Dorothea announced, “I might go out for a walk later.”

“That’s a good idea,” her mother said. Just a turn around the Square would do you good. You have been too long in the house lately.”

“Yes,” said Dorothea. “I think a walk up to the Park will do me very well indeed.” She paused. “If that’s alright, papa?”

She looked away from her aunt and towards her father, who lowered his newspaper to regard her.

“I have no objection,” he said. “I believe that you are old enough and sensible enough now to walk to the Square on your own.”

“Thank you, papa.”

At that moment, Dorothea saw Milling walk past the open door to the breakfast room.

“I have finished eating,” she said, placing her napkin on the table. “May I be excused.”

“You may,” said her father.

Dorothea tried not to rush from the room to where Milling was waiting for her in her bedroom.

“I have a reply for you, miss,” she said, and handed Dorothea an envelope.

“Thank you, Milling,” Dorothea said, trying to appear calm. “You may go.”

She waited until the maid had left her alone before opening the envelope with trembling fingers. Although she knew what the reply would be, she felt the flutter of nerves at the prospect of reading his compliance with her suggestion. She drew out the single sheet of paper that was the same cream as his calling card, and unfolded the note from Rex.

The message was simple.

“I will be at the Arch at eleven. RVK.”

Dorothea put the note back in its envelope. She put it firmly into the pocket of her skirt. The weather had been too warm since the storm, and so fires had not been lit in the bedrooms. Dorothea knew that the only way to dispose of the note was to return it to Rex.

She walked down to the hall and asked Barker to bring her overcoat. As she waited, she checked her hair in the mirror that hung in the hall and tried not to think about what she was about to do.

Minette appeared behind her.

“Are you going now?” she asked, looking at her sister with surprise.

“I am,” Dorothea replied calmly.

Her sister looked disappointed. “Oh. I had hoped that we could walk part of the way together. I’m meeting Selena and Rex’s mother and we are going into town.”

“I want to go now,” Dorothea answered her. “As mama said, I have been in the house too much since the storm. I feel the need to clear my head.” She smiled at Minette. “Of course, if you’d rather I waited for you.”

“Oh, no. It’s fine. You go now. You do look a little pale.”

Minette wandered into the library as Barker appeared with Dorothea’s overcoat. He helped her on with it, and opened the front door for her.

“Thank you, Barker,” she said, as she stepped out into the spring morning.

She walked purposefully through the Village towards the Square. The streets were quiet at this time. The business men were in their offices or at coffee houses. Ladies were preparing for a day of housekeeping or social visits. Dorothea was free from the constraints of the house and the presence of her family, and as she walked she freed her mind to think about what she was doing.

At the soirée, Rex had found occasion to glance her way a number of times. Dorothea was forced to remain with her parents, or with her sisters, or with a trusted friend until her parents relaxed enough to forget that their youngest child was there.

It was then that she had managed to slip away, to walk in the fresh evening air of the Bensons’ garden. The storm had not yet begun to gather its wits and wreak chaos in their lives.

She was standing by the wall at the very end of the garden, looking out on this still unspoiled area of the island, where people had the luxury of gardens, when Rex appeared behind her.

He had held her by her upper arms, forcing her to remain facing away from him. She could feel the warmth of his body through the shawl she had pulled on over the gown. He had spoken into her ear.

“I almost didn’t recognise you, Dorothea, you look so grown up tonight.”

Dorothea hadn’t replied. She felt, instead, his hands slide slowly down her arms, along the fabric of the shawl, and then across onto her waist. His fingers had squeezed gently her already too-cinched waist, and she had thought she might pass out. Then one hand slid over the rise of her belly, and Rex bent his head so that his lips touched the skin of her neck and her now exposed shoulder.

He had turned her around then and moved his hands across her back, exploring her form, revelling in this new-found delight that he had not realised existed before tonight. He murmured nonsense into her hair and pressed himself close against her body.

Dorothea had raised her head slightly as she gave in to the pressure of his body against hers, and his lips met hers briefly.

He had pulled away then and smiled at her. His eyes looked into hers and the knot of sorrow had begun to form.

He had walked back to the house without another word, leaving Dorothea standing in the dusk at the bottom of the garden. She had known that this was only the beginning.

And then the storm had started to build.

She was slightly breathless when she arrived at the Park. She saw him from a distance, recognising his form immediately. She slowed her pace and tried to regulate her breathing, so that when she walked up to him she appeared calm and composed.

She handed him the note.

“Here,” she said. “I didn’t think it wise to keep it.”

He took it from her, raising his eyebrows and smiling wryly.

“You think of everything,” he said. “I will dispose of it later.”

They began to walk around the park. He took hold of her arm and placed it through the crook of his. He kept one hand on top of her hand, so that his body was pressed close to her side.

“Is this what you want?” she asked, not really knowing what she was asking, but feeling that the question had to be posed.

“Right now?” he said. “Yes.”

They walked around the Park once without speaking. As they returned to the Arch, Rex spoke at last.

“I have a room not far from here,” he said. “Certain aspects of a gentleman’s life insist on it. We could go there. It would be private.”

Dorothea felt the sadness grow, matched by an equal increase in the longing to be touched.

They began to walk around the square again. Dorothea did not speak for a while, and then, “Where is this place?” she asked him.

“The room?” Rex replied, as though the conversation was the most natural thing in the world. “It’s two streets from here. Very private. Nobody will see us.”

“Why do you want me to go there with you?”

“To talk. To enjoy your company. To get to know you better.” Rex paused. “You are a surprise and a mystery to me, Dorothea. You are quite unlike your sisters.”

“Will you marry Minette?” she asked him.

“Of course. She’s meeting my mother and sister today and I am quite sure that they are already planning the wedding.” There was another short silence. “But that has nothing to do with this.”

“And it’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

Dorothea surprised herself with her next words.

“Then you should take me to your room,” she told him.

They walked there in silence. Dorothea removed her arm from Rex’s grip and walked by his side, with a small but deliberate distance between them. She could not think of any words that would distract from their actions. Rex also seemed unwilling to speak.

The room, when they got there, was small, little more than a bedroom. Dorothea stepped inside and looked around her. She knew that being here was wrong. She did not really understand what was about to happen. She did, however, understand that she didn’t want to resist it.

Rex closed the door behind them. Dorothea was standing a little way into the room. She faced Rex, standing at the door. He walked across the room and kissed her, still in her overcoat, still crisp and fresh from the morning air. He kissed her, and as the storm again began to gather, Dorothea saw her aunt’s gown hanging on the door of her closet and began to understand.

© J R Hargreaves January 2007