Beauty
“I’m going home,” Elizabeth announced, breaking our chary silence. She carefully set her knife and fork down on her plate with a quiet chink. We all looked up the long table at her.
“Home?” Father said, after a moment’s pause.
“To Mother’s house,” Elizabeth said. “Home. I’ve had enough of this.”
David exchanged a cautious glance across the table with Simon, who sat next to me. I met nobody’s eyes. Elizabeth looked down the table at us all, pushed her chair back abruptly and rose to her feet.
“I’m going home,” she said again. “The rest of you can do what you like.”
She looked at me when she said that, and I – I could not meet her eyes. There was so much more she could have said, but did not. I wanted to ask her not to go away, to talk to me again, but I didn’t.
She strode from the room. David followed quickly, leaving Father and Simon to stare after them. I couldn’t bear to sit there a moment longer, so I shoved my chair back from the table and was out of the room while the china was still shaking. I heard a glass roll from the table-top and shatter on the floor behind me.
I walked briskly down the passage; I heard voices, quiet and urgent in the hall. Elizabeth. I lingered by the doorway until I heard two sets of footsteps cross the hall and the door to the study open and shut.
I crept across the empty hall and pressed my ear against the door.
“Do you have to go?” I heard David ask.
“I think so,” Elizabeth replied.
“Then don’t be too long,” he said.
“I won’t,” she said. “David, don’t you want to know why I am going?”
“If I asked, would you tell me?” he said.
“No,” she replied.
“Then I will not ask,” he said. “I wouldn't want you lie to me.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then neither of them said anything for a moment or two.
“I love you, you know,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said. It sounded almost offhand to me. “David, could I ask you something?”
“Anything,” he said.
“The story – the one I told you the way my mother told it to me, was it the same as the one you knew. About the prince and the rose?” she asked.
“No, not quite,” he said. “The one I knew had no rose and no witch, and the prince was more roundly condemned. The ending was the same – the prince must wait for a girl both beautiful and good to break the curse.”
“Did the version you know say what happened to the princess?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so. She curses the prince and leaves the castle, and no one ever sees her ever again,” he said. “Is this what it’s all about? Why you are going home? No – don’t answer that. I said I wouldn’t ask. But, Elizabeth, though I know we seem to be living it, it is just a story, surely.”
“I’m not so certain,” she said.
“Elizabeth, what has Beauty done?” he asked.
“I cannot tell you,” she said. “It is…”
Contemptible? Evil? Wrong? I could not hear the last word, but I thought I heard one of them make a movement towards the door, so I ran across the polished wooden floor and up the first flight of stairs. One of them opened the study door; they had heard the clatter of my feet, but I was safely out of sight.
