Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Eight

I would like to say I spent the next days replaying Bobby and mine’s amorous meeting. Sadly, I had no such time to do so.

Tensions rose on May 7th at my house, as a German U-Boat had sunk Great Britain’s RMS Lusitania. A shiver ran down my spine. All those people, innocent people like Percy and Alice, innocent children, fighting for their lives as a million pricks of iciness froze them until their bodies slowly, slowly drifted to the bottom of the ocean.

“Where are you going?” I had cried to Father, running down the front steps after him with a hurriedly packed, battered brown trunk. He raked a hand through a stubble of hairs tinged grey.

“Elsie, I have to sort out affairs at my work. Carlos Lutenez’s cousin was on that ship, there could be a whole circle operating.” He was muttering more to himself but the word ‘ship’ rung in my ears like a menacing echo. I stopped walking, clapping a hand to my mouth.

“You’re dealing with spies in the war?” Father raised his eyebrows, getting into the automobile, which was now fixed. He slammed the doors.

“Spies that are blowing up our ships?” My voice’s pitch steadily ascended and I teetered on my heels. Father’s hands clamped onto the steering wheel. He cocked his head.

“Elsie, grow up.”

“You could get yourself killed!” I screamed hysterically.

Dust blew up, the tyres screeched and my hair became static in the sudden breeze. He was gone. He had left me alone, with no adults to protect me, the precious Kingston heiress. I had wanted this all my life but now the time had come, I didn’t know what to do. I felt small and scared and I wanted Mother. My eyes squeezed together and I felt myself begin to shake. Oh how I wanted Mother.

I kicked a stone. In some ways, I had grown up. I had let myself be exposed to a cruel, mangled version of the world in my storybooks with the family who lived in a pretty, red-bricked, thatched cottage.

Feeling a presence, I slowly turned around. Mary. And Emma. It was only then that I suddenly realised that I had always needed Mary but she didn’t need me.

*****

“Well then,” Susanna said later on that day from her position on the floor, where she was trying to find a dropped needle, “It’s just you, me, Mary, Emma, Maddy Jack and Stevens.” (Madeline Jack being the cook and Jimmy Stevens the weedy lad who just did anything needing to be done.) The other servants were long gone to more needed jobs, nursing and the likes of that, helping out in the war. Or, going to war and never coming home.

Susanna and Emma’s ‘personal maid’ status seemed trivial; perhaps Father wanted us to have company in his absence? What if his absence became more than a mere absence but his body lying under one of those cold grey stones in the local parish church?

I shivered and got up to stare out the window for a long time, arms wrapped around torso. Specks of dust obscured the windowsill, early signs of how normal life was being pushed aside to make way for the terrible events occurring.

It had been like that since Mrs Campbell, our housekeeper, had left more than a few yestermorning’s ago after her brother had fallen at Ypres. The Germans were taking our men left right and centre, not caring about the people left behind. Now that I had taken more interest in the war, the nightmares came on stronger after reading every day the dreadful things that happened. Every sharp, sudden noise to me was the bomb going off. Every shape in the sky was a Zeppelin to me.

*****

Slowly, the four of us got into the pattern of sleeping in late and eating little. Maddy Jack and Stevens scarped off together behind the bushes.

“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” Mary reminded me on the way to the attic a week later as we had taken up rafter residence with Susanna and Emma. I had got Mary a present; a ring that I never wore but would complement her colouring better.

I stayed up all night like an owl and was waiting at the gate for the post as early as Susanna allowed me. I paced up and down, biting my lip, wringing my hands. Finally, the postman came on his bike, whistling.

“Morning, ladies.” He doffed his cap to Susanna and me, grinning, gap-toothed, shaking his kinky short hair, handing me just one envelope.

To Mrs Isabella Kingston, it read. Was this really for Mother, or had she just posted it to herself? I tore open the silky smooth cream envelope. No card. Mother would never forget Mary’s birthday. She couldn't. Even Susanna and I had left our petty little presents early this morning in Mary's bedroom. My heart beat faster and I took in shaky breaths.

“We should go,” Susanna said edgily.

“Yes, to Somerset, to Mother,” I responded fiercely. Something was wrong and I needed to find her.

“Yes, yes, anywhere. We have to move!” Susanna’s finger stabbed the paper which had unfurled from the envelope.

Two, inky black words: We’re Coming.