As a Girl

Bramber Station

‘Honestly Lydia, I have no idea why the girl didn’t take up the offer when bestowed.  She can hardly have any expectations of better.’ 

The speaker was as heavy as her companion was slight, buttressed in the belief of her gossip, which had been handed down earlier that morning by an irate Mrs Middlethwaite at St Nicholas’s.  Lydia laughed, sending a shrill trill of notes into the June breeze.  ‘Why of course, Charlotte, you can’t expect the girl to possess such assets’ (here her hands make a vague cupping motion) ‘as well as the brains to know how to use them.’

That Mrs Middlethwaite had confided in Charlotte, Mrs Mitt, was her way of letting the foolish girl, Amelia, know her actions in denying her son were remarkable at best and regrettable at least.  Everyone in the village knew that Amelia Barber, though delicately beautiful, was easily led, if a bit dim.  She had a shrewd, shrewish older sister, Julia, whom everyone suspected of amorous sabotage because of her mopish looks around the Middlethwaite boy.  Then again, it was entirely possible that, seen in the correct setting with minimal opportunity for chat, Amelia would go to an even higher bidder. 

As they passed the station, Charlotte’s eye was drawn to a figure clad in lilac towards the end of the platform, skirts gliding lightly along the ground.  The woman, or young lady, Charlotte surmised upon further scrutiny, seemed to hold her face from view under a rather large hat.  She was fair, with a well-defined jawline, and the beginnings of a grimace as she struggled with what looked like brand new kid gloves.  The dress itself was very plain, with stiff, straight sleeves, and the girl seemed to fit inside it rather awkwardly.  Even with a waspish waist, there was something almost muscular about her, a solidity that seemed confined within unyielding fabric. 

‘Now then, have you ever seen anything like it?’ Charlotte audibly tutted. ‘Waiting for a train on the Sabbath?  And of course, never to be seen in church beforehand.’

‘Indeed,’ said Lydia coolly, eying the girl, who looked as if she was one of those brash suffragettes, out of place in the wilds of Sussex.  ‘Though, she’ll be waiting until July for that train unless someone tells her.’ 

Charlotte pursed her big lips in disapproval.  ‘It would be Christian of us to say.’  The two ladies diverted their path to The Street and approached the girl with some speed, each more eager than the other to part with their self-proclaimed special knowledge about the trains.  More importantly, to find out who would be fool enough to wait for the Bramber train on a Sunday. 

Lydia knew there was something strange about the girl before she even drew near.  She had a sense about these things; one summer she’d warned a farmer about keeping his sheep on a particular slope of the Downs – she felt, in her bones, she was often to say, that something evil would happen to the flock if left there in April.  She wouldn’t say that the Devil himself would appear, but was adamant enough to insinuate that one of his minions might make an impromptu journey to the Devil’s Dyke.  The farmer, Will Smart, stubborn as a goat, didn’t heed her warning and Lydia was only too gratified (while outwardly contrite) to hear through the parish that the farmer lost half his flock to some mysterious toxins native to the hillside.  The fact that other farmers noted an outbreak of poisonous plants imported from New Zealand around the same time was by the by.  Lydia knew her bones.  And she knew they were always right. 

But what was strange about this girl, Lydia couldn’t say.  As they neared, she seemed to freeze, her limbs languid despite the inactivity.  When the girl turned at the last second, the women were momentarily blinded by a mouth full of white teeth; thrown into stasis, their eyes gradually focused to, they were each privately pleased to note, an otherwise ordinary figure.

‘Well, young lady, we felt it our duty to come and rescue you from your efforts, which unfortunately will be wasted on this holiest of holy days!’  Charlotte imparted this line rather gleefully, particularly as she’d spotted with her third eye a heavy-looking cloud in the near distance.  ‘You have a chaperone, I trust?  We really should have a word with both of you together.’ 

The girl, whose sharp green eyes were as arresting as her teeth, offered a large smile. 

‘Oh!’  She exclaimed, in quite a loud voice.  ‘I haven’t a chaperone in Bramber, I’m afraid.  But I do welcome your words, as I’m sure to find them helpful.’

The women were struck by two things simultaneously, each equally shocking.  First, that the voice carried a strange, flat accent.  She was, they rightly assumed, American.  Second, and more titillating than Amelia Barber’s ill judgment, was the girl’s lack of suitable chaperone.  A young lady, rather, a young American lady (a problem enough on its own), without supervision?  Scandalous indeed.

Lydia, intrigued, was thrilled to have found her before the rest of the village.  ‘But no chaperone?  My dear, I’m sure you must know someone nearby.  We are such a small parish, you see, and sadly there are no trains today as it’s the Lord’s day.  Of course we must guess that you are a visitor of sorts.  To whom do you belong?’   

‘I’ve been visiting my Great-Aunt in Upper Beeding who unfortunately doesn’t get out much, which naturally describes my ill-timed presence here.  You are both too good to remind me that such a lovely place should enjoy such silence on Sundays.’  She leaned forward and lowered her voice, ‘Up in London where I live, they work the whole week long without observing.  Such a shame.’  The ladies, although latching on to the most important information, took a moment to nod vigorously in agreement with such true words.

‘It is,’ Charlotte began sadly, ‘most unfortunate.  I’ve always said that the Church puts everything back in its rightful place – you must see all sorts of dreadful things in London, what with the suffragettes.  One hears many stories, even in Bramber – ’

‘Who, dear girl, is this Great-Aunt in Upper Beeding?’ Lydia interjected smoothly, ‘Charlotte and I are well acquainted with many of the parishioners there, although I must say I’ve not heard talk of an American relative.  How alluring!’

The girl smiled.  ‘Mrs Clitherow.  It has been too long since my last visit you see.  However, I must return to London today somehow.’ She raised her hands in a helpless gesture, ‘I can see that I’ve come across just the right ladies to help me solve this particular dilemma.’

Barely a glance flickered between the two women.  Mrs Clitherow was a notorious recluse; she wouldn’t even come out when the parishioners were selling chutneys on behalf of St Nicholas and St Andrew’s.  It was entirely possible she had a mysterious American relative, but it struck both women as unlikely, and yet intoxicatingly puzzling. 

‘The Middlethwaite boy.  Runs a hansom all the way to London on occasion, but I’m afraid you’ll be too late in the day to start.’  Charlotte feigned disappointment for the girl.  She was eager to march her up to the Middlethwaite’s and watch the boy’s eyes boggle at the scandalous sight of her.  He’d forget the Barber girl in a matter of seconds.

The girl’s smile, which until this point appeared to be fixed, wavered momentarily.

‘Well, then, I must engage this gentleman for his services for his earliest possible convenience.  I really am incredibly lucky to have come across such founts of knowledge – you certainly have saved me!’

Charlotte and Lydia allowed themselves a brief acknowledgement of this fact.  Yes, they did seem to save a lot of people; they’d always felt it was their special task.  Especially to help those who never even knew they needed saving.