Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Fifty-Six

Fifty-Six

September, 1915

                                                                                   19th August 1915    Newcastle, England

 Dear Elsie,

I am missing you dreadfully, but I hope you and John are enjoying yourselves. Miss Emma has been attending to me wonderfully, as I am sick quite a lot, and feel lazy and fat!

Jacqueline and I went to the Royal Pavilion before I left Brighton, which is presently a hospital for the Imperial Indian Army. Lord Kitchener was there in July, which we missed, but we went to see our KING (!!!) present Military Honours!

On the subject of war: on the 8th August we sunk Turkish Battleship Barbaros Hayreddin, and 3 days before that Germany captured Warsaw from the Russians. Your father sends word that if he dies on Poland, on his latest mission, we are to marry Mary off to Robert Bringham.

Mary, Miss Emma and I are in Newcastle, selling off his estates here, preparing for the worst and giving money to the government to help with the war effort, for Jacqueline and I felt our knitting circle was simply not enough.

I am so sorry to tell you such bad news, but I am proud of you every day, darling, and I long for you to come home, although I do envy you, out in Spain with the glorious weather you must be having, and not having to worry about the war.

Mother xxxxx

PS: Mary, your new sibling (!) and Miss Emma send their greetings and best wishes.

I folded the letter back up, putting my head in my hands. My emotions were everywhere. How could Mother like Emma, horrible, vindictive, I’m-so-perfect-Emma-Aleksandrov? I thought this rather half-heartedly, without any spite. Emma had been through too much with my family now for me to hate her.

I hated my father for what he had done, but I was quite shocked to hear of the prospect of him admitting he himself might be close to death, after sending so many others to theirs. I didn’t even know he owned lands in Newcastle!

I felt so homesick; the thought of my little sister, who only months ago still had a rainbow collection of ribbons for plaits, getting married… And I had another little brother or sister on the way, who would be born into a world at war, a world where we would win one day and loose another.

The civil war in Reaurez had ceased. John and I had finished burying the villagers. Katchatchawen was dead, and John had paid for some men to clear away the field of destruction and blood.

Ludmilla, however, was not among the dead, or the villagers piecing together planks of wood, piecing their lives back together. The thought of her, and maybe Natalya out there, waiting to kill me, didn’t scare me. It gave me the thirst to get revenge for my brother’s death and their failed plan to kill me.

*****

It was a few nights after the burning of Reaurez, as our servants had taken to calling it, and I was lying in bed, hand to my tender ribs. The doctors at the nearest hospital had said I was lucky, for the gashes on my stomach could have been fatal, as well as the brown paint Ludmilla had used being poisonous to the skin. She had tried to kill me in every way; she had tried to kill the fight in me, she had tried to kill the heart of me and make me look like someone else. 

I shifted over as John got into bed, and I turned away from him, still distracted by my thoughts. I couldn’t look at him, knowing I had burnt his village down, the village which had been in his family’s hands for centuries. We were King and Queen of nothing now, except of scars, both physically and emotionally. I would never forget the feeling of lying there, thinking I was going to die, that there was no hope, as the flames licked at me, or the sight of my friends’ mangled necks as a coil of rope throttled them. It was maximum torture.

“Elsie,” John said softly, catching my arm, “Why do you turn away from me? Do the burns on my face hurt your pretty little eyes?” I shook my head, burrowing down under the quilt, which was like a wave of sorrow washing over my head. His handsome face was all puckered and glistening angry pinky-red. Because of me. He had been so shocked when I had told him what had happened, and he had cursed himself for letting me go in the first place.

“You turn away from me every night,” he repeated, “You won’t let me embrace you. You won’t let me love you.”

“I know you love me,” I said seriously, throwing the cover off me and shifting upwards slowly, clutching my side, “No man would cry like that unless it was for the love of his life.”

“Then what is it, my Elsie-bee? Am I not the love of your life?” He paused, allowing time for the image of Bobby and Susanna kissing to fill my head again. I swallowed, trying to ignore the raw pain, still fresh, coursing around my heart. A month on, I still hurt. Except now, I was thirsty for revenge, and I wanted to make them pay.

“I wouldn’t care if you weren’t a virgin. (I winced.) I wouldn’t care if you were a whore or a pauper or a criminal or as ugly as a hippopotamus. I picked you out at the Brighton Ball when I was fifteen, and again last week when you didn’t look like the Elsie I knew and loved.” I slid into his arms, coal colour locks framing my face. He smiled at me, a sort of hopeful but sad smile.

“But you are still the same Elsie inside.” John was wrong. I had been through much now to be the Elsie who tried not to care.