Beauty
“I want to go out,” Hob said. “I am so bored.”
Milady barely looked up from her book. “We know,” she said. She turned the page neatly and carried on reading. Hob continued to stare out of the window and kick her feet against the window seat, which echoed with each kick. I counted them out…nine, ten, eleven, twelve…
“I want to go out,” Hob said.
“We know,” Milady said.
“Twenty-three,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What?” Milady said. I think they had both almost forgotten that I was there.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Twenty-three what?” Hob asked.
“Times you’ve said you want to go out and Milady said that we know,” I answered reluctantly. Milady looked infuriated.
“If you haven’t got anything better to do than listen in on our conversation then I suggest you go and find something to entertain yourself with elsewhere,” she said.
“But I’m bored,” I said. I looked up at Hob. “I want to go out too.”
“Hah!” she said and pushed herself off the window-seat. “Two against one, Milady. We’re going out!”
“Oh, alright, but you’ll need your cloak. It’s still wet in the gardens.”
“We’re not going into the gardens. We could go into the gardens any old time,” Hob said dismissively. “We’re going to go somewhere else, somewhere more exciting.”
“Somewhere new?” I asked.
“Absolutely!”
“Where?” Milady asked. “There’s only here and … and you said you weren’t going to go there again.”
“I’m not,” Hob said. “But there’s always the village.”
“The village!” Milady said. We all knew that the village was there, of course, because Father and sometimes Mother went there and sometimes people came from there to the house, although we never saw them, but we had never been ourselves. Except to go to the forest, none of us had ever passed the boundaries of our own home. To even think of going that way was shocking.
“The last time I was on the roof” – here Milady drew in a sharp breath and I decided never to tell her that Hob had taken me up on the roof with her that time. I was never going to go again; once was quite enough – “I looked that way. It’s hard to see, but when I manageed to stand up holding on to a chimney pot I could see the roofs and a bend in the road and some people. I waved, but no one saw. I thought we could go and see it and maybe meet other people. We’ve never meet anyone who isn’t part of the family, except maybe for-”
“I know who you mean. Don’t keep talking about it.”
“Well, we’ve never been outside of the walls, or met anyone. They didn’t make us promise not to and I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
“No, me neither, I suppose. We ought to ask if we may first, though.”
“But if we ask and they say no we won’t be able to, but if we go and then they say yes afterwards everything will be all right. We could ask for permission afterwards.”
“You just think they’ll say no.”
“And then neither of you will come and it will be no fun on my own.”
“I’d still go with you,” I said.
Milady sighed “You’ll still go on your own even if I say no, won’t you?”
