The house is cold and the weather here in Yorkshire is relentless. The snow is falling and Father has finally agreed to light the huge fire in the parlour, but we need other ways of keeping warm and we walk around the house wearing several layers of clothing.
Mary and I both cuddle up in our rooms and sleep together most of the time. It’s much warmer this way and even though our mother often tells us that at eighteen we are much too old to sleep together, we treat it like a game and wait until she’s asleep before sneaking from one room to the other. One night is spent in my room, the next in Mary’s. We’ve tried to explain the twin thing, but no one understands it but us. Besides, we like to chat to one another and make up ghost stories, just as soon as the lights go out.
I’m worried about Jimmy; he’s sixteen now and seems to have reached an age where he’s taking an unhealthy interest in the chambermaids. Our father has been heard reprimanding him so many times. But then, I’m not sure that it’s all Jimmy’s fault. I’ve seen how the maids linger in the family rooms whenever he is home, especially Molly. Her family are quite poor and live in the village, whereas Jimmy is a young man with quite an inheritance who would be quite a coup for Molly to entrap, especially seeing as he is so young and so easily swayed. Molly seems quite the temptress and just a little too bold and forthright for her own good. I’ve tried to warn him of the dangers, that the gold-diggers are out there, but he’s young and bored and I doubt that he cares, so long as he’s getting what he wants. After all, he is a man. I worry where it will all end and some days I pray for the holidays to be over and for Father to send him back to school.
Mary has taken a liking to Benjamin, the new valet. He’s much older than her, but rather handsome. He does smile at her sweetly and she seems to enjoy his attentions. I saw her with him in the garden today. He lifted his hand and stroked her cheek and I’m sure that they’re in love, but as yet she still hasn’t said.
It’s now late, yet still Mary hasn’t come to my room as we’d planned earlier today, so I fear she’s gone to meet him after dark, which upsets me a little. But, if she has gone to meet him, I hope that she is being sensible and isn’t taking any risks. Our mother would internally combust if Mary ever announced that she were pregnant.
I walked past Eddie today. My whole heart lifted when he whistled at me and winked. It was his normal sign to meet him at teatime, and even though I know that I shouldn’t and that I worry about the others being involved with the staff, Eddie is different and I go to meet him whenever I can, without Father’s permission. There would be no point in even trying to get Father to allow it. I’ve never met anyone quite as mean and I just know that he would never understand that two people from such different backgrounds could actually be friends and if he found out he’d probably go mad.
Eddie and I meet on the staircase, the one that’s hidden within the house and leads to a single room beneath the bell tower. Not even the servants know that it’s there. Only the immediate family know how to find it and I’ve taken a risk showing Eddie. It was the only place I could think of where we could meet undisturbed and where Father wouldn’t stumble upon us during his evening walk around the house.
I let Eddie in and we both went one by one up the staircase and, after letting ourselves through the panel, we sat on the wooden steps and held hands for at least an hour. We spoke to each other non-stop, until the hourly chiming of the bell tower indicated that it was time for tea. It also got so loud that we ended up running down the stairs laughing, with our hands over our ears, and had to hold our breath at the bottom so that no one heard us giggle. I know it’s wrong for us to act like this and if we were found out it would bring disgrace upon me and upon my family, but I wonder if it would be so wrong to take Eddie up to the room beyond the staircase. It’d be much warmer than sitting on the steps, but there’s a bed up there and that’s what makes me nervous. I’m a little worried that he’d get the wrong idea, even though I doubt that he’d ever take advantage, but I’d be terrified that our being up there in the first place would be seen as an invitation.
Father expects me to marry well. He expects me to marry a solicitor or a doctor or someone of consequence and within the year will be introducing me to every eligible bachelor that he can think of. They’ll be invited to dinner at first and if we get along, there would be a reason why he and his parents would come to stay at the house and pretend to be fascinated in what I do. Of course, I’ll do my best to be boring and feign an interest in needlepoint, knitting or reading. I wouldn’t talk much and I may even pretend to be sick or not to like boys at all. One by one, I expect they’ll ask me to marry them. Their parents would expect them to ask, whether they like me or not, and would probably be sat with Father in the library waiting for news.
The thought of being paraded before so many men terrifies me to the core and, if I’m honest, I feel as though I’m trapped in Victorian England, not in 1942. Our whole family acts with such propriety, but then again Father is an important man and I dare not argue. Father wouldn’t expect me to question him. Instead, one by one, I’ll just have to refuse and find some petty reason for doing so.
However, with Mary and I being twins, it will be a race to see which one of us they can marry off first. I’m sure we’ll both be expected to marry before we’re twenty-one, just like our mother did and though I’m sure that Mother loves our father now, the last thing I want is a marriage with no room for sentiment. I just hope and pray that the times change and, if nothing else, I would rather be single than marry someone I don’t love.
I’m sure Eddie would ask me to marry him if he thought that Father would allow it, but he knows not to ask for fear of losing his job. The gatehouse, in which Eddie and his mother live, is tied to the hall and if Eddie didn’t work here, he and his mother might lose their home, which means that we wouldn’t get to see one another at all.
* * *
Madeleine’s fingers turned the wafer-thin pages of the diary as she sat shivering beside Bandit. They looked at each other in amazement as the diary began to reveal its secrets.
‘I can’t believe she talks like this in 1942. She sounds as though she were born in eighteen hundred and something,’ Bandit said as Madeleine turned to the next page. ‘Don’t you think?’
Madeleine shook her head. ‘I think it’s really sad. It must have been awful for her to know that her parents were going to introduce her to all of those men and, what’s more, she’d be expected to marry one of them. I mean, what if she didn’t like them? She loved Eddie.’ Madeleine pouted and flicked over the page, hoping to read some more words that Emily had written, but the words had stopped and in their place were the most beautiful pencil drawings she’d ever seen.
‘Wow, Emily must have been quite an accomplished artist, look at these,’ she said as the five or six very small pictures came to life before them. Each picture sat alone with a smudged blend of pencil between each to bring them together on the page.
But, it was the drawing central to the page that caught Madeleine’s eye. It was of a man dressed in old, torn clothing. His trousers were far too short for his legs, yet he wore a shirt and a waistcoat. He was leaning on a spade that was propped up firmly in the ground, as though taking a break from doing the gardening. His right hand was just about to touch his cap, making Madeleine think that maybe he was about to take it off. It was a natural pose, his eyes looked kind and he smiled towards the place where Emily must have sat drawing him. Maybe she’d asked him to pose that way, or maybe she’d caught an image of Eddie in her memory, a snapshot of his day as he’d stood there working her father’s land.
‘Do you think that’s Eddie?’ Madeleine looked up and into Bandit’s face, which in the lamplight had softened and she noticed how he gazed in a dream-like fashion at the picture.
Bandit shook his head. ‘Who knows.’
Madeleine held the torch up and slightly away from the picture. It looked ghostlike in the shadows and even though the man was smiling, he looked sad.
‘At least people are allowed to love who they like nowadays,’ Maddie whispered as her finger lightly brushed the image.
Of all the marriages she knew, and of all her married friends, not one of them would have followed the rules of times gone by. Most wouldn’t have even been allowed to marry in those days. Yet here they were not so many years later and most were happy, most were completely untraditional and Madeleine couldn’t help but think that she was pleased that times had changed.
She stared at the picture and then back at Bandit. There was a resemblance there and it occurred to her that, if it hadn’t been drawn over seventy years ago, it could almost have been a picture of him; the eyes were the same shape, the mouth tipped up at one corner in a similar way and the jawline was square and symmetrical. She shook her head and smiled to herself. She hadn’t realised until now that she’d taken quite so much notice of Bandit’s appearance.