‘Explain yourself,’ Mrs Sowerby said terribly.
Harriet was so frightened she could hardly breathe. When her mother called her from the kitchen, she’d wiped her hands on her apron and obeyed readily enough, even though she knew from the peremptory tone of the call that she must have done something wrong. But she didn’t think it could be anything particularly bad because she’d been working very hard and very carefully all that day. And besides, she’d been in the middle of such a happy daydream, looking forward to tomorrow when she would dance at the Victory Ball with Mr Easter.
She’d found a way round, just as she’d hoped. Or to be more accurate Miss Pettie had provided one, inviting her to this Victory Ball just as she’d invited her to the last, and even giving her one of her ball gowns, which they’d altered and trimmed and made over into quite a new garment –and such a pretty one, with a new waistband of pale blue velvet and the dearest little puff sleeves trimmed with pale blue ribbons to match. And now she only had twenty-four hours to wait before the ball began and she would see her dear Mr Easter again. The sight of his letters, spread out before her on the dining table, looking so white and vulnerable and naked against the unforgiving wood, gave her such a shock that she couldn’t move another step.
‘Well?’ her mother said, standing beside the offending documents straight-spined and fierce-faced and black as thunder. The chastening rod lay on the table beside the letters, ready for use, its red leather most horrible in the firelight.
‘I found – these –’ her father said, speaking slowly and precisely as though every word were so distasteful that he had to spit it from his mouth, ‘these – articles – hidden under the floorboards in your bedroom, my gel. What have you to say for yourself?’ His face was so pinched with anger that his lips had virtually disappeared and his little narrow nose was as grey as dry putty. ‘What? Eh? What?’
Harriet was too shaken to be able to answer. Yet. She stared at them mutely, her knees trembling.
‘You don’t deny they were sent to you, I suppose?’ her mother said.
‘No.’
‘Nor that they are from Mr Easter, with whom you were most expressly forbidden to communicate?’
‘No –’ her chest constricting most painfully.
‘Nor that you have disobeyed your parents in the most flagrant and disgusting manner?’
Oh no, Harriet thought, there was nothing disgusting about my letters, nor about Mr Easter’s. I can’t agree with that. I was wrong to receive them but not disgusting.
‘I disobeyed you, Mama,’ she said, ‘because you told me to do something that wasn’t polite.’ It frightened her to be making such a stand but it had to be done.
Mrs Sowerby was so surprised she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What’s this? What’s this?’ she snorted. ‘Do you defy me, girl?’
‘No, Mama,’ Harriet said. She was calmer now that she’d made her stand.
‘Then how dare you say such things to your Mama?’ Mr Sowerby said.
‘I say them, Papa, because they are true. Mr Easter is a fine gentleman. He wrote to me and I replied. ‘Twas only common courtesy.’
Her mother picked up the chastening rod and jabbed the wooden end under Harriet’s chin. Her eyes were blazing with hatred.
‘I have never known such flagrant disobedience in all my born days,’ she said. ‘After all we’ve done for you. All the care we’ve taken of you. All the money we’ve spent on you! Only think of the money we paid to have you educated, and a fine waste that’s turned out to be. Oh yes! We teach you to read and that is the sort of rubbish you spend your time on. “We live by admiration, hope and love.” What wicked, wicked trash to write to a young girl. Admiration hope and love indeed! There is nothing in you to admire, let me tell you, nor to love, if this is the way you go on. Wicked, wicked trash! And if you don’t know yet what evil will come of reading such vile words then I despair of you. Oh what a waste of your education! We teach you to write and you spend your time writing foolish letters to young rakes who will ruin you. And after all our efforts to protect you, to raise you up in the right way, to inculcate obedience and sobriety and self-control and gentleness and all the good Christian virtues, after all our efforts, this is how you turn out. Oh Mr Sowerby, words fail me!’
But words didn’t fail Mr Sowerby. He knew exactly what to say and exactly what to do.
‘There is nothing for it, Mother,’ he said happily. ‘She will have to be whipped.’
With her chin still held up by the rod Harriet had no way of avoiding the expression on her father’s face. His mouth was twisted sideways with the force of his anger and his little eyes shone. ‘She will have to be whipped, Mother,’ he repeated with satisfaction. ‘Whipped within an inch of her life. The evil will have to be whipped out of her.’ And each time he said the word whipped he licked his lips as if he were already savouring the action.
I won’t beg for mercy, Harriet thought, because this time I am right and they are wrong. I won’t beg for mercy, no matter what they do. Her hands were still sticky with dough and she tried to rub them clean on one corner of her apron, acting instinctively as if clean hands might deflect their wrath. But she didn’t flinch and for the first time in her life she didn’t drop her eyes.
‘You will take your punishment,’ her mother promised grimly, thrusting a chair into the centre of the little room. ‘Take off your dress and bend over that chair if you please.’
Harriet didn’t resist because she knew from bitter experience that resistance only prolonged a beating. If they were going to beat her let them do it quickly and get it over with. She took off her shoes and her apron and unbuttoned her dress and stepped out of it without a word. She even folded her clothes and put them neatly on the table, because neatness was habitual to her and because it gave her a few more moments to compose herself before the pain began. Her heart was beating so fast it was making her chemise shake and her chest felt as though it was being squeezed by some giant vice. But she would endure it. She always had.
But this time, although her mother watched her prepare with her usual narrow-eyed anticipation, her father was infuriated by her slowness. He seized her roughly by the hair and pulled her down across the chair. ‘Lay on!’ ordered his wife. ‘She has dallied long enough. Now do not spare her!’
Harriet lay across the chair, afraid but still determined not to plead and not to say another word. But she cried aloud at every blow. She couldn’t help herself. They hurt so much and came stinging down upon her back and her legs and her shoulders so quickly and brutally and unpredicatably, and with such force.
It was the worst beating she’d ever endured. Usually her mother hit her either six times or twelve, counting the strokes as they fell, her voice as sharp as the rod, and Harriet hung on to the edge of the chair silently counting the blows too because each one brought her nearer to the moment of release. But this time her mother beat without counting and without mercy, flailing at her daughter’s body until her arms ached and she could barely see what she was doing. ‘Repent your sins!’ she shouted. ‘Repent! Repent!’
And Mr Sowerby echoed, ‘Repent, you grievous sinner! Beat her, Mother! Beat her! Repent! Repent! Repent!’
After the thirteenth blow Harriet began to scream, hanging on to the edge of the chair because her mind had stopped functioning and she couldn’t think of anything else to do. But after the twentieth, reason and revulsion returned together and she struggled to her feet and stumbled away, dodging the next blow, and the next, pinned against the wall and swaying out of range, and still screaming a long, high-pitched, eerie wail of desperation and terror. Her unexpected resistance drove both her parents into a frenzy.
Her father grabbed at her, trying to pull her down on the chair again, tugging at her hair and shrieking at her to be still, and her mother beat her as though she was demented, terrible blows that cut her arms and her face until her whole body was slippery with terrified sweat, and she couldn’t run any longer, and she couldn’t stand either because there was no strength in her legs, and she fell sideways onto the flagstones, wrenching her hair from her father’s grasp so violently that clumps of it came away in his fingers.
For a few seconds they were all quite still, looking at each other, while the Sowerbys blew like horses and the fire spat and hissed, and two drops of blood fell from Harriet’s forefinger into two neat red circles on the flagstones. Then she began to cry, in long, drawn-out, forlorn sobs that hurt her throat and frightened her parents.
‘Get to bed,’ Mr Sowerby said abruptly. ‘We don’t want to see your ugly face again tonight.’ The sooner she was out of sight the better.
Harriet crawled up the stairs on her hands and knees, sobbing and groaning, and stumbled through her parents’ room, barking her shins against furniture that she could barely see, and fell onto her truckle bed in a state of total exhaustion. But even then, with the beating over and alone in the dark cell of her room, she couldn’t stop crying. She wept on and on until the ache in her chest was sobbed away and she had no more energy left to cry with and no more tears to shed. Then she lifted herself wearily from the mattress, covered herself with her blanket and lay shivering in the dark.
And her thoughts went round and round in an endless, useless circle all night long. She had disobeyed her parents, which was certainly a sin. And she’d fought against them and she was glad she’d done it. For she wasn’t sinful. Not this time. Writing a letter to a gentleman as proper and kind as Mr Easter couldn’t possibly be a sin. She knew it. And as she lay stiffly under her blanket, she also knew, in that private innermost core of her mind and emotions, that she hated her mother and father and that she always would.
She was still cold and still wide-awake when the dawn began to trawl a faint grey light across the little space of her window. She got up very stiffly and limped to the door to see if it was possible to get out quietly and go downstairs for a drink of water, because she was desperately thirsty. But the door was locked. And there was no water in the ewer either, because, as she remembered now, she’d been sent upstairs before she had a chance to fill it. Her mouth was so terribly dry it was an effort to swallow. But then it was an effort to do anything, she felt so sore.
She looked at her arms in the faint half-light, examining them quietly and dispassionately almost as though they belonged to someone else. They were both blotched with dark bruises and there were two long cuts on her right forearm that were still oozing blood. She examined her chemise, which was torn and bloodstained and very dirty. And she touched her face very delicately with her finger tips, because it was extremely tender and very swollen. Then she knelt down beside her narrow window and peered at the faint image of her head and shoulders in the darker corner of the glass. Her face was so disfigured she couldn’t recognize it. One eye was half closed by two dark mounds of bruised flesh that puffed out beside and beneath it, there was a lump on her temple and both her lips were cut and swollen. I look like a monster, she thought.
But she didn’t cry. She’d gone beyond tears now. She was quite calm. She knew that there was nothing she could do except wrap herself up in her blanket again and endure until one or other of her parents unlocked the door. They had done their worst, just as she had always feared they would. Now it was simply a matter of waiting.
Miss Pettie was rather upset when Mr Sowerby arrived on her doorstep that afternoon to tell her that Harriet would not be accepting her kind invitation to the Victory Ball after all.
‘She is being kept to her room,’ he said, ‘as a punishment for a most grievous sin.’ And the expression on his face implied that it was too shameful to be talked about.
‘I am uncommon sorry to hear it,’ Miss Pettie said. And a most uncomfortable suspicion came winging into her mind. What if the sin were something to do with Mr Easter and the letters? Oh surely not! Harriet was always most discreet and, besides, there was no harm in a letter or two. Surely not. But it worried her just the same. ‘I shall look forward to seeing her on Sunday,’ she said, ‘when I trust she will be quite restored to obedience.’
But it was a great disappointment that Harriet would miss the Victory Ball especially as all the Easters were due to attend. It quite took the gilt off the gingerbread, which was a pity for this second Victory Ball was even more lavish than the first.
Mrs Easter was in splendid form in a blue and green silk gown cut in the very latest style and very much envied by all the ladies, who were either complimentary or scathing about it according to their natures, and Billy was dancing quite rapturously with his beloved Matilda, but John was very quiet and barely danced at all. He made no mention of the absent Harriet and that upset Miss Pettie too.
‘I shall look out for her most particularly on Sunday,’ she said to Jane, when the ball was over and she was home at last and her old servant was patiently unhooking her ball gown. ‘She will be forgiven by then, surely to goodness, whatever the sin. And I can’t believe it was as bad as Mr Sowerby made out for our Harriet is too kindly a creature, wouldn’t you say so, Jane?’
‘She’s pleasant enough in all conscience ma’am,’ Jane agreed, ’but if she don’t obey the fifth Commandment, there en’t a deal of hope for her, nor no Victory Balls neither.’ She approved of stern discipline, did Jane. And when you’ve been sitting up until two in the morning waiting for your mistress to come home, it is hard to be full of Christian charity.
‘I shall look out for her notwithstanding,’ Miss Pettie said.
But there was no sign of Harriet in chapel that Sunday, and when Miss Pettie made discreet enquiries she discovered that nobody had seen her at all since Tuesday. Which was five whole days. By now Miss Pettie’s hesitant suspicion was beginning to turn into alarm. She spent the rest of the Sabbath worrying and praying and all of Monday and Tuesday hoping in vain that Harriet would visit, and finally, early on Wednesday morning, she trotted next door to confide in Bessie Thistlethwaite.
‘The family’s all gone back ter London, Miss Pettie,’ Bessie said, coming in to the hall to welcome her visitor when the parlour maid had admitted her. ‘Mr John went Thursday in such a rush you’d never believe, and Mrs Easter was off Sat’day, and now Mr Billy’s gone too by the first coach yesterday morning. We’re all on our ownsome, as yer might say.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Pettie said, clutching at her curls in her anxiety. ‘I rather imagined that is how it would be. But ’tis no matter, Mrs Thistlethwaite, for ’twas you and Mr Thistlethwaite I came to see.’
‘In that case, Miss Pettie,’ Bessie said, ‘would you care ter come in to my parlour? You’ve just caught us in. Thiss is off ter Norwich in ’alf an hour.’
So Miss Pettie went into the parlour and Thiss and Bessie listened to her most seriously while she told her tale.
‘You think they’ve locked ’er in fer writin’ to our Mr John then, Miss Pettie?’ Thiss asked.
‘I fear so,’ Miss Pettie confessed. ‘And ’tis all on my account. What shall I do?’
‘Never you mind, Miss Pettie,’ Bessie commiserated. ‘Don’t you go a-frettin’ yourself. Thiss’ll think a’ somethink. Wontcher, Thiss?’
Thiss stood up and took his pipe from the rack in the chimney corner and, after filling it slowly and thoughtfully, and then lighting it with Vesuvian clouds of smoke and much puffing, he sat down on the settle again and delivered his verdict.
‘If Mrs Easter was ’ere, I should say we oughter tell Mrs Easter,’ he said. ‘Being she’s the most forceful lady I knows. But she ain’t ’ere. She’s off in Hertfordshire somewhere, an’ a fair ol’ journey away. That bein’ so, my opinion of it is this. They was Mr John’s letters what caused the shindig so you sez, Miss Pettie, which do seem a queer thing ter me when we considers what a fine gentleman ’e is. But no accountin’ fer taste as the butler said when ’is master spread jam on the bloaters. So bein’ they was his letters, I reckon ’e should know the outcome a’ the correspondence, so ter speak. One of us should write an’ tell ’im. What I’m quite willin’ ter do, if you’re agreeable to it, Miss Pettie.’
‘Oh what a relief ’twould be to me,’ Miss Pettie said. ‘When could it be done?’
‘If it ain’t like ter take more’n twenty minutes,’ Thiss said, ‘I could do it fer you now. I got me pipe lit.’
So the letter was sent, and arrived in Bedford Square the following morning while Billy and John were eating their breakfast.
It reduced John to prowling agitation. ‘Read it, Billoh,’ he said tossing the letter onto his brother’s plate.
‘Steady on!’ Billy said. ‘Now it’s all over butter. Sit down, do, it can’t be as bad as all that.’ But when he’d read the letter too he grew serious at once. ‘We must go down and see about this directly,’ he said. ‘We can’t have young ladies punished for writing to us Easters, dammit. Indeed, we can’t. What’s the world coming to?’
‘Do you think it’s true?’ John said, drumming on the table with his fingers in his agitation.
‘We’ll take the first coach up on Saturday morning,’ Billy said. ‘That gives you today and tomorrow to find somebody else to do the stamping for you. Mr Lowther might be just the man. He’s sharp enough. Then we’ll see.’
‘But what will we do when we see – whatever we see?’
‘Time enough for that,’ Billy said practically, ‘when we see it. Come on!’