Chapter Six: Reality
Amelia closed the book and looked down at the red cloth binding, she had never read such a book as that. It had taken her longer to read than any other book she had encountered, another five days had passed since she had spoken to Peter briefly on the hillside. It had taken time because it was in French and she wanted to make sure she understood every line and because of course Peter had told her to take her time with it, but now she had finished it she wanted to talk about it.
She had spent the nights of the last week reading it religiously. It must have been past midnight when she finished and blew out what was left of the candle. She knew her mother would be angry with her for wasting the light like that but it had not felt like a waste at all. She had read the most amazing story, a story like nothing out of England or out of France that she had encountered before, it was not full of characters and amusing observations like the Dickens' she had read in her youth, and it was not fantasy or swashbuckling adventure like other French novels she had read. It was romantic and it was tragic and it was exciting.
In her bed in the darkness she thought about how she would call on the Jenkyns' the next day and talk to Peter about the book, he had told her it was a book that had had great effect on him, she wondered if they had been affected the same way. She doubted it. She wondered if he thought she was like the girl in the story, innocent and barefoot. She didn't know which character she identified more with, the poor girl who had her heart broken or the strange creature who no one but the girl would ever love. She wondered what Peter had liked best about the story, she hoped it was the same as her, the vivid descriptions of Paris.
She would take his book back the next morning and she would ask him then. She tried to sleep but the haunting description of the two skeletons stayed in her mind, only the French could write something so macabre and make it sound so romantic.
Matty opened the door to see Amelia standing there her arms full of books- as well as the spectacular novel she had bought a history book of Peter's and a small book of comical verse, they were books she had not returned in the past. "Good morning, Miss Matty," she smiled, "you look nice today," she looked at her friend's youthful curls and wondered if Matty was to see Mr Buxton, her secret fiancé, later that morning.
"Hello, Amelia," Matty said but she didn't open the door enough to allow the girl into the house, "I'm afraid I'm not really at the liberty to entertain just now, Peter has work he wishes to get on with."
"Of course," Amelia smiled, "only I've just finished the books he leant me and I hoped we could discuss them," she laughed a little and looked down at the books in her arms, "When do you think he will be finished?" she asked.
"I'm not sure," Matty tried, "This is a project he wished to get underway a month or two ago but he has not been using his time wisely." Matty swallowed, "He said he wishes to concentrate on his work now."
"Oh," Amelia said but she still smiled, "perhaps in a couple of days I shall call again then," she offered.
Matty nodded a little, "maybe," she said. "You are returning his books?" she asked.
"Yes," Amelia agreed, "shall I set them in your parlour?"
"That won't be necessary, here, let me take them," Matty tried to take the books.
"Do not be silly," Amelia insisted but the older woman took them from her. "if- if you're sure," Amelia tried. But Matty stood and held the pile of books in her doorway.
"I'll say goodbye now, Miss Amelia," she said and Amelia nodded and smiled though Matty hadn't smiled once while they had been talking to one another.
"Goodbye," by the time the word had come out of her mouth Miss Matty had closed the door. Amelia wondered what was wrong, what Peter was working on to make his sister too scared to let anyone in the house.
She walked home and sat down in her living room wondering when her mother would get up and if she would be nice today or angry.
Three days later Amelia was sure that Peter would be finished working and that Miss Matty would not be so hostile. She tried again and this time Matty shook her head, "we cannot see anyone today, I am going to see Miss Pole and Peter has stressed that he's not to be disturbed. I'm sorry."
"Of- of course," Amelia smiled, "Let me walk you to Miss Pole's house, Miss Matty, perhaps we can catch up at least briefly. It must be a week since I last really spoke to you."
"I have to change my dress, Miss Amelia," she said and shook her head, "it will take me some time."
"Oh, all right," Amelia said acceptingly. "Did Mr Jenkyns get his books?" she asked as she sensed the door was going to close on her again. "If- if I'd have known he was so busy I would have put a card in with them," she joked.
"Yes, I gave them back to him."
"Will you tell him I enjoyed them very much."
"Of course," Matty smiled and Amelia did too.
More days passed before Amelia decided that a Sunday was the best day to visit them because it was a day of rest, Peter would surely not be working then and Miss Matty would not object to the gift Amelia had prepared. She had baked them a tray of shortbread, which she had not done since the brother and sister had insisted she stop baking them things and that she was welcome in their home without always bringing them presents. It was the day they had given her the portrait Peter had painted of her, she hadn't seen it since as her mother had been insulted by it and locked it in her desk drawer. Amelia remembered her mother saying that she looked depressed in the picture but Amelia had not thought that at all when she had unwrapped it. She had looked at it and seen herself looking back, serious and grown-up but with a calm, thoughtful look on her face. She had thought then that Peter must have seen that in her, must have known that she was not a smiling, laughing young thing, but the serious person she wanted to be when she was around him. She found everything he said so interesting, he was more interesting than anyone else she had ever met and more intelligent. It had made her heart beat fast and she did not know why to see that he saw her like that, not silly or foolish which she knew she was sometimes, but calm and thoughtful, maybe someone worthy to talk to.
It was Sunday afternoon, all Miss Matty had to do was make the tea. She knocked on their door once more and she smiled at Miss Matty who answered the door looking very pretty in her Sunday best, Amelia handed her the basket, "I know you told me not to, but I thought perhaps you might forgive me," she joked warmly knowing that Miss Matty adored shortbread.
"No, no thank you," Miss Matty did not take the basket. "I'm very grateful Miss Amelia, but I can't accept this. I am still not to disturb him with visitors."
"I can't even come in and talk quietly to you?" Amelia tried another small joke but she felt her smile fade. "you- Miss Matty, you cannot come then for a walk with me?"
"Oh, that's nice of you, but no. No, Amelia, I am too tired for that."
"Are you both well, Miss Matty?" she asked in concern, "please tell your brother I asked after his health," she said quietly as Matty nodded her head. "Please," she tried again and she put the basket into Matty's hands, "it is a gift for you."
Amelia nodded insisting that she take the biscuits and then she curtseyed and said goodbye. She walked not straight home this time but to the general stores in the centre of the village where she passed Miss Pole and her friend Mrs Forester who smiled back at Amelia when she bowed her head, but they did not stop to say hello though Amelia stopped and opened her mouth to speak. Miss Pole took her friend by the arm and pulled her past the confused Amelia who shook her head and stepped into the shop.
"Hello, Miss Walker," Mrs Johnson smiled at her when she came into the shop. "Nothing for your mother today," she said apologetically with a smile and Amelia smiled back and wondered absently what her mother must have ordered from the shop.
"I should like to buy a candle," Amelia said realising she could not simply stand in their shop because she had nowhere else to go.
"Just the one?" Mrs Johnson spoke, Amelia nodded.
"I read all night by mine last week and I haven't told my mother, I don't think she'd like it."
"You naughty thing," Mrs Johnson handed her the candle, "I shan't tell her," Amelia handed her a penny and took the candle before deciding to look around the shop at all the brightly coloured fabrics and then the boxes stacked up the walls. Amelia found herself looking at the window display that Mrs Johnson had arranged so that it looked attractive from both sides; inside the shop and out, she admired the detail that the shopkeeper's wife had put into sewing each patch so carefully when she saw far across the road through the window Miss Matty Jenkyns welcoming Miss Pole, Mrs Forester and Miss Tomkinson into her house. She moved away from the window and wondered why her friend hadn't told her the truth. Surely Peter was avoiding his sister's friends by hiding in his room, understandable as he had expressed his feelings towards them many times, but why had Miss Matty not invited Amelia to join her friends for afternoon tea or whatever it was they were doing?
Amelia took her candle and walked out of the shop with the intention of going home and making Miss Matty a card apologising for anything she had done when she stopped in the road and watched as young Erminia Whyte and her guardian Mr Buxton walked up the Jenkyns' garden path followed by Peter Jenkyns who held a large box in his arms, Amelia was too far away to hear anything that was being said but she could hear Erminia's musical laugh carry over the village right into her ears. There was a party of some sort happening at her dearest friends' house and she had not been invited.
Amelia walked quickly to her front door and hoped that no one would see her. But of course no one would, because they were all at the Jenkyns' house having a good time.
She had excused herself after preparing her mother's dinner and sitting with her while she ate it. She did not eat anything herself and she told her mother who was suspicious of this that she did not feel well and that she wished to go to bed and so not let her mother catch whatever it was that she might be coming down with. And so she was alone again, alone for the first time since she saw the guests arriving at her friends' house, really alone again.
She undressed for bed, when she got under the covers she cried quietly and hoped that her mother wouldn't hear her. She felt extremely foolish for letting herself grow close to the brother and sister who lived up the road. When she had moved with her mother to the village she had told herself not to make friends or to trust anyone, but everyone had seemed so kind, and they were mostly old widows and spinsters, not malicious sorts.
The thing she felt the worst about though, the reason she cried into her hands beneath the sheets of her bed at half past seven on Sunday evening was not that her friends had decided they did not want to know her. It wasn't that Miss Matty had been cold to her on the doorstep of her house and turned her away three times now. It was the old man whose company she had come to look forward to so much. She had not seen him in two weeks, she had not heard him say that he did not want to see her. She hadn't realised it, not even when he had presented her with the painting and her heart had raced at seeing it, but now that she knew he didn't want to see her, she knew she loved Peter Jenkyns and he had broken her heart.
She knew it was ridiculous to be in love with a man who, when they had been friends, must have seen her as a daughter, he was so much older than she was, but Amelia knew that that must have been the first thing that attracted her to him, that he was older and wiser and safe. He was kind and gentle, he spoke softly and he smiled warmly, but the thing she loved most was that they talked, they had so many things to talk about, he had so many things to tell her and she had loved listening and learning. She had looked forward to talking to him, every day she woke up and wondered when she would see him and what they would talk about, and now she knew they wouldn't talk about anything because she must have said or done something awful to make him want to cut her out of his life.
Or maybe this was what he meant when he had said to her those weeks ago that they would 'tone down' their friendship, so it would not hurt when they no longer saw each other. She had not realised that he meant cut it short even before Miss Matty announced her engagement. And that must have been what had been happening at their house that afternoon, an engagement party of some sort that she had not been invited to.
Amelia calmed down under the covers and put her head back on the pillows in her candlelit room and she looked at the tiny stump of a candle that she had used while she read his book, she couldn't think what she had done or said but she knew it was her fault. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him, she tried hard and thought about having bumped into him on her Sunday walk a fortnight ago. They had discussed what she thought of the book so far and he had laughed his deep rumbling laugh. And before that he had told her that if she ever read the book he would relate more similar stories, that he might even read aloud to both Amelia and Miss Matty in the firelight as they were short but scary fantasies and the women would need to have one another there in case they got too frightened. She remembered every expression on his handsome face. It was a handsome face; even if he was older she could see that he was still handsome and that in his youth he must have been something very special, the painting on their mantelpiece showed that. Amelia sat in her bed and reached for the handle of the bedside drawer, she opened it, inside the drawer was a copy of the Bible, she took it out and opened it. In the back of the book was a collection of sketches she had made over the years. She kept them flat and secret between the pages, there were flowers and trees and there were a couple of her mother but at the back were the small sketches she had done of him. She looked at them sadly and wondered why it had taken heartbreak for her to admit to herself how much she cared for him.
She had kissed him once, kissed his cheek as though it did not mean what it really meant to her. She had kissed both siblings in thanks for the gift of the portrait that she hadn't seen since, kissed his sister and then stood up, walked to him and kissed his cheek. She wondered if while he had been painting her portrait from memory the way she could draw him without seeing him, wondered if he had thought of her at all in anything like the way she thought of him. He can't have done. Not to cast her aside so easily. Not unless that's just the way men are, all men, even him.
Amelia woke up early the next morning, she felt horribly sad and she cried against her pillows, a night's sleep had not helped her come to terms with her new but all too familiar emotions. She had dreamt horrible things, things that she had managed not to think about for the last happy months. And the combination of nightmares, bad memories and new feelings of heartbreak had made her weep when she woke to the dark winter morning.
But it was not her place to feel heartbreak, she told herself she was a foolish little girl and that if Peter could see her cry because of his actions he would not feel pity for her he would think it was ridiculous and he would talk down to her as he sometimes did to his sister, but it would not be affectionate like it was with Miss Matty it would be in that harsh voice he sometimes used when he was arguing a point.
She dressed for the day and walked quietly down the stairs to be in the kitchen and start the fire burning in the stove, it was cold down there but she did not feel it much, she did not care anymore.
Was it because of something she'd done? She did not understand it. She wept in the kitchen as she sat by the warm stove, was it because she knew of Miss Matty's engagement? But she had kept her word and said nothing! Amelia felt like she was going mad. She felt as horrible and confused as she had in the early summer before they had moved to Cranford, she shuddered as she cried and tried not to think of her nightmares. She wrung her hands and tried to think of anything but that. The kettle whistled loudly startling her and she stood up and made her mother's tea automatically, she stopped thinking about the past and the present and instead focused on the menial task of tea making, though her hands shook as she carried the cup and saucer through the house and up the stairs she felt better for the task and she decided she would clean the house after she had made her mother's breakfast.
Amelia had gone so long without thinking about the reason why she and her mother had moved to the little village of Cranford that she felt she must have convinced herself, as her mother had done at the time, that none of it had ever happened.
But as she stood at her mother's desk early that morning with the letters in her hands it all was made so horribly real that she had been sick with it and her body now shook all over as her eyes scanned the letters in disbelief. For the letters she had seen her mother pour over night after night these last few weeks had not been the old letters she thought they were at all, they were new letters. Her mother had been receiving letters, and so she must have also been writing them.
If Amelia hadn't thought she would die from heartbreak she now felt sure she would die from the betrayal of her mother.
She had only opened the drawer so she might look at the portrait once more. As she had quietly turned the key and pulled out the painting her mother's letters had fallen out onto the floor. She had quickly picked them up and pushed them back into the desk wanting only to see her portrait. To check if it had ever existed, if there had ever been a person who seemed to know her so well that he could paint her from memory. And yet the letters she pushed back into the drawer were not from India, not from her father or brother all those years ago, they were crisp and new and with English postmarks. Amelia recognised the hand with fear and she quickly set aside the portrait as her past came flooding back into her mind and suddenly the foolishness of her wanting to see a painting done by a kindly old man was so far apart from the real horror in her life.
She stood and read the letters, there were three of them, all short but to the point. All about her, and all lies. Amelia felt as though she could not breathe as she read them. Could her mother possibly believe what was written? Why was she being written to? Was their address known?
She could take it no longer, she ran from the house and out into the village, it was all dark and calm out there, people had not yet woken for the day, they had not seen the calm blue sky or the frost on the grass, the escape of the British countryside. The girl ran through the village to the edge of it, up the familiar hillside and over the tops. When she could no longer see the village behind her she fell apart, fell to her knees and wept. She had no friends and no family and once again she had no escape.
"So, you have come back?"
Amelia stood in the doorway shivering as she looked up at her mother. Her fingers were almost blue with the cold, she had not stayed up on the icy hillside long, the stream that ran through the hills was far too shallow for her to even attempt drowning herself, but it had not occurred to her to try. She had wept and shivered and shook on those hillsides that morning but by early afternoon she had come back to her home to face her mother.
Only her mother could answer her questions and only her mother was tied to her in blood, she could only hope that despite her betrayal and mistrust that she might feel something for her daughter. After all Amelia looked after her, cooked and cleaned like a maid, read to her and cared about her, she could not have hated her.
"Mother," Amelia opened her mouth and she felt the tears in her eyes.
"You bad girl," Mrs Walker said angrily and tears too formed in the older woman's eyes, "how dare you go through my private things?"
"I am sorry," Amelia stressed painfully and quietly. "I know I should not have, I only-"
"Only what?" Mrs Walker snapped, "if you wanted to read our letters you need only have asked! Maybe then," she sighed painfully, "maybe then I would know that you were getting better. That us moving to this awful place was worth while, that you are getting better like you said you would try to do!"
"I- I was better," Amelia stressed, "I- I like it here, I am happy here."
"You have not been so these past few days."
"That- that is different, I have forgotten that now," Amelia said truthfully, for it was all unimportant, what was important was that she and her mother were happy and safe, everything had suddenly been put into perspective.
"You are only happy when you are in the company of men," he mother spat at her and Amelia drew in a sharp breath and cried painfully.
"Mother, how- how can you say that?" she wept.
"I know that you spend all your time with that woman and her brother, I hear that it is not the sister you are friends with at all but the man."
"No, no!" Amelia protested, "I swear, I swear mother, that is a lie. And- and they are neither of them my friends any longer, I want only to be with you."
"You do not propose to move me again?"
"No, of- of course not," Amelia said quietly, "I only mean that I love you Mother, that I am happy only with you, I- I will do anything you say, I swear."
Mrs Walker looked down at her child painfully and her face broke and softened a little. "My poor girl," she said painfully and Amelia wept and walked into her mother's embrace. "What am I to do with you?"
Amelia cried and held onto her mother tightly, "I am sorry, I am so sorry," she wept, "Mother, please do not write anymore, please, I am begging you."
Her mother stroked her cold hair gently and held her tightly, she nodded and Amelia felt the relief course through her like warmth and she felt safe again.
They were quiet together. Amelia spent the next week being quiet and close to her mother, staying in front of the fire with her all day and drawing and painting her portrait while her mother knitted and read the papers that Amelia fetched each day for her.
She cooked and cleaned but with extra care to be attentive and kind to the woman who had done everything for her, she did not wish to leave the house ever again. It was only when Mrs Walker told her to take a small constitutional that Amelia dutifully did so. She looked pale and wan with dark circles around her eyes but she was full of relief that the horrible things that had happened to her were once more in the past and pushed to the very back of her mind.
She did not mistake relief for happiness of course, she found that she could not remember happiness though she had been happy for a great many weeks a short time ago. At night when she was alone in her bed Amelia allowed herself to look at the drawings of Peter Jenkyns and she wondered if she would see him again and if she would ever feel the same happiness she had felt in his company. She doubted she would now, not after what she had been through.
At night she cried and thought of her life in Cranford and how the past had managed to ruin that as well, she wished that she could persuade her mother to move again, somewhere isolated, as they had been before. She did not want to be near people or places that she associated with a nearly unimaginable happiness, it made her too sad.
"Don't you think you should go and call on one of your old lady friends?" Mrs Walker said to Amelia one morning as she caught her daughter staring vacantly into the fire. She looked up and shook her head. "You have been inside with me for nearly two weeks," she pointed out, "even when we lived at home you needed your time away at least every second day."
"It is different now," Amelia assured her, "I am grown-up and I want only to stay with you."
"It will be awkward the next time you see someone in the shop and you have no explanation to why you have been so cold."
"It will be awkward for them, not me," Amelia insisted.
"Amelia," Mrs Walker said her name in concern, "You look terrible, you have been unwell these last weeks, that is all I can think of. You can tell people you have been unwell."
"You- do you want me to leave you?" Amelia said unsurely and her heart beat painfully in her chest.
"You know I need my time alone. I know you mean it to be affectionate, but- but it is smothering. You are smothering me, Amelia." Her mother sighed and Amelia swallowed nervously. "You do not want to leave me, because you do not trust your own mother, I know this is the reason." She said resignedly.
"No, no, "Amelia said quickly and she coughed and tried to soften her tone, "that is not the reason, Mother, I thought- I believed you wanted my company."
"I keep my own company, Amelia, you know that."
Amelia nodded wearily, "Yes, yes I know," she said quietly, "I will go then," she looked up at her mother for approval and her mother smiled, "I shall go and visit one of my friends."
