The Edge

The next morning was chill and grey and the wind howled around the hall. It had done so for much of the night and I had been unable to sleep. I had risen early and sat near the fire and endeavoured to read. In the end I had given up and simply walked about my room, feeling my baby move in my belly and let my mind be soothed by my walking and moving.

At six Mrs Evans had come in to see to the fire and seemed very surprised that I were awake. She had been her usual snakish self but I was too focused on my task at hand. I had spent some of my early morning freedom to write a note to Daniel. In it I had told him of Victoria's plan, of what she and Mrs Evans had said to one another and that I needed to be rid of that woman in order to escape the house. I needed to see him, I had to. I told him how powerless I was becoming and how I longed to be away with him, far away.

That letter was written, sealed and ready, hidden in my desk. Once I had breakfasted, I asked for a bath to be drawn then stated that I wanted to walk outside once I had done dressing. On her new orders, Mrs Evans just nodded and had the bath drawn. She herself helped me into the tub and I forced myself not to shiver as her fingers touched my flesh. Once I was under the warm water, lent back and realised how my stomach was really starting to become large now. It was surprising, with James I had hardly shown until I was six months but here I was, not five months in my term and already I had a large bump. I washed the water over it, the warmth was soothing, I looked at how my body had changed. I was bigger in the belly, but the rest of me seemed shrunk somehow. I felt thinner at the shoulder blades, around my ribs and arms. My bottom and hips were still round but my face seemed thinner. It was odd.

Once I had washed my hair and soaped my body, Mrs Evans helped me out and dried me. I took great care with my dress and chose one which I thought was not too fine, I wanted Victoria to look the better out of us too. I chose my warm brown dress which would allow for some colour in my cheeks. I wore only my cross and my garnet ring from Rhiannon as well as my wedding ring. I put a soft cream shawl around my shoulders. I dressed my hair carefully, plaiting up the two long wings at either side and twisting them together so that the rest fell down my back. I considered my face in the glass, I looked pale and tired but not so ill as I had in recent months.

I was escorted down to the lower floors. Mrs Evans never stood at my side but just behind me, watching. I was informed that Mrs Eveleigh was in the morning room and I went there, my snake following. Once I was outside the door Mrs Evans said she wanted to attend to some other duties, I would kindly call for her when I wished to go elsewhere in the house. Gliding off, I noticed her little smile was back.

In the morning room it was cheerful and bright. The cold grey day outside was challenged by the light yellow wallpaper, the bright lamps and the warm fire. Victoria was seated on one of the sofas, embroidering something with intricate stitches. When I came in and asked to join her, she was polite at least and I seated myself on the same sofa, smoothing my dress as I sat down.

After tea had been brought in, Victoria continued to sew. Apparently I was to begin this encounter. I had thought carefully about how to begin in a way which would not seem threatening or accusatory. I had decided to begin by asking about the new decorations to the rooms she and her family would occupy.

She brightly described the new wallpaper she had picked for her marital bedchamber, a bright cherry red with polished mahogany furnishings. Her private sitting room would be in blue and white, to be airy and light to get the most from the south facing light. Her face took on a slight shadow as she then began to describe what she was doing with the new bedrooms for her boys. They, their nurse and nursery maid and their tutor would arrive within the week. Her oldest boy Robert, who was seven years of age, was to take my old marital bedroom. His brother Thomas, two years younger, would remain in the nursery for another year or so and then he would take the largest of the old guest rooms. The nursery staff would take the maids rooms in that apartment and the tutor would take over the old schoolroom and apartments at the other end of the wing.

The school room was wood panelled rather than papered and that panelling had been washed down and polished, the floors sanded and waxed and new equipment bought for the school room. The tutors apartments, his bedroom, sitting room and bathroom, had all been papered in the bright modern style. Young Robert's bedroom had been papered in green, his brother's future bedroom in the same shade.

It was when she came to describing the nursery that I saw her eyes take on a new watchfulness, a glitter that was terrifying to me. I could see she wanted a reaction.

The maids rooms had been washed down and papered in cream. The nursery itself, a wide room with windows which got the full light of the days sun, had always been papered in green with cream bordering it and light wood frames. Now the only thing that remained from that decore, which had been host not only to my little boy but my husband and sister as well as their father and his siblings, was the panelling. Victoria had chosen a new modern paper, with a pattern of cherry wood boxes, leaves and birds, a truly pretty piece and one which apparently adorned the best nursery’s in London. I could picture it clearly, it would be the height of fashion.

To accompany this, all the old furniture had been burnt and now new tables and chairs, a new rocking chair, cribs and toys had been ordered. The floor had been stripped, sanded, polished and new carpets had been ordered, in thick Welsh wool of bright colours. New shelves and cupboards had been installed and the windows had been cleaned and polished until they shone. It now, Victoria informed me, looked like a room to be proud of. A brand new nursery for the new children.

I picked up my tea cup and drank, to calm myself and stop any emotion running through me. Having seen the shell of that room before the decore had been changed, I did not have any residual emotion or so I thought. It was truly a shell. James had never been there. I felt a pang, none the less, a pang of sadness that I should not go to that one so beloved room and play with my child. However I controlled myself. I stopped my hand from shaking, I drank calmly and asked several questions on how the paper had been chosen and so on. Victoria looked slightly disappointed but was mollified when I complimented her on her choices.

While she was in a good humour, I continued to be kind and complimented her on her looks, impending motherhood evidently agreed with her? She talked excitedly about her desire for a daughter but confessed that she thought it would be a boy again as this baby was just as active as her last two had been. Looking slyly at the front of my own skirt, she asked if I were not a little uncomfortable? I looked very large for my time, was I certain of the dates? Oh, but of course! How silly of her to forget my accident. She mentioned my miscarriage with another look from under her lashes. I managed to remain outwardly calm.

I decided to try a slightly different tack. I admitted that since my fainting fit the other day, I had been concerned as I had felt a little odd. I saw her change colour slightly and pressed on, asking if I could speak in confidence? She nodded and I said that I was not certain that my nurse was appropriate as she had no midwife’s skills and clearly knew nothing of what medicines were safe for an expectant mother. Victoria was now really pink in the face and she agreed with me. She so understood and she had spoken with the woman herself to tell her not to give anything which the doctor himself had not advocated.

Using this to my advantage I reached out and took her hand. Looking her full in the face, I told her how happy I was that she cared so. I had always been most anxious that we be friends, after she had always been so kind to me, ever since she had been my bridesmaid. That I had only ever wished her good but that since the tragic happenings recently, I felt that she saw me differently. I knew that she must grieve very much for her parents.

She was still. Her eyes were lowered for a while then she looked up. There were tears shining on her face.

“You have no idea of how I feel.” She said, her voice calm but with a suppressed emotion beneath it.

“I say again, you have no idea of how I feel. I lost my father, whose approval and love I wanted always yet never got. As a child I do not remember him ever playing with, nor even coming t see me in the nursery or at my lessons. It was always Michael. It was Michael he wanted, not me. He cared nothing for me. I strove to please but was always pushed away. I never was told how precious I was to him, he never fought to keep me close when I went away. Even on my wedding day, no emotion. I lived far away to bare the pain of knowing that my father cared less for me than for one of the house spaniels.”

She had never before mentioned her feelings to anyone, I was sure. I asked her. She snorted and looked at me angrily, pityingly.

“Never spoke of it? Of course I have! I speak to my husband as you never have to yours! I see your looks! You think my Thomas was once handsome but now has grown plump? Well, he is the best of men. Gentle, loving, kind, a good father, a good husband who gives me anything I want and would die for me! Yours would not for you. My Thomas loved me from the first and to him I tell everything, everything! I told him of how unhappy I was, that my father did not love me and he told me that it mattered not, because he and his family loved me! He told me that my father was a fool and he was right!” She paused for breath and then began again, faster, with animation making her face light up.

“I knew my father did not love me and so I turned to my mother. My mother who you say you loved so dearly. Let me tell you something about my mother. I am sure she told you that I was selfish and cared not for her? Well that was never true. I adored her, I wanted her adoration in return, for her to love me and be proud of me and think me everything a daughter should be. Instead I was disliked because I did not wish to walk in the rain or ride a horse! She rode, oh yes, famous for it! It was her horse that terrified me. When I was only four I was out in the yard when my mother was going to ride. I did not know that the animal was in season and liable to be wild. I walked near by and it bucked and reared. As I turned to run, my frock caught on something and I tripped. When I lay on the ground, before I could rise, the beast stamped its foot down on my leg and broke it! Did you know that? Did you?”

I allowed that I had never heard the whole story. She went on, flushed and furious.

“I was carried into the house and my mother was so attentive and kind. I woke from having my leg seen to and she was beside my bed. I was so happy and then she told me I should not have been playing in the yard in the first place! I was a child, I wanted my mother to adore me and then I am told how wrong I was! I was frightened of horses from then onwards. Even today the thought of going near one frightens me. Thomas is so good to me, he made sure all our horses are the gentlest and sweetest natured animals so that I am not afraid and our boys learn under my supervision so that nothing can go wrong. I am good to my family, yes I am, in a way my mother was not. Riding off about the country, disliking me for not liking the same pursuits, for angering my father by trailing after him or my brother.”

She became calmer and that, somehow, was more frightening than her rage.

“Michael was sweet to me. He let me play with him and his friends, he made me little boats or dolls from wood. He sometimes tried to make Father be kind to me but not even he could succeed at

that. I loved my big brother and then he was sent off to school and I was alone. But he wrote to me every week, twice a week! Letters full of story’s for his little sister because he wanted to make me smile! He sent me ribbons and pictures and promised me that life would be different. He knew how I suffered, with Mother always telling me to be bolder, less frightened, less worried about my clothes or my dolls or things like that. To be bold like she was.”

Now she grew graver and calmer still. I was rooted to my seat, unable to say a word.

“When she had her accident, I remember running to her bedside. I saw what that brute of a horse had done to her. I never forgot it, the blood and the bones sticking from her legs, bruises and gashes all over. What was worst was the limpness of her limbs, the whiteness of her face. My bold brave mother was broken.

I could not stay. It sickened me to stay there. I was terrified of the anger and sadness of my father, my mother's screams as they tried to mend her body, how the entire house was like a tomb. I went to school. Perhaps it was not bravery like my mothers but her bravery got her broken. Mine got me friends, for the first time in my life. It got me my dear husband and my children and my family. I regret nothing.”

She became quiet and I ventured to ask if she truly regretted nothing. Her head came up and her eyes flashed, anger flushed her face.

“Nothing! I made my own life and my own fortune and I have everything I wanted except that which I could never win. My parents love. When my father died, I spent my hours beside him coffin praying for him to appear to me and tell me of his love before it was too late. He never came. And to see you, you who were nothing to the family, kept close by my mother and my brother as if you were the one they wanted when it should have been me! It tore me apart. Then my mother died. I never got the chance to tell her how much I loved her, or how I wanted her to love me, of why I had stayed away. She died and it broke my heart into pieces! Then to see you take the place of her, and accuse me of killing my mother and your son, of being unfeeling and a bad daughter when you know nothing!”

Her eyes were full of a hatred that I could not escape. I tried to tell her I was sorry, that I was mad with grief, that I had not meant it but she stopped me.

“Silence! I will not hear you! You are the one that is worthless, not me. I despise you. For the crime of taking my brother, my father, my mother and everything that should be mine, I will see you destroyed! I will have your child raised as my own, far from your influence. It will never even know your name or call you Mother! I will drive you mad indeed! Mad with grief, and mad you will stay! So you can think on that while you are alone and never forget how much I hate you!”

She stood up and walked to the door. Just before she stepped out, she turned. Her voice was emotionless as if she had worn herself out.

“You can run away and become a London whore or you can rot in a madhouse, I do not care. One way or another, you will leave my family and I will see you buried before I offer you any friendship.”

She went out. I sat frozen on the sofa and the door closed with a click.