Longbourn (16 page)

“Run and get Jane, will you? I mean: do actually run,” said Mrs. Bennet. “She’s wandering out in the shrubbery, I think. Quick now; quick as you can, my dear. Go fetch her.”

Mr. Bingley and his sisters were ushered along the hall. Their voices could be heard trailing after them: they had come to bestow upon the
Bennet family an invitation to the ball at Netherfield, which was fixed for the following Tuesday. Mrs. Hill wilted at the news.

Sarah, having fetched the girls in from their walk, now hung up the cloaks and laid the ladies’ bonnets carefully on the cloakroom dresser. She ran an ostrich feather through her fingers, touched a rosebud of vermilion silk. Then she took a swift look down the hall: it was empty, though she could hear Mr. Bingley’s clipped tones, his sisters’ chiming laughs. Sarah slipped out to the vestibule, and then through the front door.

The Bingley coach was waiting for its owner, the coachman sliding down from his seat to check some aspect of the harness; the footmen were round the back, standing at their ease, talking and sharing a cigarillo.

Now that she had come this far—actually outside, closing the door behind her, blinking in the cold morning light—Sarah was appalled at her own brazenness. She would just stroll past him, she could be on her way anywhere: it need not mean anything. He had no particular cause to think that it was his presence that had drawn her out.

But as she passed, she saw the way his attention shifted, and focused; the way a smile dimpled his cheeks. And it was wonderful to be noticed; it was giddying. She felt the gravel crunch beneath her feet; she felt too the shush of her skirts around her ankles, the press of her stays, the tickle of a curl at the back of her neck. She felt as though she was more
there
, simply because he noticed that she was. And then he took his cigarillo from his lips, and came towards her, a cloud spilling from the corner of his mouth.

“Pretty round here, isn’t it?”

“It is, sir, I suppose.”

“You’ll have time for a stroll, show me around, while the big folks are indoors.”

He offered his arm. She laughed.

He held out his arm still, nodded to it. “Go on.”

She looked at it, then up at him. “I can’t.”

“Course you can.”

“I’m working.”

“No, you’re not. You’re skylarking. It’s written all over your little face. And you’ve got this far; why not do it properly?”

“If I get caught—”

He smiled fully then; it was sunshine. “Don’t.”

She slipped her arm through his. It was warm and solid. His sleeve, lying against her own, was good blue twill. He moved off, and she, laughing nervously, was drawn after him, off the drive and onto the grass plait; she saw them as others would see them now, their figures jaunty and almost comically ill-matched: the bulk of him in his good blue greatcoat, her slight figure in wilted linsey-woolsey, tagging along, a faint wisp of tobacco smoke following after them.

“This way—”

“Oh, I don’t—”

But he drew her along into the little wilderness, and they followed the path through the tangled dead grass. He lifted a low-hanging branch to let her pass. The rowans still had a few scarlet berries unpecked by the birds, and everything was hung with raindrops, and smelling of rot. Behind her, in her absence, the house was grinding along, its cogs turning and teeth linking, belts creaking, and there must come a moment—any moment now—when a cog would bite on nothing, and spin on air: some necessary act would go unperformed, some service would not be provided; the whole mechanism would crunch and splinter and shriek out in protest, and come to a juddering halt, because she was not there. And all the time she was pulling further and further away, like a spindle twisting out upon a thread of flax. Pull far enough, twist and stretch it too thin, and the thread would snap.

She squinted up at the grey clouds, conscious of the bulk of him so near to her, the scent of smoke. To think that it was the same sky that blanketed the whole world, that skimmed all across America and the Antipodes. That he had come from so far away, himself.

“Do you find it miserable here?” she asked.

“England has its own particular charms.”

She blinked round at him. “Really?”

“I was trying to be gallant.” He looked at her a long moment, which made her look away. “But, one thing about this country is that living here, you cannot be a slave.”

“You weren’t a slave?”

“I was born a slave.”

“Your mother—”

“Was one of Mr. Bingley—Senior’s—slaves.” Ptolemy lifted his cigarillo to his lips and sipped on it.

Sarah did not know where to put herself, or what to say. She felt hot. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, sweetheart.”

They walked on together, silently, through the rough grass.

“Mr. Bingley, Senior, God rest him, brought me back here,” he said, after a while. “He was always very fond of me. And of my mother, too, though he left her there. I was just a boy.”

He proffered the smouldering cigarillo. She looked at it, uncertain. He jerked it closer:
Go on
. Out of shyness more than anything else, she took it off him, and tried it at her lips. The smoke was treacly and rank; it turned into a lump in her throat. Coughing, she thrust the cigarillo back towards him.

“You have to practise.” He patted her back. “Don’t suck it in like that.”

She nodded, feeling sick. They continued on along the path, and his hand lingered on her back, where the stays stopped and the shoulders were just thinly covered by her shift and dress.

“Tell you a secret?” he asked.

“Go on, then.” Her head was spinning.

“I’m going to set up my own tobacco shop one day. Only the very best, oh yes indeed. Only the very finest Virginian tobacco.”

He stopped in his tracks; she had to turn back to him. He stood there, brilliant in that shabby little wintery wilderness. He examined the neat scroll of the cigarillo, turning it between dark fingers. Then his face broke into one of his miraculous smiles, and he looked up at her.

“They can’t ever get enough of it, your proper London gentlemen. Men of that calibre, they love their tobacco almost as much as they love their sugar.”

She felt suddenly giddy with it all: the novelty, the transgression, the thrill of his difference; the way that all awkwardness with him had seemed to dissolve and drift away with the tobacco smoke. She took the cigarillo from his hand, to show that she approved of him and his tobacco and his grand plans, and was herself a creature of his ilk, and willing, as he had said, to practise. This time, she huffed the smoke out into the air with a shade more composure.

He said something that she did not quite hear.

“Mm?” She peered at him through narrowed eyes.

“She going to give you grief?”

He nodded over towards the edge of the wilderness: Mrs. Hill was marching up towards them, arms swinging, face like a quince.

“Oh, good Lord.”

She fumbled the cigarillo back into his hand.

“Trouble?”

She nodded, prickly with terror. How on earth could she excuse this to Mrs. Hill? She turned to go.

“We could go walking out,” he said. “When you get your afternoon off.”

She flashed him a look, half fear, half delight; then she gathered up her skirts, and raced back to Mrs. Hill.

Fortunately Mrs. Hill required no explanation or excuse. Indeed, she offered Sarah no opportunity to give one. She just met her with a cuff round the back of the head—“Ow!”—then a shove at the small of her back, which sent her staggering towards the house.

“Missus, please—”

“Don’t you ‘missus’ me! When I think—with Mr. Collins in the house, and the Bingleys! And you out where anyone might see—”

Mrs. Hill gave her an extra shove to impel her up the front steps, then she grabbed Sarah’s arm and dragged her through the door, and into the vestibule.

“Fetch the Bingleys’ things. They’re leaving.”

“They’ve not stayed long.”

Mrs. Hill’s voice dropped to a hiss. “I was calling you, Sarah, and you were not here. I was so ashamed. Now get on with your work. Jump to it, girl. Quick as you like.”

Quick as I like, Sarah thought, is actually a good deal slower than I am going now. But her cheeks burnt with misery, at the thought of shaming Mrs. Hill.

The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family
.

With the departure of the Bingleys the heavens opened, and there followed such a succession of bad weather as prevented the ladies from walking out at all.

It also prevented Sarah from sleeping; the rain clattered on the attic roof, and pattered on the little skylight, and burbled in the guttering, and whirlpooled down the drainpipes. Polly snored through it all, arms flung back and wide above her head. Sarah lay awake, thinking of Tol Bingley; his twining smoke, his dark eyes, his hand warm on the top edge of her stays.

The rain also fell on the stable roof, and dripped, and dripped, and dripped, somewhere off outside the lamplight’s glow, outside the realm of James’s book. It distracted him; he found that he turned the pages without reading the words. He was obliged to mark his place, throw on his coat and tread into his boots, and go out into the streaming night with a storm lantern and a ladder, and climb up onto the stable roof, and listen, in the drenching rain, for that particular drip amongst all the other drips. He found the loose slate and slid it back into place; this would serve until a dry day and daylight, when the job could be completed properly.

And Mrs. Hill, stark awake at her window while her husband wheezed behind her, looked out across the puddled yard, at the moving storm lantern that seemed fringed around with crystal where the raindrops caught the light, and watched James climb the ladder up onto the roof, and watched him fix the loose slate, and watched him climb safely down again, and watched until he had carried the ladder back into the stable, and watched the door shut on his light, and watched
the light return to his window. Inside, he settled down again to his solitary night.

When his light went out, she realized that she was cold, and drew her shawl tighter around her, and went to her bed, and knelt beside it, and said her prayers silently to herself. And when she had said them through once, the rain drumming on the skylight above, she said them through again, shivering, her lips shaping the unspoken words. She held each phrase for a moment in her thoughts, to try to give it full and proper attention. There was so much to be thankful for: there was pleasure in her work, in the rituals and routines of service, the care and conservation of beautiful things, the baking of good bread and the turning of rough, raw foods into savoury and sustaining meals. There was pleasure, too, in the little clutch of people that she now had clustered around her. If she could but be certain that they would continue in this manner, that James would settle, that Sarah could be made to see sense, that Polly would become steady and useful; if she could but know that this would tend towards continuance, and not towards dissolution, then she could be quite content.

And yet, and yet, the feeling still could not quite be quelled: there was also the fact of her, herself. Would she, at some time, have the chance to care for her own things, her own comforts, her own needs, and not just for other people’s? Could she one day have what she wanted, rather than rely on the glow of other people’s happiness to keep her warm?

Work, Mrs. Hill knew, might not be a cure for all ailments, but it was a sovereign remedy against the more brooding kinds. With Sarah buried deep in a drift of gowns and petticoats, harried by demands for miracles of rejuvenation and embellishment, she would have little time to daydream, and was conveniently hidden away from that troublesome mulatto.

He was, thankfully, less present in the kitchen than of late. The rain, and the pre-existence of a significant social engagement in the near future, meant there was a temporary falling-off in communication between the households. It was a pleasant sensation, Mrs. Hill felt, to be locked up tight and snug at Longbourn. The rain streaming down the windows, the countryside beyond sheathed in grey, the roads
awash, the footways mired, no one approaching the place, no one leaving: it was like the Flood, and Longbourn was their ark; whatever happened to the world beyond, they few were safe inside.

But it was a temporary situation at best. It could not be for ever.

And so Sarah must be spoken to: behaviour of that kind could not be ignored. But how to speak on such a subject without risking damage to the girl’s innocence? Innocence was a sheet of pristine glass, a screen from the harshness of the weather; one slip and Sarah would do terrible, bloody damage to herself, and others, and the glass would be all in pieces on the floor.

Best to keep it simple. Simple rules for a simple girl to follow.

“I forbid you to see that mulatto man again.”

“What?” The girl’s face was gaping shock. “You mean Ptolemy? Why?”

“Do I really need to tell you? Really?”

Her lips pressed tight, Sarah nodded.

“You were
smoking
, Sarah. You were out walking the grounds—not
your
grounds, need I add; your master’s property—when you should have been at your work. And with this man—a—a stranger to us here, and quite unknown. You could be dismissed for less, and fined, into the bargain. When I think of the harm it could do, to the reputation of the household—”