Georgia Hill - While I Was Waiting

I heard no little anger in his voice and raised my wretchedly tear-stained face to look at him for the first time. ‘I saw –’ and then had to stop.

Edward’s face tightened with anger and he nodded. ‘I thought as much. When I get my hands on that little so-and-so I’ll thrash him until he can’t sit down. The little –’ he bit off what he was about to say with another look at me.

I found my voice at last. ‘Richard didn’t mean to upset me. He thought it was a joke.’ I wiped my damp face with my pinafore and shivered.

‘When will that boy ever learn to think before he acts?’ Edward said it softly. He shrugged off his jacket and laid it gently over my shoulders. It was heavy and made of rough tweed, but warm from his body. He cleared his throat. ‘Erm, so, what do you know?’

I looked at him in panic. He blushed and became very busy lighting a cigarette.

‘You know, it really ought to be your father or Nanny or Aunt Hester talking to you.’

I shook my head and hid it back in my skirts.

Edward sighed again, even more loudly. ‘But, as it seems to be me in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps I ought to tell you.’

I sneaked a look at him. He was concentrating fiercely on his cigarette. His nose turning pink with cold.

‘I should quite like it to be you.’ I said in a tiny voice, hardly believing my own daring.

He coughed slightly and put a hand through his hair, making it stand up in comic fashion. ‘Oh Lord,’ he groaned.

‘Please tell me Edward,’ I said, ‘I think it might be better to know it all than some of it. It might make it seem less frightening.’

Edward shook his head.

‘Father always says if one wants to know something one should ask questions.’ I straightened my back and took comfort that Edward’s discomfort seemed even greater than mine.

He gave a little nod, as if a decision had been made and smiled at me through the blue tobacco smoke. ‘And your father is a great scientist, a very learned man. Well, shall we be scientists? Shall you begin with a question, little Hetty?’

And so I did. And Edward, in halting fashion and with many blushes, told me of what to expect on my wedding night. He told me the simple biological facts at first, but then, as he elaborated, I became more and more fascinated, my natural curiosity taking over.

‘But it looked so, so violent in those pictures. As if they were killing one another, not loving one another!’ I thought back to the images with this new information whirling around my brain. It was at once repellent and fascinating.

Edward shifted on the bench and there was a long pause. ‘Well, I understand it can take one like that.’ He looked at the gathering darkness outside. ‘But remember, Hetty, it is for people who love one another very much. And sometimes love takes many forms, sometimes it is passionate. And that passion can seem like violence.’

I looked at him, sitting in the cold, shivering openly and being so brave for my sake. I wondered, perhaps, if he were thinking of the beautiful Flora Parker. ‘Have you, have you ever –’ I began.

‘Good Lord, Hetty, the questions you do ask.’ He lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and made much of flicking away the match. I had my answer. It satisfied me.

‘Richard says I am to marry you and you will take my money to rebuild the house.’

Edward turned, a startled look on his homely face. ‘Richard is a –.’ Here he said a filthy word and the oath came out violently. He sucked deeply on his cigarette and there was a long pause. ‘Sorry, Hetty. Forgot myself. You know our family has little money.’ He gazed around at the shabby summer house, full of hints of lost glory. ‘And it would take a great fortune to restore Delamere. More than you have, I am sure.’ He smiled. ‘If you would like to marry me, then so be it. But that is for many years from now. And we have all the time in the world to decide. Come along, we must go back to the house, they will be wondering where we are and it is bitter in here!’

He held out his hand to me and I stared up at his face in a daze. I had hardly known Edward before today. This strange little interlude in the summer house had convinced me of one thing: he might not be as much devilish fun as Richard, but he was an infinitely kinder person.

I took his hand, not sure if I had just received my very first proposal – and even less sure how I felt about it.

April 2000, Clematis Cottage, Stoke St Mary, Herefordshire

It was the first day the Llewellyns were expected to start work and Rachel sat at her drawing board, too wound up to do anything other than stare at the view.

She felt half resentful, half relieved. Although pleased that work was to begin on the house, she was reluctant to give up sole possession of it. Knowing it was pointless to paint or do any more work until Mike and Gabe had finished, she had limited her refurbishment to the sitting room.

Reluctantly.

The room had become ever more her refuge. She’d had to grit her teeth not to put the rest of the house in the same order. However, bringing a temporary halt to any DIY had freed up time for her to sit at the window, gaze enraptured at the view and begin, at last, some serious drawing work.

Until this morning.

She expected her builders any minute and it made her too on edge to even pick up a pencil. She was worried about so many things: how she was to get any work done with muddy-shod builders stomping through the house, the noise, the mess, most of all the disorder. Not to mention the expense.

She’d got used to the tranquillity in the house. She liked the solitude, the freedom to talk to the walls if she chose, and to ignore anybody she didn’t wish to talk to. She’d even cut back on phone calls to Tim and Jyoti. Tim was too loud, too demanding, somehow, for her current mood and Jyoti had seemed preoccupied and uncommunicative.

Looking at the clock for the fifteenth time that morning Rachel began to draw randomly. Sometimes the very act of having a pencil in her hand, making marks, could calm her, lead her into doing something more useful or productive.

She braced herself, pencil poised in mid-air. She could hear a vehicle advancing up the track. She watched as Gabe and his father unpacked an alarming amount of tools and materials. Her knuckles clenched to white on the drawing board. It felt like another Llewellyn invasion. Behind her, the room seemed to prickle and a wave of apprehension rippled around her. The house seemed to disapprove of the interruption too. Rachel liked a place for everything and everything in its place. Several builders roaming around – and their accompanying mess; it would be enough to drive her insane. God, she was turning into her mother.

Gabe spotted her at the window, said something to Mike and came along the path to the house. He rapped on the front door.

Rachel, taking a deep breath, and with a feeling that life was never going to be quite the same again, rose to open it.

‘Hi Rachel,’ Gabe said cheerfully. ‘We’re just unloading the stuff. Dad’s got to go on to the Halliday job, so I’ll wait here to supervise the scaffolding lads. There might be a bit of noise, bit of to-ing and fro-ing today, but after that we shouldn’t have to disturb you too much until the radiators arrive. You won’t know I’m here, I reckon.’

‘Oh,’ said Rachel, taken aback at how easy he made it sound. ‘Fine. Shall I, erm, put the kettle on?’

Gabe shrugged. ‘I’ve got a flask with me, so don’t worry.’

‘Right,’ said Rachel, now thoroughly deflated but feeling some of her tension easing. ‘I’ll just go back to – I’ll get on with some work, then.’ She was disappointed she wouldn’t be seeing more of him.