Georgia Hill - While I Was Waiting

She laid her elbows on the small table she used as a desk – it had been Hester’s from her dressing room at Delamere – and cupped her chin in her hand. She thought back to the tea parties, the dances – before it all changed so horribly, horrifically, and not just for those at the Front. Hetty frowned. Could she do justice to this task? There were too many gaps, too many lost memories. Too many regrets. She watched, amused, as a blackbird flew down into the garden and began to groom his damp feathers. Straightening her shoulders, she reminded herself that she had never undertaken a challenge without facing it square-on. After all she had lived through this really ought to be easy. She picked up her pen, dipped it into the ink and with it dipped into the past.

The bond between Richard and I was quick to form, thrown as we were into each other’s company. We had few other companions to dilute our friendship. I quickly regarded him as my best friend, although he irritated me more like a teasing brother.

It was a glorious summer afternoon in July 1907. I had been at Delamere for nearly four years and considered it my home. Richard was on holiday from school and had been taunting me from the door of the schoolroom while I did my lessons. In exasperation, Miss Taylor dismissed me. We found ourselves in the summer house again. It had quickly become our sanctuary, the place we came to when we wanted to escape the adults. Not that the aunts paid us a great deal of attention. As long as we did not cause any obvious mischief, they left us alone.

But we were no longer small children. We were growing up. A strange tension sprang up between us, making us unsure as to how to behave with each other. It was all terribly confusing.

Richard was in a strange mood that day. He often was. His mood would change in mercurial fashion from petulance to wild enthusiasm to an almost cruel delight in practical jokes. He had so much energy. He was easily bored and his mind danced like quicksilver onto the next enthusiasm before I had barely begun to grasp what it was. It was as if Delamere was too constricting, too limiting for him and he was bursting for more than anyone could offer. Today, he was almost febrile.

He sat me down on the flaking wooden seat and then looked about him furtively. There was no need. I’d spied the gardener over in the kitchen garden picking peas. I hoped they would appear at supper and my stomach rumbled in anticipation. Food, however, was all forgotten, when I saw what Richard drew from his pocket.

‘Look what I have!’ His eyes were enormous. ‘Isn’t it spiffing?’

‘A knife! Richard, wherever did you get it?’

I regarded it, in its leather scabbard, with fascination. We were barred from the kitchens, so my experience of such items was limited. Richard held it out to me and allowed me to take it. My hands shook with excitement. I repeated, ‘Where did it come from?’

Richard merely shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He took it from me and slid the blade out of the scabbard. He held it up to the light and we watched in awe as it caught the hot sun and cascaded light around the shabby summer house. It made the place magical.

‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘Would you like to be bound to Delamere and Edward and me forever?’

I nodded. Of course I would. After a dull childhood spent in a small villa in Kent, the Trenchard-Lewises seemed impossibly glamorous.

Richard’s eyes shone. ‘Then we can be bound together.’

‘How?’

He slid closer. ‘We can be blood brothers!’

I laughed. ‘But I am a girl, Richard! How can I be your brother?’

He looked affronted at my pedantry. ‘Blood brother and sister, then.’ He held up the knife again. The light caught the edge of the blade and it looked brutal.

I gasped. ‘Do you mean to cut me?’

Richard nodded. ‘It won’t hurt, Hetty, the knife is sharp. It will go through your skin like butter.’

‘No!’ I shrank back. ‘I do not like it.’

‘Are you scared?’

I nodded.

‘Feel the tip, Hetty. It’s sharp.’

I was terribly afraid, but Richard, even then, had a way of making me do things. He made me feel so dull, so unadventurous when I demurred. I reached out a shaking finger to the blade and tapped it, ever so slightly, on the tip. ‘Ow!’ I snatched my hand back.

He grinned. ‘Shall I go first?’

I watched, with a morbid fascination, as he pulled back his sleeve and pressed the blade to the white skin on his wrist. At the last moment, he stopped. Looking at me, with a mischievous glint in his blue eyes, he said, ‘You have to promise to do it too, otherwise I will bleed and it will go nowhere.’

‘Stop!’ An idea had occurred to me. ‘If you bloody your suit there will be an awfully nasty row. The aunts would not like it.

Richard shrugged.

‘They will not let you in here again,’ I warned. ‘You will have to do extra school work, even if you are on vac.’

He put the knife down and looked so disconsolate, I wracked my brain for an alternative plan. ‘What if we only prick our finger?’ I suggested.

‘Like the princess?’ he said, scornfully.

I grinned. ‘A finger will not bleed as much as a wrist. No one will know if we have cut our finger tip.’

Richard looked somewhat mollified. ‘Only if you do it too.’

I took in a great breath. ‘Very well,’ and then, with a quick look at the knife, I added, ‘you first.’

Richard nodded, held up his forefinger on his left hand and stabbed. Blood welled immediately. I could not tell if he was in pain as he grabbed hold of my hand and did the same before I had second thoughts.

‘Ow!’ It was done.

The knife clattered to the floor as Richard pressed our fingers together. Perhaps he had pricked my finger harder because a thin trickle of blood ran down my hand and dripped onto my pinafore. It made a tiny but unmistakable stain, just below the ruffle on my shoulder. I had to lie to Nanny afterwards and claim a nosebleed.

Richard’s eyes gleamed. ‘It’s done. Now we are bound together, you and me, Hetty, forever.’ He tugged out his handkerchief to dry our wounds. It was so filthy already that no one would notice one more brown blot.

I sucked my finger. It throbbed. I could not quite believe what he had made me do. He had half-charmed, half-dared me and I could never resist him. He could be quite cruel sometimes, I thought – nothing like Edward.

‘Now we must dance in a circle and recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards.’ Richard put the knife back into its scabbard and stood up.

This was one step too far, even for me. ‘Oh no, Richard,’ I said, firmly. ‘That will send us to Hell. I know that for a fact.’ The other fact being, if Aunt Leonora heard of this, we would be thoroughly thrashed.

‘A game of tag and then I must lie down before tea. All this blood is making me quite faint. Remember, I am only a girl.’

Before he could disagree, I’d run out of the summer house. Sometimes, being a mere girl had its advantages!

Christmas of that year brought great excitement to the occupants of Delamere House. My father had, at long last, returned from his travels, albeit temporarily.

He had come to stay at the big house, our more modest house being shut up whilst he had been away. He entertained us all with his stories of exotic people and places and only Aunt Leonora tired of hearing him speak.

One evening, we gathered, very unusually, in the drawing room after dinner. The room had been opened up just for Father’s visit. By now, I knew enough of the workings of this enormous house to understand that only a few rooms ever had a fire. I never had one lit in my bedroom. We existed in a scant few rooms and shivered even in those. Money was scarce but no one would ever admit as much.