Georgia Hill - While I Was Waiting

Richard and I had been allowed to stay up late, as a special treat.

‘Oh I wish I could go back with you. To see those things – the mangrove swamps and the waterfalls!’ Richard, now a lanky, restless boy of fourteen, was hanging upon Father’s every word, egging him on, continually asking questions. ‘The tribes and the animals! Did you really see elephants? And lions? And zebras? And crocodiles?’ Richard babbled on, ‘if only Ed were here!’

‘Richard, do calm yourself. You have been allowed to sit up to talk to your Uncle Henry, but do let him get a word in edgeways!’ Aunt Hester, as always, was laughing indulgently at Richard’s enthusiasm. Aunt Leonora simply tutted her disgust and turned away to her sewing. Not for the first time did I wonder at how two sisters could be so different.

Father, too, laughed at his newest admirer. Here was a boy after his own heart. Nothing like the untidy, lumpish daughter he had sired. I was finding it rather more difficult to engage in the conversation. Four years had passed and Father, I could no longer give him the more familiar moniker of Papa, was a stranger to me. I had, long ago, lost my fascination with his travels and only wanted to talk to him about the information Richard had intimated at when I first came to Delamere. Father had resolutely ignored the questions with which I filled my letters. Did I really have money? If so, where was it? Why could I not have it? Was I really to marry Edward, currently at university and expected to enter the army?

I was fourteen, too, and nearly at my next birthday. Strange things had been happening to me over the last few months; things I could not bring myself to broach with a father now unknown and distant to me. Nanny knew, but even telling her had been painfully embarrassing. She had explained that I was a woman now and could no longer, at certain times of the month, play as I was used to with Richard. Gone were the games of chase around the gardens, the meetings in the summer house to pore over a battered atlas, the endless adventure stories made up by us both and continued week after week. I no longer slept in the night nursery and had my own room.

Part of me felt important at entering this new stage in my life, but a greater part felt desolate at leaving my childhood behind. I did not feel ready to face the adult world, particularly if it involved marrying Edward, more or less as much a stranger to me as Father, having been away for most of my time here. Now Richard had followed his brother to school and I did not even have his enlivening presence at our lessons with Miss Taylor to look forward to.

If this was adulthood, I thought it very dull.

My one consolation was retrieving the journal Papa had given me on my very first day at Delamere. ‘We live through great times,’ he had said then. ‘You must chronicle them, child. One day you may be great too. You must get into the habit of writing everything down.’

To my shame, I had hardly written anything at all. I had been too busy running around the grounds with Richard – and getting into trouble with Aunt Leonora. Now, with the boys away, I fell on my own company a great deal more. I am sure Papa had in mind my recording scientific fact. With these strange new happenings in my body, I was far more interested in exploring my emotions. I had taken to recording my thoughts and feelings as much as I had time for.

I looked at Richard, still deep in conversation with Father. He was as tall as me now, still energetic, still getting into scrapes. Only this term the aunts had received a written warning from his school. According to the letter, Richard had sneaked out of his dormitory one night and tried to buy beer at the local public house.

He was home for the holidays and had been refused permission to visit our neighbours, the Parkers, whose horses always proved irresistible to him, as a punishment.

School had changed him, had made him scornful of the limitations put on him by the aunts. They, in turn, having only had to deal with placid Edward in the past, struggled with this new, wayward Richard.

He had chafed at his imprisonment and had taken it out on me. Puzzled by my reluctance to engage in our childish games he had taken to spying on me, pulling my hair or my pinafore tails. Once he had put a worm in the neck of my blouse and watched with glee as I danced and shrieked and scrabbled to get it out. Vile boy. As bored as I, his natural sense of fun and mischief found expression in vindictiveness and spite. Our love-hate relationship was even stronger.

Only once had I glimpsed an even stranger Richard. We had gone exploring, as we used to and strictly against the dictates of the aunts. We had found our way up into the old attics. I did not like the attics; they were gloomy and the dust made me sneeze. As usual, Richard goaded me, claiming I was unadventurous and dull and, as usual, I responded by being even bolder than he.

In one of the rooms were stored some old tailors’ dummies, from goodness knows where and when. I hated them with a passion. They stood, headless but watching, silent in a corner. One or two were cloaked with dustsheets and that made them even more terrifying.

I ran ahead, wanting to put them behind me and furious that Richard had called me chicken for being scared. In the furthest-most attic, the roof had partially fallen in and pigeons were nesting and cooing on the rotten beams. It was lighter and colder here, the winter air whistling through the gaps. As I ran in, the pigeons took flight and disappeared, leaving a choking mess of feathers and swirling up the dust and their droppings. Shaking it out of my hair, I turned to where I thought Richard was behind me. And screamed.

I thought one of the Trenchard-Lewis ancestors had come to haunt me – a white-robed figure danced in front of me. I put my hand to my heart; it was beating so. I feared I should drop down dead. About to scream for help from Richard the ‘ghost’ let out a familiar giggle and dropped down to reveal the boy behind the dust-sheeted dummy.

‘Richard, you perfect beast!’

‘Jolly good wheeze, Freckle-Face.’

Looking about me, I spied a piece of rafter. Grabbing it, I attacked Richard. I was furious. But, even then, Richard was stronger than me. Easily overpowering me, he held me fast, managing to wrap the filthy dustsheet around me, trapping my arms against my body.

He held me to him, his blue eyes vivid and a little wild. ‘A kiss as a forfeit for your release.’

Struggling and calling ‘pax’ I began to giggle. ‘Richard, you are a shocking boy. How can I kiss you when I cannot move my head.’ He loosened his hold a little and I took advantage. Stamping on his toe with as much force as I could muster, I ran off as he let go. Shrieking, as he chased me, I ran.

Now, in a clean dress, I watched as Father and Richard began to trace Father’s most recent journey through West Africa in the atlas. My thoughts turned to Edward. He was a mysterious figure, only at home for holidays and currently in his second year at Cambridge. He was due home soon. Edward had inherited the family tendency to be tall; he was well over six feet now. Thankfully, to his relief, his hair had darkened to a quite nice dark brown, with reddish glints, rather like Aunt Hester’s. His eyes, not as vivid as Richard’s, were a gentle shade of grey. We had never really grown to know one another and he still treated me in a stiff and formal manner, as if I were a creature as exotic as one from my father’s collection. Was it still expected that I should marry him? Richard always averred that it was so. How did I feel about marrying Edward? What did I know of men and marriage? What did I know of anything? I sighed.

Richard, hearing me, looked up from the atlas. ‘I say, old thing, come and have a look at this. It’s where your father was last month and it’s the most spiffing-looking place. Look at the river, it goes the whole length of the country. Can you imagine?’