Lydia Page 5

  “I certainly cannot imagine Miss Elizabeth climbing through bushes to spy on people,” he teased. “You are quite unique in that respect.”

  I giggled and smacked his arm. He caught my hand, and did not let it go, but held it quite firmly, looking into my eyes as if he had something to tell me that was very important.

  “I think that you and I could be great friends,” he said, and then he let go of my hand, swung himself into the saddle, and trotted away. He turned when he reached the bend in the lane, and waved. It was all I could manage to wave back before he disappeared.

  What does that mean? You and I could be great friends?

  I don’t want to be friends. I want him to be in love with me!

  I was in such a rage of disappointment I could not return to the house, but stormed off down the lane, and did not come home for hours. I was hot and even filthier when I returned. The others were all drinking tea. I threw myself on the sofa, declined refreshment, and glared into the fire. Friends, indeed! I thought.

  Then, little by little, I became sensible to what was taking place around me. In the far corner of the room, Mamma and Father were arguing – she insisting that he write to Mr. Bing-ley, he refusing. She began to cry. He sighed in exasperation and left the room and Mamma bit her lip to stop herself crying harder. Jane sat with Lizzy’s arms about her, staring into the fire, a veritable picture of gloom, and Mary sighed heavily as she read, doubtless thinking of Mr. Collins, while Kitty frowned as she worked on a new bonnet with which she hopes to impress some officer or other.

  Love, in our household at least, seems to cause an awful lot of misery.

  When I was little, before someone decided it was wrong, I was friends with those village boys who used to swim in the Waire. We built dens together in the woods, and they showed me how to catch fish, and one of them – Thomas, he was the oldest – once made a fire to cook them on. The fish were burned to a cinder, but it was wonderful to sit swinging my legs on a tree stump, licking fishy charcoal off my hands.

  Perhaps Wickham is right and friendship could be a splendid thing after all.

  Sunday, 22nd December

  The day after I last wrote in this diary – the day after Wickham said what he did, about us becoming friends – we dined with him at Aunt Philips’s, and he talked as usual almost exclusively to Lizzy, and I realised then that nothing had changed, nor would change, unless I did something about it. On the drive home, I pondered what it means to be friends with a person – and realised that I did not know. I am not sure I have friends. There is Maria Lucas, of course, and there are other neighbours, but in all honesty (and I think it is important at least to try to be honest), most of them (including Maria) could easily be replaced.

  You and I could be great friends, he said, but how did one go about making such a thing happen?

  And then I thought again of those village boys, all those years ago, and I realised what it was that made us friends. It was the fact that we did things together – built shelters with logs and branches, climbed trees, caught fish. We would never have become friends just by sitting about chatting to each other in drawing rooms. I did not think Wickham would want to build shelters in the woods, but there were other things he could do . . . And so the following day, as we all prepared to walk back to Longbourn together after a visit to Savill’s to buy a last few presents for Christmas, I pulled him aside and said, “Wickham, will you do something for me?”

  “Anything you ask,” he said, his eyes still on Lizzy walking ahead.

  “Will you teach me to ride a horse?”

  “To ride a horse?” That got his attention. “I must admit, Lydia, that is the last thing I expected. But do you not know how to ride already?”

  “I know how to sit on a horse as it walks very slowly from one place to another,” I said. “I want to learn to ride properly – to go fast, and gallop, and jump over things. Ladies do, you know,” I added, in case he should think I was being very improper.

  “I find most ladies are more concerned with balls and bonnets and practising their accomplishments.”

  “Then you have a very narrow view of young ladies,” I snapped. “I am very fond of balls and bonnets, but I should like to learn to ride as well. I don’t think that is so very contradictory. I should also quite like to learn to shoot,” I added, remembering my thoughts the day Aunt Philips came to bring news of the regiment when they first arrived, when I sat fidgeting upon the sofa thinking of all the things I would do if I were a man.

  Wickham burst out laughing. Lizzy looked back curiously, but he offered me his arm, and together we planned when my lessons should take place.

  And so I have ridden every afternoon for the past three days. Wickham is a surprisingly thorough teacher. I am learning in our paddock, on the mare he was loaned for his stay in Meryton. Her name is Bessie, and she is alarmingly tall, but also, he says, immensely docile and well trained, and perfect for teaching a lady.

  “So, Lydia,” he said, as he arrived for our very first lesson. “How serious are you about this?”

  “Entirely serious,” I replied.

  “And you don’t mind getting dirty? Doing tasks most ladies would consider unbecoming, or beneath them?”

  “Not in the least!”

  “Excellent reply!” And with that he led the mare to the stables, tied her to a ring, removed her bridle and saddle, gave me the bridle to hold, disappeared into the stables, and came out carrying our side-saddle, with a brush and hoof pick on top.

  “Lesson one,” he said. “How to prepare and saddle your horse. Not the most elegant aspect of the sport, but something every true horseman or horsewoman ought to know how to do.”

  I did nothing else that day but brush Bessie from her mane to her fetlocks (I did not even know that horses had fetlocks), pick out her hooves, and put on her bridle and saddle, the task made all the harder by the cold, which numbed my fingers.

  “I don’t know a single lady who does this,” I complained.

  “Now you know how grooms and stablehands feel,” Wickham said pitilessly.

  On the second day, I prepared Bessie again, and then Wickham led me round the paddock, correcting the position of my hands, my legs, my back and even my head as he taught me to stop, move on, turn left, right, change rein, and execute figures of eight, first at a walk, then at a gentle trot, as our breath made puffs of vapour in the air.

  And then today, he put Bessie on something called a lunging rein and told me we were going to canter.

  “But don’t worry,” he said. “You will be on the rein, and just going in a wide circle, so she cannot run away with you.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said quickly.

  He let out the rein. I squeezed Bessie’s sides, as he had taught me. She walked forward. Wickham flicked his whip. She broke into a trot, throwing me about so my bones all rattled. Another flick and . . .

  “I can’t!” I squealed.

  “Whoa . . .” Bessie slowed down. “What is the matter, Lydia? Don’t tell me you are afraid! I thought you completely fearless!”

  “It is so high up!”

  “Then don’t look down.”

  “I cannot help it!”

  “Very well,” he said, and took the reins from my hands.

  “What are you doing? I don’t want to stop!”

  “You are not going to stop.” He had tied a knot in the reins, and hung them to rest on Bessie’s neck, well clear of her legs. “Now, Lydia,” he said. “Do you trust me?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “I suppose that will have to do.” He smiled. “Now I want you to hold on to the pommel – that is the front of the saddle – and remember everything I have taught you about your posture. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” I said suspiciously.

  “Good.” He let the rein out again. “Oh, and I want you to close your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me! I
promise I won’t let anything happen to you!”

  And so I did as he said. I sat on Bessie, ramrod straight, chin up, heels down, my hands upon the pommel, and my eyes tightly closed as she walked, then trotted, then . . .

  “Keep your eyes shut!” Wickham yelled.

  I was flying . . . flying! With Bessie moving smoothly beneath me, and the wind rushing past, and the cold completely forgotten as Wickham whooped.

  “Whoa!” he called again. Bessie slowed, and I opened my eyes.

  “I did it!” I shouted.

  “You’ll make a horsewoman yet, Lydia Bennet!” Wickham grinned. “I knew you wouldn’t be afraid for long.”

  Every bone in my body aches, the farmworkers think I am hilarious, my sisters think I am mad, and Mamma is convinced that I will break my neck, but I have done it! I have learned to ride fast!

  “When can I jump and gallop?” I asked Wickham as together we removed the side-saddle from Bessie.

  “Soon.”

  “And shoot?”

  “After the jumping and galloping.”

  He walked back to the house with me to take his leave of the others. Lizzy raised her eyebrows as we came in. “Goodness, Lydia, look at you! Spattered in mud from head to foot!”

  But she was smiling as she said it, and as Wickham took a seat beside her and I dropped on to the sofa, she poured out wine and offered a plate of biscuits, and I thought how perfect it would be if life could always be like this.

  “It was a good lesson today,” Wickham told her. “Wasn’t it, Lydia?”

  “Monstrous good,” I agreed.

  In more ways than one, I realised, as I stood beside Lizzy, waving goodbye as he rode away. For today I finally learned what it means to be great friends.

  It means trusting someone so much you are prepared to do something terrifying with your eyes shut, knowing they won’t ever let anything bad happen to you, and it is the best feeling in the world.

  Sunday, 29th December

  It has been the best Christmas in the entire history of Christmases, better even than the one when I was little and we were given the doll’s house, or the one when the spaniel’s puppies were born.

  The house has been full to bursting for days. Aunt and Uncle Gardiner came from London as usual with all four of their children, and from the minute they tumbled out of the carriage the place has been all noise and fun.

  “We must gather holly!” William cried, as he always does.

  “Ivy!” Philadelphia shouted.

  “And rosemary and bay!” Sophy ordered.

  “I want to paddle in the stream!” Henry yelled, but his mother said no.

  And then we ran about the woods gathering greenery for Jane and Lizzy to make into wreaths, and raided the kitchen for mince pies behind Hill’s back. Kitty and I have the two little Gardiner girls sleeping in our room on beds brought down from the attic, and the boys are in Father’s dressing room. He pretends to mind, but secretly he likes to imagine they are the sons he never had (and who, life being so unfair, would have inherited Longbourn). “Good to have the house not overrun by females,” he says, as he does every year, as William and Henry chase each other up and down stairs, and “That’s the spirit!” as they thump each other with cricket bats.

  Everything is topsy-turvy at Christmas – the house so full of greenery it looks like a forest, the tables and sideboards heaving with pies and puddings, sides of beef and gleaming hams, capons and carp and jellies and aspic, fires blazing in every room, so bright it is as if there were no night, mealtimes almost forgotten as visitors come and go. Some stuff their mouths and drink wine till they are red in the face and some fall asleep on the sofa. Others help to push back furniture so that we can dance to Mary or Lizzy or Aunt Gardiner at the piano, and Captain Carter on his violin.

  Colonel Forster has married recently. His wife, Harriet, is about a century younger than him and very pretty. Kitty thinks her very fashionable, but her clothes are perfectly hideous. Tonight she was wearing yellow-spotted lilac with a double row of primrose ruffles at her skirt and neckline, and her hair pinned in so many curls she could not move her head. Wick-ham says she is trying to look older than she is, because her husband is so ancient – at least twenty years older than her.

  “Do purple and yellow make a person look older?” I asked.

  Wickham said no, they made a person look like a particularly dangerous mushroom, and made me snort with laughter.

  There has been no riding since the Gardiners arrived, but I danced a vastly jolly reel with Wickham this evening, all whooping and clapping. He dances better than anybody.

  “Look at the stars,” he said when he left. “It will be a fine day tomorrow, Lydia. Shall I come back in the afternoon, and ask your mamma’s permission to take you for a proper ride at last?”

  “What, in the countryside? Do you mean outside the paddock?”

  Wickham said that was exactly what he meant.

  “I should like that more than anything!” I told him.

  “Then consider it done. It will be my Christmas present to you.”

  He bowed, very formally, which made me laugh again, then moved away to take his leave of the others. He lingered over his goodbyes to Lizzy, but I found I did not mind.

  Tomorrow when we ride, I shall wear my new fur-lined gloves. I wish I could have a proper riding habit – I would make it red, with gold buttons, nicely fitted, with a grey necktie and a matching smart grey top hat. As it is, I will have to make do with my blue wool. Even so, I can see us now, galloping across the fields, jumping over ditches, the warm breath of the horses, the rising mist. How fine everyone will think us!

  Yes, it has been the best Christmas ever.

  Monday, 30th December

  Everybody has gone. The Gardiners returned to London yesterday, taking Jane with them. In the past I would have complained at the unfairness of it. Lizzy and Jane go to town all the time, because they are Aunt Gardiner’s favourites, but Kitty, Mary and I have never been invited. For a moment, as they drove away, I felt desolate. I tried to tell myself that I couldn’t care less about London now, when there is so much fun to be had in Hertfordshire, but as William and Henry and Philadelphia and Sophy climbed back into the carriage, you could almost see all the merriness and bustle and excitement and cheer being sucked in after them.

  “Blessed peace!” Father said, but it didn’t feel that way at all. It felt suddenly very quiet and cold and lonely.

  We will keep the greenery and decorations up until Twelfth Night. Mamma is already planning the menu for our celebrations, but the extra candles are all out and the spare beds have already been put away. The Christmas pies are finished and it’s to be a cold dinner tonight, so that the servants may rest.

  Wickham was wrong about the weather. It has started to snow. We all ran out when it began, and played at catching flakes as we used to when we were children. But it was cold, and our boots and gloves and cloaks were soon wet – you feel these things more when you are grown-up. We have put our steaming clothes to dry before the kitchen stove and our boots are stuffed with rags. I thought to walk to Meryton this afternoon to make up for the blessed peace at home, but Hill says I mustn’t, in case the snow turns into a blizzard, in which case I might not be able to return. We are due at the Lucases tomorrow to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Nobody was looking forward to it, but if the snow gets worse we may not be able to get there, and so now Mamma is desperate for us to go. She has told Father to order the farm boy to clear the whole road between here and Lucas Lodge. Father refuses. “It would be both unfair and impossible,” he says, and so Mamma is sulking.

  Everyone is bad-tempered.

  “For heaven’s sake, Lydia, stop fidgeting!” Lizzy cried as we sat sewing after luncheon. “If you are going to be like this as long as the snow lasts, I will strangle you.”

  “Couldn’t you strangle her anyway?” Mary asked.

  “That is a monstrous thing to say!” I cried.

  “At least
I am able to entertain myself quietly,” Mary said. “I do not rely on the company of small children or officers to be happy. As long as I have my books . . .”

  “You will die an old maid,” I finished for her.

  “LYDIA!”

  I stormed up to my room, taking care to stomp on every single step along the way.

  I paced up and down before my window all afternoon, but I never saw a soul. Wickham did not come, and I did not get my ride.

  Monday, 6th January

  It was a sorry Twelfth Night. Denny, Carter, and Pratt turned up out of the night, snow-covered and red-nosed, with wet boots from braving the roads on foot and breath smelling of the brandy they had drunk to keep warm. Wickham did not come.

  “He had another engagement.” Denny would not quite meet Lizzy’s eye as he spoke.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Denny said it was not his place to tell.

  “Why not?”

  Lizzy said, “Lydia, go and tell Hill we’re ready for tea.”

  “Did he send a message?”

  “Lydia!”

  I hate Lizzy when she’s like that. And I hate Carter and Denny for all their mystery, and I hate this endless snow for keeping us trapped at home. It is not nearly so much fun without Wickham. Carter and Denny and Pratt are nice, but he is different. They do not let me win at cards, and when I suggested going outside to look at the stars, they said they had only just got warm. All they want to do is eat and drink and dance, but dancing is dull with so few people, and they don’t dance nearly as well as him.

  “Denny,” I asked, when we finally gave up on the dancing. “Will you teach me to shoot a gun?”

  “Shoot a gun?” Denny’s bushy eyebrows shot into his hair. Carter and Pratt laughed. “That is not a usual occupation for a young lady, Miss Lydia.”

  “No,” I said. “I suppose it isn’t.”

  Perhaps there has been an accident, and they think we are not strong enough to bear it. No, his friends would have been in a sombre mood if that were so . . . Perhaps he has been sent away – maybe promoted into another regiment, and it is a great secret. But then surely he would have said goodbye?