Lydia Read online

  “The Waire?” Mamma cried. “But Lydia nearly drowned in it when she was a child!”

  “Yes, and it is such a little stream,” Father agreed. “Imagine the damage she could do herself in the English Channel.”

  “But in Brighton there are attendants . . . the swimming is supervised . . . there is no risk to anyone!”

  Father said he would not change his mind, but Mamma has not given up.

  Lizzy and Jane are no help at all. They came home a few days ago, and were utterly unsympathetic to our cause. Kitty and I went to meet their coach in the hope of engaging their help for the Brighton project before they saw Father. I was so looking forward to seeing them – especially Lizzy, to tell her about Miss King – but they showed not the slightest interest, not in the officers leaving, or our plans for a Brighton summer, or even in Miss King being sent away from Meryton.

  “Wickham is safe!” I told Lizzy.

  “And Mary King is safe,” she corrected, in her new boring, sensible way.

  Lizzy has a secret, and I have found it out.

  It wasn’t difficult. Jane and Lizzy think when they go to their room and close the door that nobody can hear them, but we can. Our bedrooms used to be one big room, which has been divided by building closets in the middle of it. The closets are made of wood, and there is a small crack in the back of ours. If you climb in and put your ear to it, you can hear very clearly indeed.

  The secret is this. Mr. Darcy has proposed to Lizzy! Mr. Darcy! After all his ignoring her at balls, and sneering at Mamma, and looking down his nose at the rest of us! She has refused him, just as she refused Mr. Collins, and quite right, too. Lizzy said that when he proposed to her, he made it very clear he did not think her family was good enough for his – that he was doing her a great favour in proposing, the proud, horrible man! But – he has ten thousand a year! And even though Lizzy took great pains to say how much she despised him, if Wickham is the sort of man one doesn’t marry because he is poor, surely that makes Mr. Darcy the sort of man one doesn’t refuse because he is rich?

  Could she do that – could she actually marry him for that reason?

  There is another secret, too, which is much more horrible.

  Last summer, Wickham tried to elope with Mr. Darcy’s sister, who is called Georgiana and was the same age as me. Mr. Darcy wrote a letter to Lizzy to explain, and Lizzy read it out to Jane. Georgiana was at Ramsgate with her companion, and Wickham was there, too, and he convinced her to run away with him. He planned everything and they were almost on their way when Mr. Darcy turned up and put an end to it all.

  She was persuaded to believe herself in love. That is what Mr. Darcy wrote to Lizzy.

  Wickham almost destroyed Georgiana. She was so in love with him she was prepared to risk everything – her reputation, her fortune, her connection to her family – just to run away with him, but as soon as he found out that Mr. Darcy would not let him see a penny of her money, he disappeared, and left her broken-hearted.

  I never thought that he could be so unkind.

  And now I am mortified again . . . Yesterday, in the coach coming home – how I went on! Wickham this, Wickham that! Silly little Lydia, always running after Wickham, convinced that he is her friend, even though he did not speak to her for months, even though he abandoned her for a wealthy, freckled shrimp he didn’t even like! I don’t believe for a minute that he didn’t pursue Miss King, and what he did to Georgiana Darcy was wrong. Lizzy watches me now all the time – what a fool she must think me, falling again and again for his charm and lies . . . I have to get away. I have to leave Meryton, where they all think me foolish and stupid. Oh, they are so superior! I swear that if I stay I will die – killed by their sniffs and frowns and the eyes they roll behind my back when they think I cannot see! But where can I go? There is nowhere! Nowhere!

  I have to think of something.

  Sunday, 24th May

  Brighton. That is where I am going.

  I spent a great deal of time with Harriet Forster this past week. Kitty’s cough has not gone away, and Mamma has not allowed her outside. On Wednesday, I went alone to the library with Mary. I did not mean to do what I did. I swear on Napoleon’s life that when we set out for Meryton, I thought only to distract myself by taking tea with whoever happened to be there. It is not my fault that that person was Harriet Forster.

  We chatted and drank tea. The following day, we went shopping together for hats, and the day after we spent the afternoon cosily embroidering dancing slippers in her private drawing room. And then yesterday we took tea together again at the library.

  “What a delightful few days these have been.” She sighed. “How sad I shall be to see them end when we go to Brighton!”

  I didn’t do it on purpose. Not entirely, anyway.

  Did I think, Harriet asked, that Kitty’s health would benefit from some sea air?

  It was just one of those moments when it feels like time has stopped, and you know that what you say next is going to change everything.

  “Alas,” I said, very carefully. “Kitty’s health is vastly fragile, and Mamma will not let her out of her sight.”

  I did not say more than that. I did not need to.

  Harriet invited me to Brighton there and then, with never another thought for poor Kitty.

  Lizzy is doing all she can to try and stop me going. I have heard her actually begging Father to forbid it. “Vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled” – those were her actual words about me, and when I heard them I honestly felt like a dagger was being twisted in my heart.

  Is that really what she thinks of me? Or is it what Mr. Darcy thinks? Even though she has refused him, is she seeing me now through his eyes? Does she wish she had not refused him? I have kept her secret so carefully, knowing how Mamma would react if she knew Lizzy had turned down such a match – and she says all this?

  I wasn’t sure, when Harriet first issued her invitation, that I wanted to go, on account of Wickham also being there. I have been very cold towards him since I heard the secret about Georgiana Darcy. I have not danced with him once, or allowed him to deal my cards, and I have made a very clear point of favouring all the other officers in Meryton over him, and when he has come to dinner – Mamma still invites him, and I cannot very well say why she should not – I have always sat right at the other end of the table. In truth, if I am to go away, I would rather be anywhere that he is not. But Lizzy saying those things – oh, I will go to Brighton, if it is the last thing I do, and I will show her what I am capable of! I shall bathe in the sea, and I shall make whole rafts of elegant new acquaintances, and I shall probably come back with a husband – I would come back with two if I could, just to prove that I am as capable as she is of getting proposals! And I am not going to allow an insignificant matter like Wickham being there to stop me.

  Father told Lizzy there would be no peace in this house until he agreed to let me go, and he was right. There wasn’t. And now I am off.

  “But Harriet was to ask me!” Kitty wailed when Father said I could go. “She was my friend first!”

  Mary, who was in the library when Harriet asked me and heard every word of our conversation, says there is a special place in Hell for girls who betray their sisters, and that I am heading straight for it, but I am not going to think about that now.

  “Mamma says you have to fight for what you want,” I told her.

  Mary said, “Not if it means trampling all over other people to get it,” but she doesn’t understand a thing.

  Harriet has told me everything we shall do – though she has never been to Brighton, she has been to Weymouth, and so she knows all about the seaside. We shall bathe every day, and go on excursions, and there will be boating parties, and I will learn to sail, and everyone will be amazed at how naturally nautical I am.

  I may be going to Hell, but I am going to Brighton first.

  Brighton,

  Friday, 5th June

  My dear family,

 
; Here I am, safely arrived in Brighton, and it is every bit as delightful as I expected. It is a charming collection of quaint fishermen’s cottages and elegant new buildings, all white trim and bow windows, quite the smartest I have ever seen. We are lodged very near the sea and close to glorious shops that put poor Savill’s to shame. I have bought a new parasol, pale-blue muslin with an ivory fringe and tassels, and tiny bows of ivory satin at the end of each spoke. It is wildly extravagant, but Harriet says everybody carries them in Brighton, and that I will need to protect my skin, for the sun is far hotter at the seaside, you know. But I cannot write for long, for I must go and dress. There is a little piece of common land here they call the Steine, all fenced off for elegant promenading. I shall wear my new green sprig, with my parrot cape and the snuff gloves and the black-and-silver netted purse Jane made me for Christmas. They will be just the thing.

  Your loving daughter and sister,

  Lydia

  Saturday, 6th June

  I was tempted to tell the truth, but I could not bear the thought of their smug faces.

  I had imagined the sea to be a bright blue, with bobbing sailing yachts and no sound but the cries of bathers, but it is actually grey and angry, with crests of white foam that look like it is spitting. It swells and falls like a living creature, and roars as it crashes on the shore. There are no bathers, the colonel says, when the sea is in a mood like this. Harriet can’t wait to throw herself in when it is calmer, but I do not like it one bit.

  The new buildings with their white trim and bow windows are all situated in the new town and monstrous expensive, according to the colonel. We are staying in the old village, which is not nearly as quaint as I wrote in my letter, in Market Street, which is narrow and smells of fish, and each crooked house seems to need the support of the next to stop it tumbling to the ground. My room is the size of our closet at home. Apparently, there are not enough lodgings in Brighton for all the people who want to stay here. “We are lucky not to be sleeping on a floor!” the colonel says, trying to console Harriet, and I don’t think he is joking.

  I have a splinter in my foot from a broken floorboard, and my new clothes, which I was so excited about buying for this trip, are a disaster. My dresses are so plain; the necklines that seemed so daring in Meryton are so high! Ladies wear hats here, not bonnets, and daring ruffled pantaloons peeping out from beneath skirts that are a good deal shorter than we wear at home, and I don’t know a soul apart from Harriet, because all the men are away on exercises.

  If my sisters were here, Jane would help me extract the splinter from my foot. Mary would insist on visiting the library AT ONCE for a fresh supply of books, and Lizzy would walk about like a queen in her unfashionable dresses. Kitty would share my narrow bed and we would joke all through the night about sleeping in a cupboard.

  I want home so badly it hurts. And that is the last thing I expected of Brighton.

  Sunday, 7th June

  Harriet burst into my room early this morning. Our landlady, Mrs. Jenkins, told her that the sea was quiet again, and Harriet insisted that we leave immediately to bathe. Sally, her maid, brought coffee and toast as we gathered our belongings into a basket – our swimming shifts, and nets for our hair, and large napkins to dry ourselves afterwards, our combs and hairbrushes, additional wraps in case the sun does not shine and our smart new parasols in case it does, a rug for sitting on, and some gingerbread to eat after bathing. We piled it all into the basket so high that Sally could not carry it alone, and we had to unpack half of it again.

  Off we struggled, Harriet and I carrying the basket between us, she in a fashionable ankle-length canary muslin and I in an unfashionably long blue, with Sally following behind carrying the rug and napkins, looking like a grumpy little sparrow in her plain dark dress and not in the least bit grateful for her lighter load. Down the dark, fish-smelling street we went and out into the open of East Cliff, then left along the seafront to the Steine, and I prayed that we would not run into anyone we knew, not just because I was red-faced from the exertion, but because of the dreadful apprehension that had begun to grip me. There was the sea, calmer than when I first saw it, but still swelling and falling like a live creature, still roaring, still the colour of lead. There were the bathing machines, preparing to take me into it, and there was my heart, beating at twice its usual speed.

  “Hurry up, Lydia!” Harriet tugged crossly at the basket handle. “Look how crowded the beach is – we shall never get a bathe if we dawdle.”

  Down the steps to the beach we climbed, balancing the basket between us, our skirts blowing about our legs, and the roar grew louder.

  The air was clammy here, and tasted of salt. I thought that I might be sick.

  “Isn’t it divine?” Harriet yelled.

  It never occurred to me, when I accepted Harriet’s invitation, that I would be afraid. All I could think of, looking at the sea, was the Waire – not the stream as it is now, but the raging torrent experienced by my eight-year-old self, clinging to a rock. And they expect me to swim in the sea? There are probably millions of drowned people lying on the seabed – sailors and fishermen but also pleasure-seekers just like us who went into the water thinking to amuse themselves and sank straight to the bottom with lungs full of water and eyes like marbles. Even as I write, they are probably being eaten by crabs and little fishes. There is absolutely nothing divine about any of this at all.

  The ladies’ bathing machines lie to the left of the Steine, the gentlemen’s on the right. I knew about these already, of course, from Harriet’s descriptions of Weymouth. “They are like dear little caravans,” she told me in Meryton. “You skip up a little ladder into them, and then while you change into your bathing dress, the horse pulls you into the sea. Then they unhitch the horse, and you just open the door at the other end of the machine and simply dive into the waves!”

  In my head, they were gay things the colours of boiled sweets, all pink and green and blue, with cheerful ponies to tow them into the surf. In real life, they are plain and rickety, made of boards, like the cart on the farm at home, dragged by long-suffering nags. The large bathing attendants they call dippers, who stand alongside all dressed in navy, look like crows gathered at a watery funeral.

  Harriet squinted anxiously down the beach.

  “We are too late!” she cried. “The bathing machines are all in the water!”

  “I’m sure one will become available presently,” I mumbled.

  “There is one!” Harriet squealed. “Right at the end, look, Lydia! There is one coming back in!”

  Sure enough, right at the end of the line, a machine was lumbering back to the beach through the shallows.

  “Sally, run and secure it!” Harriet ordered. She turned to me, a fixed smile upon her face. “Lydia, you must go first. You are my guest. I absolutely insist.”

  “You go,” I whispered. “I promise I don’t mind.”

  “Are you sure?” Harriet was already fumbling in the basket for her shift and napkin.

  “Quite sure.”

  Sally was standing by the returned machine, waving frantically. Harriet grabbed the basket, threw my shift, the gingerbread, and most of my things on to the rug, and ran towards her, clutching her bonnet to her head and her belongings to her bosom.

  I sat upon the blanket and drew my knees up to my chin.

  If Wickham were here, I surprised myself thinking, he would probably make me walk straight into the sea with my eyes closed, and I wouldn’t have time to be afraid.

  I chased the thought away. I did not want to think about Wickham.

  The shingle crunched. I opened my eyes. Sally had returned, her face redder than ever.

  “Missus is gone into the machine.” She stood a little to one side, eyeing the gingerbread in its linen cloth.

  “Do you want some?” I unwrapped the cake and searched in the basket for the small knife we had packed to cut it. When I looked up, Sally was no longer ogling the gingerbread, but staring behind me down the
beach.

  “Who is that?” she breathed.

  I followed the direction of her gaze. Another machine had come in from the sea a few feet from where we sat, just above the shoreline. A young lady of about Lizzy’s age stood in full sun in the doorway, wringing out a tangled mane of fiery copper hair. She wore a dress of the brightest emerald green. A straw basket sat on the floor by her bare feet.

  “Did you ever see such a colour dress?” Sally whispered. “And silk on a beach, too – covered in sand and salt and whatnot.”

  The young lady pulled a crumpled yellow bonnet from the basket and jammed it on her head, without pinning up her hair. She should have looked a mess, but she was quite the opposite.

  Suddenly, she waved and jumped lightly down on to the beach.

  We turned to see where she was going.

  A young gentleman was walking towards her, a small black-and-white dog at his side. He was perhaps a couple of years older than me, and a little younger than she. He was about Wickham’s height but slighter, with a head of dark curls blowing about in the wind as he waved his hat, and the widest smile upon his face. He was immaculately dressed, in a blue coat and grey breeches and long riding boots, but with a bright red scarf flung dramatically about his throat. The young lady threw herself into his arms and he wrapped the scarf tightly around her shoulders before crushing her to his chest and swinging her round so that her feet clean left the ground. She slipped her hand into his when he set her down again, and together they ran to the water’s edge, the little dog leaping at their feet.

  They looked as if they owned the entire world.

  “Brazen,” commented Sally.

  “Wonderful,” I breathed.

  Another machine was creaking back in towards the beach. I sighed, remembering where I was.