The Gilded Cage - Accepting My Place

More of the Same

There is an old saying, when you are in a huge hole, stop digging. My new life in Meadvale was not going as I had planned, or hoped, but the more I tried to do something about it, to give in or move on, the further I fell into despair. I had started out as a nanny, a trusted and respected employee of the Montague family, who were themselves leading lights in the new traditional renaissance within the Church of Christ the Reformer, or so I thought. Then I had made the big decision to join their church, with Mr and Mrs Montague as my sponsors, and became a maiden in their eyes, essentially a young unmarried woman who is learning her place in the community and before God, which I really messed up by being so arrogant and selfish, I will admit, which led me to think that I was, or should be, some sort of special case, and did not have to learn my place like every other dutiful maiden in Meadvale. And that resulted in my poor guardians, and my parents, who suddenly apparently shared my new passion for the church and were planning on making their life in Meadvale, reducing me to the status of nursling, despite my age. So, I found myself stuck in my own nursery, my own former domain, with all of my new sisters, for over three months, and no matter what I did there to put things right, however hard I tried to make amends for my stupidity and arrogance, or even change my mind and return sheepishly to my old life, I just kept falling deeper and deeper into the old familiar hole of crippling anxiety and depression and fear. Hence, after some twelve weeks of misery, I stopped trying. I stopped worrying about it, and thinking about it all the time, and just floated on the surface of my new life, which was a lot less tiring than treading water. I was just rolling with the tide and letting life carry on around me.

"Daddy says the new Brewster clothing line is selling really well...and not just here." Nicola Montague commented as we saw another girl in the familiar park play area wearing one of the new outfits our 'sisters' were primarily promoting to the heathen world, although we had been involved in the photoshoot as well. It was a Church of Christ the Reformer initiative, organised by the Elders, of course, designed to encourage children of all ages to dress more modestly like their favourite Christian sisters. Henrietta, Georgina and Philippa had been television stars, and singers before their father was arrested by the FBI and I had helped their grimly determined grandfather, Benjamin Brewster, get them home to Meadvale and settled in the nursery I would soon join them in, for my many sins. And although he had soon put a stop to their professional career, there was a lot of interest in what had happened to them, and therefore the church they all suddenly belonged to, and they had performed a very successful concert for charity with the Deepdene school choir back in December, using their successful social media channels to keep in touch with their fans and promote their new lives and a very positive image of Reformism in general. And that had worked so well, the girls were now being used to promote the values of the church and encourage non-believers to live a better life. Which had all been my idea originally, whilst I was still their doting nanny. But since I had been forced to relinquish control of all the social media activity, the church had built upon my initial successes, using my nursery sisters to promote the church, raise more money for charity and sell a range of modest clothing to boot. We had all been photographed modelling clothes for the website wearing some of the new designs put up for sale, although Henrietta, Georgina and Philippa were the main models of course, and as Nicola said, we had been told that they were selling like hot cakes.

"Some of the designs are too casual for here...they are meant to make all the heathens dress their girls better." I pointed out as I watched the little girl in the red and white striped plastic coat getting onto one of the swings. She was about eight, I reckoned from the look of her, and not from a particularly traditional family. Meadvale was the epicentre of the church, and all of the more traditional members, the First Congregation, at least had a house in the village and spent much of their time there, but there were still a lot of people who were more moderate around and about, too. Nicola and I were wearing long pale pink overcoats with poke bonnets and mittens, white wool tights and shiny black shoes, like the prissy traditional nurslings we were. The fact that she was seventeen and I was about to turn twenty made no difference at all to anyone, in that rare place; we were just little girls and everyone was quite happy to treat us as such, until our parents, or guardians, decided otherwise. "I don't think we even modelled that one, did we?"