Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Seven

Seven

February, 1915

I stayed in the hospital for two weeks. My ankle was on the mend but I needed a crutch for another couple of weeks. How ungainly I looked, hobbling here and there!

I was only trying to think such vain thoughts as those, for the guilt over Percy and Alice’s deaths had become a great swelling monster inside me. I couldn’t ignore it.

Why had they died, why, why them and not me? Just because I was considered more valuable, the Kingston Heiress? As if I cared about money now, when the idea that my life could’ve also been severed was quite scary and overwhelming. Then I felt selfish because two people were dead.

“But you didn’t know them,” Rose pointed out matter-of-factly, flicking through The Spectator at the end of my bed. She, Mary and Emma (grudgingly) had visited every day, having escaped with nothing but scratches.

This war raged in my head and with my family, who thought I was being too considerate of others. I stubbornly refused to admit it was a bad quality.

And yet, the internal scars inside me were not closing up, with every seed of doubt that was planted in my mind. I would not listen to Mary. Mary was as selfish as one can be, boasting her survival of a gruesomely savage attack, when she wasn’t even in King’s Lynn that night!

How would the relatives of the deceased feel if they heard that? Thoughtless, thoughtless girl! If I had died, the inheritance would’ve been passed to her. She would’ve spent it on lavish ball gowns, glittering hair ornaments, overpowering perfumes and yes, just ridiculous things.

The reality of all this was forcing me to grow up and face the side of life where honey didn’t drip off flowering trees. Death had danced into my life, twisting my thoughts.

It made me feel more responsible for my choices and to choose them more carefully. I would not waste a precious moment arguing with Mary, as I would’ve before.

When I was finally discharged, it was a Sunday morning and everything was eerily silent, a town still in mourning. The carriage plodded along and Rose, weary and exhausted from stress, didn’t tell me off for leaning out the window. The frame dug into me but I didn’t care; what was pain, compared to death?

I held my breath as we passed dilapidated houses. Some rubble had been cleared but some possessions still littered across the ground, remnants of broken families, broken homes, broken lives.

The world seemed bland; there were no enticing smells from a baker’s, no radiating sun. An iron had flattened the bright lights of New Year hope. It felt like the Germans had won, in my head at least. I kept looking up at the sky nervously, jumping whenever I saw something black, even if I knew it was just a crow. I couldn’t get the Zeppelins out of my head. Why did I have to be the first person to have seen them?

It was reassuring to see the familiar grounds of Kingston House, with the mermaid spouting frothy, foamy water into the fountain, the towering hedges, the gates with the bronze eagles embellished on them. Eagles fly like Zeppelins. Zeppelins flying through the sky… I shook my head.

Suddenly, Emma came flying out the door, brandishing a piece of paper, which she handed to Rose. There was no concealment of her hopefulness, the excited gleam in her eyes. Rose’s hand jerked, so I could see the message.

C o m e  h o m e  E l s i e, it read.