Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Twenty-Six

Twenty-Six

I had changed. I became mute and painted for hours on end, even the most intricate details. I ate and slept less and less, becoming like Mother, who I still sorely pined for. Images of Bobby and Beatrice kissing on my note exchange haunted me. She was the one who introduced him to me, after all. Images of the Zeppelins bombing everywhere haunted me. Images of every bad thing this year swirled in my head.

Susanna still brought me notes from him but they were left littering my desk. Even Emma and Mary noticed the change, the former raising her eyebrows and the latter questioning me. In fact, I had questions for her. Why had her plumpness vanished, why had she now this tall figure, pretty features, seductive lips, glittering eyes? Had Emma made her like this, had she made me lose my sister?

“Why are you becoming more and more droopy and pale?” Mary whined one morning at the breakfast table. Father peered over his newspaper, rising up in his seat.

“Good lord, you’re the spitting image of your mother.” I flinched.

“When is Mother coming home? I want her here for my birthday,” Mary said with a sigh. Oh yes, I remembered, she would be thirteen.

“She will be,” Father replied shortly, “Now take your sister out for some air- she has been doing too much stupid painting!”

Both Mary and I’s faces flushed. We both used to lay on our backs like starfish on my bed and whisper our dreams to each other. Mary always took this deadly serious, to match her eyes. Yes, that was the only thing we shared in traits- dark, serious, caramel eyes. Did she lie on Emma’s bed now; had I been so easily replaced?

I did feel rather guilty as we hadn’t conversed properly for seemingly ages, since even before Emma’s employment, back to January in Ingoldisthorpe. Goodness, that did seem long ago.

Just after midday, Mary and I were clutching our skirts as the wind was roaring most ferociously. The cold bit at our hands until we wished we had brought some mits. The sea was that sludge of a grey-green that tossed moodily and the rain splattered down into the dismal, humid town.

People scurried by us with grim faces, wearing black attire. We strolled along the front, freezing our tongues with ice cream bought from a stall near the pier, which floorboards groaned when we stepped on them. I had no idea what to say to Mary, yet she was my sister.

“I am to be bridesmaid at your wedding,” Mary told me rather awkwardly. I nodded, imagining her in a rosebud dress and hair adorned with garlands and me, up the aisle with John. My stomach gave a lurch and my teeth chattered. This was meant to be April! Mary ventured further.

“I am to be paired with John’s cousins, Leah and Faith Stirling-Sanders.” I nodded, in a world of my own, a world of horror where men beat women and men in black planes bombed houses. In my trance, I had tipped the cone. The ice cream was beginning to drip.

“Father says you are to wear a gown from Paris.” Paris? Just for one day, the most dreaded day of my life?

Mary stopped. She threw her hands out in despair.

“Will you stop ignoring me!” Ha. So beneath those grown-up layers remained a petulant child. She stamped her foot as if to prove my thought.

“What is wrong with you, Elsie? You are getting married.” Her voice became injured, soft.

“You should be happy.”

“Not to someone I love,” I whispered, ever the fool.

Her eyes glimmered mischievously and she held her arms akimbo, one eyebrow cocked.

“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” My head turned to the plump boy sitting so nonchalantly on a nearby bench; the baker’s boy, the boy named Bobby, the boy I barely knew yet had somehow found a place in my heart.