Something New
It's been a while, huh?
I woke up today with a whole book in my head, just ready to fall onto the page. The whole structure, every major character, the signposting, just perfect. I've written over 2000 words today, after over a year of no writing at all. Here goes:
The air in the room was cool and dark. Every surface was bright with polish. The house smelled of beeswax and abrasive cleaning powder, lye and whitewash.
Adella carefully brushed her skirts smooth. She took a slow, deep breath, and ran down the stairs as fast as she dared. Her hard new boots held her feet tight, and slipped on the polished wood. One floor, two. She was close; she might make it; she would! The book was hot in her hand, held tightly. Her cases and trunk were lined up in the hall. They were pristine, the wood scented with beeswax, glossy in the morning sun.
Her nervous fingers fumbled with the catch on her smallest case. She slipped the book inside, and was squeezing it closed when she heard the unmistakeable click of her mother’s footsteps. The catch wouldn’t fit; her book was the last straw. She held one side of the case with her knees, pressed the other side in, one hand desperately pulling the lock closed. Her mother was coming down the stairs; she would be there in a few seconds. The catch clicked shut, and she just had time to line it up to the others.
“Adella. I hope you weren’t fiddling with those cases. Mary has packed the things you need, and I am quite certain she won’t have included any of your silly toys. School is not for luxuries.” She closed her eyes briefly, before glancing up at her mother.
“No, Mother. I was worried this case would be scuffed: you know how the porter carries them. It isn’t, though.” Mother drew herself up, her shoulders rising in their stiff, starched jacket.
“Of course not! I had Mary clean and polish everything before she packed. I would thank you not to second guess the help.” Adella lowered her head, and murmured her agreement.
“Don’t mutter, child.” Outside, the carriage drew up, blocking the daylight from the hall. Adella’s heart sank. That black cloud in the hallway meant another long, cold year at school. Mother raised her eyebrow at Adella’s expression, but before she could pass comment, Father opened the front door. The new manservant and Smith, the butler, took Adella’s trunk, and then her cases, and strapped them to the carriage. It didn’t matter that she could have been practising her Latin, or reading. A woman’s job was to oversee the household staff, and Mother was determined that she should start to play her part, so Adella watched as Smith and the man whose name she had forgotten strapped the cases tightly on. She could not imagine what she might have had to add, but her mother was insistent.
The journey was bleak, and her mother and father stared straight ahead at the patterned walls of the carriage, but Adella rather liked it. The rolling Pennine hills were golden and purple, and here and there grouse still burst from the scrubby fields. It was a cool day, as though summer had arrived at September and immediately relented to autumn, but the sun was golden and the landscape was lush and green. The rain that had trapped them inside through August had left the land wet and gleaming, new and fresh.
When she was little, the bumpy, jolting journey had made Adella sick, but no one had helped her, and she had quickly learned to keep her eyes on the passing land and breathe deeply when the nausea crept up to her. Her father might read paperwork or the London paper on the journey, but she knew she could not.
The sun began to sink, the horizon a line of bright fire against the inky night. The hills disappeared, and they could see only stars and the bright swells of road illuminated by the driver’s lamps. By the time they reached Sheffield, Adella could hardly fight sleep. Her head kept bumping against the cold glass. She wished they would take the train, but her father insisted that they travel together.
They arrived at the school late the next day. The other children had already been delivered by their families or drivers, or collected from the bustling train. They had filled their little cupboards, found their old friends, met and probably intimidated the new children. Adella’s parents spared her a brief word about her behaviour, and left her with matron.
In Adella’s dormitory, the girls had left her a bed at the end of the room. She quietly put away her possessions, and joined the girls in prayer before quickly changing for bed. The room was chilly, and the thick, bristly wool blanket seemed to cloak her in cold. One of the new girls was crying, but no one whispered words of encouragement. Occasionally matron would stand in the doorway, checking for whispered conversation.
In the morning, the school year began. They ate kippers and toast. Adella’s mother and father sat at the high table with the other teachers, frowning down at the children. Adella ate carefully, picking the bones away with her fork. The cavernous room echoed every sound, the scraping of cutlery and murmur of voices. As she always did at the start of the year, she felt a ball of nervous inside. The new children would not know to be quiet enough, and there would be trouble. Her father would whip one of the new boys, and the children would treat her as coolly as though she had issued the punishment herself.
Breakfast passed without anyone drawing her father’s attention, but during lunch a boy kicked a football too close to the windows. Adella could hear his howls from where she sat reading in the corridor. She could not be seen running around; her mother had decided she was old enough to be acting like a young lady, so she held her energy in a tight ball in her stomach, and read. She had two books with her; the book she had thrust inside her case, and a book her father had gifted her over the summer. Her father’s book was a dry, prescriptive explanation of the requirements of running a house. Her own was a novel she had snatched from a pile on her father’s desk.
They had been at the school for three years now. The word in the London papers was that all children would soon be attending daily education. Her father had been determined that Adella would not mix with the local children. Adella had liked the school: the smell of church incense, the pews pushed to the edges. She had had friends, well-mannered girls from good homes, who had enjoyed her incisive wit and unpredictable imagination.
It was like forever to Adella. She had been a girl, laughing with friends and walking home unaccompanied, picking blackberries from hedges and waving to her friends in the village. Her father had started the school as soon as her local school mistress had refused to promise that she would exclude the labourers’ children. The rambling, dark stone building, inherited by a friend of her father’s, was cold all year round. The rolling grounds, where Adella had liked to walk and even hide, were gardens now, and flat gravelly squares for drill lessons.
Adella heard footsteps, and swapped books with skill borne of practise. Her book was the last one from the library’s confiscated books. She had the other book open at a page about managing kitchens when her mother walked past. She was not even acknowledged. Her mother’s skirts swished by, her back ridged, polished black boots clipping on the stone floor. She hid her disappointment, bowing her head into her book. The author was describing how one might encourage a cook to use the freshest eggs for a cake, ensuring an even rise and golden colour. Adella thought that she had not eaten cake in so long she had forgotten the taste.
Winter arrived with sickness. The cold winds seemed to have brought the turbulent hot and cold fever that confined Adella to her bed. Two children were sent away with tuberculosis, coughing bright splotches of blood into their handkerchiefs. Father gave a talk in assembly about the need to keep a watchful eye on one’s peers for sickness, and at lunch a little boy was forced to see matron by his friends because he had coughed.
The school’s little sick room was full of children more ill than her, her mother said. Adella coughed until she thought she might be sick, her stomach cringing at the explosive choking, her muscles aching. She looked up at her mother, remembering with surprise being very small and poorly, and her mother wiping her forehead and singing to her. The mother above her now looked away, embarrassed, as though Adella’s pleading expression was unseemly. Adella, she said, needed to be well before the mayor visited at the end of the month. She would see that matron brought a glass of orange.
“ Mama, please, could I have another blanket?” Mother looked at her with what might almost be sadness. She tucked the rough woollen blanket up to her chin, where it would tickle and rub until Adella pulled it away.
“Please don’t call me that at school, Adella. I will see what matron can do, but there are children much more ill than you, and you must understand that they come first.” The sadness and the pounding in her head, the hot and cold and the loneliness overwhelmed Adella. As her mother walked away, tears slid away down her cheeks and into her hair. She cried and snuffled until she fell asleep, and in the morning there was still salt on her face. She did not have another blanket.
They sat exams before they went home for Christmas. Adella broke a pen nib halfway through mathematics and thought her father might whip her. He had never touched her that she could remember, but his rage at her ink-splattered paper was terrifying. He threw the paper on the desk, his face so red with apoplexy he might burst. She knew everyone had heard him shouting, and she left flushed with shame. She heard the girls in her dorm giggling when they thought she was asleep, and she fought to muffle her tears.
They walked to the village church for the service before Christmas. Their own chapel would be quiet now, closed up and cold, and Adella felt sorry for its friendly-faced virgin and abandoned Christ, alone on his cross while they headed home. The villagers crammed themselves on the front seats so that the children could sit at the back. There was a space reserved on the front pew for Adella’s father, but she and her mother sat at the back with the children and the other teachers. The priest told them endlessly that Christ had been born to die, until the younger children were bored and fidgety. She watched the low sun’s progress through the diamonds of coloured glass, and pretended not to have seen her mother’s glances. When the service was over, the children spilled from the church full of laughter and celebration. They would return home for almost a whole week. Warm homes with fires and gifts and sweets awaited them.
Adella and her family stayed at the school. It was pointless making such a long journey, her father said. Her mother felt that there was so much they could do while the school was quiet. They ate Christmas dinner in silence with the small group of children who could not go home. The twins whose parents were in India. Lila and her little sister, Grace, were to stay here because of the threat of cholera in London. Thomas’ father had succumbed to tuberculosis. He barely ate, and his eyes were rimmed with red. He ignored his friends’ attempts to make him smile. Separated from their families, their own spirits were low. They left him to his unseasonal grief.
Adella’s Christmas gift from her parents was a beautiful new pen, and a china ink well. She could barely look at the reminder from her father of her spoiled exam paper. She muttered her thanks, and he rebuked her for not enunciating.
“Thank you Father, Mother. Merry Christmas.”
When they had all eaten and the other children were happily playing, or eating oranges and nuts by the fire, Adella went to the farthest corner of the library. It was so cold that there was mist on the inside of the windows. She tucked her feet up underneath her, and opened her secret book. She had read it so often that she knew it from the first page to the last; she was even a little bored of it. It was her only escape, though. The pages had started to come loose from the binding, and she turned each one carefully. The winter sun sank, and she stuffed the book back into her satchel. They ate dinner in silence; the school was so cold that the mutton was chilly, with fat congealing in the gravy.
I woke up today with a whole book in my head, just ready to fall onto the page. The whole structure, every major character, the signposting, just perfect. I've written over 2000 words today, after over a year of no writing at all. Here goes:
The air in the room was cool and dark. Every surface was bright with polish. The house smelled of beeswax and abrasive cleaning powder, lye and whitewash.
Adella carefully brushed her skirts smooth. She took a slow, deep breath, and ran down the stairs as fast as she dared. Her hard new boots held her feet tight, and slipped on the polished wood. One floor, two. She was close; she might make it; she would! The book was hot in her hand, held tightly. Her cases and trunk were lined up in the hall. They were pristine, the wood scented with beeswax, glossy in the morning sun.
Her nervous fingers fumbled with the catch on her smallest case. She slipped the book inside, and was squeezing it closed when she heard the unmistakeable click of her mother’s footsteps. The catch wouldn’t fit; her book was the last straw. She held one side of the case with her knees, pressed the other side in, one hand desperately pulling the lock closed. Her mother was coming down the stairs; she would be there in a few seconds. The catch clicked shut, and she just had time to line it up to the others.
“Adella. I hope you weren’t fiddling with those cases. Mary has packed the things you need, and I am quite certain she won’t have included any of your silly toys. School is not for luxuries.” She closed her eyes briefly, before glancing up at her mother.
“No, Mother. I was worried this case would be scuffed: you know how the porter carries them. It isn’t, though.” Mother drew herself up, her shoulders rising in their stiff, starched jacket.
“Of course not! I had Mary clean and polish everything before she packed. I would thank you not to second guess the help.” Adella lowered her head, and murmured her agreement.
“Don’t mutter, child.” Outside, the carriage drew up, blocking the daylight from the hall. Adella’s heart sank. That black cloud in the hallway meant another long, cold year at school. Mother raised her eyebrow at Adella’s expression, but before she could pass comment, Father opened the front door. The new manservant and Smith, the butler, took Adella’s trunk, and then her cases, and strapped them to the carriage. It didn’t matter that she could have been practising her Latin, or reading. A woman’s job was to oversee the household staff, and Mother was determined that she should start to play her part, so Adella watched as Smith and the man whose name she had forgotten strapped the cases tightly on. She could not imagine what she might have had to add, but her mother was insistent.
The journey was bleak, and her mother and father stared straight ahead at the patterned walls of the carriage, but Adella rather liked it. The rolling Pennine hills were golden and purple, and here and there grouse still burst from the scrubby fields. It was a cool day, as though summer had arrived at September and immediately relented to autumn, but the sun was golden and the landscape was lush and green. The rain that had trapped them inside through August had left the land wet and gleaming, new and fresh.
When she was little, the bumpy, jolting journey had made Adella sick, but no one had helped her, and she had quickly learned to keep her eyes on the passing land and breathe deeply when the nausea crept up to her. Her father might read paperwork or the London paper on the journey, but she knew she could not.
The sun began to sink, the horizon a line of bright fire against the inky night. The hills disappeared, and they could see only stars and the bright swells of road illuminated by the driver’s lamps. By the time they reached Sheffield, Adella could hardly fight sleep. Her head kept bumping against the cold glass. She wished they would take the train, but her father insisted that they travel together.
They arrived at the school late the next day. The other children had already been delivered by their families or drivers, or collected from the bustling train. They had filled their little cupboards, found their old friends, met and probably intimidated the new children. Adella’s parents spared her a brief word about her behaviour, and left her with matron.
In Adella’s dormitory, the girls had left her a bed at the end of the room. She quietly put away her possessions, and joined the girls in prayer before quickly changing for bed. The room was chilly, and the thick, bristly wool blanket seemed to cloak her in cold. One of the new girls was crying, but no one whispered words of encouragement. Occasionally matron would stand in the doorway, checking for whispered conversation.
In the morning, the school year began. They ate kippers and toast. Adella’s mother and father sat at the high table with the other teachers, frowning down at the children. Adella ate carefully, picking the bones away with her fork. The cavernous room echoed every sound, the scraping of cutlery and murmur of voices. As she always did at the start of the year, she felt a ball of nervous inside. The new children would not know to be quiet enough, and there would be trouble. Her father would whip one of the new boys, and the children would treat her as coolly as though she had issued the punishment herself.
Breakfast passed without anyone drawing her father’s attention, but during lunch a boy kicked a football too close to the windows. Adella could hear his howls from where she sat reading in the corridor. She could not be seen running around; her mother had decided she was old enough to be acting like a young lady, so she held her energy in a tight ball in her stomach, and read. She had two books with her; the book she had thrust inside her case, and a book her father had gifted her over the summer. Her father’s book was a dry, prescriptive explanation of the requirements of running a house. Her own was a novel she had snatched from a pile on her father’s desk.
They had been at the school for three years now. The word in the London papers was that all children would soon be attending daily education. Her father had been determined that Adella would not mix with the local children. Adella had liked the school: the smell of church incense, the pews pushed to the edges. She had had friends, well-mannered girls from good homes, who had enjoyed her incisive wit and unpredictable imagination.
It was like forever to Adella. She had been a girl, laughing with friends and walking home unaccompanied, picking blackberries from hedges and waving to her friends in the village. Her father had started the school as soon as her local school mistress had refused to promise that she would exclude the labourers’ children. The rambling, dark stone building, inherited by a friend of her father’s, was cold all year round. The rolling grounds, where Adella had liked to walk and even hide, were gardens now, and flat gravelly squares for drill lessons.
Adella heard footsteps, and swapped books with skill borne of practise. Her book was the last one from the library’s confiscated books. She had the other book open at a page about managing kitchens when her mother walked past. She was not even acknowledged. Her mother’s skirts swished by, her back ridged, polished black boots clipping on the stone floor. She hid her disappointment, bowing her head into her book. The author was describing how one might encourage a cook to use the freshest eggs for a cake, ensuring an even rise and golden colour. Adella thought that she had not eaten cake in so long she had forgotten the taste.
Winter arrived with sickness. The cold winds seemed to have brought the turbulent hot and cold fever that confined Adella to her bed. Two children were sent away with tuberculosis, coughing bright splotches of blood into their handkerchiefs. Father gave a talk in assembly about the need to keep a watchful eye on one’s peers for sickness, and at lunch a little boy was forced to see matron by his friends because he had coughed.
The school’s little sick room was full of children more ill than her, her mother said. Adella coughed until she thought she might be sick, her stomach cringing at the explosive choking, her muscles aching. She looked up at her mother, remembering with surprise being very small and poorly, and her mother wiping her forehead and singing to her. The mother above her now looked away, embarrassed, as though Adella’s pleading expression was unseemly. Adella, she said, needed to be well before the mayor visited at the end of the month. She would see that matron brought a glass of orange.
“ Mama, please, could I have another blanket?” Mother looked at her with what might almost be sadness. She tucked the rough woollen blanket up to her chin, where it would tickle and rub until Adella pulled it away.
“Please don’t call me that at school, Adella. I will see what matron can do, but there are children much more ill than you, and you must understand that they come first.” The sadness and the pounding in her head, the hot and cold and the loneliness overwhelmed Adella. As her mother walked away, tears slid away down her cheeks and into her hair. She cried and snuffled until she fell asleep, and in the morning there was still salt on her face. She did not have another blanket.
They sat exams before they went home for Christmas. Adella broke a pen nib halfway through mathematics and thought her father might whip her. He had never touched her that she could remember, but his rage at her ink-splattered paper was terrifying. He threw the paper on the desk, his face so red with apoplexy he might burst. She knew everyone had heard him shouting, and she left flushed with shame. She heard the girls in her dorm giggling when they thought she was asleep, and she fought to muffle her tears.
They walked to the village church for the service before Christmas. Their own chapel would be quiet now, closed up and cold, and Adella felt sorry for its friendly-faced virgin and abandoned Christ, alone on his cross while they headed home. The villagers crammed themselves on the front seats so that the children could sit at the back. There was a space reserved on the front pew for Adella’s father, but she and her mother sat at the back with the children and the other teachers. The priest told them endlessly that Christ had been born to die, until the younger children were bored and fidgety. She watched the low sun’s progress through the diamonds of coloured glass, and pretended not to have seen her mother’s glances. When the service was over, the children spilled from the church full of laughter and celebration. They would return home for almost a whole week. Warm homes with fires and gifts and sweets awaited them.
Adella and her family stayed at the school. It was pointless making such a long journey, her father said. Her mother felt that there was so much they could do while the school was quiet. They ate Christmas dinner in silence with the small group of children who could not go home. The twins whose parents were in India. Lila and her little sister, Grace, were to stay here because of the threat of cholera in London. Thomas’ father had succumbed to tuberculosis. He barely ate, and his eyes were rimmed with red. He ignored his friends’ attempts to make him smile. Separated from their families, their own spirits were low. They left him to his unseasonal grief.
Adella’s Christmas gift from her parents was a beautiful new pen, and a china ink well. She could barely look at the reminder from her father of her spoiled exam paper. She muttered her thanks, and he rebuked her for not enunciating.
“Thank you Father, Mother. Merry Christmas.”
When they had all eaten and the other children were happily playing, or eating oranges and nuts by the fire, Adella went to the farthest corner of the library. It was so cold that there was mist on the inside of the windows. She tucked her feet up underneath her, and opened her secret book. She had read it so often that she knew it from the first page to the last; she was even a little bored of it. It was her only escape, though. The pages had started to come loose from the binding, and she turned each one carefully. The winter sun sank, and she stuffed the book back into her satchel. They ate dinner in silence; the school was so cold that the mutton was chilly, with fat congealing in the gravy.