A Pearl for My Mistress

There is nothing to be surprised about, then. Nothing to worry about.

That was what Hester was telling herself, when her glance fell on the tiny printed words beneath the grand title.

Editor: A. K. Chesterton.

I know this name.

Of course, her inner voice reasoned. It’s just like the writer. The mysteries you used to borrow all the time, remember?

No, no, that was something else.

She must have heard it …

Yes.

She remembered the moment now; it was tinted with her own curiosity and marvel at the power of the machine.

Could it be a coincidence?

What do you think? The inner voice again, impatient. How many editors called Chesterton are there in this country?

Probably not many, Hester conceded.

I absolutely had to find these numbers.

What kind of numbers could Lady Lucy have needed for her usual articles? The number of guests at a costume party …?

Everything will change soon, Blake.

And those responsible for it will answer.

It was no empty consolation, then. It was a sincere promise.

Suddenly, Hester felt very cold.

So, her lady wasn’t merely a curious observer. She was one of the acolytes.

Why do you think it so strange? You know next to nothing about the Blackshirts. Lady Lucy is a reasonable person; surely she wouldn’t have supported them without good reasons?

Perhaps their aims were noble, even if they looked a little disconcerting. Perhaps.

And still, Hester couldn’t get rid of a tight, unpleasant feeling forming in her chest.

Apprehension. Resentment. Bitterness.

She didn’t even tell me! The bitterness in her wept, unpleasant and irrational and strong. She didn’t even tell me.

Why should she have? her mind asked in return. You are her maid.

***

Lucy Fitzmartin lay in the darkness, feeling absolutely no inclination to sleep. Her mind was ablaze with stories, with thoughts, with possibilities. She could feel the spectres of a thousand plots at her fingertips. Words flared up in her head, colliding and intertwining with one another, forming sentences and paragraphs of the stories yet to be written.

Now she had someone to read them.

What was it about Hester that made her open up like a flower, vulnerable as an overexcited child? She would have never showed these scribbles to any of the Bright Young Things she met last year – not even to Nora Palmer, sweet though she was.

Guarding her words like a poisonous medicine, remembering every favour and dissecting every gesture; it all felt as natural to Lucy as a corset must have felt to her grandmother. With Hester, that was different. Why? Was it because she was safe? A servant girl, a half-invisible creature? No, hardly. Lucy knew better than most just how painfully these seemingly harmless creatures could stab you.

Something else, then. What? Her gentleness? The spirited ring in her voice when she defended these – what was it? – landscapes of Northern counties?

Lucy found herself smiling, absent-mindedly and happily.

Well, even her grandmother must have taken her corset off sometimes.

In less than two months, they would finally be away for the Season. Lucy couldn’t wait to show her new confidante all the wonders of the ancient capital. She was also impatient to return there herself, to find herself once again at the magnificent heart of the Empire – a dying, withering Empire, but an Empire nonetheless. At the place where everything important happened. At the place where all the vital decisions were made.

She would meet, once again, her comrades-in-arms. She would shake Mr Chesterton’s hand. She would hear Sir Oswald speaking.

Her introduction to the movement was almost as accidental as her introduction to the Society journalism. Lucy fulfilled the promise, given to herself that sunny afternoon in the restaurant of Claridge’s hotel. She set out to find out everything she could about Oswald Mosley and his supporters.

Initially, she was prepared for something laughable – something like Sanderson’s English Mistery that proposed to re-institute feudalism in Britain and condemned pasteurised milk as a cause of physical degeneracy. She was prepared to join in the hearty ridicule, to participate, at last, in her companions’ witty banter about these thugs.

Lucy was glad to have an aim, even such a petty aim. She gulped down all the information she could find as hungrily as she used to gulp down old novels or her cousin’s textbooks. Newspapers and pamphlets, brochures and weighty political tomes.

Yes, it felt good to have an aim.

But the things she found out didn’t make her laugh. In fact, they didn’t even make her smile. To be extremely precise, they made her freeze in horror.

Sir Oswald’s aims were very, very far from laughable. And the more she learnt about the problems he proposed to combat – in other words, the more she learnt about how things really were – disbelief and horror slowly turned into anger.

She could guess, of course, that the country wasn’t exactly in its halcyon age. Even in the careful isolation of the debutantes’ society, she caught some offhand remarks, some weary sighs about the inept government officials, some distant fears of a Communist invasion. Nothing you should concern your pretty head with, darling. Better think about the upcoming dinner at the Astors’.

Surely nothing to be concerned about. It was just her country crumbling around her. Nothing to worry her pretty head about. Better to sit in her doll’s house and write about other doll’s houses, before the hurricane comes and tears them all to shreds.

She learnt more and more, eagerness mixing with fear, about the closed shipyards and silent factories. She learnt about the towns, counties, regions quietly going mad with desperation. She learnt about the ‘children of the Empire,’ given up by starving families and sent to the colonial farms as cheap labour.

These tragedies didn’t play out in some far-flung land; they were only a couple of steps, perhaps a short trip away. And yet, here she was, insulated in petty Society dramas.

And the government officials, it seemed, were just as unwilling to touch these problems as any debutante on a golden chair would be.

Of course, she wasn’t supposed to think about such things, much less bring them into a discussion. For a lady to mention such an interest in a conversation with an eligible young man was a disaster in the eyes of any mother.

Today’s gentlemen are quite superficial and airheaded, they said; one could even go so far as to say they tend to be quite brainless. We cannot change that. Therefore, you will have to make every effort to hide any intelligence you possess. Imagine how the poor boys might be scared otherwise! And you don’t want to scare them off, do you? Talk about weather, ghosts, and the royal family. One cannot go wrong with these topics.

She couldn’t share her fears and thoughts with anyone of her acquaintance; she couldn’t let out the words, screaming in her mind.

Fine.