A Pearl for My Mistress

A look of concern flickered over Lady Lucy’s face, as if a twitch of some invisible flame sent shadows across it.

‘Is there some kind of trouble?’ she asked cautiously. ‘I … I happen to know a little about the situation in this region.’

‘The situation in this region’ – the Earl’s daughter couldn’t have put it more delicately. Hester was used to hearing much less tactful words. The newspaper headlines were, perhaps, a little too dramatic: ‘Places without a future: where industry is dead’. But the situation Lady Lucy was referring to definitely existed; Hester would have to be deaf and blind to argue with that.

Of course, it hadn’t touched her family yet. It couldn’t touch her family. After all, they were always so industrious, so secure, so respectable. Their doorstep was always whitened, and their kitchen range was always blackened. They had a meat joint every Sunday. They even had a piano. Their father hardly ever visited a pub. Their mother took in other people’s laundry to earn some extra money – she used to be a hotel laundress before the marriage, but, of course, no one would retain a married woman at their workplace.

Nevertheless, the spectre of hunger seemed to hover over every doorstep. Even if it was a doorstep scrubbed white.

‘Everything is fine, my lady,’ Hester finally said. ‘You shouldn’t worry about it. My father has a good job at the shipyard …’

‘Aren’t the shipyards among the places worst hit?’

So she knew that, too.

‘They are, yes,’ Hester admitted. ‘But he did retain his job. They are working on one of those giant Cunard liners now.’

Lady Lucy’s face was still tense with concern.

‘I know about these problems,’ she said quietly. ‘About whole families living on the dole. About the Hunger Marches. About youths, walking along railway tracks for hundreds of miles to find some kind of work. And, if you ask my opinion, it is a disgrace to the country.’

Hester couldn’t help but sigh. She didn’t think about these problems in such grand terms; but, come to think of it, there was scarcely a better word.

‘But everything will change soon,’ Lady Lucy continued. ‘Believe me.’

‘It will?’ Hester’s voice must have sounded more sceptical than would be polite.

‘It will. And those responsible for it will answer.’

There was a new, steely conviction in her tone. And, looking at her lady’s smile, Hester felt something like a stir of pity for those responsible.

‘Well, we all hope for the best,’ was all she managed to say.

The sight of Lady Lucy’s frozen, naked hands was still unbearable. Hester reached out and touched her palm; the cold almost burned her.

‘My lady, your hands are icy. If you aren’t writing anything now, I think it’s better to put your gloves on …’

‘Yes, of course.’ Lady Lucy nodded, but didn’t move.

Her hand could have been made of marble.

‘You have such warm fingers,’ Lucy murmured, her voice clear in the snowy silence that surrounded them.

Hester barely dared to stir. It was akin to holding a fragile bird in her hand.

Indeed, she barely dared to breathe, as if too great a sound, too brash a movement, could upset some precarious balance and get the universe falling down on their heads.

But she couldn’t resist moving her fingertips just a little, tracing the outline of the scar, as if a careful enough touch could somehow smooth it over.

Several moments passed, laden with the unbearable sense of precarious wonder.

‘Forgive my curiosity …’ she whispered, ‘but …’

‘Where did I get this scar?’ Lady Lucy’s voice was lower and softer than ever. ‘You are forgiven. I can tell you, if you want. But you must promise me one thing first.’

‘Anything,’ Hester said before she could even think about the regular, sensible ‘Yes.’

‘Promise me that you will not call me wicked.’

Hester stared at her. ‘I’d never!’

‘Or wild.’

‘Of course!’

‘Or stubborn.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, you would.’ Lady Lucy pressed her finger against Hester’s lips in a gesture of mock sincerity. ‘Consider these words to be under embargo.’

Hester resisted the temptation to lick her lips now, to taste the faint imprint of this exquisite, marble cold.

‘Yes,’ she managed to say.

‘Very well. It was a burn.’

That was clearly a mere preamble. Hester tried not to let her gaze linger on her lady’s fingertips or think of the wintry tenderness of their touch, before prompting: ‘What kind of burn?’

‘A silly one, really. I touched a fireplace grate. Accidentally, of course. I only wanted to retrieve the letters.’

Hester’s head was starting to swim. ‘The letters?’

‘Yes. My cousin’s letters.’

‘Did they end up in the fireplace by accident?’

‘Oh, no,’ Lady Lucy assured her. ‘It was very much deliberate. My mother threw them there. Those letters she could find, that is. But she managed to uncover most of them. The search was quite thorough.’

The meaning of these words didn’t sink in instantly; and when it did, Hester froze.

‘I was careless, of course,’ Lady Lucy continued, her voice now tinted with old scorn. ‘I shouldn’t have left that letter in the library. You see, Blake, I was under a naive impression that my dear mother would never stoop low enough to read other people’s correspondence. After all, wasn’t she raising me to be a paragon of good manners? But, as I’ve found out, she didn’t apply these same rules to herself – at least, when it came to those who couldn’t answer.’

Hester didn’t dare to say anything more, but Lucy needed no encouragement.

‘I’ve never told you about my cousin. What should I say? His name was Albert. He was older, than me – two years older, I think. He studied at Harrow back then, and we can safely say he was very unhappy about it. He hated the cold, hated the discipline, hated the sport. He wasn’t any good at it, either. Weak and pale, just like me; a lover of poetry, just like me.

‘Can you imagine – he tried to teach me Latin by correspondence! I wasn’t tutored in Latin myself, of course. Or in rhetoric. Or in anything much else. He tried to help me with all possible sincerity; he transcribed for me every interesting thing he heard at school.