Angela's Bouquet
by Jack O'Donnell
Genre: Romance
Swearwords: None.
Description: Love blossoms across the social divide.
_____________________________________________________________________
No sooner had the serving girl bumped my bedroom door closed with her sharp hip than I could hear her adjusting her feet so that she could balance the breakfast tray and clump slowly down the stairs, chewing like a goat the cold morsels from my tray her cold omnivorous eyes had already selected.
But the mere thought of food seemed to make me want to throw up. And, each morning, before breakfast, I had cause to use the bowl under the bed, which had lain dusty and unused since I was a child. The serving girl used the servant’s toilet, in the basement to empty it. She used the backstairs and returned it to me with a knowing smirk. I sprayed the receptacle with Eau de Cologne and carefully placed it under my bed vowing never to use it again.
Even although the leaves were still on the trees outside, I asked for a fire to be lit in the grate, and stood before it shivering. My clothes needed taking in and even my shoes no longer seemed to fit properly, but the lump around my midriff, seemed to keep growing no matter how tightly I tightened my corsets, no matter how little I ate.
Each weekday was the same. The bell would ring in Eldridge Primary School. The children would fidget and file in two by two, sit down and we’d practice singing out the alphabet phonetically. All the other classes in the same block were doing the same thing, so that for a time the classroom world seemed to be filled with the rise and fall of different letters. Then it would be counting, and the hurry and scurry of playtimes and lunch. The afternoons seemed slower in comparison, as if the day had run out of breath. Slow reading and careful writing bridged the gap until the bell at the end of the day.
Mother would stand waiting for me in the hallway at home.
‘How was your day?’ she would carefully ask, before turning away, not waiting for an answer. I could tell from the set of her mouth whether she wanted to peel my hair back and search for head lice, or accuse me of being the kind of woman that did not want to marry and smoked tobacco.
The latter accusation had come from my refusal to attend the debutant ball. At that time my voice had taken on a mocking determined tone. I had pointed out the stupidity of it all, an attempt to mimic the glamour of the London season, from 150 miles away, in the Town Hall, with the Lord Provost, acting as surrogate royalty. Too late I’d realized that this was the place that mother had met father.
I had tried to make amends, frittering away time with mother, her friends and their hands of cards. Like mother, I was considered to be the local beauty and her group had seen this concession as weakness. A number of mother’s friends’ sons had suddenly began appearing at the front door clutching what seemed like the same set of dead flowers and the same inability to hold a conversation. I worked harder than at any lesson plan to prep myself beforehand about the type of questions one might ask between soup and pudding at The Plaza.
Each beau seemed more unremarkable than the last. One had a bald spot that he carefully tried to cover. Another had a laugh like a kettledrum. Another had one of the most terrible stammers. Between the roast beef and over salted potatoes I inadvertently found myself coaxing him along, like one of my pupils. I might well have seen him again, but at the end of the evening he seemed emboldened and seemed to have grown another hand. He rubbed himself against me outside the front gate of our house so that I retreated further and further until I was almost pushed into the hawthorn hedge. He also pulled and ripped at my bodice so that for a time I felt under siege like our boys at Ypres. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over. He stammered out an apology, but it was too late.
The following morning I tried explaining all this to mother in the dayroom, but she hissed out before I was finished: ‘Angela do you want to make me look stupid and end up an old maid?’
Rather than being angry I felt a strange calmness, as if I was adrift from such events and with it came recognition that although mother had borne me, and brought me up, she did not actually like me; felt threatened by me.
I retreated, of course, so that when mother came into a room I slipped out. As the summer progressed the garden seemed the logical choice. There was only old Tully the gardener for company and I could hide behind The Mill on the Floss whilst sitting dozing. Mother would still make forays into the garden bringing outsize hats from her wardrobe, and white gloves, with dire warnings of the wedding prospects of girls that had gone native with brown skin.
Then old Tully had some kind of stroke and died. It seemed small minded, but with so many gallant young men dying it seemed no great loss. Father, for reasons of continuity, employed young Tully, in the garden, on a part time basis.
There was a great need for coal, for the war effort, so that some suggested that men like Young Tully should be exempt. I did not. As he stood holding his cap I expressed that very sentiment on his first day. His eyes flashed, but he made no comment. He was like one of my pupils. I turned away smiling, resisting the urge to smooth down the unruly bump of the cow’s lick in his hair.
There was quietness about young Tully that he brought to the garden. At first I unnerved him. He would look at me and look away and look again to see if I was watching him. But the heat of the day seemed to loosen him, and the buttons on his shirt, whilst I blended into that part of the earth he could safely ignore. He stayed far beyond the hour old Tully would have and seemed loath to leave whilst there was still daylight.
‘Night miss,’ he finally said putting on his cap and taking it off again to say those few words.
Each night was much the same, but something of his calmness and order seemed to enter into me, so that I began to take an interest in the garden, advising him the best way to get rid of slugs, how best to cut a privet hedge and how to edge the borders.
Young Tully would listen politely and shake his head in agreement, whilst pursing his lips in a half smile and looking the other way. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he would say politely. It was totally infuriating.
I believe it was the third week since young Tully had started working in the garden that I noticed an old woman, making her way up the drive way. She was like a Victorian crow, with her black frock gown spread around her, but she wore the Hessian type hat of a fisher woman, so that it was difficult to tell what her business was.
Gypsies often came to the door, selling clothes pegs and sprigs of heather. Mother would allow them to sit on the back step and instruct the serving girl to give them a cup of tea. But mother rarely bought anything.
The old woman also seemed to be limping. I decided to save her a journey, although I was sure I could arrange a cup of tea. But I was not quite quick enough. Young Tully bounded up and past me. I could see at once, the way they leaned into each other, he knew the old crone. Young Tully seemed to do most of the speaking and there was a lot of head nodding, but finally the old gypsy woman shook her finger, as some kind of dire warning to him and limped away.
‘Whatever did she want?’ I asked.
‘It’s-me-mum,’ said Young Tully, as if it was all one word, shifting one foot to another.
‘There is no need to be ashamed of one’s mother,’ I replied, perhaps too forcibly.
‘I’m not,’ he said, a rumble in his throat, that built up, ‘I’m ashamed of yours.’
I took a step back before replying, ‘Whatever do you mean?’
But he had already taken a step forward and was answering, in way of an apology, before I had even finished asking, ‘Your ma thinks that because your da pays my wages for the mine he shouldn’t have to pay extra for gardening work.’
I did not know what to say. ‘Then why do you keep coming back?’ I finally managed.
With one motion Young Tully had whipped his hat off, stepped forward and shutting his eyes, pecked me on the lips. It was the kind of kiss one might give a great aunt, but a kiss nonetheless.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Love blossoms across the social divide.
_____________________________________________________________________
No sooner had the serving girl bumped my bedroom door closed with her sharp hip than I could hear her adjusting her feet so that she could balance the breakfast tray and clump slowly down the stairs, chewing like a goat the cold morsels from my tray her cold omnivorous eyes had already selected.
But the mere thought of food seemed to make me want to throw up. And, each morning, before breakfast, I had cause to use the bowl under the bed, which had lain dusty and unused since I was a child. The serving girl used the servant’s toilet, in the basement to empty it. She used the backstairs and returned it to me with a knowing smirk. I sprayed the receptacle with Eau de Cologne and carefully placed it under my bed vowing never to use it again.
Even although the leaves were still on the trees outside, I asked for a fire to be lit in the grate, and stood before it shivering. My clothes needed taking in and even my shoes no longer seemed to fit properly, but the lump around my midriff, seemed to keep growing no matter how tightly I tightened my corsets, no matter how little I ate.
Each weekday was the same. The bell would ring in Eldridge Primary School. The children would fidget and file in two by two, sit down and we’d practice singing out the alphabet phonetically. All the other classes in the same block were doing the same thing, so that for a time the classroom world seemed to be filled with the rise and fall of different letters. Then it would be counting, and the hurry and scurry of playtimes and lunch. The afternoons seemed slower in comparison, as if the day had run out of breath. Slow reading and careful writing bridged the gap until the bell at the end of the day.
Mother would stand waiting for me in the hallway at home.
‘How was your day?’ she would carefully ask, before turning away, not waiting for an answer. I could tell from the set of her mouth whether she wanted to peel my hair back and search for head lice, or accuse me of being the kind of woman that did not want to marry and smoked tobacco.
The latter accusation had come from my refusal to attend the debutant ball. At that time my voice had taken on a mocking determined tone. I had pointed out the stupidity of it all, an attempt to mimic the glamour of the London season, from 150 miles away, in the Town Hall, with the Lord Provost, acting as surrogate royalty. Too late I’d realized that this was the place that mother had met father.
I had tried to make amends, frittering away time with mother, her friends and their hands of cards. Like mother, I was considered to be the local beauty and her group had seen this concession as weakness. A number of mother’s friends’ sons had suddenly began appearing at the front door clutching what seemed like the same set of dead flowers and the same inability to hold a conversation. I worked harder than at any lesson plan to prep myself beforehand about the type of questions one might ask between soup and pudding at The Plaza.
Each beau seemed more unremarkable than the last. One had a bald spot that he carefully tried to cover. Another had a laugh like a kettledrum. Another had one of the most terrible stammers. Between the roast beef and over salted potatoes I inadvertently found myself coaxing him along, like one of my pupils. I might well have seen him again, but at the end of the evening he seemed emboldened and seemed to have grown another hand. He rubbed himself against me outside the front gate of our house so that I retreated further and further until I was almost pushed into the hawthorn hedge. He also pulled and ripped at my bodice so that for a time I felt under siege like our boys at Ypres. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over. He stammered out an apology, but it was too late.
The following morning I tried explaining all this to mother in the dayroom, but she hissed out before I was finished: ‘Angela do you want to make me look stupid and end up an old maid?’
Rather than being angry I felt a strange calmness, as if I was adrift from such events and with it came recognition that although mother had borne me, and brought me up, she did not actually like me; felt threatened by me.
I retreated, of course, so that when mother came into a room I slipped out. As the summer progressed the garden seemed the logical choice. There was only old Tully the gardener for company and I could hide behind The Mill on the Floss whilst sitting dozing. Mother would still make forays into the garden bringing outsize hats from her wardrobe, and white gloves, with dire warnings of the wedding prospects of girls that had gone native with brown skin.
Then old Tully had some kind of stroke and died. It seemed small minded, but with so many gallant young men dying it seemed no great loss. Father, for reasons of continuity, employed young Tully, in the garden, on a part time basis.
There was a great need for coal, for the war effort, so that some suggested that men like Young Tully should be exempt. I did not. As he stood holding his cap I expressed that very sentiment on his first day. His eyes flashed, but he made no comment. He was like one of my pupils. I turned away smiling, resisting the urge to smooth down the unruly bump of the cow’s lick in his hair.
There was quietness about young Tully that he brought to the garden. At first I unnerved him. He would look at me and look away and look again to see if I was watching him. But the heat of the day seemed to loosen him, and the buttons on his shirt, whilst I blended into that part of the earth he could safely ignore. He stayed far beyond the hour old Tully would have and seemed loath to leave whilst there was still daylight.
‘Night miss,’ he finally said putting on his cap and taking it off again to say those few words.
Each night was much the same, but something of his calmness and order seemed to enter into me, so that I began to take an interest in the garden, advising him the best way to get rid of slugs, how best to cut a privet hedge and how to edge the borders.
Young Tully would listen politely and shake his head in agreement, whilst pursing his lips in a half smile and looking the other way. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he would say politely. It was totally infuriating.
I believe it was the third week since young Tully had started working in the garden that I noticed an old woman, making her way up the drive way. She was like a Victorian crow, with her black frock gown spread around her, but she wore the Hessian type hat of a fisher woman, so that it was difficult to tell what her business was.
Gypsies often came to the door, selling clothes pegs and sprigs of heather. Mother would allow them to sit on the back step and instruct the serving girl to give them a cup of tea. But mother rarely bought anything.
The old woman also seemed to be limping. I decided to save her a journey, although I was sure I could arrange a cup of tea. But I was not quite quick enough. Young Tully bounded up and past me. I could see at once, the way they leaned into each other, he knew the old crone. Young Tully seemed to do most of the speaking and there was a lot of head nodding, but finally the old gypsy woman shook her finger, as some kind of dire warning to him and limped away.
‘Whatever did she want?’ I asked.
‘It’s-me-mum,’ said Young Tully, as if it was all one word, shifting one foot to another.
‘There is no need to be ashamed of one’s mother,’ I replied, perhaps too forcibly.
‘I’m not,’ he said, a rumble in his throat, that built up, ‘I’m ashamed of yours.’
I took a step back before replying, ‘Whatever do you mean?’
But he had already taken a step forward and was answering, in way of an apology, before I had even finished asking, ‘Your ma thinks that because your da pays my wages for the mine he shouldn’t have to pay extra for gardening work.’
I did not know what to say. ‘Then why do you keep coming back?’ I finally managed.
With one motion Young Tully had whipped his hat off, stepped forward and shutting his eyes, pecked me on the lips. It was the kind of kiss one might give a great aunt, but a kiss nonetheless.
About the Author
Jack O'Donnell was born in Helensburgh and now lives in Clydebank with his partner, Mary. He claims to be fat, balding and middle-aged.
Jack writes for fun and has a blog at http://www.abctales.com/blog/celticman, which he also claims no-one ever reads.
Jack writes for fun and has a blog at http://www.abctales.com/blog/celticman, which he also claims no-one ever reads.