LITMIR.BIZ

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      More to the point, who was this girl to judge? From what I’d seen of her own clothes, they were plain and well used, handed down, even if she wore them as if they were something special, with cuffs turned back, buttons unfastened. In fact, she was plain herself, not that you’d know it from the way she walked around with that glittering half-smile. She walked tall despite her lack of stature. Purposefully, too, her pace measured. Like an adult. None of our scampering or dawdling. She was thin-lipped and big-nosed; her eyes were small and grey, her hair not Tudorgold but bronze. She wasn’t a patch on any of us, I didn’t think, with perhaps - if I was honest - the exception of double-chinned Alice. This colourless little new girl was nothing special but she acted as if she were. Polly would’ve put her in her place but she’d gone, having left us at Christmas to be married.

      Later that morning, on our way into Hall for dinner, the new girl’s eyes trailed the imposing figure of Mr Wolfe, the caterer, and - again - to no one in particular, matter-of-fact, she remarked, ‘That one looks a lot like one of my sister’s ex-lovers.’ This time, no one responded. Little Maggie bit her lip. That one was a disturbingly casual way to refer to Mr Wolfe, who held considerable respect in the household. And lover? Not a word we used, probably not a word we’d ever heard. Ex-, too, which made clear that there’d been others. And, anyway, even to think of our respectable - indeed, married - Mr Wolfe in that way…

      When we were leaving Hall, though, and passed Jay-jay, one of the page boys, just as he spat copiously on to the cobblestones, Katherine muttered, ‘You’re nice,’ for us to hear but for him to fail to catch, and it was this snipe of hers - pointless but pointed - that had us smiling among ourselves. The page boys were a wily trio and we’d never have admitted it but we were in awe of them, so it was good, for once, to feel superior.

      Sewing, that afternoon, Katherine had barely clapped eyes on Mrs Scully’s stepdaughter before coming up with ‘Oddbod’, and nothing could’ve been more apt. Skin and bone, with birthmark-red hair and venous-blue eyes, Trudie was a girl of sudden revelations: a moth from the palm of her hand, a milk-tooth dredged from her pocket, a shrew’s skeleton shrouded in her handkerchief. ‘Oddbod,’ decreed Katherine, her tone neutral, just as it was safe to do so, just as Trudie flitted away over the threshold ahead of her stepmother, and in that instant, it was done: Trudie became - affectionately, and only among us - Oddbod. As for Mrs Scully herself: later that afternoon, having asked us to fetch cheeses for the Lady’s Day supper and rushing into the dairy to supervise us, she slipped but managed to correct it before it had properly happened, perhaps even before she’d consciously registered it. Respectfully averting my gaze, I came up against Katherine’s, which showed no such compunction. That evening, Katherine relayed a message to me with, ‘“Skid” Scully’s asking for you,’ and by bedtime, Mrs Scully was, to all of us, without discussion, as if she had never been anything else, simply ‘Skid’.

      Despite myself, I began listening for Katherine’s asides, anticipating them. We all did. Desultory though they were, they drew us in, they drew us to her in our efforts to catch them. I don’t think it had ever occurred to us to pass judgement on anyone, but in the new girl’s eyes everyone was fair game. I saw how adults took the light in those eyes as evidence of keenness and interest. Little did they know she was on the lookout, and that the smallest detail was up for comment: for speculation, or dismissal, or ridicule. The smaller, the better: the bigger the prize. People’s appearance, their behaviour, their relationships, and what she saw - accurately - as their pretensions. Sometimes she was cutting, unkind, petty; sometimes, droll; often intriguing. Of the duchess’s maid, Mrs Barber: She needs one, and a single tap of a fingertip to her top lip (which, later, had me surreptitiously and anxiously dabbing my fingertip to my own). Of Mr Wolfe and his wife: No love lost there, bet the last time they did it was their wedding night. Did what? Danced together? Of the bad-tempered farrier’s wife, sometimes: Probably due her monthly. Monthly what? Confession? Of our chaplains, whispered in their wake: a flat-eyed, derisory, God loves you, Fathers, for which, I worried, we’d all be struck down.

      I began catching myself thinking in asides, but mine were merely reflex, nothing but tics: Nice one, Mr Scully; Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs Barber; Is that really necessary, Mr Wolfe? With the exception of Mary, who could never reign herself in, we girls began talking together in asides, too - our girlish exuberance dampened down. Within a week, we’d become watchers, turning self-conscious, guarded, judgemental. What had happened to the ready smile that my mother had insisted was so important? What had happened to Be respectful?

      And still none of the adults seemed to notice; on the contrary, they regarded Katherine as the very model of diligence. Something to do with how high she held her head, perhaps; her meeting of their eyes with her own, and the confident half-smile. She hoodwinked everyone. See that it’s done, please, Katherine: they were addressing everything to her, as if she were in charge of us. And thus she became so. Certainly my friends seemed to concur: there was a seriousness to their gathering around her, a respect in it - even from Mary, sometimes, in the early days - as if something important were to be gleaned from her very presence.

      One morning, heading along the gallery towards the household office with a letter to my mother, I glanced down through a linen-screened window to see my friends following Katherine across the courtyard. Not that she was actually leading them, nor even walking in front of them: her pace was too stately for that, her swaying hips partnered by her swirling of a lavender head by its long stem. She was in the middle of them and it was Alice who was ahead, although turned around and pacing backwards. Still, I knew that whatever they were doing had been Katherine’s idea - perhaps a casually thrown Let’s go to the gardens - and even from a distance, and through that thick cloth, my friends’ readiness was palpable. To my mind, everyone was being taken in, as I might so easily have been when I’d first set eyes on her. What pained me particularly was that Dottie was falling for those superior-sounding asides. I could understand it of Maggie, because she was young and thereby could be said to be impressionable, although actually she wasn’t; and Alice because, as far as I could tell, despite her seriousness she was - frankly - empty-headed; and, well, anything could be expected of Mary. But Dottie: I was angry at Katherine for taking advantage of Dottie’s readiness, and disappointed with Dottie for being naïve. For no reason that I could fathom, I’d expected more of Dottie. I, alone, was standing my ground. My mother was wrong again, and this time spectacularly so: Be the girl who warms hearts. Well, despite her cold eyes and cutting comments, it was Katherine whom everyone wanted.

      My mother had claimed that character was what distinguished a girl: she’d said not to pay attention to mere appearances. Yet Katherine did and everyone was in thrall to it. Each day, there was something different in how she dressed, so minor as to escape notice and censor by busy adults but for that reason looming large in our little world. A plaited ribbon slung around her wrist. Her sleeves rolled back as if she’d just finished doing something, which she hadn’t. Her hood worn further and further back, and a loose knot in its veil which could’ve been there by mistake except that she didn’t make mistakes. For me, it rankled: she’d given thought to how she dressed, as if it mattered, when - I knew, I just knew - that it didn’t. Because how could it? Clothes were just cloth. Yet we looked for them, found ourselves looking for them, these additions and adaptations: I saw my friends sneaking looks, even as I did. Her own studied lack of regard, by contrast, implied they were nothing much, a momentary diversion: it was we who were in thrall to them, said her indifference, not she. Even noticing them - let alone commenting on them — should be beneath us, said that indifference of hers. So, we were reduced to a surreptitious keeping track of them, which was how they established their hold.

      One morning, Dottie fixed a band of red cloth across her forehead, under the front of her hood, covering the parted hair that would usually be visible. She looked lovely - but, then, she always did; she didn’t need a piece of cloth to make her so. Presumably she’d taken it from the basket of scraps. It was what Katherine had done earlier in the week - hers had been black satin - but Dottie wasn’t wearing hers with Katherine’s insouciance. Instead, adjusting her hood, she shone with shy pride. Seeing this, my heart sank in anticipation of her exposure, and sure enough: ‘What’s that?’ asked Katherine, as we left for the duchess’s closet.

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