Anonymous

Caroline

CHAPTER ONE

When I was a child I thought of such lanes as led towards our house, or crossed the countryside around, as ways out of the world into another world. At night I conceived of huge doors closing at the ends of them, of carriages, carts, and hawkers' barrows waiting for the dawn that they might open up again.

Children entertain such mysteries. I have often thought that the world is more real in childhood than obtains when we are older, for in growing older we cloak the world in thought and make it other than it is. A child will say “I,” and yet it merges its identity with others and so better enjoys the fruitfulness of all. Upon reaching one's middling years, or long before, there comes a consciousness of conflict in oneself. One wishes to be others and yet not, and is in the very centre of a tug-of-war. So often does one hear another say, “I am not myself today,” or they may say, “I do not like myself-oh, would that I could change!” or again (and most often in the case of women), “Tomorrow I shall be different; I shall be more myself; I shall be better than I am today.”

I-older now-am both myself and yet another whom I do not know. I have gazed at my reflection in mirrors- many mirrors and in different rooms-and wondered at the being who stared back at me and to whom my only relationship, as I felt, was one of wonderment, a sense of being awkwardly disturbed that I had materialised in quite another guise to what I thought, looked how I did not think I looked, hair tousled where I thought it smooth, an alarm of creases faint upon my brow.

Once, in moment of exquisite terror-such terror as is flavoured by the condiments of deep excitement and a quivering in the very soul-I stood before a mirror in my mother's room, which mirror being on a stand allowed a full length view, and asked myself, “Who am I, then?” So piercing is the question to oneself that my toes curled painfully and I could not bear to meet the blank reflection of my eyes.

Had my mother entered her boudoir then, I believe I might have run to her, though being seventeen I was too old for cuddles. Even so, there were brief occasions when, seemingly for no reason whatever, she would suddenly hug me to her and I would be conscious of the largeness of her breasts and the sweet, melting look in her eyes.

I was more about the house than my father who, when he was not in London on business, would do much shooting and riding. I did not care much for this, but my sisters, Adelaide and Bertha, did and would ride on white stallions which he preferred them to have instead of mares. I knew not why. He taught them to take horse as men do with the saddle in between their legs, my mother objecting and saying it was most unladylike and that she feared our neighbours would see. Often enough in Spring and Summer the three would ride out together after breakfast, not returning until lunchtime, flushed and bright.

Mother would not allow them to take lunch until they had bathed, which they did together to save water and to be quick while father strode about, smoked a cigar and snapped his crop against his legs. I thought my mother of an ill mood at such times, but later I better understood. Bertha was twenty and a strapping girl, rich in her curves and with a sultry lower lip. Adelaide, two years younger, but senior to me by eighteen months, was much the quieter of the pair and slimmer but well-formed. Their splashing together in the bath reminded me always of the sea-sound and the waves that lap upon the beach. They would laugh and splash each other. Mother would call out to them to be quiet. They heeded her, but then would start again. Mother would sigh and say, “I know no end to it.”

Father would take his paper up and read and not reply to her. I thought it rude of him, but adults then were a whole world apart.

Bertha married at the age of twenty-one-not to the pleasure of Papa. He birched her when he heard of her intent, but she grew the more rebellious. Several times at night I heard him go into her room and heard the silky swishing of the birch and Berthas cries. Mama would disappear and lock her door when such occurred, sometimes with Adelaide and sometimes not. My younger sister objected and would sometimes have herself let out and take herself, not speaking, to the morning room until Bertha's cries grew softer. Then would a silence fall that seemed both fearsome and awesome to me. After Papa at last emerged, Bertha would go to bed and no one would speak to her until the morning. Even then, Mama was still put out with her, though not on account of her intended betrothal, so I felt.

Adelaide took a suitor not long after. “A weed of a man,” I heard Papa call him-speaking to Mama. He did not birch her, though, and still they took their rides together. When Bertha visited, Papa would not receive her husband but would speak with her only in his room where she would stay for half an hour or so and come down all a-bubble, for her birching days were done.