Apologies to those that have noticed that I described this as being set in the Victorian era when that ended with Victoria's death in 1901 so this is actually set in the Edwardian era! However, I felt that readers would have a firmer grasp of how Victorian England might look and feel like compared to its successor. That's my excuse anyway.
I have corrected some typos and made some small edits to things that I felt were a little clumsy. I'm delighted that so many people have read and enjoyed this story, which literally fell out of my head over the space of about four days. For those that didn't enjoy it, I wish you would say why!
As ever, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Constructive criticism is very welcome.
I know Alfred and Letty and Alice think I am a vessel of limitless capacity. I am flattered by their confidence, but I am still just a woman, delighted in the fact that I exist at all under the infinite vault of the sky. And I have learned that life is strange. One of the books in the Reverend's library has some lines in it that affected me deeply and have stayed with me to this day. They talk about time as a river, how it always flows yet always looks the same and - and this was the notion that touched me - one cannot paddle in the same waters twice. But I digress. My story starts at a much simpler time and place.
As I look back on those innocent golden days, I marvel that almost before a decade had passed, so many of the local young men would end up as names on a stone tablet in our church, others broken in body or mind or both. A way of life gone forever, swallowed up by the Great War, and the river of Time.
However, this memoir is not about the aftermath ...
***
The Reverend Fellowes died shortly after Easter 1905. There was no lingering illness nor sudden fever, he went to bed one night and did not wake up in the morning. It appeared that he had been granted a peaceful passage to whatever comes next.
His replacement, the Reverend Adams came along about six weeks later. Formerly at a poor parish in London, his bishop had decided that he should see out his time somewhere less stressful.
The new Reverend was a kindly man in his mid-forties with silver hair and a twinkle in his eye. He was well liked by all and quickly settled into his new location, often remarking that the parochial house was a great deal nicer than his previous lodgings and rather grand for a humble man of the cloth. However, he seemed in no great hurry to give it up.
The great surprise was Mrs Adams who must have been less than half his age. A pretty young thing with the bluest eyes, auburn hair streaked with chestnut and amber in the summer sun, a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a lively restless personality. Quite why she was wedded to this older man was a source of considerable speculation, some of it quite lewd when the men had had a bit to drink. I was pleased that Alfred did not indulge in such things but then, being a foreman, he had a certain standing to uphold.
Alfred is my husband of six years. We have two strong and healthy children, Alfie and Daisy. Alfie was swelling my belly before I walked up the aisle, but such things were not uncommon, and we weren't getting wedded because of it so nothing was said.
Alfred was and is a good man, kind and supportive and some of what I will relate will seem heartless, but nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, although he came back from the War with a streak of melancholy, I believe that these events helped him through his darkness.
***
I became friends with Letty Adams after our eyes met during one of her husband's sermons. He may have been kindly, but he took his calling seriously and tended to wax at length from the pulpit.
Anyway, her eyes widened fractionally, and I had to pretend to cough into my sleeve to cover up my involuntary snort of laughter. Afterwards she came up to me to apologise, although the way her eyes danced, I didn't think she was sorry at all.
We became firm friends and were frequently to be found in each other's company. We were in and out of each other's houses, though hers was far grander than mine. At the Adamses, when the children were younger, I'd have to leave them with Alfred or one of my neighbours if the weather wasn't good because they couldn't be trusted inside the vicarage.
The parochial house was a rather grand affair. Inside it was all dark wood and polished brass. They had a housekeeper, a cook, a gardener, and a maid. The housekeeper was Mrs Spencer, a small, neat woman of an age with the Reverend and briskly efficient. On Thursday afternoons she would take herself off to Staughton to visit her sister.
Cook was Mrs Cooper, a sullen woman given to much muttering about the sorry state of affairs in which she found herself. Charlie Perkins - or 'Perks' - took care of the gardens and was known to be partial to a bottle of cider of an afternoon in the potting shed.
Lastly was the maid, Alice Lively, who more than lived up to her name. Now for all that the three of us were of very different standing, we were little different in age. I was four and twenty, Letty two years my junior and Alice a further two years younger than that. Consequently, we were often involved in each other's exploits which would inevitably lead to Mrs Spencer giving Alice a telling off, and me and Letty a look that left us in no doubt that Letty was too flighty for her station and as the eldest I should know better.
***
1905 turned into 1906 and then into 1907 but still there were no little Adamses and Letty started to attract sympathetic glances from the matrons of the parish. Letty herself was blithely unconcerned.
"I am in no great hurry to be a mother, Sarah. Whatever happens t'will be the Lord's will," and we burst into giggles, so perfectly had she captured her husband's pious intonation.
There was one other thing that happened in that year. One spring afternoon I made my way to the vicarage and it being a Thursday Mrs Spencer was out. No one answered a ring of the doorbell, so I went round to the back door. In the distance I could hear snores coming from the potting shed, so Perks was obviously on his break. I let myself in to find the kitchen empty and quiet, from which I concluded that Mrs Cooper had gone to market.
I heard a noise from elsewhere in the house and decided that
someone
had to be in and went in search of them. Now, the vicarage was an imposing sort of a place and the doors in the main part of the house were big and heavy and couldn't be just cast aside, at least not by the likes of me. As soon as the door opened a crack, I heard a sort of muffled gasp, and I stuck my head through the gap to find Letty and Alice standing about a yard apart. They were both a bit flushed, and I wondered what on earth they could have been doing.
Letty clapped her hands. "Sarah! Lovely to see you! Alice, would you get us some tea?"
She spoke too high and too fast.
"Yes'm." Alice ducked her head and scurried past me, her eyes fixed on the floor and her cheeks burning scarlet. While the girl didn't have much in the way of a uniform, I could have sworn that it was a little more dishevelled than usual. Mrs Spencer was always pulling her up on it.
"Is Alice alright?" I asked.
"Yes, fine," Letty answered hurriedly. "Are you going to help me with the flower arranging?"
"Yes, of course," I replied, and thought no more upon it.
***
Then, a few weeks later I again happened to be at the vicarage, and I came to understand things a great deal better. Letty was in the kitchen discussing dinner plans with Mrs Cooper. It again being a Thursday, Mrs Spencer was away in Staughton, and the Reverend was busy among his flock. I stood in the main hall and wondered at how quiet it was. A house like this should be full of people and to be perfectly honest, if it wasn't for their station, Letty and the Reverend hardly needed a staff of four to serve their needs. Letty had shown me round the house, and I marvelled at the number of rooms that were closed up, the furniture shrouded in dustsheets.
I shook my head and made for the library. It was our favourite place when Reverend Adams was out. It smelled of polish and leather and paper and was a treasure house for someone lucky enough to have their letters like me. I idly strolled around the shelves trailing my fingertips across the spines. How could any one man
own
so many books, let along read them in one lifetime? I knew the Reverend hadn't, they'd come with the house. In fact, the Adamses had arrived with little but a trunk between them.
I paused by the window, looking out at the garden bathed in sunshine. I didn't resent Letty's fortune; Alfred was a good husband and father; my children were strong and healthy, and I too had my health, childbirth had not been a problem for me. The country was at peace, we had somehow managed to avoid the drought in '05 and the flooding earlier this year. My neighbours crossed themselves, but I wasn't much of a believer. 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may' was a line I'd found in a book of poems, and I'd felt a profound sense of kinship.
My fingertips were still resting on a book on the shelf, and I turned to see what I'd happened on. It was a slim volume with tiny gold lettering on the spine. I couldn't make them out, so I extracted the volume and gazed with some astonishment at the title.
"Perversions: A Guide."
it proclaimed. I confess I was baffled. What was a perversion when it was at home? Well, dear reader, I opened it and found out for myself.
