Little Sister
Prologue
~A change was coming. I could feel it. In every morning, every restless night, I could feel the change calling out to me. It wasn’t like the change people sing about in musicals. I’d seen West Side Story five times with my friends whenever the local Odeon played it, and it wasn’t like when Tony sings ‘Something’s Coming.’ It was the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down over a vast landscape that stretches forever: a well of bubbling fear in my stomach from balancing on my tiptoes on a crumbling precipice… but also a sense of beauty, of awe, of sparking excitement at the prospect of a new life. The only question was: could I leap into the unknown? Or would she stay where I was, safe and cautious, but forever wondering what my life would look like if I took that jump. ~
Chapter One
“Beatrice!” Mother called from downstairs, putting on her delicate lace gloves and straightening her fancy Sunday Best hat, admiring herself in the mirror.
“Yes, Mother?” I replied, popping my head out from behind the door of my bedroom.
“Don’t you ‘yes, Mother’ me. I’ve been calling you for half an hour, we’re going to be late for church. Your brother and sister have been ready for hours while you were lazing in bed. Honestly Beatrice, sometimes, I don’t even know what to do with you…”
Mother’s voice trailed off into the background as I slowly peeled off into my bedroom, firmly closing the door behind. I couldn’t think of anything I’d less like to be doing than church – I wished I could take advantage of the empty house and get in an hour’s practice on my guitar (something I could rarely do with a full house; Mother always complained about the noise and my siblings would sit outside the door and laugh at my playing), but Mother would never let me stay at home by myself. It was all part of her plan to train her up to be a good, God-fairing Christian girl that would one day find a nice husband and settle down in an upper-class house in the country with seven bedrooms, six bathrooms and a greenhouse. But somehow I knew this future was not going to be mine. I knew times were changing, I’d heard about the sexual revolution and Women’s Lib and a host of other movements that I so badly wanted to be a part of – but the change never seemed to happen to me.
Oh, well. May as well go to church in the meantime.
I was already dressed in one of my favourite flowery dresses, with white tights and buckled sandals (I had to endure the fashion torture of wearing flats, my mother really would hit the roof if I showed up at church wearing heels), so all that was needed was to run a comb through my blonde waves and dash downstairs.
“Finally,” Mother sighed sarcastically as I jumped down the last couple of stairs and landed with a flourish at the bottom. “Honestly Beatrice, you are so awful at timekeeping, and- honestly, this dress is far too short,” she snapped, tugging at the hem.
“Stop it, Mother,” I flapped her off, embarrassed by her protectiveness and terrified she’d rip it.
“I’ll allow it for today, seeing as we’re late already. But mind you wear something decent next weekend. You can’t afford getting a reputation. Now, William, Charlotte, shall we go?” She held out her hands to my two younger siblings who clung to her like blonde monkeys. The three of them marched ahead down the lane, while I slunk behind.
I hated still living with my family. When I was eighteen I’d wished more than anything to go off to university and study English or Music or Philosophy, and for once feel in control of my own life. But Mother firmly believed that a woman’s place was that of a wife, a mother, not an academic or a singer. So here I was, nineteen years old, stuck in a huge lonely old house in the English countryside like it was 1875. But it was 1975 and the air crackled with possibility. Part of me still believed that I’d escape one day and be free… all I needed was some courage.
The service dragged on. The vicar droned for what seemed like hours about a Higher Power and Lord Eternal and Omnipotence. I’d been going to church all my life but the words squiggled round my brain like moths, never leaving an impact. It didn’t make any sense to me. But church to me was just another chore to endure to make my mother happy. Soon, I told myself, I’d be rid of it. Soon, when I had my own life. Soon.
Finally, it was over, and we were released into the dusty July morning. It was swelteringly hot in the church, and I closed my eyes and breathed in the sweet air, letting the breeze dance on my face and tickle the ends of my hair.
“We’ve got to hurry home, children. We’ve got a new gardener arriving in an hour and I need to greet them and tell them what I want done.” Mother twittered up the lane, smiling and waving her fingers at her equally vacuous socialite friends. I took little interest in what she was saying, we had a string of gardeners and maids and cooks and God knows what else that lived in our house, but I rarely talked to them or had any contact with them. So I took my siblings’ hands and swung them fast up and down, until they were both red in the face from giddy laughter and I had brightened up my gloomy mood a little.