Because of her parents’ special interest in Edna’s well-being, she had always believed that their neglect of herself indicated that there must be something wrong with her. Had she some deficiency in her which they were hiding from her? Something weird which would one day spring out and send her mad – or, at least, make her a useless invalid, like a neighbour’s daughter who had been confined for years to a wheelchair by an attack of infantile paralysis?
This childhood dread, implanted by careless, selfish parents, had fed upon itself until, in her confused, early teenage years, it became an overwhelming terror, which periodically swept over her like some mighty wave whenever she felt threatened.
Frightened themselves by these seizures, her parents had firmly put them down to that popular female complaint, hysteria. It was the height of vulgarity, an effort to draw attention to herself, they said. They had slapped and beaten her at such times, then locked her in her bedroom, until she saw sense, as they put it.
The panic would eventually wear itself out, and, exhausted, she would drag herself out of her bed and knock on her bedroom door to plead tearfully to be let out. She invariably promised that it would not happen again, but, sooner or later, it invariably did.
Now, in adulthood, she had slowly realised that she was probably quite normal. But Church and custom reinforced her parents’ declaration that it was her duty as a good churchwoman and devoted daughter to care for them when they grew old. They had often made it clear to her that she was too stupid to be capable of doing anything else.
Sundry aged aunts and cousins at various times nodded their grey heads sadly over her and agreed that, since she was so plain and lacking in vivacity, she could not hope to marry. It was better she be the companion of her own dear mother than be faced with the horrors of having to earn a living at something dreadful, like being a companion-help in a strange household.
She had been devastated as it slowly dawned on her that she had simply been kept single and poorly educated for Timothy’s and Louise’s own convenience, not because they loved her and wanted to keep her by them. Her plaintive request during the war that, like many other women, she be allowed to nurse was met by a threat from Timothy to leave her penniless; nurses didn’t earn anything, he assured her. With two servants deserting the family in favour of working in ordnance factories, Timothy was not about to allow a useful daughter to desert as well. Such was the class distinction that it never once occurred to Celia that she could do precisely what the servants were doing – earn in a war factory.
Though hopelessly cowed by her parents, she carried under her subservience a terrible bitterness. This week it had been added to by the realisation that, at his death, her father had indeed left her nothing. She was now entirely dependent upon her mother’s whims.
Once she had understood that she was sane and not particularly unhealthy, she had not had a terror attack again. Like many other middle-class women, she sadly accepted that there was no escape from home. As a result of the war, marriage must now, in any case, be discounted – there were barely any men left for pretty girls to marry, never mind plain ones; they had died, like George and Tom, for the sake of their country; their names would be inscribed on one of the new war memorials going up all over a country which was already finding the wounded survivors an expensive nuisance.
‘You can’t marry a name on a war memorial,’ she had complained pitifully to her only woman friend, Phyllis Woodcock, whose husband had proved to be too delicate for call-up.
Phyllis, who was not very enamoured of the married state, muttered agreement. Like Celia, she had been warned in her youth that, for a single woman who left home, there was no way for her to earn a living except by being a governess or, if one was uneducated, face a fate worse than death by joining the crowds of ladies of the evening all over the city. These sinful hussies were there for even the most innocent, honest women to observe, and it was whispered that they died of horrifying diseases. Just what ladies of the evening did to come to such untimely ends, neither Celia nor Phyllis were quite certain, but both of them were sufficiently scared not to want to try it.
Once when he came home on leave, George had told her cheerfully that someone had to keep the home fires burning while the men were away, and this had been a small comfort. The walls of the West Derby house became to her at least some sort of defence against the unknown.
She bowed her head and, with her mother and a group of elderly females, rolled bandages and knitted socks and Balaclava helmets for the troops. Her mother did a lot of organising of sales of work and big balls at the Adelphi Hotel to raise money for the Red Cross, which, for Celia, meant endless writing of letters and running hither and yon on small errands for her mother. She became accustomed to the invisible walls of her prison and to being her mother’s obedient shadow.
Now, however, the sudden crumbling of the relative safety of her imprisoning walls had frightened her so much that panic had set in again; that open gates might lead to greater freedom for her to do something for herself did not occur to her; long-term prisoners do not always try to escape when the opportunity offers – and Celia was no exception.
‘“… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”’
The muttering ceased, and she lay still. If she remained very quiet, she comforted herself, God would give her strength. He had to, because there was nobody but herself to look after Mother until Paul and Edna arrived to help her.
Soon after six o’clock the next morning, young Ethel, sleepy and irritable, clumped into the breakfast room. She swung a heavy coal scuttle into the hearth and followed it with a clanking empty bucket in which to carry downstairs yesterday’s cold ashes from the fireplace. The room was dark, except for a faint glimmer of dawn through a crack between the heavy window curtains.
Suddenly awakened, a bewildered Celia sat up on the chaise longue.
At the sight of her, Ethel screamed and clutched her breast dramatically. ‘Oh, Miss! You give me a proper fright! Haven’t you been to bed?’
Celia swallowed, and pushed back her long tangled fair hair, from which all the hairpins seemed to be missing. She laughed weakly as she swung her feet to the floor. ‘No,’ she told the little fifteen-year-old. ‘I was so tired that I fell asleep here on the sofa.’
Rubbing her hands on her sackcloth apron, Ethel came over to stare at her. She thanked goodness that it was only Miss Celia there, not the Missus. She had not bothered to put on her morning mobcap to cover her own untidy locks, and the Missus would have been furious to see her without a cap.
‘Are you all right, Miss?’
‘Yes, thank you, Ethel. Would you light one of the gaslights? I think it will still be too dark to draw back the curtains.’
‘I were just about to do it, Miss, when I seen you.’ Ethel drew a box of matches out of her pocket, and went to the fireplace. After striking a match, she stood on tiptoe to turn on one of the gaslights above the mahogany mantelpiece.
There was a plop as the gas ignited and the room was flooded with clear white light. Dead match in hand, Ethel turned, for a moment, to stare at her young mistress, before beginning to clear out the ashes. In her opinion, Miss Celia was taking her father’s death proper hard and looked real ill with it.
She began to hurry her cleaning, so that she could return to the kitchen to gossip with Dorothy about it.
Celia sat on the edge of the chaise longue, absently poking around the cushions in search of some of her hairpins, while her eyes adjusted to the bright light.
As she rose unsteadily to her feet, she noticed the silver card plate from the hall lying on the table in the centre of the room. It held a number of visiting cards. Dorothy must have brought it in the previous evening, and it had lain neglected because of Louise’s collapse. Now Celia quickly sifted through the cards.
They