Promise Me This (27 page)

For the second year Annie spent the morning of Owen’s July birthday visiting his grave in Bunhill Fields. The gathered seeds she’d planted in the early spring had taken root and blossomed, as blue, if not as full, as those on her parents’ graves. Annie circled Owen’s plot, gently pinching the faded petals and pulling stray weeds, then sat back on her heels, wishing there were more she could do to add to the beauty of the grave.

“I do not feel as if I have reached the Celestial City, Owen,” she said aloud. “Every day I’m still trudging uphill with that wretched load on my back.” She glanced at the relief of Christian, weighed down by his heavy burden, on John Bunyan’s stone and sighed. “How long does it take, I wonder?”

She spent the afternoon in the gardens at Hargrave House, alone except for the surreptitious visit of Jamison, who carried her a small flask of tea and a napkin hiding two orange-and-currant scones—the recipe Owen had loved best. Midafternoon she wrote in her journal:

Owen would have been twenty-two and perhaps building a home for Lucy and Margaret Snape by now. I would have crossed and been living with Aunt Maggie and Mr. McKenica and with Michael. And perhaps, if Owen had lived, we would all be a family, the family he intended.

“A family,” Annie said aloud. “I cannot even remember what that was like.”

“Moping, are you?”

Annie hadn’t heard Connie cross the garden path. “Connie, what are you doing here?”

“I know the date. I figured you’d be off by yourself, weeping your eyes out.”

“You’re too blunt.”

“It’s a simple statement, Annie Allen.” Connie plopped on the bench beside her friend, then swept her arm across the gardens. “However, do not fear, for I have come to lift you from your doldrums!”

“Please, Connie. I don’t wish to—”

“You don’t wish to discuss it? Fine! Neither do I.” Connie stood and grabbed both of Annie’s hands, raising her to her feet. “I wish only to whisk you away from all this botanical loveliness—which, by the by, you have forged into a living, breathing mausoleum—and march you into the world of living, breathing people.”

“Not today. I—”

“Yes! Today of all days. We’re going to our Red Cross meeting—or have you forgotten your promise to Father? You are to practice rolling and applying your bandages and boiling eggs and brewing tea until Matron declares that you have passed and are capable of rolling lint for the remainder of your spinster days.”

“Another day, Connie.”

“Today!” Connie insisted and shook her friend’s shoulders. “Don’t you see? You’ve become morose. You’re throwing away the very life God has given you by continually bemoaning your loss. Is that what your brother would have wanted for you?”

Annie pulled back.

“I don’t believe he would have tolerated it, not for a moment! If he was half the man that you and Father have made him out to be, he would be fed up with your moping about this place!”

“Owen loved the gardens!”

“But he did not live for them! They lived for him! And anyway, I’m not speaking of gardens. The gardens are gorgeous, Annie—amazing! But life only begins in the garden, as you so dearly love to remind me; it must not end here! When you close that garden gate, you lock yourself in and shut out the rest of the world. It’s time to venture forth, to explore new horizons.”

“Stop talking like Shakespeare,” Annie chided. Connie was right; despondency draped a comfortable cloak.

Connie smiled. “There now. I am delighted that you appreciate the likeness. Now put up your hair, and off we go.”

“I feel like a sham and so made-up with my hair pinned high. You know they’re going to realize sometime that I’ve been pretending to be your age, and then what a row we’ll face!”

“They’ll never know from me, and not from you unless you tell them, foolish child. With your hair pinned up, you could pass for seventeen, probably eighteen—if you would raise your chin and stop acting so mousy.”

“I never act mousy, Connie Sprague! You take that back.”

But Connie laughed. “Not that time, you didn’t. Keep up that spark and they’ll be convinced you’re old enough to sit with the VADs. Besides, you take it all so seriously, Annie! Just as if we were real nurses in training. That alone makes you look eons older. And you can bandage better than any of us—especially those that come just for the tea and crumpets.”

“And gossip,” Annie added. “You can always tell who comes for the gossip.”

“And gossip, my dear!” Connie echoed, laughing and linking her arm through Annie’s. “We must never allow ourselves to forget our duty to tea, crumpets, and gossip!”

Annie would have preferred to spend her sixteenth birthday alone in the splendor and sanctuary of her Hargrave House gardens. But on the morning of 22 August, Mrs. Sprague announced that they would attend a lecture in London.

“Does Father approve of our becoming suffragettes, Mother?” Connie asked.

Mrs. Sprague pulled a pale-gray veil over her hat and raised her chin but did not return Connie’s merry gaze. “We are not suffragettes—not truly.” She tugged her gloves securely. “While your father does not entirely approve of the image of the suffragette movement, he understands that nothing short of their current campaign will result in the emancipation of women. I believe your father to stand shoulder to shoulder among the most generous and enlightened men of our time.”

She hesitated, then added more quietly, “He did not ask about our morning activities, Constance, and I did not mention our schedule for the day.” She looked away as color spread across her cheek. “I have decided that you and Elisabeth Anne are old enough to take an interest in world affairs, especially as they affect the young women of our time.”

The laughter in Connie’s and Annie’s eyes nearly burst their dams, but their mouths did not betray them.

“Straighten your brooch, Annie. As soon as the meeting adjourns, we shall pick up a box of sweets from Reilly’s Sweets and Pastries Shop and take a picnic to St. James. We’ve a birthday to celebrate today!” Mrs. Sprague smiled.

“St. James is always lovely, Mrs. Sprague. But . . . this is Friday.”

“Why, yes, of course it is Friday. Whatever does—?”

“The little digger goes to her gardens on Friday afternoons,” Connie reminded her mother.

“Constance, do not call Annie a ‘little—’”

“I don’t mind the name, Mrs. Sprague; truly I don’t. But I would love to have you and Constance come to my gardens for tea. Mrs. Woodward, Jamison’s sister, promised to send me a box of Banbury cakes and scones for my birthday—orange and currant, and some lemon, too—and Barbara prepares the loveliest teas. She could easily build it round that box of sweets you mentioned. Jamison is so courtly—he would serve us, I know, just as in a grand hotel! And the gazebo is surrounded by roses in their second bloom! I’m dying for you to see it!”

“It’s really quite something that she’s done, Mother. You ought to see it.” Connie sounded the sage.

“Why, it sounds delightful! Thank you, Annie. I have been curious about your gardens. As soon as the morning session ends, we’ll go.”

So happy was Annie in anticipation of serving tea in her garden—so eager was she to sit in the gazebo with two other women, all three in long skirts and hair piled properly (and at last, appropriately for Annie) high—that she barely heard the morning address.

Sixteen! Why, Mother ran away to marry Father soon after she turned sixteen!

Annie wondered what her mother could have been thinking. She could not imagine looking at a young man with the thought of marriage.
But Mother ran off with the family gardener!
Annie didn’t know whether to giggle or be horrified by such an idea.
It would be like my running off with Michael!

Annie felt herself blush furiously and turned her thoughts back to her mother.
I suppose Grandfather was livid, Mother was delighted—and frightened, surely—and Aunt Eleanor . . . Aunt Eleanor was angry and insanely jealous.

She felt an unfamiliar pity for her aunt. The sensation was so odd, so out of character and confusing. Annie tried to force her attention to the stark and severe fashions of the women before her and to focus on the bold female speaker. Still, she could not scrape the image of a pitiable and younger Aunt Eleanor from her brain.

Annie felt the old pull of darkness, the pull she experienced each time she allowed her mind to wander to her aunt, but she pushed it away.
Today is a wonderfully happy day. I’m sixteen! I will not think about her today. I will not!

Distracted by a sudden charge that tore through the room as the speaker posed her challenge to the audience, as though lightning had struck from the podium and run the length and width of each aisle, Annie looked up. Women jumped as one to their feet, shouting, cheering, waving banners on sticks, and chanting in unison, “Vote! Vote! Vote!”—Mrs. Sprague and Connie among them.

But Annie could not take it in. She stood with the others. She waved idly, as if a window before her needed polishing, but wondered,
If women win the vote, what will that mean to me? To Aunt Eleanor? Will it give me more legal rights and protection from her, or will Aunt Eleanor gain a stronger hold?
Annie shuddered at the thought as she followed Mrs. Sprague and Connie into the street.

Whyever am I worried? Aunt Eleanor is not fit to do anything anymore! I am quite safe with the Spragues. As soon as I turn eighteen—just two more years—I shall inherit Owen’s legacy and be free to travel to America if I want. Aunt Eleanor can no longer hurt me.

The freedom of such a thought grew inside Annie until she dared to smile. She no longer had eyes or ears for the excitement of the suffragettes. She could think only of the possibilities her future might hold—a future free of Aunt Eleanor. And perhaps, if she could learn to pity her aunt, then she would also be free of her bitterness toward the broken woman.

I know what it is to be jealous, and I know how, if left unchecked, it can eat through you as it has Aunt Eleanor, and for that I do pity her. Whatever she was before, she is not now. She’s lost everything and everyone dear to her in any way. And so have I. But I’m still able to love Connie and Mr. and Mrs. Sprague. I can still love Aunt Maggie and . . . and I can like Michael and Daniel McKenica,
she qualified her thoughts but smiled just the same.
All of life is before me.

Annie stopped in her tracks and repeated the thought:
All of life is before me!

She could barely keep from running down the street to Hargrave House.

“We could take a taxi, Annie dear, if you are in such a hurry.” Mrs. Sprague tried to catch her breath. “Remember you are a lady now. Please slow your steps!”

“Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Sprague. I’m so terribly excited! I was thinking, back in the hall, that my mother and father married soon after my mother turned sixteen.”

“Oh?” Connie tilted her head to intone sarcastically, “Do you have plans of which we have not been informed?”

Annie laughed. “You know I don’t! I’m just happy today. For the first time in a long while, I realize that I am standing on the threshold of my future!” She threw her arms wide, then suddenly embarrassed, leaned toward her companions confidentially. “And somehow, I feel the gardens have been part of rebuilding me and getting me ready for today. Does that sound silly?”

“Not silly at all, my dear.” Mrs. Sprague smiled and stroked Annie’s cheek. “It is just what Mr. Sprague and I have hoped for you. You have come a very long way, and we are so proud of you, dear Annie.”

Annie knew she was too old to stand in the street and clap her hands. But that was exactly what she felt like doing.

They passed Bunhill Fields. “Not stopping today?” Connie whispered.

“Not today.” Annie smiled. “I’ll go soon but not today.”

“Good for you!” Connie squeezed her hand.

Mrs. Sprague spared no expense at Reilly’s Sweets and Pastries Shop: a jar of lemon curd and one of strawberry to go with Mrs. Woodward’s scones, a crock of Devonshire cream and one of currant jam, chewy nougats, marzipan, and toffees to Annie’s heart’s content.

“We shall all have toothaches in the morning!” Mrs. Sprague laughed and the girls joined her, delighted with the conspiracy, the camaraderie.

Their arms were happily laden as they made their way down the cobbled walk. Briefly Annie thought,
Perhaps I’ll cut a bouquet for Aunt Eleanor. Surely she must remember this is my sixteenth birthday. Owen’s flowers will please her.

Once they turned the corner, the day dimmed just slightly—a gray cloud passing.

“What is that smoke?” Mrs. Sprague asked.

“Where? I smell something foul but can’t see where it’s coming from.” Connie wrinkled her nose.

Annie stopped and stared in the direction of Hargrave House, beyond the house. She narrowed her eyes, tried to comprehend what lay ahead. Her heart stopped. Her throat constricted and she gasped for air.
No. No. No!
Annie dropped her packages to the cobblestones without realizing what she’d done and began to run.