Lydia (11 page)

Tuesday, 9th June

W
hen I woke up this morning all the clouds were gone, the sky was blue, and the sun was shining brightly. Today we did not make so much fuss about the beach. There was no gingerbread and no blanket, no hairnets or additional wraps. We arrived at the beach just in time to watch the bathing machines setting up by the shore, the horses pulling and the horsemen slapping them and the blue-dressed dippers waddling alongside, with children darting in and out between the wagons. It reminded me of when the fair arrives at home, except that instead of music there were the waves and the gulls, and instead of the smell of food there was a warm, salty wind blowing off the water.

The waves were the same blue as the sky, their frilly crests today like trims of lace. Seagulls floated lazily above and there were a few sails out on the water. It was exactly how I had imagined it before I came, and for a moment, looking at it, my heart soared. Then, as we made our way down the steps and towards the machines, it sank again.

“We must be first in the water,” Harriet declared. “We will run if we have to. There must be no one before us. You will see, Lydia, how very amusing it is. Why, I never felt better in my life than I did on Sunday after bathing!”

She chose two machines towards the end of the line, farthest from the prying eyes of onlookers. She skipped up the steps into hers without a backward glance, but I stood on the fine shingle looking up at mine with limbs too heavy to move. The machines, the horses, the bathers – how small they looked beside the sparkling sea!

“You going in, miss?” The dipper was watching me with an impatient frown.

I thought of Wickham, the look of new-found respect in his eyes when I told him I knew about Georgiana Darcy and when I told him about Mr. Darcy's proposal. What would
he
think of my standing here, trembling?

“Yes, I am,” I replied, and seized the ladder with both hands.

Inside, the machine was plain but dry, with neat hooks from which to hang my clothes, and a bench on which to sit to change, and curtained windows at the front and back from which to peep at the town or the sea, which made me feel like a little girl again, playing in a den. It would almost have been snug but for the fact that no sooner had I closed the door behind me than it began to move! It is quite one thing to move about when you are in a high-sprung carriage, with nothing to do but sit back and watch the scenery. It is quite another on a pebble beach, being flung this way and that as a horse pulls you into the sea while you attempt to remove all your clothes and don your bathing shift. I tumbled off the bench as I
unlaced my boots. Bounced off a wall as I unbuttoned my dress. Staggered about with my bodice round my waist as we came to a sudden stop and began gently to sway.

I struggled out of my dress, hung it on a hook, stepped carefully to the back of the wagon, and parted the muslin curtain. We had come not more than a few yards, but the town looked suddenly very far away – for those few yards were all water. I ran, lurching, to the front window.

Water all around us!

“You ready, miss?” The dipper (her name is Janet) was growing impatient.

“Almost!” I took my bathing shift from its peg and pulled it over my head. It caught in my hair and again over my shoulder – I had forgotten the buttons.

“Need any help?”

I tugged on the shift. There was a ripping sound. One of the buttons went flying, but at last the wretched thing was on.

“I'm ready!” I shouted, and threw open the door.

The world is very different when you are standing on a mere platform inches above the sea. You cannot see land, and the sea is lapping at your feet, and it would take only one larger-than-average wavelet for the water to rush in and possibly drown you.

I imagine it is a bit like being alone on a very small island.

Or perhaps not
completely
alone.

“You can climb down the steps, miss, or you can jump.” Janet stood up to her thighs in water beside the door.

“If you do jump,” she continued, “you're best going lengthways. Like a dive, but without going under. The water's only three foot deep.”

“Lengthways?”

“Watch your friend, miss.” Janet nodded to the next machine along, where Harriet had appeared at the top of her steps in her pristine shift.

“Lydia!” She waved. “Isn't it heaven?”

And she flung herself into the water, landing on her belly with a sound like a slapped fish. Janet winced.

“Like that?” I asked.

“Try crouching,” she advised. “It'll hurt less.”

I stepped down into the water. The waves lapped at my feet, then my ankles and knees. I paused. I craned my neck round the edge of the wagon and looked back at the beach. Most of the machines were in the water now, and everywhere scantily clad ladies were hurling themselves into the waves. I looked back down at my feet. The water was cold. It was
moving
. I couldn't see the bottom. I thought I saw a fish. It might have been a shark. Mary had told me about these fearsome creatures, when she was studying natural history. They can eat you in one gulp.

“I cannot do this,” I said.

While I was hesitating, another machine had lumbered up to take its position beside mine. The door opened, and I recognised the occupant immediately, by her red hair and also by something else – an indefinable air of owning the entire world.

It was the young lady from the other day – the one with the handsome gentleman friend and the small dog and the extraordinary emerald silk dress. Her bathing attire was no less outlandish. It was not yellow like everyone else's bathing shift, but green like her dress, sleeveless, close-fitting, and cut
short above the knee. She stood for a few seconds, still and strong as marble at the top of her steps, with only her shift and hair fluttering in the wind. Then she took a breath, bounced lightly on her feet, and dived head first and graceful into the waves. She cut through the water so cleanly the sea never even noticed, but swallowed her without so much as a ripple, and she stayed under so long I was sure she must be drowned. But then up she bobbed again, like the moorhens on the pond at home, and began to swim in strong, steady strokes out into the open water.

“If you've finished gawping,” Janet said, “I've other ladies waiting.”

And then she pushed me in.

Janet's idea of bathing is to grasp you firmly by the shoulders and push you briskly under the water five times in quick succession, which is just as unpleasant as it sounds. I think I swallowed quite my body weight in seawater this morning, and when I lean forward it
still
pours out of my nose in alarming quantities, but even so IT WAS THE MOST WONDERFUL THING I HAVE EVER DONE IN MY LIFE. Janet didn't give me time to be afraid, and it would have been impossible anyway, with her beside me. She is built like an oak wardrobe, and she did not let go of me once. And oh, the feeling of being in the water, as it swirls you about, and pushes you up, and tumbles you over, and causes your skin to prickle and your eyes to sting and your whole body to come alive. Alive! That is exactly how it made me feel. Alive as I have never been before! Alive as I remember feeling all those years ago when I was a little girl, in those few seconds before I nearly drowned in the Waire.

The red-haired young lady returned from her sea swim as I spluttered up from my final dunking. She grasped the ladder to her bathing machine and, refusing the aid of her dipper, climbed out of the water. I hurried out after her, but it took me even longer to struggle out of my wet shift than it had to change into a dry one. By the time I came back out on to the beach, she had disappeared.

 

 

Brighton,

Tuesday, 9th June

Dear Kitty,

We have been so busy since we arrived, but we finally got around to bathing today, and it is every bit as amusing as Maria's cousin told us. Today was just a bit of gentle splashing, but I have told my dipper (a bathing attendant) that I want to learn to swim, and she says she never saw anyone with a more natural ability, and that I had taken to the water like an absolute duck! Do
not
tell Mamma, but I am about to make considerable changes to the bathing shift she made me. It is impossible to swim properly with all that cloth flapping about your legs.
I am going to cut it shockingly short
, and remove the arms as well!

We saw Wickham at the theatre last night. I can't go into detail, even with you, for it is all
extremely secret
, but suffice it to say that I have
him
wrapped around my little finger, and also that I have a feeling that
all will be well for all of us – Wickham says it is bound to end well, for he always gets what he wants.
Love is in the air, Kitty, and
such
a love – it will solve everything! I am
only
sorry you are not here, too. I think that if you were, I would not be able to keep it to myself. Please say you forgive me for coming without you? I do feel monstrous about that whole business, I really do – though I do think you would not have enjoyed it with your cough.

Your loving sister,

Lydia (who is half-mermaid)

Saturday, 13th June

T
hey do not come into society – the swimming lady and the dark-haired gentleman. I look for them wherever I go, but have only seen them once more at the beach. She was coming out of her machine as we arrived, and walked straight past us towards the steps cut into the cliff where
he
stood waiting. Harriet thinks she is absurd and very un-English, but I think she is magnificent. She was wearing the emerald dress again. Close up, I saw that it was old, the hemline frayed, and the skirt patched, with a low waist and full skirts more reminiscent of Mamma's wardrobe than my own. She wore a cream-and-purple Kashmir shawl, curiously stylish though ill-assorted to the dress. He wore the same blue coat as the first time I saw him, with his red scarf still wrapped around his throat, as ill-matched to his outfit as the Kashmir shawl was to hers, yet just as dashing. There is something so
poetic
about him – Mary would jeer, but that is exactly the word. The pale face, and the tumbling curls, and the fact that he always carries a book. Perhaps that is why he doesn't swim – poets most
probably don't. They are too busy thinking of fine words and rhymes and things like that, unlike Wickham, for example, who swims every day and is burned dark brown by the sun, with gold glints in his hair, which makes him exactly like the sort of pirate who goes about trying to kidnap innocent young girls.

I suppose they must be married, though he is so very young.

We went to dance tonight at the Ship Assembly Rooms, which is a very grand establishment on the seafront, with rooms for cards and assemblies and a new ballroom that is the finest I have ever seen, painted all blue and gold, with double rows of seating at either end and an excellent dance floor, and because it is my birthday and I said I had never tasted it, Denny ordered champagne. “When the war is finished,” he said as he filled my glass, “we will all go to France and bathe in the stuff. But for now, we must content ourselves with merely drinking it, because it is a great deal more expensive here than it is over there.”

I defy
anyone
not to look inelegant when they take their first sip of champagne. I was completely unprepared for it. Bubbles exploded on my tongue and up my nose, making me snort, then sneeze, then burst out laughing.

“Good?” Denny grinned.

“Wonderful,” I admitted, and he refilled my glass.

Until tonight, I had not spoken to Wickham since the evening at the theatre, when I disclosed that I knew the truth about Georgiana, and he has not sought me out. As I sipped my champagne, I was aware of him watching me across the room. I turned away, but soon enough there was a light touch
at my elbow, and he was standing beside me. The orchestra was striking up after a pause, a tune I did not know.

“Will you grant me a birthday dance?”

It is not easy to be haughty with Wickham, because he never really appears to notice, but I tried.

“I find I do not care to dance.”

“Well, I know that is a lie. Lydia Bennet, not care to dance!”

“I do not care to dance
with you
.”

“Ah, that is more serious.”

I glared at him. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he looked grave.

“Come, Lydia,” he said. “We are old friends, are we not? I apologise, sincerely and without reserve, for any harm I have done you.”

“Not only me.”

“You, or any other person.”

“And you promise that you will not try to ruin any more young ladies.”

“On my honour, I promise.”

The dancers were taking their places. The music was irresistible.

“I find I do not care much for your promises,” I murmured.

“Lydia!”

“Just one dance,” I said, and he led me on to the floor.

I hate to say it, but I had forgotten what fun it is to dance with Wickham. The dance was a waltz, which is quite new, even in Brighton. You have to stand very close to your partner, and he holds your hand and places his other hand around your waist, and you go round and round until your pulse is racing and you feel quite giddy. It is considered extremely shocking,
but I honestly think all dances should be like that, always.

“Well?” Wickham smiled as it ended. “Am I forgiven?”

He was a little breathless, his hair out of place. Suddenly, I saw him just as I had at Longbourn, that afternoon when he first taught me to ride, pacing about the paddock in his shirtsleeves, patiently exhorting me to sit straight and not to grip so tightly, and I almost relented.

“I will think about it,” I said.

The orchestra had abandoned the waltz, and changed back to more familiar reels. I danced with Denny and Carter and Pratt and several others whom I did not know. I danced until my feet hurt and I moved from scarlet coat to scarlet coat until I no longer saw their faces. At one point, I stumbled, thinking I glimpsed a head of dark curls, a red scarf, but when I looked again it was not the poet from the beach but someone altogether different.

What a year it has been since my last birthday, when Mary gave me this diary! How much I have had to write!

I was very much in demand this evening, and I did not speak with Wickham again, but – if he behaves himself and even though he is awful – I think I may forgive him. After all, no one dances as well as he does.