Dinner is just as painful as I anticipated. The food is marginally better than usual, as we are out to impress, but our cook has never met a vegetable she couldn’t boil into submission. I am seated between my mother and Cuthbert, and Mother keeps chivvying our talk along with encouraging little conversation openers.
“Beatrice, Philip tells me that Cuthbert is a keen philatelist; isn’t that fascinating?”
“Yes,” I wade in grimly. After all, none of this is Cuthbert’s doing. “Do you have any particularly interesting stamps in your collection?”
“Er … not really,” Cuthbert mutters, the mottled flush making another appearance. “I don’t really collect them myself, you see. Uncle just gave me some of his old scrapbooks…” He trails off miserably.
“Mmm,” I murmur, drawing an infinity sign in the gravy on my plate with my knife. At one end of the table I notice Father is deep in conversation with Mr Astley about the hunt, a subject on which they could happily spend all night agreeing loudly with each other. The vicar is making some sort of disparaging comment about the moral fibre of his parishioners to the woman next to him. The vicar’s wife is telling the story of the head cold again in a rather carrying drone.
Their voices seem suddenly to clamour over one another, filling my head with the endlessly repeating pattern of polite conversation. I grind my teeth together, feeling an itch spread across my skin. A longing to jump to my feet and run as fast as I can, as far away as possible, sweeps over me.
Instead, I force myself to concentrate on the conversation on either side of me.
“Oh, Cuthbert!” Mother is saying, shaking her head, a roguish twinkle in her voice, “there’s no need to be so modest; I’m sure a young man like yourself will have no trouble in running the estate. What you really need, of course, is a wife who knows how these things work: a young woman of good breeding with experience in such matters. Wouldn’t you agree, Beatrice?” The look she gives me is pointed. There’s steel behind her words.
“Yes, Mother,” I say evenly. “Perhaps placing an advertisement in The Times would be a sensible way of filling the position.”
Mother forces a laugh then, a shrill, nervous sound, and casts me a look of warning. We both know I’m building up to being outrageous. I was fully prepared to behave myself tonight, but this set-up with Cuthbert is enough to try the patience of a saint. Really, it’s her own fault.
I think I might be about to start enjoying myself.
“Ah.” Cuthbert clears his throat, his uncertain gaze moving anxiously between us. “What – what do you like to do, Beatrice?” he asks, rather desperately, as though trying to steer the conversation back to stable ground. “As a hobby, I mean?”
I lean forward on my elbows and flash him a brilliant grin. “Oh, Cuthbert,” I say. “I’m so glad you ask.”
“Beatrice…” Mother begins, all her senses obviously awake to the danger of the situation, but it’s too late now.
“Actually, at the moment I’m making a study of the Lampyris noctiluca, or the glow-worm, as you would call it in common parlance.” I sit back in my chair. “It’s their mating habits which I find particularly fascinating.”
My voice rings out clear as a bell in the quiet room.
“Mating habits?” Cuthbert’s flush deepens, and he darts an anxious glance at my mother, whose eyes are widening helplessly. I realize that even the vicar has turned in my direction.
“Yes,” I say. “Mating habits. By which, of course, I mean the sexual coupling that leads to reproduction.”
Cuthbert’s mouth is slightly agape, his fork hanging limply from one hand. The others at the long table sit in frozen silence.
“It’s the female glow-worm who emits a bioluminescence in order to attract a mate, you know,” I continue chattily. “In fact, the more a female glow-worm glows, the more attractive a mate she becomes, as greater luminescence indicates increased fecundity.”
“F-fecundity,” Cuthbert repeats in a dazed whisper.
A groaning sound comes from the end of the table, where Father sits with his head in his hands. Mother’s face is ashen. The rest of the party are staring at me with round, unblinking eyes.
“Yes,” I say, turning slightly so that I am addressing all of them. “Fecundity.” I roll the word around in my mouth. “Or fertility. Which is, of course, innately desirable in a mate when considering copulation for the propagation of the species.”
“I think this conversation is unsuitable for the dinner table, Beatrice,” Mother cuts in now rather raspingly, having recovered something of her voice.
“I think this conversation is unsuitable for a young lady, regardless of the time or place,” the vicar thunders in his dramatic, Sunday-sermon roar and Mother flinches.
“Oh, no,” I say earnestly. “Why should young women be left out of such conversations? After all, Vicar, we’re the ones who must become mothers ourselves, if the human race is to continue at all. It’s in the Bible, isn’t it? Be fruitful and multiply and all that.” I wave my hand airily. “So, you must agree that to keep young women in ignorance when it comes to acts of sexual congress is nothing less than irresponsible.”
“Acts of sexual congress!” the vicar’s wife whispers, as Mother sways in her chair.
“Exactly.” I smile at the whole table, showing off my teeth. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. Wonderful dinner this evening, Mother; I must pass on my compliments to Cook.” I spear a carrot neatly on my fork and pop it in my mouth as the roar of disapproval finally breaks around me.
CHAPTER THREE
“I don’t think it went that badly at all.”
My pronouncement is met by a groan from Mother, who lies prone on the chaise-longue.
The dinner party has limped miserably to its polite conclusion, salvaged only by Mother’s over-bright chatter. After she kicked me under the table, I became mutinously silent. Once the obligatory after-dinner brandy had been drunk by the men, and the ladies had forced icy, polite conversation in the parlour, the guests all made rather hasty exits into the night and Father disappeared to his study to smoke cigars “in peace”.
“Copulation,” Mother moans, one arm flung across her forehead. The word hangs so dramatically in the air that I have to smother a laugh, turning it into a cough. “You said copulation in front of the vicar. I’ll never hear the end of it. He’ll work this into Sunday’s sermon and everyone will know why, and somehow it shall be all my fault that you behave outrageously and talk so improperly. Honestly, Beatrice, how could you? It’s completely inappropriate for a young woman to discuss those … those sorts of things. Especially in polite society.”
“Oh, well, it’s not as if the vicar doesn’t know what the word means, for goodness’ sake,” I say stoutly. “He and that horrible wife of his have two equally horrible children, so they must have done it at least twice.”
“Beatrice!” Her horrified tones come from between the sofa cushions.
“And it was in an educational context,” I continue. “I was simply trying to explain…”