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Part of the process . . .
* * *
“Look pretty, my darling girl,” Mother says as she buttons up my cardigan. “Look pretty and smile.” She pulls the collar of my pale blue-striped dress over the top and pats it down. “That’s what we must always do.”
“We smile when we’re unhappy?” I ask, mystified by this. Mother’s hands falter on her sweeping up-do as she smooths it with a palm spritzed with hairspray for the hundredth time since she pinned it up an hour ago.
Then she laughs lightly. “My darling, I am very happy.” She comes to me, crouching to get her face level with mine. She taps the end of my nose with her fingertip, her red lips stretched wide. “You are too curious for a little girl. We must control that.”
“Yes, Mother.” I smile at her necklace, reaching forward and touching the creamy stone. A giant pearl surrounded by small rubies.
“One day it will be yours, my darling. Now, then. Go and say hello to your father and his guests. Then you must go to your bedroom and play quietly. We must not interrupt your father’s poker evening.”
“Okay,” I say, not asking what Mother will be doing. She will be sitting quietly beside my father, smiling on tap. Laughing when prompted. Being the perfect, silent wife.
She takes my shoulders and leads me into the drawing room. It always confuses me why we call it a drawing room when I am never allowed to do any drawing in it.
I enter the large, elaborate space and immediately feel all eyes on me. “Ah, here they are.” Father pops his fat cigar in his mouth and smiles at us. “Come, come, say hello to my friends.”
I look at father’s friends. All men. All with women by their sides who appear to be mute. And young. All so young. I know Father is older than my mother, but whenever I have asked, Mother has always told me not to be curious, as curiosity is troublesome. Especially in women.
The men will play cards. The women will sit in a square and sip champagne. “Hello,” I say when presented to them. I get endless plumes of rancid cigar smoke breathed all over me as they all look me up and down.
“Beautiful like her mother,” one says.
I feel my mother’s hands tighten on my shoulders, and I look up at her. She nods. Instruction. “Thank you,” I say as Father claims me from Mother’s hold and wraps one of his big arms around my shoulders, pulling me in close.
He drops a kiss on top of my head, sniffing, and sits, pulling me down onto his knee, and Mother takes that as her cue to join the ladies on the other side of the drawing room. “Tell me about the deal,” he says to a friend, pulling on his fat cigar.
His friend looks at me.
“She’s ten, Frazer,” Father reminds him. “Speak freely.”
He nods, sitting forward, rubbing at his nose. “We have reached mutually agreeable terms.”
“Excellent.”
I gaze around the room as Father chats with his friends about things that don’t sound very interesting at all. I see something white on the table. A straw. A gold little card. “Why is it called a drawing room if I can’t draw in here, Father?” I blurt my question and everyone in the room falls silent. Looking at me. Father eventually laughs, glancing at my mother. “You must control her curiosity, Ruby. No one wants a wife with too much to say.” He stands me up, and Mother is soon collecting me.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she says quickly, leading me away, and the moment I’m out of the room, she dips and gets her mouth to my ear. “Pearl, my darling, children must be seen and not heard.” I look up at her. “And women should be graceful and quiet.” She straightens my collar again. “Off to your room.”
I do as I’m told, closing the door behind me and settling on the carpet next to my doll’s house. I play with it for an hour, rearranging the furniture, making sure there’s a table by the chair in the . . . what will I call this room? “The drawing room,” I say to myself. After tidying the library, I get up and put a few more pieces in my jigsaw puzzle, looking over the building picture of the English countryside.
When I hear a car door close, I go to the window and look down onto the driveway. Father’s seeing his guests off, shaking hands while all the ladies wait, quiet, smiling their goodbyes. I watch all of the fancy cars drive away, then hear mother’s steps coming down the hallway. I grab a book and sit on the chair in the corner as she enters. She smiles, happy I’m reading, and goes to the window, pulling the curtains closed. “Supper and bed.”
“Okay, Mother.” I close my book and set it neatly on the bedside table ready to read myself to sleep as she fixes the closed curtains just so, brushing down the velvet material.
She pauses when the sound of a car coming down the gravel driveway drifts through the window. Her face. I never know how to decipher her expressions. She opens the curtains again. “Oh, no.”
“Ruby!” Father bursts through the door, his cigar hanging from his mouth. “Get her in the cupboard. Now.”
* * *
Ding!
I blink myself back to the present as the doors slide open, and on a swallow, I step out. Okay, Mother. Never heard. Hardly ever seen.
I walk around the corner and come to a sharp stop when I spot a woman walking toward me. She has long, black hair. A short, tight little black dress. Her chest is exposed. Her heels sky high. She’s counting money, a smile on her face. A guest of Mr. Black’s? This early in the day? My heart hurts.
