Page 37 of Holding Onto Love

Sherwood preened as he poured out the pints, implying he would have wrapped things up there by now.

To Vanessa’s annoyance, she saw too many nods. Not Lydia’s. Not Corporal Compton’s. Anyone who had been there had not seen foot dragging, but rather courage and dogged persistence.

How dare these people! This party was not honoring Wellington’s victory, or recalling to memory the fallen. Whose deaths, Crispin had waxed lyrically, had meaning—except, apparently not to these men. It was an excuse to drink, that was all.

“The nobs, you know,” Dan Gowe said, wiping spilled froth from his beer onto his smock. “They don’t want it to end. Too much profit in it.”

She thought of Crispin’s unleashed exhilaration. Tempered only by his kindness. And dismissed the words of these men who knew nothing.

Cartmel’s folks didn’t talk of the war, of the victory, but of their crops and the weather, the boot mill, and the damnable Leather Tax. And the nobs, of course. It was the nobs always wanting taxes they did not have to pay. Vanessa heard the man Herve’s name. And the cousin, whose name was Bitter or Blither. Words twisted on the men’s tongues as they grew louder and laughed harder. Bitter had not lost his legs. They remained attached, but useless. Something in his back had snapped when he fell. There had been a contest, Vanessa made out, that Bitter had won by putting away a vast quantity of beer. The men admired him, pitied him, and swilled as if imitating him.

Such false courage they had: easy when death was too busy to come looking for them.

She edged her thigh away from Tam’s, beside her on the bench, a lank-haired farmer who stank of beer and sweat and goat. A sprawler, not a lecher, but still. Oh, she did not wish to be here, seeing this. Feeling this revulsion for her neighbors and their coarseness.

She was not better than them. She knew that. If she hated the rigidity that made her lesser than, she must equally reject notions of her own superiority. And Henry’s.

After all, she’d seen Henry drunk, too. Worse than this. Every soldier received a rum ration. They drank more rum than water. They drank rum in their water. The first few months, he had shared his ration out, trading it for food for them both. Or sometimes he simply gave it away. But that didn’t last. It couldn’t. The things he saw. The things he did…poor, dear Henry who had wanted to be a doctor. She didn’t fault him for the degrading condition she sometimes found him in. He never grabbed her lustfully when he was rum soaked. He’d never raised a hand to her either. She had never, like so many of her friends, needed to hide a blackened eye, split lip, or reddened fingermarks around her neck. Henry had drunk from desperation. She’d understood that. She didn’t understand how these men drank so carelessly.

Jasper could also drink in quantity, carelessly. Why hadn’t that bothered her? Because it was fine cognac or champagne instead of grog? Because he’d never fallen down or threw up? Because when liquor made him amorous, he’d still managed to retain his charm? He’d never seemed drunk. Merely foxed or a trifle disguised or a little bit bosky. All their little euphemisms for lapses without consequence. Jasper would never tumble down a hill, or accidentally discharge his weapon into his own gullet as Henry’s friend Dixon had.

“Dance with me, Mrs. Wardrip,” Jon said, holding out his hand. “You are too pretty for such a long face. This is a party.”

“Oh, no, but—”

“Go along with you,” Lydia urged. “Let Jon try out his new boots.”

Lydia settled her hand on Vanessa’s shoulder, that sustaining hand that had not permitted her to lie down and surrender after the fight she had lost, but rather made her leave a blood-soaked bundle under a bush and march on to Corunna.

“Lovey, Henry is smiling tonight. Our lads are all smiling. Let Henry watch you dance one more time.”

Here again was Lydia the general. Vanessa stood. Yes, she would march on. What else was there? If Cartmel was a mistake, she must learn to live with it. She felt, or imagined she felt, a whisper-breath on her ear. Dance, Vanessa. It was not Henry’s memory whispering. She had never danced with Henry.

What do you know about this stranger, this Jon?

If she was truly tired of living amongst strangers, there was a remedy. A modification of Jasper’s game.

Learn one thing about each of them. One good thing.

Jon? She knew he was a generous man.

“I don’t know the steps. You’ll have to show me.”

*

A week later, Vanessa walked to the Compton’s cottage. Their mill. She was on a mission. The front door was ajar, so she let herself in.

“Good morning, Bitter, you idiot,” she said.

His name was Peter, not Bitter. Everyone called him Bitter because his wife of twenty years, whom he had married at fifteen, was deaf and could say only a few intelligible words. “Bitter” was how she said, “Peter.” He would answer to nothing else.

Except now. Now he answered only to, “Bitter, you idiot.” Apparently, that was how he coped with what he had done. Generous Jon had hired him at first meeting, giving him light work he could do from a chair.

He beamed at her. “Mrs. Wardrip, isn’t it? What can we do for you?”

“I need a pair of boots.”

“I thought as much. For who?”