Lucy

a Victorian scene. A half-story. Maybe a first chapter. You tell me.

The puerile yipping of baby starlings outside the window was causing the cat to arch her back in distaste, and sink her claws into the divan cushion upon which Lucy was sitting with her feet tucked under her, pricking her finger with the nib of the pen she was twirling fascinatedly over and over. The shiver of joy at the slight pain in her throbbing fingertip both excited and frightened her. The pen was the first sharp object she had been permitted to hold in three long years, and this act was her small defiance. Today was the morning of her coming-out party from the asylum, and Lucy hadn’t slept at all the night before. In a tumult of excitement, she had run and danced and drifted all over the spacious, shadowy manor house, slipping past the cold iron gates at midnight to watch the poignantly gloomy moon flooding the dark gardens and glossing her skin to an impenetrable sheen. Heavy boughs pressed in around her, dripping with dew, and the scent of lilac so overwhelmed her senses that for a brief moment she sang out with delight. Lucy smiled at the memory, sheltering in a slow, thorough recollection to avoid considering the impending future of her party. She remembered how dawn had come to warm her shoulders from this divan in the drawing-room, where she was now curled and contemplating idly.

            A drop of blood fell on the worn, nondescript fabric of the cushion which the cat was now shredding with renewed enthusiasm. Lucy smiled softly, and as she raised her finger to her lips and was about to touch it to her tongue, when an enormous woman with raw, red arms bustled in carrying a clattering tea-tray. Her eyes rolled up, fish-like and wide, and brightened devilishly as she said, “And how is Little Miss Loony today?”

            The name stung a little, as expected, but Lucy was immediately comforted by the heavy scent of cinnamon wafting from the plate of round cakes on the tray. She sprung out of her seat, welcoming the impulse, and walked over to the long dining table to reach over, snatch one from the tray and pop it in her mouth; though not before replying, “I’m as fine as I could be, considering. Really, I haven’t had any sleep at all, but it’s all right. Do you know… has mother prepared whatever surprise she said that she had for me?”

            “That, I would not know” answered the cook, amid the delicate chime of silver spoons and the scraping of china saucers. Lucy, still munching on the fat little cake, stood by and watched as the tablecloth fluttered smooth and white over the table, sprigs of lilac were grouped into spindly glass vases, and the silverware laid out in its proper pattern around the tiny plates. There were many more bare tables standing around the room to be similarly arranged. The cat, its interest temporarily waylaid from the methodical destruction of the divan, deftly jumped to the floor and up onto the table in one admirably fluid movement. The cook was halfway across the room before she turned and found that the cat had now begun to nibble the tiny lilac blossoms overflowing the vase. She hurried over, powerful thighs pumping beneath her starched apron, and yelling out “Go on! Go on, shoo! Bad cat!”, while Lucy stood still, smiling behind her hands. When the cat had fled the room entirely, the cook turned incredulously to Lucy, as if to ask why she had not moved to help. Lucy shuffled her skirt in embarrassment, and turned to glide towards the window.

            “Of course, I would be contriving to skip this whole affair,” she said, “but I’m afraid that they rather expect it of me. To show I’m all right, perfectly presentable, and the like.” She often found herself confiding to servants in this way. It seemed safe because they were under a code of polite confidence. Also, it was so temptingly easy to let fly with an honest sentence or two as they would come sweeping through a room to perform their fiddling, neatening duties; their studied silence seemed to automatically imply a quiet attentiveness.

            The cook looked up from her work with her cool, pale eyes fixed on Lucy’s slight frame outlined in the window. “It is to be quite an ordeal, for sure, but you mustn’t be ungrateful to your parents. This is all meant to be in your honor, you know. You are the occasion.”

            The words darkened Lucy’s expression with recognition of the source of her discontentment �" she was the occasion. She knew all too well her mother’s zeal for planning parties and seizing occasions to suit them. To become just another promotable cause felt demeaning and false. Of course, Lucy would rise to greet the event in perfect style and regress with perfect grace, as she always did. This was inevitably planned. If she failed in this, all she had worked for to free her from the asylum would be discredited. It seemed that the value of her mind was in jeopardy, her mind which still flitted nervously with the birds in the trees and never seemed able to settle onto one comfortable, commonplace thing. With an almost imperceptible sigh, Lucy closed her eyes and touched the ridge of her pale cheekbone against the windowpane.

            The weather in this part of England had a tendency to change rapidly, and bulging gray clouds were now coagulating over the lawn of green summer grass. Couples coming up the drive in white, light clothes and crisp gloves cringed under the darkening sky. Ladies’ skirts billowed and popped out in all directions, while their male companions squinted their eyes at the sky as they clutched derby hats to their heads. Lucy continued to stare, unmoved. It seemed so often she had been left derelict, silently watching in the splendor of a wide window in the tall manor house �" like a beautiful painting in its frame. Looking down and waving at the guests, she felt appropriately picturesque, but could not deny the edge of bitterness to that fact.

            The cat had slunk back into the room, and was again eying the birds outside. The cook was gone; the room was empty and humming with the vibrations of the party-crowd coming up the stairs slowly and luxuriantly, taking their time to exclaim admiringly over every passage in the house. Lucy crossed over to the table and was just about to take another cake from the tray when a call floated up, “Oh, Lucy! Dear, are you in there?”

            Immediately she hiked up her skirt and pattered out of the room, putting all thoughts of escape out of her mind as she swirled into view of the party coming up the stairs, like a bird settling down breathlessly from flight.