Free A Little Death by Laura Wilson Page A

up my head to see the bruise on the side of my face where mad Jenny had kicked me, but she didn’t put anything on that. Then she said, ‘Open your mouth,’ and gave me something to drink. I didn’t want it because it tasted vile and she pinched my jaw open with her hand as they do to horses when they want them to take medicine. Louisa and Roland had it as well. I think it was something soporific, because they fell asleep in their chairs and I think I must have done too, because I don’t remember anything after that.
    There is a dream I have had, many, many times, always the same. We’re sitting at the kitchen table, but I get up and leave the room. The servants try to stop me—they stand in my way, but they can’t touch me, I can move through them as if they don’t exist. I go outside to the privy, except it isn’t really the privy anymore, but another part of the garden with flowers and proper grass, and Freddie’s there, but there’s no blood on him. He’s wearing white clothes, like his sailor suit, but all white, and his hair is bright and clean, and he’s smiling at me. And I feel happy. But then I wake up and it’s gone.
    The next morning I asked Mrs. Mattie if I could see Freddie. She said she would go and see about it—she went off and it was the first time I’d been left on my own to get dressed. I didn’t know if I could do it, so I said to myself, ‘If I can tie my laces, Freddie won’t be dead; if I can do up all my buttons, he won’t be dead; if I can tie my hair-ribbon he won’t be dead,’ and so on. By the time I’d finished, I was convinced I’d done so well that Freddie would be fine, just a bump on the heador something. But then Mrs. Mattie came back and said I could see him, and she took me and, of course, when I saw him he was dead.
    He did look quite lifelike, because they’d washed the blood off and put on clean clothes. ‘Doesn’t he look happy?’ I asked Mrs. Mattie. I remembered the dead baby in the photograph my father had shown me. ‘It must be nice to be dead. Dead people always look happy.’
    ‘You should go to your room now, Miss Georgina.’
    ‘Yes, but may I see the photographer?’
    ‘Photographer?’
    ‘So we can put Freddie’s picture in the album, with the other one.’
    ‘There isn’t going to be any photographer, Miss Georgina.’
    ‘Then may I see Roland?’
    ‘Miss Louisa and Master Roland have gone home. Now come back to your room and don’t upset yourself.’
    I didn’t go to Freddie’s funeral, nor did Edmund. Edmund didn’t come home at all that summer. He told me afterwards that our father had written and had him sent straight back to school. Father came to live at Dennys permanently and at first I hoped that he might come up to the nursery to see me, but he never did and Nurse wouldn’t let me go downstairs. They used to leave our meals outside the door—big mice with big feet, coming and going, but I never saw them. I remember trying to hide lumps of mutton under my dolly’s skirt, but Nurse was always watching and of course it went straight back on to the plate. Mrs. Mattie came up eventually. It was a very hot summer and perhaps one of the maids told her about the bad smell. She pushed the door wide open and made all the plates topple over. Nurse didn’tstay long after that. When Mrs. Mattie saw us I knew that she would be sent away, so I got up from the table and lay down on the bed in my room and she didn’t try to stop me. I stayed there for a week and the other servants looked after me, and then Nurse came in to tell me that she was leaving. She said she had ‘gladsome tidings’, except I thought she said ‘gladsome tidyings’. I only remembered that a few weeks ago and I told Edmund about it. He was tickled pink. He said, ‘That must be what Ada does when she’s happy.’ Nurse told me she was going to the Belgian Congo or somewhere, to be a missionary for her church. I hope they were cannibals and put her in the