Free Joan Smith by Never Let Me Go Page B

at Chêne Bay, in that fine mansion overlooking the countryside. Her activities, however, would have been confined by the era’s notions of what befitted a lady. Until they were married, young ladies were guarded like vestal virgins. That unavailability must have added to their allure. We do not value highly what we can have for the taking.
    I knew from my reading of Jane Austen that the dowry was of more importance than beauty. Arabella was doubly blessed: beautiful as well as rich. Had her dowry been her main attraction for Vanejul? He would, presumably, have had wealth of his own. But then his lifestyle was no doubt extravagant. Was he a gambler, as well as a womanizer? The book had not mentioned that, but it was a common failing in those days. I had read that the Regency bucks would bet on anything, even the progress of a fly along a windowpane.
    My writing wasn’t to be a full biography but an account of Arabella’s doings with Vanejul. I would not start at her birth, nor even at her parents’ death, but at her fifteenth birthday. That was about the age at which she would have caught Vanejul’s interest, and William’s, and it was the part of her life that interested me—especially her murder by Vanejul.
    I finished the coffee, washed up, and slid into jeans and a clean shirt. It was a white shirt of my dad’s that was too small for him and really too large for me, but it was my security blanket. I always felt he was looking out for me when I wore it. An odd fancy, that. Had I always had an intimation of some invisible power lurking at the periphery of normal life? I made the bed and ran down to the kitchen. Breakfast was the rest of the grapes, a bun, and another cup of coffee.
    When I went to the typewriter, it seemed wrong. The banging of the keys against the platen disturbed me, although it hadn’t before. My fingers kept striking the wrong keys. A pen seemed the proper writing tool. I got out a fresh sheet of typewriter paper, unfortunately not lined, and began to write. I would begin on Arabella’s fifteenth birthday, June 9, 1800, according to the book. And I would put her at the only spot at Chêne Bay I knew well, the weir. When I closed my eyes, I could almost see her there, an innocent young girl-woman, warm and happy in the sunlight of her youth. I wrote:
     
    The fruit trees were in bloom at Chêne Bay on that lovely day in June. They looked like giant balls of cotton wool against the azure sky. Arabella felt grown-up in her pink sprigged muslin gown. Her new kid slippers had a small heel, and a silver buckle that winked in the sunlight as her feet flew over the park, down to the stream.
    Her hired companion, Mrs. Meyers, had given her a new netting box for her birthday, despite repeated hints for a pair of blue silk stockings seen in Allyson’s Drapery Shop. Mrs. Meyers was a good woman, but sadly lacking in romance. She would not have let herself fall into flesh at forty years, and she would not have worn those horrid old gray gowns, if she had any notion of romance. In her hand Arabella carried the present Cousin William had given her, a copy of Mr. Wordsworth’s poems. But Uncle Throckley had given the best present of all. He was having a rout party that evening, with all the young ladies and gentlemen of the neighborhood coming to honor her birthday.
    “Now that you are all grown-up, it is time to introduce you to the young gentlemen. Mind you don’t let any of them steal your heart away,” Uncle Throckley added waggishly. “We don’t want to lose you yet, do we, William?” He leveled a commanding eye at his chinless son.
    “No indeed, Papa,” William replied dutifully.
    The whole household was in on the secret of the party; for days the servants had been preparing raised pies and hams and macaroons. They had turned out the whole downstairs of Chêne Bay. The carpets were lifted and hung over the clothesline and beaten; beeswax and turpentine were applied to the furnishings, and even