Ironskin

“In our empty flat I wouldn’t be chaperoned,” said Helen. “Positively much more scandalous, I assure you. Not to mention dull as dirt. No Jane to fuss over me and keep me from spending all my earnings on shoe buckles and fizzy wine. Why does it bother you?”

 

 

“It doesn’t,” said Jane. If she probed deeply, it was probably because she felt guilty at leaving Helen to make her own decisions, manage her own life. Which was ridiculous. She’d only left Helen because Helen was leaving her. Well, that and the no-job thing. She’d been fired from the Norwood School over winter holidays, and hadn’t that just made them pleasant. “Forget I said anything.”

 

Helen carefully took apart a cream cake and licked the insides out. “Can you remember when we used to have this sort of thing at home?”

 

“Just,” said Jane. “Never every day though.” Father had died in the Indis of brain fever when Jane was eleven. Though the estate went to Charlie, there had been no family money left, except what Father had earned by his wits. After the dust and the debts had been settled, they were left with Mother’s tiny annuity. Still, even those times had had joy in them. Jane had seen the terrible conditions at the Norwood School, and that had just been as a teacher. If both her parents had died when Jane was eleven, she and Helen might have ended up as charity pupils at a school just like that, cold and hungry and at the mercy of typhus or polio. She could scarcely imagine how that Jane would have turned out—equally scarred, perhaps, equally angry.

 

But when Jane was thirteen, the war started, and the poor-but-happy time grew fainter, thinner as the terror dragged on and on. Until one day on a battlefield her brother was gone and it was all over, all of it.

 

After the war, after no Charlie, the estate went to the cousins, and Jane could not even keep Mother in her own home while she wasted away. All she could manage was huddling in Niklas’s foundry, lost and confused and trying to recover from a wound that would never heal.

 

But down that road lay guilt and rage. Jane blinked back the orange fire that warmed her mask, doused it with thoughts of lakes and streams and pure cooling rain. She refused to be angry today.

 

“No, not cream cakes every day,” Helen was saying, “unless Father sailed home with a windfall. But better than never. Better than grubbing in the gardens, and depending on neighbors’ charity, better than watching Mother take in tatwork and ruin her eyes by hoarded candlelight. Tatwork! Do you hear how old-fashioned that sounds? No one wears lace now. Mother wouldn’t know what to make of it, if she were here.” Her voice faltered on the final word.

 

Jane touched Helen’s arm. “I know you miss her.”

 

“And I’m sure you missed her in the city, after you left us,” said Helen, brightly, sharply, and Jane’s hand fell away. “But we’re not digging up unpleasant pasts today. Not for my wedding.” She dropped the decreamed cake sections to her saucer and smiled at Jane as if willing things to be all right. “Go on, eat, before I clean off this entire tray.” Helen’s fingers hovered over another slice. “But everyone says Silver Birch is enormous, one of those grand old fey-built estates. They probably have cream cakes out the ears. I suppose if he doesn’t chop you into bits, you can sneak me into some brilliant party there and we’ll make off with a bottle of sherry and an entire cake and go looking for all those slaughtered ex-wives.”

 

“I don’t think he has parties,” said Jane. “They live simply.” In truth she suspected that money was tight, but she didn’t like the idea of gossiping about her employer. To assuage Helen she picked up a small triangle of rose-scented cake and tried to turn the subject away from Helen’s gruesome imaginings. “Won’t there be lots of food today? Were there problems with rations?”

 

“Bosh,” said Helen, separating another cake slice. “The Great War is over, Jane, no matter what your country friends think. Rations simply don’t apply to someone like Alistair. Why do you think I picked him? Not just for his charm. People with money can save you, Jane—if they want to. But you take the bad with the good—you see how practical I have become, on my own—and today that means excess. He has the staff making mountains of cakes, chilling waterfalls of champagne. And really, it will be glorious, won’t it? But I can’t do this while people are watching.” She demonstrated what she couldn’t do by sucking pink cream filling from the sponge. “Anyway, that’s ages away. I still have an entire ceremony to get through without fainting, and so do you. Did you bring something nice to wear?”

 

“My best,” said Jane, referring to the navy frock with short sleeves. “You’ve seen it.”

 

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