—
It was still early when Beatrice went out into the courtyard bearing a large comb, a broad sash of white grosgrain ribbon, and her sewing box. Birds sang in a garden beyond the wall. A white butterfly was looking for milkweed. She could hear the snort and jingle of a horse tossing his head in the street and smell the peppery scent of Mrs. Turber’s tomato plants wilting against sun-heated brick. Amid the sounds and scents of the hot summer morning, the girl sat on a wooden chair in the small courtyard behind the cottage, head bent, allowing Abigail to vigorously towel-dry her hair.
After a gentle scrubbing with carbolic soap, the girl had emerged from the dented copper hip bath in the kitchen as unself-conscious as a child being bathed by its nanny and allowed Abigail and Beatrice to rub her dry with two of Mrs. Turber’s rather rough cotton towels. She had one or two large bruises on her arms and a deeply bruised cut on her thigh, which was scabbing over but red and black around the edges. Beatrice sent Abigail for a bottle of iodine and they soaked the wound, the girl crying out only once as the iodine stung. When it was a dry purple stain, they dressed her in a set of Beatrice’s underclothes, neither the oldest nor the newest she owned, and in a medium-good cotton tea dress and a pair of embroidered leather slippers which had always been too good to discard but too flowery for Beatrice’s taste. Beatrice was sorry to lose the tea dress from her adequate but not extensive wardrobe, but understood that the loss meant she had picked correctly—bestowing a gift rather than the abject charity of handing over something only suitable to be discarded. She was also slightly pained that the dress hung loose on the girl, and that its cornflower blue, set against the pale skin and hair, made a color harmony worthy of a painter’s brush; whereas it had only ever looked washed-out against her own dark hair.
As Beatrice approached, the girl stood and let Abigail gather the back of the dress with a few running stitches and then tie the sash around to hide the makeshift alteration. She then sat again and made no sound as Abigail set to work with the comb and fought her way through several nasty knotted tangles. Finally the hair flowed straight and smooth and Beatrice stepped in to roll and pin the pale corn silk into a simple, low bun at the nape of the neck. With her hair up the girl looked less like a frightened child and more like a young woman recently out of the schoolroom. Beatrice judged her to be seventeen or so.
“What’s going on here?” said Mrs. Turber, stepping into the courtyard with a glowering face. “Water all over the floor and a fire blazing like it’s November.”
“Abigail was helping me bathe our guest, Mrs. Turber,” said Beatrice.
“Just because I offered a roof, doesn’t mean…” The girl turned to look at her, and Mrs. Turber stopped as suddenly as she had started. “Well, bless me, she’s quite the angel, isn’t she?” she added and then did not seem to know what to say next.
Beatrice translated for the girl that the large, red-faced woman thought she looked like an angel. The girl gave a shy smile and stepped forward.
“Non, non. Vous êtes un ange, madame,” she said quietly. “An angel.” With that she kissed Mrs. Turber’s rough hand.
“Bless me, she speaks English,” said Mrs. Turber and patted the girl’s hand, adding, “You are très welcome dans ma maison, mam’selle.”
“Thank you, chère madame,” said the girl, her English romantically accented. “I am Celeste, I am daughter of Professor Fontaine.”
“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth open, Abigail,” said Mrs. Turber to her dumbfounded maid. “Take Miss Celeste in and get her some breakfast. Make sure you bring her a bowl of the good cream, and perhaps she’d like some smoked haddock and poached eggs?”
“Your generosity is unbounded, Mrs. Turber,” said Beatrice, as Abigail led Celeste into the house. She wondered if she too was to partake of haddock and cream or whether her usual breakfast of porridge and toast, and the occasional overboiled egg, would be served.
“She needs feeding up,” said Mrs. Turber, frowning as if Beatrice had failed to see this. “And she’ll be needing better than that rag of a dress, I’m sure. I have some bits put by from when I was younger. I had the waist of a hummingbird my husband used to say…”
“That’s my second-best tea dress,” said Beatrice, distracted by trying to picture any bird with an appreciable waist.
“Well, I’m sure it’s perfectly adequate,” said Mrs. Turber, giving her a doubtful look. “But Miss Celeste is clearly a girl of great refinement.” She let the thought trail away, and Beatrice had an unworthy urge to drop Aunt Marbely’s name in rebuke. The thought made her snappish.
“She is very blond and lovely,” she said. “But were fairness the accepted test of rank and refinement, no doubt the royal family would all be albino.”
“I was referring to her respectful manners,” said Mrs. Turber. “Something some of us could no doubt learn from.”
“Touché, Mrs. Turber,” said Beatrice. “You are right of course and I am a shrew.”
“The royal family indeed,” said Mrs. Turber. “I’ve never been so shocked.”
“Then I am doubly sorry, for I know you are a woman who is often shocked, Mrs. Turber,” said Beatrice. “I am stiff and grumpy from sleeping on the floor and waking up too early.”
“I suppose now you’ll be wanting the bed back again?” said Mrs. Turber. Beatrice could think of nothing worse. No doubt the wormy frame and lumpy mattress had been rendered more wormy, lumpy, and damp from being kept in Mrs. Turber’s cellar and chewed by mice.
“Mrs. Kent has promised to send another bed,” said Beatrice. “But if you do have clothing and linens put by, I’m sure Celeste would be deeply indebted for your trouble.”
Mrs. Turber brightened considerably at this suggestion. “I’ll alter them for her with my own hands, bless her,” she said. “I have a dress or two, and some red flannel petticoats that still have years of strength in them. A lady needs good, stout petticoats.”
“In all seasons and climates, Mrs. Turber,” said Beatrice. As Mrs. Turber bustled into the house, Beatrice grinned. She was surprised to feel a warmth of purpose in being now connected to the great enterprise under way. To provide sanctuary was an ancient tradition, and as long as pride did not become hubris—she must not start talking of “my refugee,” like Mrs. Fothergill—she acknowledged that it felt gratifying to have found some small connection to the war.
—
Mrs. Turber was not the only citizen of Rye to be taken with Celeste. Mrs. Saunders, who did the washing and mending, was summoned after breakfast to take away the spoiled dress. In the passageway, she shook her head at Beatrice over the impossibility of cleaning such fine ruined silk, but when Beatrice brought her into the parlor to explain the matter to Celeste, not wanting to dispose of even this ruined item without consultation, Mrs. Saunders began to weep at the girl’s shy shrug of understanding and made tearful promises to do the work of Hercules himself to save the dress.
“Please tell her it does not matter,” said Celeste in a whisper to Beatrice. “I shall never wear it again.”