Phoenix and Ashes

When
I needed to populate the village of Broom and Longacre Park, the denizens of
the Dixon's Vixen bulletin board sprang to my aid by volunteering to be
scullery maids, war-heroes, or villains as I chose. So if the names of the
inhabitants are not consistent with the conventions of 1917, that is why.

And

Thanks
to Richard and Marion van der Voort (www.atthesignofthe dragon.co.uk), who
vetted my historical and colloquial accuracy.

And

To
Melanie Dymond Harper, who, when I lost my map and pictures of Broom, went out
into wretched weather to recreate them for me.

December 18,1914
Broom, Warwickshire

HER EYES WERE SO SORE
and swollen from weeping that she thought by right she should have no tears
left at all. She was so tired that she couldn’t keep her mind focused on
anything; it flitted from one thought to another, no matter how she tried to
concentrate.

One
kept recurring, in a never-ending refrain of lament. What am I doing here? I
should be at Oxford.

Eleanor
Robinson rested her aching head against the cold, wet glass of the tiny window
in the twilight gloom of her attic bedroom. With an effort, she closed her
sore, tired eyes, as her shoulders hunched inside an old woolen shawl. The
bleak December weather had turned rotten and rainy, utterly un-Christmas-like.
Not that she cared about Christmas.

It
was worse in Flanders, or so the boys home on leave said, though the papers
pretended otherwise. She knew better. The boys on leave told the truth when the
papers lied. But surely Papa wouldn’t be there, up to his knees in the
freezing water of the trenches of the Western Front. He wasn’t a young
man. Surely they wouldn’t put him there.

Beastly
weather. Beastly war. Beastly Germans
.

Surely
Papa was somewhere warm, in the Rear; surely they were using his clever,
organized mind at some clerking job for some big officer. She was the one who
should be pitied. The worst that would happen to Papa was that he
wouldn’t get leave for Christmas. She wasn’t likely to see anything
of Christmas at all.

And
she
should
be at Oxford, right this minute! Papa had promised,
promised faithfully, that she should go to Oxford this year, and his betrayal
of that promise ate like bitter acid into her heart and soul. She’d done
everything that had been asked of her. She had passed every examination, even
the Latin, even the Greek, and no one else had ever wanted to learn Greek in
the entire village of Broom, except for little Jimmy Grimsley. The boys’
schoolmaster, Michael Stone, had had to tutor her especially. She had passed
her interview with the principal of Somerville College. She’d been
accepted. All that had been needed was to pay the fees and go.

Well,
go
meant making all sorts of arrangements, but the important part had
been done! Why hadn’t
he
made the arrangements before he’d
volunteered? Why hadn’t he done so after?

Hadn’t
she had known from the time she could read, almost, that she all she really
wanted was to go to Oxford to study literature? Hadn’t she told Papa
that, over and over, until he finally agreed? Never mind that they didn’t
award degrees to women now, it was the going there that was the important
part—there, where you would spend all day learning amazing things, and
half the night talking about them! And it wasn’t as if this was a new
thing. There was more than one women’s college now, and someday they
would
give degrees, and on that day, Eleanor meant to be right there to receive hers.
It wasn’t as if she would be going for nothing…

And
it wouldn’t be
here
. Not this closed-in place, where nothing
mattered except that you somehow managed to marry a man of a higher station
than yours. Or, indeed (past a certain age) married any man at all.

“
Oxford
?
Well, it’s—it’s another world… maybe a better one
.”

Reggie
Fenyx’s eyes had shone when he’d said that. She’d seen the
reflection of that world in his eyes, and she wanted it, she wanted it…

Even
this beastly weather wouldn’t be so bad if she was looking at it from
inside her study in Somerville… or perhaps going to listen to a
distinguished speaker at the debating society, as Reggie Fenyx had described.

But
her tired mind drifted away from the imagined delights of rooms at Somerville
College or the stimulation of an erudite speaker, and obstinately towards
Reggie Fenyx. Not that
she
should call him Reggie, or at least, not
outside the walls of Oxford, where learning made all men (and women!) equals.
Not that she had ever called him Reggie, except in her own mind. But there, in
her mind and her memory, he was Reggie, hero-worshipped by all the boys in
Broom, and probably half the grown men as well, whenever the drone of his
aeroplane drew eyes involuntarily upward.

And
off her mind flitted, to halcyon skies of June above a green, green field. She
could still hear his drawling, cheerful voice above the howl and clatter of his
aeroplane engine, out there in the fallow field he’d claimed for his own,
where he “stabled” his “bird” in an old hay-barn and
used to land and take off. He’d looked down at her from his superior
height with a smile, but it wasn’t a patronizing smile. She’d seen
the aeroplane land, known that in this weather he was only going to refuel
before taking off again, and pelted off to Longacre like a tomboy. She found
him pouring a can of petrol into the plane, and breathlessly asked him about
Oxford. He was the only person she knew who was a student there, or ever had
been a student there—well, hardly a surprise that
he
was a
student there, since he was the son of Sir Devlin Fenyx, and the field, the
aeroplane, and everything as far as she could see where she stood belonged to
Lord Devlin and Longacre Park. Where else but Oxford was good enough for Reggie
Fenyx? Perhaps Cambridge, but—no. Not for someone from Warwickshire and
Shakespeare country. “I want to go to university,” she had told
him, when he’d asked her why she wanted to know, as she stood looking up
at him, breathless at her own daring. “
I
want to go to
Oxford!”

“Oxford!
Well, I don’t know why not,” he’d said, the first person to
sound encouraging about her dream since her governess first put the notion in
her head, and nearly the only one since, other than the Head of Somerville
College. There’d been no teasing about “lady dons” or
“girl-graduates.”

“No,
I don’t know why not. One of these days they’ll be giving out
women’s degrees, you mark my words. Ought to be ashamed that they
aren’t, if you ask me. The girls I know—” (he pronounced it
“gels,” which she found fascinating) “—work harder than
most of my mates. I say! If your parents think it’s all bunk for a gel to
go to university, you tell ‘em I said it’s a deuced good plan, and
in ten years a gel’d be ashamed not to have gone if she’s got the
chance. Here,” he’d said then, shoving a rope at her.
“D’ye think you can take this rope-end, run over to
there
,
and haul the chocks away when I shout?”

He
hadn’t waited for an answer; he’d simply assumed she would,
treating her just as he would have treated any of the hero-worshipping boys
who’d come to see him fly. And she hadn’t acted like a silly girl,
either; she’d run a little to a safe distance, waited for his signal
after he swung himself up into the seat of his frail ship of canvas and sticks,
and hauled on the rope with all her might, pulling the blocks of wood that kept
the plane from rolling forward out from under the wheels. And the contraption
had roared into life and bounced along the field, making one final leap into
the air and climbing, until he was out of sight, among the white puffy clouds.
And from that moment on, she’d hero-worshipped him as much as any boy.

That
wasn’t the only time she’d helped him; before Alison had come, she
had been more out of the house than in it when she wasn’t reading and
studying, and she went where she wanted and did pretty much as she liked. If
her mother had been alive, she’d likely have earned a scolding for such
hoydenish behavior, but her mother had died too long ago for her to remember
clearly, her father scarcely seemed to notice what she did, and she had only
herself to please. Reggie had been amused. He’d ruffled her hair, called
her a “jolly little thing,” and treated her like the boys who came
to help.

In
fact, once after that breathless query about Oxford, he had given her papers
about Somerville College, and magazines and articles about the lady dons and
lecturers, and even a clipping about
women
who were flying
aeroplanes—“aviatrixes” he called them—with the
unspoken, but clearly understood implication that if anyone gave her trouble
about wanting to go to Oxford, she should show them the clipping as well as
give them his endorsement of the plan to show that “nice girls” did
all sorts of things these days. “Women are doing great things, great
things!” he’d said with enthusiasm. “Why, women are
doctors—I know one, a grand gel, married to a friend of mine, works in
London! Women
should
go exercising their brains! Makes ‘em
interesting! These gels that Mater keeps dragging round—”
He’d made a face and hadn’t finished the sentence, but Eleanor
could guess at it. Not that she had any broad acquaintance with “ladies
of Society,” but she could read about them. And the London newspapers
were full of stories about Society and the women who ornamented it. To her way
of thinking, they didn’t seem like the sorts that would be terribly
interesting to someone like Reggie. No doubt, they could keep up a sparkling
conversation on nothing whatsoever, and select a cigar, and hold a dinner party
without offending anyone, and organize a country weekend to great acclaim, but
as for being interesting to someone like Reggie—not likely. Even she, an
insignificant village tomboy, was more interesting to him than they were ever
likely to be.

Not
that she was all that interesting to someone like Reggie. For all that she
looked up to him, and even—yes, she admitted it—was a bit in love
with him, he was as out-of-reach as Oxford was now…

In
fact, everything was out of reach now, and the remembered sun and warmth faded
from her thoughts, replaced by the chill gloom of the drafty attic room, and
the emptiness of her life.

Nothing
much mattered now. The war had swallowed up Reggie, as it had swallowed up her
father, as it had smothered her hopes. The bright and confident declarations of
“Home by Christmas” had died in the rout at Mons, and were buried
in the trenches at Ypres, as buried as her dreams.

She
had thought she was through with weeping, but sobs rose in her throat again.
Papa,
Papa
! she cried, silently, as her eyes burned anew. Papa, why did you leave
me? Why did you leave me with Her?

For
it wasn’t the war that was keeping her from Oxford, anyway. Oh,
no—her current misery was due to another cause. Surely Papa would have
remembered his promise, if it hadn’t been for the manipulations of Alison
Robinson, Eleanor’s stepmother.

Two
more tears oozed out from under her closed lids, to etch their way down her
sore cheeks.

She
wouldn’t be able to treat me like this if Papa hadn’t gone. Would
she
?

Horrible,
horrible woman. She’d stolen Papa from her, then stole her very life from
her. And no one else could or would see it. Even people that should know
better, who could
see
how Alison treated her stepdaughter, seemed to
think there was nothing amiss. I’ll hear one more time how lucky I am
that Papa married her and left her to care for me while he’s gone, I
think I shall be sick…

The
day she first appeared had been, had Eleanor only known it, the blackest day of
Eleanor’s life.

She
pounded an impotent fist against her thigh as she stifled her sobs, lest She should
hear…

Papa
had gone on business; it had seemed just like any other of dozens of such
absences. Eleanor was accustomed to Father being absent to tend to his business
from time to time; most fathers in Broom didn’t do that, but Charles
Robinson was different, for he was in trade, and his business interests all lay
outside Broom, even outside of Warwickshire. He was a man of business, he often
told her when she was old enough to understand, and business didn’t tend
to itself.

Although
her father never flaunted the fact, she had always known that they lived well.
She’d had a governess, when most children in the village just went to the
local school. Miss Severn had been a
good
governess, one, in fact, who
had put the idea of Oxford into her head in the first place, and good, highly
educated governesses were (she knew now) quite difficult to find, and
expensive.