Diana Worthington was not a woman who cared for nonsense, in any form or manner, from anyone. She was a stout woman, with over four decades of life behind her, much of which had been a life hard earned and lived properly by marrying at a good age, and even having a surviving child who was now in his twenty-fifth year and thinking of marriage himself. She ran a small, but well maintained house in a quiet borough out of London, and was even fortunate enough to have a live in servant named Jennifer Jones. Jennifer, who was eighteen and young, had been a great help to Diana in running the affairs of the house and keeping it in the proper order expected of their class, and Diana knew that she was lucky to have her.
Still, Diana thought with no small amount of consternation, Jennifer had been no help at all lately when the time turned to two thirty in the afternoons, and in fact was making a daily occurrence of a migraine which forced her to retire to bed until three o'clock arrived. The preparations for high tea had lately been the sole bane of Diana, who, with her many, many other duties stretching before her for the remainder of the day, was not at all pleased with this development. She had a mind to complain to Mr. Worthington about it, if it got too terrible.
She paused over her peeling of potatoes, and eyed the bubbling iron pot of boiling water critically. No, she would do no such thing. If Jennifer couldn't cope with nonsense, for that's certainly what all of this *was*, then she could stay in her half hour cocoon of ignorance if that's all the cure it took.
The cut up potatoes were tossed into the large pot, and the tiny oven door opened to reveal a neat row of freshly baked biscuits. Diana took them out with her thick woolen oven mitts, and turned the tray of biscuits onto the counter and then arranged them more neatly onto a pretty plate. She covered them over with a tea cloth to keep them warm, and then proceeded to sweep up the mess of ash that had fallen to the floor when the oven door had been opened. Her life had been mostly spent in this room, she thought, even if she was the mistress of the house. They were not so wealthy to afford a cook, and so much of the burden of cooking and cleaning had fallen on her own shoulders, which had long become broad from the effect of unending labor.
Her husband, Mr. Worthington, was naturally at his gentleman's club this afternoon, no doubt smoking cigars with his peers and discussing things of the utmost import for hours. Things, Diana thought without some measure of bitterness, like whose horse was best to bet on. She wiped at the crumbs left by the biscuits and tossed them into a hole on the back of the stove, where they fell into tiny cinders on the hot coals on the bottom. She wiped away a bead of sweat from her forehead with a kerchief from her pocket. It was always a concern, just how much her husband thought he could play with on any given day. Sometimes the allowance she'd been given to cover their bills and their monthly supplies of food had been lacking, and it was never he but she who had to suffer the brunt of his disappointment when he was low on funds. She had put quite a stop to his nonsense early enough, however, and it was rare that such problems with their budget arose again. There are many things Diana Worthington would put up with, but nonsense was most definitely not one of them.
Instinctively, she raised her eyes to the ceiling, where Jennifer's room was situated above the kitchen. Poor girl. It couldn't be helped, Diana supposed, some people were just weaker than others. But even amongst this understanding, the girl's fear vexed her.
The kettle on the stove began to sputter and then screech its whistle loudly into the otherwise silence of her home. She picked it up and placed it on a ceramic hotplate, its surface dotted with pale blue flowers. Diana sighed, and took out a few items for a very simple arrangement of tea, the biscuits supplied with delicate servings of butter and jam and a dollop of cream--the tea prepared in the usual way with milk in the creamer and a few small lumps of precious sugar in a nearby bowl. Heaving a heavy, tired sigh, Diana allowed herself to sit for a few moments at the large table in the centre of the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of tea, and took the liberty of a biscuit and jam.
Two bites. The clock on the far wall shifted to two-thirty.
The room melted.
That is the only way to describe such a happening, Diana reasoned, for this was the way the walls slipped out of place, the colors melding together, only to recollect into a new arrangement like a collage atop of her own home. The picture of Queen Victoria and her dear departed Albert were transparent while a framed portrait of a smiling little boy in living, rich color lay overtop of it. The table itself was out of focus, a layer like glass atop of the dark wood, the base having both the usual wooden legs, and another section beneath it which looked to be made of a large piece of marble. The scene was what one would exactly find if a portrait had been accidentally double exposed, though certainly none of the images had any kind of cultural congruence with the other.
Diana sipped her tea, and ate another bite of her biscuit before looking up and nodding at her usual guest. She smiled at the young woman sitting at the other end of the table, and offered her a cup of tea. The young woman paled, and clutched at her throat slightly, and then, almost apologetically, accepted the offering. She got up from her side of the table and went into the shadow that was her kitchen sitting on top of Diana's in bold pastels and many more windows than what Diana had. One could tell there were certain things that hadn't changed, however, like the moldings on the ceiling-they'd kept the ridged trim, although they'd painted them white.
The young woman came back to her seat, this time brandishing a cup which did not look like a tea cup but was more of a stout ceramic creation, with an ugly handle and equally bland, ugly flowers in pastel hues on its surface. Diana raised a brow at it, but poured the young woman a cup of tea anyway. It did hold more than the delicate cups, but then, the tea would be cold before one could properly finish it. That was the cost of being greedy.
"How have you been?" Diana asked, brightly. She smiled at the nervous young woman as she looked at her over her cup of tea. She was a tiny woman, who wore mannish clothes, though Diana had come to learn that was the style of fashion for her. The young woman shifted in her seat, and didn't meet Diana's gaze, and it was soon clear to Diana as to why. Diana sipped her tea, pretending not to notice the young woman's bruised eye. "Here now, Eliza," Diana said, trying not to be too obvious, "where did you ever get such a nasty purple mark? On the door, was it?" Diana let her gaze drop into the pale brown contents of her tea cup. "Or was it the kitchen cabinet this time?"
The young woman, who was Eliza, slid a shaking hand through her hair. It had been cropped short, as was the style, Diana new. That's what they did where Eliza was--Women wore comfortable clothes and had comfortable hairstyles, and had many, many wondrous things that gave them more time to do lots and lots of other things. Diana knew how busy Eliza was. She was always running here or there in her 'van', taking her son to school, going to work, coming home, cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, organizing the house, figuring out how best to decorate it.
Yes, for Eliza there was always plenty of time for lots of things that ate up her life.
Diana sipped her tea. Eliza simply stared at hers like it was going to give her a lecture.
"And where is Mr. Miller?" Diana asked, with as sweet a smile as the sugar lump she had dropped into her cup of tea.
"On a business meeting," Eliza said, but her voice wavered.
"I suppose he's under stress, is he?" Diana asked.
Eliza nodded.
"Ah, what a pity, that," Diana said. She sighed and placed her teacup on the table before her. "Did Tommy do well on his exam?" She glanced at the time on the large clock that was fading in and out on her wall--twenty to three. Diana frowned, wondering if she'd have time to say what needed saying.
"His teacher said he could have done better. I think so too, he's never gotten a C before."
"I'm sure he's a young boy with a lot on his mind," Diana said, pointedly. Eliza said nothing.
The clock was ticking through both of their worlds, a heady, malevolent sound that refused to ease up in its insistence. Tock. Tock. Tock.
Of course, she'd first thought Eliza was a ghost. Who wouldn't? And Eliza had thought likewise of her--that was until it became very clear that it was not one was a ghost and one wasn't, but that at two-thirty until three o'clock every day, this kitchen had proven them to both be spirits. Or not. Perhaps one of Mr. Worthington's more philosophically minded friends could explain such happenings better, a bending of physics, maybe, or a spirit realm that rested outside of time.
Time. It didn't change all that much, when you really, really thought about it.
"Eliza," Diana said, and now she was stern, and abrupt, and definitely, most certainly not putting up with any more of this nonsense, "a bad man is only as terrible as the woman who keeps him."
Eliza frowned, and looked over her mug at Diana, as though she wasn't sure she was hearing correctly. "How can you of all people say such a thing?" she said. "I don't want a divorce."
"I never said to do that," Diana said, primly. "I merely said don't be with him anymore. Go live with your mother, in Bath, that's what's best for you. She's been begging you to do so for years."
"But.." Eliza began, and tentatively touched her injured eye with her fingertips. "I can't. I love him."
Diana nearly spilled her tea, she was so vehement in her anger. She placed the cup down with less care than usual, and stood up from her chair, to be an imposing stature above Eliza who nervously looked up at her scolding expression. "Stupid girl!" Diana exclaimed. "How many times do I have to tell you, make you understand? You don't have any family halting you from making this decision, you have every power to leave him behind, and start your life over, without the stigma of his influence hanging over you. You keep telling me how much freer and more open your life as a woman is where you are," Diana crossed her arms over her ample chest. "Prove it to me."
Tears were forming in the corners of Eliza's eyes. She wiped them away messily with the back of her hand. "I can't," she repeated.
Diana was impatient, and furious. "If you were my daughter..."
"You would tell me not to divorce him," Eliza said, immediately, her unhappy gaze defying Diana. "You would tell me to wait it out and be a good wife and hope he gets better if I am more submissive to him."
Diana nearly dropped her cup of tea in shock. "Do you honestly think I would tell you something like that?" she exclaimed.
Eliza let out a smile then, and behind it was something that might even have been cruel. "Of course not, you're a suffragette," she said.
"The cheek of you, making that kind of assumption," Diana grumbled under her breath. "You don't have to be a suffragette to understand you are being stupid, Eliza," she said. She walked closer to the younger woman, and made her take heed of what she was saying. Diana put a strong hand on Eliza's shoulder, and made her stay put when she was attempting to leave. "Listen to me. Yes, it's true you've got more of your freedom, as it were. You can buy property, you can vote, you can go to work and run your own life. But don't think for a second, Eliza, that there aren't women in my world who haven't done the same thing. You have no understanding of how different we live, you and I. Right at the basics, if you like, we die a lot quicker than you do, you even told me about that when I had this conversation with you the last time he smashed your face into his fist. Mr. Worthington had a bout of pneumonia last year that just about cost him his life, and he's still not fully over it, I think. When he is gone, what do you think I will be? Will I be that submissive, meek little woman your history books tell you that I am? I should think not, Eliza, for if that is the case, they should simply shoot me at the gravesite of my departed husband and throw me over the coffin to be buried with him."
Eliza's lips pursed in angry agitation. "I think that corset of yours must be laced too tight, you are a miserably cranky woman."
"When faced with a stupid woman, that I am," Diana said in finality. "You seem to think you can throw away all of the rules, that this freedom you've made means the freedom to be latched onto a man who's of no worth to you at all. Such a sloppy way to live your life, and ruin others besides." She cast a glance on the brightly colored picture of the boy sitting atop of Queen Victoria. "You may think my life is full of inequalities, Eliza, and it most certainly is, but I can assure you, I don't let my husband raise his hand to me, and if he tried he'd be the last one on God's earth to attempt it!"
She moved back to her end of the table, and poured herself another cup of tea. She offered the pot to Eliza, who shook her head sadly, refusing more. Fine. She can sulk over tea instead of her nonsense life if that's what made her miserably happy.
"A woman needs to be strong," Diana said, her voice a little quieter now. Eliza was crying openly, and a well of reluctant pity was beginning to brew in Diana's heart. "It seems to me, you've let all your freedom whittle you into nothingness. If you want to be equal to a man, then stop wallowing in your weakness and be accountable for what you choose. There's many a woman I've known who would have loved to have been in the position you're in, with a family ready and able to support your decision, and a community what wouldn't bat an eye at you leaving. You're a foolish, stupid woman, Eliza, because all around you are open doors, and you just want to throw away all the strength I've had to have, and had passed on to you." Diana sighed. "It's an insulting, disrespectful thing to do to women like me, Eliza. You turn your nose up at me, put on airs because you don't have to sully yourself with the hard work I do. You buy a loaf of bread, and I have to make it. These little things of my life, you disdain. I work hard, my bones are sore and tired by the end of the day, and for what? For your future, so you could purposefully keep a bad man around when there's no need for it. Bah! What is the use of you? A nonsense girl with a nonsense life. Your little Tommy will learn all these faults of yours, mark my words. He'll find a woman who either runs him to the ground or one he can do the favor to himself."
Diana looked up to get Eliza's reaction to this, but she was no longer there. The kitchen was back to its usual dimensions, the clock on the far wall reading three o'clock sharp. Diana sighed, and collected the dishes from her small break. She could hear the creaking of the stairs as Jennifer began her frightened descent to the kitchen, always wary that somehow that half hour would stretch into a full hour, and then, if one wasn't careful, the complete disintegration of time altogether.
Diana was not so broadly minded, in that sense. She wiped her hands on her apron quickly and walked over to the stove, checking on the potatoes. The boiling water had lowered in temperature, and Diana discovered the trouble was that the coal had burned out. The bucket beside the stove was empty, she would have to journey down into the basement and get another helping of the fuel.
Jennifer , no longer afraid now that the threat had passed, was humming as she did dishes, a folk song that Diana knew well. It spoke of love and affection and commitment, and Diana wondered if Jennifer had a beau. If so, she'd make sure he was the proper sort for the girl. One had to keep one's guard up.
A shame, really, that no one had done the same for Eliza.
Two thirty would come again, and so would she. Diana sighed, and tossed some mint in with the potatoes to give them a vibrant flavor. Life was difficult, no matter what side of the clock you lived on. Some just had more sense to wind it properly, and keep the gears running smooth.
END
