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Charlotte had been rubbing her purple fingertips in the water basin until the water became cold.
“The stains that blackberries leave are very persistent, are they not?” Alison called to her when she entered the kitchen, a frown of sorrow on her face.
But Charlotte didn’t hear, just kept working the skin on her fingers absentmindedly with her back turned towards her sister and mother.
Mrs Heywood, busy cleaning the numerous jars with the freshly cooked blackberry jam before turning them on their heads and stacking them in a crate, looked at Alison, shaking her head, and whispered “She doesn’t listen, she doesn’t talk…”
“Won’t you come with me to the post office, Charlotte, to fetch the letters? I won’t be able to concentrate on anything else this morning until I know if there’s a letter from Declan. He’ll tell me what his family in Ireland is able to do for us, you know.”
At her sister’s evasive look, Alison pressed on in a pleading tone “I need you to be with me when I receive the news Charlotte, I don’t want to be alone in the street when I read it”
“Then why don’t you wait until you’re back home before you open the letter…” Charlotte muttered without being heard.
At Alison’s sideway glance to her mother, Mrs Heywood knew she had to side up with Alison in this.
Both Mrs Heywood and her second eldest daughter had been trying to get Charlotte to talk ever since the sisters had come back to Willingden from that dubious seaside resort. Since then, the moods of the two girls could not have been more different.
Alison in high spirits, shooing the female part of the household into feverish action to prepare her trousseau and making all the younger sisters’ imaginations overflow with dreams about their own red coats appearing at their doorstep one day.
On the other side, Charlotte, working hard to conceal her gloom from anyone’s notice.
“The work on the jam is done and I have no other task for you this morning, dearest. The weather is fine for the first time in days - do accompany and support your sister!” Mrs Heywood said, looking rather at Alison than at her eldest, to convey her hopes Alison might find a way into Charlotte’s confidence on their walk to the village.
“Very well” Charlotte finally sighed. Grabbing a towel to dry her shrivelled, cold fingers she turned around and forced herself to smile at her sister.
—
“So he sent you away after kissing you twice? How shocking!” Alison shrieked.
Charlotte sighed. “After some deliberation I don’t find his behaviour…shocking… anymore. Rather… predictable.”
Running her fingers over the waist-high spikes of barley growing along their path, she let their foxtails of awns scratch her palm. It wasn’t an agreeable sensation, but keeping her alert to the present in its annoying intensity.
“I feel like… I understand him. After all this time living a secluded life on his estate and the misfortune of his first marriage… he un-learned how to share. Be it a burden or a meal with his family. Imagine, how afraid a person so out of practice of company, so used to living alone, must be to share a life. And this would have been his only other option, marriage, if he had not chosen to send me away. He is so afraid, he’d rather choose the security of his well known loneliness over the frightening step to surrender, to expose himself to the risk of…” she swallowed, “…happiness. Love.”
“That sounds awful!” Alison exclaimed.
“He can’t be happy like this, I know it. I’m not falling for the disguise of the tough facade he showed during our last conversation in his study. I know it’s a mask he was hiding behind.”
“And…. do you think you could have been happy? Could you have loved such a man as him, if he had asked you to marry him?” Alison asked, wide eyed.
Charlotte was already regretting her weakness in letting Alison into her secret, and by that means, surely sooner or later her mother as well. She didn’t answer, just directed her eyes intently into the sun. If a tear escaped them, she could pretend it to be from the brightness.
Alison slowed down and took her hand, stopping her in her walk.
“Charlotte, if that’s the case… if you could have loved him, you might…still secure him! Don’t accept the Starlings’ dinner invitation for tomorrow. You know very well what - who - awaits you there. Write to the Parkers! Try to go back to Sanditon by all means!”
Charlotte freed her hand and resumed her walk slowly.
“You don’t understand. I won’t help him against his will, I’m not a saint. And I won’t secure him, because I’m no fortune huntress either. I won’t pull him out of his misery if he doesn’t do the first steps. If he doesn’t find his way to Willingden in time, if he doesn’t seek me out, he will pay for it with his heart.”