‘Oh my goodness! Stand up straight! Fold your hands carefully and don’t let them hang like that. You must be more genteel, not lumbering about like some loutish fool of a gardener. Deary me, deary me.’ Miss Prosser, the new ladies’ maid, was a short, wispy, lisping woman, who looked as though the first gust of winter wind would blow her clean away over the hills.
‘I have spoken to plenty of gardeners, and none of them have been loutish fools,’ Mary said. In the grate the fire sparked and crackled, and Mary’s voice did too.
‘You have been talking to the gardeners? Goodness me, it seems I have arrived not a moment too soon!’ Miss Prosser raised her hands and eyes to heaven, a picture of martyred womanhood, and Mary frowned. She was not fond of her new maid; she found her silly.
Miss Crichton was very fond of Miss Prosser; the two of them were constantly whispering in corners, casting spiteful glances over their shoulders towards Mary and Colin, and then out would come another set of instructions and strictures that well-mannered young ladies and gentlemen should always obey. The implication, which Mary could not fail to miss, was that she was not well mannered. Well, she didn’t want to be. Her Mama and Papa had been thought well-mannered, with their white gloves and always the correct knives and forks for dinner, but behind those manners they were hollow, and had left her alone in that fine, genteel bungalow in the heat of India. Martha and Dickon’s mother, Mrs. Sowerby, would not be considered well-mannered, because she lived in a cottage, baked her own bread and swept her own floors, but she was the pleasantest woman of Mary’s acquaintance, and she cared about everyone. So, as far as she was concerned, being ‘well mannered’ was nothing to be proud of.
‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘about being elegant or a young lady. I’d rather be in the garden.’
‘Whatever will your uncle say?’ Miss Prosser said, whisking her hands in agitation like an overexcited fly against a window. ‘Miss Crichton has tasked me with making you presentable by the time he returns at Christmas! He won’t expect to come back and find you grubbing about outside in the soil.’
‘He will.’ Mary said, confidently. ‘He said I could have a piece of earth for myself. He wants me to learn about growing things. Not being presentable.’
‘But what about your Mama? Your dear, angel Mama in Heaven? What would she say to hear you talk like that?’ Miss Prosser’s voice quavered with melodrama, but Mary was having none of it today. Miss Prosser knew nothing of her mama.
‘She never went out of her way to talk to me when she was alive. Why should she care what I say or do now she’s dead?’ And Mary made the sourest expression possible, the one that she had learnt in India. Miss Prosser visibly flinched away from Mary.
‘Well. Well, bless my soul, how … how disagreeable … But wouldn’t you like to look pretty for the Christmas festivities? You’ll need to know how to present yourself if you’re to catch a rich husband.’
‘I don’t want to catch any husband at all. I’m only eleven years old,’ said Mary.
‘It’s never too early to learn. That’s why I’m here, to curb your worst tendencies towards independence. Independent girls become bluestocking women, and nobody likes a clever woman! First, we need to curl that dreadful hair of yours so it hangs in pretty ringlets and –’
‘I like my hair straight,’ Mary interrupted her. ‘It’s more practical. Girls at my mother’s parties in India had ringlets and they looked like poodles.’
‘Well, nevertheless, I have my orders. Your hair shall be curled. Sit down, Miss Mary. Or shall I report you to Miss Crichton for bad behaviour?’
Mary thought of what other punishments Miss Crichton might choose to inflict upon herself – or Martha – if she didn’t do as she was told, and with a huge, heavy sigh, she sat down in the straight-backed wooden chair that Miss Prosser had pulled out for her to sit in.
Curling her hair took a very long time, and involved heating metal curling tongs until the slightest touch from them burned her neck. It quickly taught her to sit still and not to fidget. Whether this was Miss Prosser’s intention or not, after the first few little accidents Mary sat rigid and unmoving. At the end of the process, her curled hair made her look and feel like a little china doll, not a girl at all, unable to move freely or turn her head for fear of disturbing her curls.
‘There! Pretty as a picture, just as your uncle would want. Won’t he be surprised to see how nice you can look when he comes home? And we shall find you some proper white kidskin boots, not those great clodhopping leather things, and some silk stockings instead of those woollen monstrosities that Medlock insists on you wearing. You can tell that she has never had cause to dress a young lady for a party season in town!’
‘But my clothes are comfortable. And they allow me to go outside! I don’t care about party seasons in town, only the seasons of nature in the Secret Garden.’
‘There’ll be no more of that! No gardens for you, secret or not. You’ll be a proper young lady by Christmas, not some dreadful hoyden from the moors, like Martha.’
‘I’d much rather be a hoyden from the moors, like Martha, than anything else on earth!’ Mary said.
Liz Taylorson 