5 October

As our move has been ushered in with the dawn of the new month, I am now at last given over to enough time to finish what I started, and continue my recollection of events as spelt out by Dr. Radcliffe (I will admit to having to read over what I already write, for this blur of time has not allowed me to be nearly half so consistent as I would like in jotting down my thoughts). 

Following the tragic demise of Georginia Thomas, whose funeral we were not permitted to attend, Evie and I were set to work at once in the matter of securing our belongings for travel. The entire time that we threw our dresses and socks into trunks and cases we whispered about what life would be like soon. Evie did not want to be married, but hardly has she supposed if it ever did happen, it would not be to a complete stranger! The idea of a good, kind, caring husband was all she had ever wanted from the prospect, as her mother often brought the topic up with her, or a husband who allowed her to do as she pleased (can you see it now, Evie wandering around her own attached garden, a man smiling from the door as his wife toils under her own work? I cannot say that I can, but at the very least, an image of my friend at her own work conjures easily in my mind). For nearly an hour straight it seemed, Evie spat and cursed about the poison having a man control her every movement would be.

"Can't you see, Winnifred? I'll become some crippled thing, a mute creature with a spine broken from the weight of his demands!" Still the only person to call me Winnifred, I could only sigh in sympathy for her. "Do you think he'll allow me my walks any longer? Not for fear of my running off! And of my trips out of town? Oh, it may just be a good thing he needs you to come along - I might kill myself now, if you weren't there!" As harsh as the statement was, I knew she meant it in every sense. While some women may view marriage as an establishment on health and prosperity and whatever else connects us to secure homes, Evie could only decline if not allowed to roam. She appeared to possess too many thoughts to contain to one place. At the very least, with my garden, she had been able to distract herself the burden of thinking. 

"The garden!" I cried, growing wet-eyed at the prospect of losing something so dear to the both of us. "What will become of our garden?"

"I shall build another," vowed Evie with a sudden sternness that terrified me.

"What if he refuses to let us out?" 

"I don't care. It will be done, be it by my hands or over my grave." I gasped and reached for her hands. 

"Evie! Don't say such things!"

"Even if I mean them with all of my heart?" She gave me a cold look, the sort I've only seen in contemptuous people with nothing to lose because they have already lost it all. Did Evie suspect I was gone? I wanted to tell her that I would follow her to the horrid doctor's home whether bidden to or not, but she stood up and threw the coat she'd been wrenching in her hands to the ground. "I... I need something to drink. I'll bring something up." She was gone in a moment, leaving me to myself with the looming threat of my best and only friend in all of England a corpse of her own doing. 

When Evie did return, she indeed carried a plate of warm and burning cups of tea, which we shared over the pile of clothes so carelessly abandoned to our tempers. As we sipped, I was reminded of the letters so long ago found in my attic and I questioned if we would bring them along with us, to have at least something to study in the misery of our imprisonment. "Why, what a brilliant idea!" Giving me a dramatic and tea-tinted kiss on the cheek (a much more welcome mood than her cold bitterness, which not even my overly-forgiving nature could hope to calm), Evie carefully set her tea down and produced the packet of letters from a chest under her bed. 

"It wouldn't do, to have someone... unsavoury, as you might put it, getting their hands on these." We huddled over the packet and bent our heads close together. Evie had already begun perusing their mysterious contents, but was silent so that I could reread the first letter. It was a strange this, to be sure, and appeared addressed to an Igor. Upon her questioning my knowledge of the previous owner of my house, I reminded her that it was my father who had done the purchasing. 

"It could be your house, for all of the information I have!" She gave me an annoyed smile. 

"Were it my house, we would never have to leave for the dark and cramped halls of a man's home."

"Not all men are as vile as this one," I reminded her, thinking of my father and the sailors he knew. They were all a rowdy bunch, but always possessed a flower upon seeing a woman, no matter her age, and a compliment to go with it. Some of the sailors had enlisted in the South, and they shared their old, romantic ways of treating people. Oftentimes, their compliments were teasingly said in heavy Southern accents, which I imitated for an incredulous Evie, as "May a fine young Miss such as yourself find favour with God today" didn't sound nearly half so nice in a New Yorker's voice. 

"Well, there are no Southern heartbreakers here. We've got cold and lifeless men. Bottled up in the drinks and their family guilt for never having left this salty town. Failures in the field and on the farm. Marriages to women they hate." 

"Evie, if you think like that, it's no wonder you don't want to be a wife someday!" Our conversation had quickly turned from the letters, but I suppose if God had wanted us to stay focused, he wouldn't have given such a passionate mind and a decidedly unfocused one the opportunity for friendship, where arguing was nearly as natural as agreeing. It was never bitter arguing, anyway, so I didn't mind when we were a bit distracted. 

Turning to gaze at me with a shrewd expression I couldn't decipher, Evie squinted and pointed at me. "Just what is marriage like in America? Stolen tea parties and rides in fields of corn for fifty years?" Despite the condescension which stole into her voice, the image of my mother and father, holding hands in the back of a cart as they rode across the countryside, proved far too amusing for me to hold back a laugh. 

"Fields of corn? I lived in the city!" My laughter turned to snorting. "You couldn't find corn unless it was on a ship!"

"Well," she demanded, looking a bit miffed that I found it so amusing. "Surely, your men still boss women about, and curse everything before them?"

"I think that is true everywhere," I replied, "only, women boss them right back."

Evie was stunned. "How?" she demanded, sure that I was jesting. 

"There are so many things a woman needs, that if she has the husband for the job, she'll boss him about nearly as much as he might be like to do! My own mother is the sensible one - there's no room for fanciful ways of thinking for my father when she's around."

"Surely, that can't be grounds for a better relationship than we have a hope of here?"

"Firstly, I doubt all coupled life here is so bleak. Secondly, I have never met a match more perfectly balanced than in my own parents. If it wasn't for my father, I'm not sure my mother would have ever smiled!" This proved an impossible idea for Evie to understand, so she turned to my beliefs. 

"Do you want to get married?"

"I... well, er..." 

"Exactly! If it so great, then why would you refuse it for this long? You should have been wed years ago, and yet, you live alone in a country far away from any possible suitors who possess all of that Southern charm you love so much." Though her points were fair and true, they didn't sting any less, and I stammered for some time. 

Convinced she had won, Evie produced the letters once more and sniffed over the introduction. Even though some part of me knew that she was right, I still felt the sting of my romantic ideas dashed. This was reality. The sound of the doctor's voice coming from the kitchens, where he was no doubt discussing the arrangements of Evie's hand and rehoming, reminded us that fanciful letters or not, friends or without, there were choices beyond our permission or understanding. I considered my heritage and ancestry by way of my father - coloured people knew this truth as much as the disillusioned women of England, it seemed. I did not think it was a problem inherent in the white man, but rather, people in general. There would always be oppression, forced ideas and marriages and labour, but I doubted Evie would agree. Was that why we had developed a friendship? Was I the answer to her vision of the enemy, a woman with less claim to domineering traits that any other? 

Interrupting my useless musings, Evie's narration pulled me back into the present world. "Know that without you, I am as miserable as were we together. What on Earth does this mean? Winn!" I snapped to attention and frowned. 

"Who is this addressed to, again?" Evie peered around the page and looked back up. 

"An Igor." 

"Who is Igor, that she would so slyly proclaim her misery around him?"

"I haven't a clue. His name isn't mentioned elsewhere, and this one isn't signed by anyone."

"Well," I groaned, standing and stretching my legs, "at least we'll have a mystery on our hands, while we're locked up in a cold and dark house, far from any family to confide in." Our mystery, as I'd hoped we could find solace in, was short lived. Appearing at the door was Evie's father, a mixed expression of hope and desolation etched onto his round face. Leaping up and into his arms, Evie began at once to make the sort of sound I assumed was crying - the only other time she wept, it was a for a calm sort of realisation that she needed to return home from our night at my house to see to her mother. This was a harder sound, and filled with all of the despair of being pulled from someone you loved and knew to care for you your whole life. Though Evie disliked the idea of being married, the notion had not scared her off from her father, who at least had the sense to give her all of the freedom she so dearly craved throughout her life. To lose this man for one so sure to strip her of it, it was no wonder Evie wept!

Pulling away for a moment, Mr. Thomas wiped away his own tears and smiled. "This is a good day, my darling. You shan't want for anything with this man. Cry not!"

"Father," Evie replied, her expression turning at once sour, "how can I ask anything of him, when I know not even his Christian name?" I doubt either of us were truly surprised to hear Mr. Thomas' next response, but the shock of hearing it was still gruesome. 

"Why, it's Igor. Igor Radcliffe, and what a powerful name!" He continued to chatter about the history of the Radcliffe's, which I suppose we should have listened to, as it was information we would likely wonder about in our impending exile . As it was, we were both so horrified to find a link from my small house to this doctor of mysterious origins, and could only stare at one another as Mr. Thomas spoke to his daughter for the last time. 

We were guided away the next day, and I doubted we would ever see the home of the Thomases again. Waving at us with smiles, for they knew not the severity of the situation, were Lily, Jack, and Peter, throwing flowers at us as a carriage, most useful had it been here when Evie was required to make her journey home in the rain, collected our despondent figures and rolled out of sight. Driving the carriage himself was the doctor, who I sense found great pleasure in personally ensuring we were separated from our loved ones. 

Woefully,
Winn