The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(88)

“I’m not afraid of you, Brigadier.” Mrs. Tilling stood resolutely where she was, upright and composed, as if she had gained a new position of strength and righteousness. “I know enough to have a full investigation set into motion. If that’s what you want.” She said every word carefully. “All it takes is one small telephone call.”

“Give the game up, Mrs. Tilling,” Daddy ordered. “You don’t know what you’re playing with. How irresponsible it would be for you to mess around with this. Put our little community in jeopardy, crush us in this awful war.”

Daddy can be extremely frightening when he’s in this kind of temper, and I was worried for a moment that Mrs. Tilling would back down, ease herself out of the room, and the thrashing would be resumed without delay.

But she stood firm. I could even see a flicker of a smile on her lips, a small, quiet kind of smile, the type you might see at a chess tournament when someone knows they’ve won a long time before anyone else realizes.

“Don’t get all patronizing, Brigadier.” She took two steps toward him, so that she was only about a foot away. “I have nothing to fear from you.” She lightly swept a little dust from his shoulder. It was a damning gesture, dismissive. “Quite the contrary, I assure you.”

Daddy was visibly perturbed. He took a step back and looked across the room as if for inspiration, some kind of solid ground. His brow was fraught and his eyes darkened, and his thin lips drew down at the corners, a schoolboy thwarted.

I cowered farther into the corner. That Mrs. Tilling could stand up to Daddy was one thing, but that she held something over him was quite another. I was unsure how he would react. He doesn’t like women at the best of times, merely tolerates Mama and us girls. What was it that she knew that could force him to back down? I’ve never known Daddy to concede defeat. Not once among his many, varied combats. Even Mrs. B. treads carefully around him, and we all know how relentless she can be.

Mrs. Tilling looked over to me, beckoning me to get up.

I got unsteadily to my feet, looked around at the small dark drips of blood on the parquet floor, and tried to straighten my shredded dress and tidy my hair.

“Now say you’re sorry,” she calmly said to him.

“Say you’re sorry, Kitty,” he bellowed at me.

“Not her,” she shouted—yes, Mrs. Tilling shouting! “You say you’re sorry to her. She’s thirteen years old, and you’re battering her with a horse’s whip. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Now, Mrs. Tilling, I don’t know why—”

“Apologize.” There was a look in her eye I had never seen before, like Justice weighing the balance and finding him wanting.

“I’m sorry, Kitty, Mrs. Tilling appears to have gone quite mad,” Daddy said, a little embarrassed.

“No, don’t apologize for my actions. Lord knows I am capable of doing so myself should it become necessary. Apologize for whipping her, of course.”

“Sorry, Kitty.” He struggled, his hands scrunched in tightly knuckled balls, furious and not looking at either of us. “Now, I think you can go, Kitty, and I think you’ve done enough, too, Mrs. Tilling,” he said sharply.

“No.” Mrs. Tilling came over and put her arm around me, guiding me to the door. “I think your family has had enough of your tyranny. They’ve put up with your cruelty for years, and I don’t see why they should put up with it for a minute longer.” She stopped in her tracks and turned toward him, pointing a finger to the window. “There’s a war going on out there. A real war. People are being killed defending our precious country, and all you can do is beat your own children into submission. Well, it’s not going to happen anymore. Do you understand?”

She turned to me. “You can go and clean yourself up now, Kitty. He won’t be threatening you again, and if he does you’re to tell me straightaway.” She looked at him as she said this, making sure he understood. I nodded and scurried out quickly. Holding my breath, I leaped up the stairs two at a time and nipped quickly into Venetia’s room, quietly closing the door behind me.

“Kitty, I heard the screams, what happened?” she whispered.

I showed her my back.

“Oh no! Not again!” She sighed, motioning me to bring a flannel from the dresser.

I brought it over, with a cup of water to make it moist, and sat on the bed next to her so that she could prop herself up in bed and clean up my wounds. It was pitiable—one victim helping another. But it felt normal somehow, as if we were each other’s natural allies.

I told her about the standoff.

“Who’d have thought Mrs. Tilling would have it in her?” Venetia exclaimed, confusion over her face. “I wonder what she knows.”

“Perhaps he’s having an affair?” I said. “Although I can’t imagine he’d be so worried about keeping it quiet—he has such little regard for Mama. Or maybe it could be his buying black-market gas from the man in Chartham, although I’m sure his status and army connections could override any manner of criminal offenses. He tells me everyone does it anyway. No, it has to be something else. Something much, much worse.”

“Yes, it has to be something else.” She paused, still dabbing my wounds, making me wince with every touch. “Mrs. Tilling has been so different lately. It’s as if she’s discovered there’s more inside her.”