“I’m relieved to hear it.”
She blushed but said nothing.
“Even so, I can’t say I share your view of the supposedly liberating origins of the movement,” he continued. “You’ve obviously never heard of Carrie Nation and her famous hatchet.”
Miss Prim bit her lip. She knew exactly what was coming. She knew the man well enough by now: that the reference to the hatchet and its owner was simply bait, so that he could proceed to give another of his master classes. She wanted to deny him that satisfaction, wished it fervently, was absolutely determined; but in the end curiosity got the better of her.
“Carrie Nation and her hatchet?”
“You don’t know who she is?”
“No. Are you making her up?”
“Making her up? How could you think such a thing?” he protested in an offended tone. “For your information, Carrie Nation was the founder of the Temperance Movement, a tiny group that opposed the drinking of alcohol even before Prohibition. I’m sure she was a lovely old lady, but she and her friends had the bad habit of bursting into bars brandishing hatchets, with the noble aim of smashing every bottle in their path. Newspaper reports of the time describe her as almost six feet tall and weighing around twelve and a half stone, so you can imagine how liberating a scene that was. Apparently, when she died, her followers had this moving epitaph carved on her tombstone: ‘Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could.’ ”
“And what has any of this got to do with feminism?” snapped Miss Prim, realizing that she was beginning to enjoy the conversation.
“Let me finish. You’ve the diabolical habit of interrupting your elders. Carrie Nation’s movement claimed that alcoholism led to domestic violence. It was therefore closely linked with the early leagues in defense of women’s rights. Many of those fanatical bar smashers were committed feminists, the kind you call liberators. Believe me, I consider Carrie Nation one of the noble forebears of the movement. All the absurdity came quite a bit later.”
Miss Prim, indignant, again chewed her lip.
“And yet you still allow feminists in this lovely village?” she asked with cold sarcasm as they reached the post office.
The Man in the Wing Chair squinted in the sunlight and shook his head thoughtfully.
“Would you like to meet them? I’m warning you, they’re not exactly what you’d expect.”
“And how do you know what I might expect? I would like to meet them, if that’s all right with you. I’m sure it would be an interesting experience,” she replied, bouncing on tiptoe as she snatched the bunch of poppies from him.
“Actually,” he said before crossing the street, “I think you had the honor of meeting their chairwoman today: our mutual friend, the amiable Hortensia Oeillet.”
Hortensia Oeillet soon sent a formal invitation to Miss Prim. The note stated that the Feminist League of San Ireneo would be delighted if she would attend their next meeting, to be held the following Tuesday. On the morning the invitation arrived, however, she was occupied with another matter. For a little more than three decades, though no one actually knew how much more, her birthday had been celebrated on that very day. It was a solemn occasion, because Prudencia Prim was of the opinion that, since only the living celebrated birthdays, this advantage over the dead should be suitably commemorated. On her birthday Miss Prim would rise at exactly seven in the morning and begin making her special birthday tart. She tied an apron around her waist, scraped back her hair, and faithfully followed the recipe her grandmother had handed down to her mother who, convinced that she would enjoy great longevity, had decided to bequeath it in life to her daughter.
Miss Prim’s tart was very popular with her small circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Even so, no one had ever been able to find out exactly what she used to create its delicious, subtle flavor. “It’s made with love,” she’d say, making light of it. Yet they all suspected that it wasn’t love so much as an ingredient foraged in the wild and added to the mixture. “If they can’t identify it, they don’t deserve to know what it is,” she said, justifying herself on those occasions—very rare—when she was assailed by pangs of guilt for guarding her secret so jealously.
“Miss Prim, did you know that Emily Brontë studied German while things were baking in the oven?” asked little Eksi out of the blue that morning, as she busied herself shaping a tiny portion of pastry taken from the main tart.
“No, dear, I had no idea, but it sounds very interesting. I suppose your uncle told you about it?”
“No, he doesn’t know much about that sort of thing. Uncle Horacio told me. He says she used to pace up and down the kitchen with a German textbook in her hand while she was keeping an eye on the bread in the oven. Isn’t that lovely?”
Miss Prim did not think that studying languages in front of a bread oven in a freezing nineteenth-century kitchen was lovely, but she refrained from saying so. That morning she felt very happy. In an unexpected gesture, the Man in the Wing Chair had given the children the day off their lessons so that they could help her with the tart. Following her instructions, the three eldest were at that moment in the garden gathering the leaves of aromatic plants for decoration, while the youngest was helping in her own way by making a miniature version of the birthday tart. The cook too had been bustling about for several hours, determined to produce a birthday menu that would make it quite clear to an outsider who was in charge of the kitchen.
The librarian, her arms dusted in flour to the elbows and cheeks flushed by her efforts, contemplated the handsome old range, which was as ancient and worn as everything else in the house. The range suggested an idyllic childhood. Achildhood rich with the scent of freshly baked bread, of sweet sugary fritters, chocolate cake, biscuits, and doughnuts. The kind of childhood she herself had not had but which, in this somewhat chaotic house, she had to admit was a daily reality.
“Miss Prim, do you think anyone like Mr. Darcy exists?” asked Eksi, who, at the age of only seven and a half, wrote serial novels for her siblings.
Prudencia, who, a few weeks earlier, would have been surprised to learn that a child so young read such literature, put down the rolling pin and wiped her hands on her apron.
“I think Jane Austen deserves our admiration for having created the perfect man. But as you’re a very clever little girl, Eksi, you’ll know that the perfect person does not really exist, so...”
“There’s no one in the world like Mr. Darcy,” declared the child cheerfully.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” The sudden arrival of the Man in the Wing Chair gave Miss Prim a start, but she managed to hide it skillfully.
“So there is someone like that?” the little girl asked her uncle, who greeted her with an affectionate dab of flour on her nose.
“I have no idea, Eks, and I have to confess I’m rather bored of hearing about it. What I’d say is that I very much doubt that Darcy is the perfect man. And what’s more, I doubt his creator ever thought her character even remotely perfect.”
