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Book 2 Chapter 3

“I am not sure what to say Lizzie. It is unlike you to be so, so.”

Edward Gardiner struggled with the words.

“You do not have to censor yourself Uncle Edward. I know that it appears that I am being disrespectful.”

And that right there was the problem. Elizabeth said it appeared rather than it was.

“Can you explain please, give us more detail?”

It had not taken her parents long to get Elizabeth sent to London. And she was not banished, of course she was not banished. All their protestations were of little use as Elizabeth had told both Mary and Kitty as well as Charlotte Lucas the truth. Now she was sitting with her aunt and uncle in the parlour of their sizeable home on Gracechurch Street.

“I have thought about this a lot, as you can imagine. Let me see if I can use an analogy to demonstrate what I mean. The Bennet family were all in a rowing boat, all seven of us. Papa sat at the front, acting the captain but staring off into the distance. Mary and I were sitting with the oars, it seemed like we were doing all the work. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia were standing making a fuss all the time; row faster, go this way, no that way, all the while waving their arms about and risking us capsizing. Kitty is harmless, she spent her entire time trying to be heard, worried about falling in the sea. And then there was Jane, the real Captain, who kept the whole thing going forward. She was the one who stopped us capsizing.

“What do you think was going to happen to the Bennet family when she left?”

Madeline Gardiner was not stupid, she got what Elizabeth was saying.

“But so soon?”

An inelegant shrug was Elizabeth’s immediate response.

“Lydia was the catalyst on the evening of Jane’s marriage. Mary and I had assisted the staff with setting Longbourn back to rights, supervising as much as anything but taking the time to express our gratitude to all the servants. It had been a long day and the other four had disappeared without a trace. When we got upstairs we found Lydia coming out of Jane’s room proclaiming that it was going to be hers. When we went to my bedroom, I had Mary stand silently while I stood quietly at the door. After a few seconds, I pulled the door open quickly and Lydia fell into the room. Not staggered, but fell on the floor. This was somehow my fault and she was going to run and tell Mrs. Bennet. Since she wanted to get me in trouble with Mrs. Bennet I slapped her face so that she really had something to complain about.”

The Gardiners winced.

“Was that really necessary?”

“Probably not, but it brought everything to the boil nicely.”

“You sound far too pleased Lizzie.”

“Do you wish me to be honest?”

It was said in a tone of ‘careful what you wish for’.

“If it helps us understand this, then yes.

“With no Jane there to calm me, often to do nothing but implore me with her eyes not to say too much, it all burst forth. And I know that I have been guilty of some of this as well, I can look in the mirror. Your sister spends her whole life making a fuss. About everything. She displayed, and still displays, marked favouritism to Jane and Lydia. Jane did not let that change her, Lydia has let it, and she appears to be getting worse. And in turn, Papa displayed a preference for me, although as I look at it, what he wanted was someone to debate with. But those debates were to be at his convenience. A lot of my recent time in his study has been nothing but the two of us reading quietly. Allegedly together but in reality, we were reading separately just in the same room.

“I am getting distracted. The morning after Jane’s wedding Mrs. Bennet called me a liar. To my face, in front of my sisters and the servants. How long do you think it will take that juicy piece of gossip to get round the neighbourhood? Using my boating analogy, this was the moment that the boat overturned. We were all wet, and nothing was going to be the same again. It boils down to the fact I am fed up with selective parenting. And especially being Mrs. Bennet’s favourite person to screech at.

“Now as you can imagine this went down extremely poorly! My father even went to that bastion of poor parenting Ephesians 6, verses 1 &2.”

Synchronised wincing.

“His smug triumphant look lasted about a second before I asked about verse 4 from the same chapter.”

She sighed.

“I am sorry that I have been dumped on you, but I was not going to sit and get berated every day. And for no other reason that she was my mother. They claim I am not banished but I suspect that I am.”

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“What do you think Edward?”

It was that same night and the Gardiners were lying in bed, the room dark but neither of them ready for sleep.