[Eleanor]: 668.Amelia.Chapter III

III.

Amelia emerged from the cocoon of her mourning completely transformed. A girl had buried her grandmother; it was a woman who put off the trappings of grief. The outside world did not know her, and she had lost touch with it. Instead of returning to school, she begged her father to let her join him in his grocery, and he agreed, thinking that a change of scene would be good for her, especially one under his fatherly eye. He saw in his daughter a gauntness that encompassed not only her body, but permeated her mind. The loss of Nana had left a scar that would be long in fading.

He began by teaching her how to do the accounts. She was clever and picked up the skills with ease, balancing columns of expenditures with sales, tallying profits and losses. The mental effort involved allowed her to stop thinking about her own personal sorrow, and the spectre of death began to lift from her brow. As Amelia got better at figures, she started making quick work of the books, and had time left over to help her father serve customers, and then deal with the farmers from whom they bought their produce, even haggling when she felt they were charging too much.

In that, she had an advantage of which she was unaware. The pretty child Amelia had been was no more; in her place stood a young woman of surpassing beauty who dazzled her beholders. The farmers were intimidated by her loveliness and always backed down when she demanded they drop their prices. Word spread that the grocer had a beautiful daughter and suddenly people were coming into the shop to see for themselves. 

At first Amelia was unaware of the attention, and then she was baffled by it. Their neighbours were coming around to wish her condolences on her recent loss, but soon strangers were also coming into the shop and just staring at her as she made up their orders. Finally she mentioned it to her father as they were closing up at the end of the day.

“Why are people suddenly so interested in me? They never even noticed me in the past,” she remarked as she added up the receipts, “and why are strangers coming in, buying one bunch of carrots, and just standing there and staring at me?” Father paused while covering up the vegetable bins and looked appraisingly at his daughter, her red hair aglow in the late afternoon sunlight as it came in through the window.

“You are beautiful, my dear,” he said finally, “a flame compelling moths.”

As the days passed, Amelia observed carefully whenever anyone came into the grocery. Her father’s regular patrons who had known her since she was a child remarked openly on what a lovely young woman she had become. The new customers, however, spoke little and stared much. Her father was not about to complain about the extra attention Amelia’s looks were causing if it brought more business into his store. It bothered her, though, and she briefly considered going back home to help Mama with the housekeeping and music lessons. But the house was too full of memories of Nana still, and she didn’t want to hurt her father’s feelings or change the luck of his commerce.

It was not long, though, before the suitors started arriving. The very boys Amelia’s childhood friends had once giggled over had now grown into men, and Amelia’s dazzling beauty was indeed like a beacon drawing them toward its brilliance. They came bearing gifts—flowers or sweets from the bakeshop—until the house was soon overflowing with candy and pastry and they ran out of vases for all the bouquets.

Mother was delighted. She took great pains when Amelia’s suitors came calling to make them comfortable in the parlour, serving tea and biscuits on her good porcelain. She bustled about, plumping pillows, chattering about her daughter’s accomplishments on top of her exceptional looks, and Amelia got the impression her mother was the one flirting and being paid court to, for she herself had absolutely no interest in any of the young men who waited impatiently until the older woman left the room. But the moment she was alone with them, her gentlemen callers had nothing to say, for all they could do was stare at her, bedazzled. When they finally did get control over their bewitched tongues, they expounded upon their own grandiose dreams and aspirations, none of which contained a place for her in their future except as an ornament, the jewel in their domestic diadem, and once sequestered by the roles of wife and mother, a prisoner. No, Amelia repeated the vow she had made to Nana all those years ago, she would not marry, ever!

But she couldn’t disappoint her mother, who seemed to take so much pleasure from the parade of young men coming to woo her marriageable daughter, and so Amelia allowed these visits to continue, although she offered her suitors no encouragement. She accepted their edible and floral gifts, but would not take jewellery, clothing, or costly stuff, for she did not want to appear to make promises she was unprepared to keep. When the more courageous among them proposed outright, she smiled and shook her head and said, “No thank you. I have no plans to marry.”

Eventually, becoming disheartened, they withdrew their attentions, convinced that Amelia was a cold-hearted snob; but two tenacious souls remained: Bartholomew, the son of a cheese merchant, and his friend Crispin, whose father owned a bookshop. These two were by far the dullest of all Amelia’s wooers, if the most stubborn. Bartholomew always smelled like soured milk, which caused her to wrinkle her nose in distaste, and Crispin, whom she imagined should have a love of literature considering all the books to which he had constant access, was devoid of interest in the printed word. As with the other suitors who had come and gone, she did not give them any reason to think she was attracted to either, but they imagined themselves rivals and that one would eventually win her over the other.

Because they were friends, their rivalry was amicable, and they would try to outdo each other in their efforts to woo the unmovable beauty. Bartholomew was a favourite with her mother, often bringing delicacies from the cheese shop, which she then served to Crispin when he visited, telling him that he was too thin and needed fattening. Having learned that Amelia liked to read, he brought her books, but they were inevitably chosen for their ornate covers and not for their literary content. He had not read a single one and her attempts at conversation about them were met with a blank stare and an abrupt change of topic to something that interested him and inevitably bored her. Both Crispin and Bartholomew were passionate about acid, and played it on the village green where opposing teams competed from spring to fall. Amelia’s own eyes glazed over as they each expounded on brilliant plays they had made, or their team had made, or foolish mistakes the other team had made and what dunces the referees were when they ruled against them. She started to realize that Bartholomew was a bully, taking advantage of his greater size and weight, and Crispin was a cheat, breaking the rules whenever possible to gain his team’s victory. 

One evening the two met in the tavern on the village square and stood each other to drinks. Their team had been defeated that day and they were both in a sour mood as they started complaining about the poor calls by the referees, accusing them of favouritism for the opposing players.

“Did you see Hobbes give me a penalty for running into Jenks?” Bartholomew complained. “It was an accident! It’s not my fault the fool doesn’t get out of the way when he sees me coming.”

Crispin nodded into his mug of beer. “I played brilliantly today. But yeah, Hobbes called me out for tripping Sylvester. How did he see that? I barely saw it!”

“You know,” commented Bartholomew, “I wish Amelia would come to the games. For sure she would be swept away watching me play.”

“Ha ha! Not bloody likely,” guffawed Crispin. “I’m the one who would dazzle her with my fancy footwork and stealth plays. You’re just an overgrown brute! A girl like that is more attracted to brains than brawn.”

It was Bartholomew’s turn to laugh. “Hah! For all your brains, you don’t seem to be having any better luck scoring in the net than I am. What is taking her so long?”

Crispin drained his beer and ordered another. “I do not understand women, my friend.”

“Nor do I,” commiserated his friend. “But I guarantee that I will make that pretty girl my wife before you do.”

“That means that I get to marry her once I’ve killed you, right?” laughed Crispin. “You’ll just get her broken in for me and then I claim the grieving widow for my own.”

“Hey!” Bartholomew blustered. “That’s not what I mean!”

“I’ll just make it look like an accident. That would work.”

“Like bloody hell you will,” cried the larger man. “I’m going to marry that girl for keeps.” 

“Well, I can tell you that you’ll never win her over. You smell like a goat farm.”

Bartholomew sniffed his shirt. “I do not!” he roared. “You smell like those dusty books you’re always bringing over to Amelia. I bet you’ve never even cracked the covers of them.”

“So what?” countered Crispin. “They’re pretty. Girls like pretty things, especially pretty girls.”

“Well at least I bring her something useful,” glared Bartholomew.

“Aye, that you do. I can vouch for how delicious your cheeses are. Her ma serves them to me every time I come over.”

“Like hell she does!” yelled Bartholomew.

“At least Amelia reads the books I give her,” added Crispin. “although I don’t know how. They’re so boring, and it’s not like any of that stuff is actually useful.”

“You’re so stupid,” said his friend. “She’d be daft to want to marry you. Books are a waste of time. People need to eat. They don’t need your stinking books.”

“I’m the stupid one?” Crispin said incredulously. “You’re the one who can’t keep score playing ball. You have no idea if we’re winning or losing most of the time.”

As their argument got louder and more derisive, the bartender interrupted, “Okay boys, if you’re planning on waking the dead, take it outside. You’re disturbing the other customers.”

The two young men staggered outside, where they continued throwing insults at each other in the deserted town square. Their argument escalated into a pushing match, until Bartholomew shoved Crispin so hard that he stumbled backward and hit his head on the cenotaph. The bookseller went down in a heap, bleeding horribly from a gash where his skull had struck the sharp corner of the hard granite base, his neck at an unnatural angle. Bartholomew, stunned by what he had done, turned tail and ran to the lake. He collapsed on the grass, filled with fear and remorse. Then he vomited violently, and threw himself into the dark water and sank where the reeds were thickest by the shore.

News of the deaths spread quickly and patrons who had been present in the tavern readily reported the subject matter of the argument which had brought about this tragedy. The two had been somewhat famous in the village for their prowess on the playing field, and their shortcomings were quickly overlooked in the face of the loss to the community. The parents of the deceased pointedly blamed Amelia for this unfortunate turn of events, and where the girl had the day before been an object of admiration, she became found herself reviled. When she made her way between home and the grocery, people crossed the street to avoid her. Her father’s business fell off, and her mother received notice from some parents of the children she taught that they would no longer be pursuing the flute.

Life for Amelia became a torment. Her mother all but blamed her for their sudden dip in fortune, sighing loudly and then wishing out loud that her daughter had chosen one of her many suitors and made her a grandmother. Her father went to work in the mornings cheerfully enough, but returned every evening with a haunted look in his eyes as his customers disappeared. Amelia felt herself responsible for everything, even while she knew that she was blameless. The two dead suitors’ demise was their own doing, abetted by the tavern owner who had thrown them out when they were obviously drunk beyond reason, and the other customers who had watched them go without concern for their welfare. 

The townsfolk did not see it thus, though, and continued to treat Amelia as though she were a leper. She stopped serving in her father’s grocery, and instead stayed home to help Mother with the housework. She retreated to the kitchen so that she would remain hidden when her mother’s few remaining flute students came for their lessons, taking over the cooking and laundry and any other jobs that would keep her from thinking about her misery. In the evenings she took out her harp and played and sang quietly to herself, but the ache in her heart for Nana did not subside, and the new pain of public rejection only festered more. Apart from her father, who had his own troubles now, she could confide in no one: her mother would not forgive her, and she had no remaining friends. Ironically, she continued to grow more beautiful with each passing day, and there were now whispers among her neighbours that she was in league with witchcraft or worse.

The situation reached a point where Amelia could stand it no longer. Shortly before her 17th birthday, on the anniversary of her grandmother’s death, she secretly visited the town wigmaker who paid her handsomely for her waist-length, auburn hair. Dressed in boy’s clothing, with only the basic necessities thrown into a satchel and the money in her pocket, she slipped out of her parents’ home and left in the darkness of pre-dawn, before the birds began their chorus to wake the weak autumn sun. Out of sight of the village, she rubbed dirt on her cheeks to hide her flawless complexion and looked back only once, watching the morning sunlight glint off the waterfall that cascaded from the mountain. For a moment she felt a pang of regret that she had not taken her harp, then thought of the extra weight it meant to carry. With a sigh, Amelia turned her back on the scene, and headed resolutely toward what she hoped would be a better life.