Writing Historical Fiction – Class Blog

Note: I did not read the description of the painting and thought the person sitting on the ground was a woman. So instead of changing my story, I left it the (incorrect) way I had written the story 🙂

It was supposed to be a simple game of croquet. Nothing competitive, just a simple game.  

But then Joanna decided she just had to get the winning strike. The frown on her face let me know that she was determined to beat my score. No matter how she achieved that. Our team was already ahead of hers in points and she knew it. 

I do not know why she always wanted to be better than me. I tried to be nice to her, but she was often rude and curt to me. I brought her flowers from my garden to brighten her day and she grumbled about the ants they would attract. I made sure my jobs were done well and quickly, so she would not have extra work. Even offering to help her with her work when mine was finished was met with “Are you trying to tell me I can’t get my work done on time?”. 

I think it all started when Bobby showed up. He was the unmarried brother of my friend Alyssa, and he was so handsome! He had walked me home from the manor one night (with a chaperone trailing behind, of course) and had asked if he could do that again. I immediately said yes. He waited at the door of the manor for me every evening when my work was done, and we talked all the way home. 

Joanna obviously had her cap set for him and was jealous of Bobby’s attention to me. I had not sought him out. It was the other way around. The fact that Joanna was 3 years older than I and getting close to the age of being forever an unmarried woman might have had something to do with it. 

So, the game of croquet was something Joanna wanted and needed to win. She had to prove her worth and this was how she was going to do it. 

We had drawn straws to see who would be on each team. Bobby and Joanna ended up on the same one and Alyssa and I made up the other one. Bobby kept watching me, but that just made Joanna play harder, determined to show Bobby how good she was. But Alyssa and I had played many games together over the years and it was showing in the score. 

The day we played our game was a lovely late spring day. We played near a copse of trees, the shade keeping us from getting too warm. Mr. Barnes, our employer, had hired a watercolour artist to come with us. He wanted to have another painting for his library, and he thought this game might provide interesting subject matter. ‘

It was odd to have someone sketching and painting you while you played. It took a while to feel comfortable having him watch us. Soon, though, we were involved in the game and began to forget he was there. 

When I look back at this picture, I am reminded so much of the time and the people I spent with at the manor: Joanna, with her perpetual frown and determination to prove herself, Alyssa with not a care in the world, sitting on the blanket near the trees and Bobby. He is the one I miss the most. I shared a special time with him, walking and talking, and now he is gone. I’ve tried to keep track of where he is, but that is not always possible. The mail is slow, people move on, and we lose track of those we call friends. 

I hope he and Joanna have had a good life together. 

In this Parisian home a living room table was adorned with a teapot, and teacups for the afternoon party. The two women were on the couch discussing their evening venture to the opera theater. One of the women leans to the other to address a secret by whispering in her ear. Luxurious attire had been the topic openly talked about between sips of tea. One could guess that the laughter involved the clothes being worn. The undetected behavior of a young man hiding behind the dark blue large living room French linen curtains detected a sense of laughter, a misunderstood secret of social standing.

A gossamer veil of fog and the glistening of dew are most noticeable during the transition between seasons, particularly from summer to fall. The French countryside is active with couples having a game of croquet. This Painting by Edouard Manet holds a place inside the Victorian clubhouse. The game being played involves Anna (blue dress) and Margaret (white dress) so while Margaret is positioning to tap the ball with her croquet stick, fellow artist Alfred and his friend have a chance to enjoy their company. Paul standing points to something in the shrubs. He does not approach the area on the lawn. Their repose they exhibit is almost meditative. However, he is pointing to a basket in the shrubs.

{Month Day, Year}

Harry and I made love today. I had been hoping for it, and wondered if it would ever happen, until he asked me to come lunch at his house so he could give me a tour of his place. Instinctively, I knew he meant that he wanted the tour to start and end in the bedroom. I just didn’t want to take any chances of our signals getting crossed, so I sent him as sexy a negligée as I could muster, which was more of a fitted nightdress. What I liked about it was the floral print chiffon on the bottom with a contrasting fitted lace camisole on the top.

I must admit that when he wasn’t in the waiting area when I arrived, I was concerned that I had overstepped. But he was almost running when he came through the door, apologizing that he had errands he needed to do before our lunch, and that his errands were unfinished. The original plan was for me to follow him home, but this will be better he said, and he kissed me on the cheek, whispering to me I got your package. It won’t fit me, so you’ll have to wear it. Then he winked and skedaddled. Yes, I just wrote skedaddled. It is a word with half a skip in it, which shows just how light on my feet I feel. I think I found my cure.     

I also have to clear my conscience about the excitement. I felt a bit guilty driving over to his house, a married woman, lustful for another man, feeling exuberant happiness. I decided before I stepped into the house that I would leave all that at the curb. It took just one deep breath in and one deep breath out to free myself of the chains that bind me. I felt present the second I turned myself onto the walkway to his cute little independent living cottage on the grounds of the retirement community. The front door was slightly ajar, welcoming me immediately.

“Oh, here comes the sunshine,” he said, as he walked from the dining room to me, pulling me into his soiled apron, smelling of spices and old-fashioned detergent. He kissed me on the forehead and told me he’d like to finish setting the table himself, but to please roam around, look at his books or whatever I fancied. Soft music piped into every room in the place.

I was glad to have the opportunity to walk around. I felt jittery about the expectation I had set. I’ll be honest, thoughts of being naked during the daytime were a little overwhelming. I was also hoping to find something that told me I was where I was supposed to be, something coincidental, a serendipitous object, some song; one which screamed true love instead of adultery. So much for leaving everything at the door.

I started in the living room, taking in the arrangement, letting my eyes lead my legs to each spot: in one corner, an exquisitely carved chess set on a round table with two chairs aside it. I picked up the king and curled him between my fingers, grateful that the peripheral neuropathy in the tips of my hands had subsided, unlike for some patients, for whom it was permanent.

Floating to the bay window, a desk drew me in. A journal sat in the middle, closed with a pen on top. Bending my frame in two, I leaned over to smell the sweet earthy-scented leather cover. I budged the pen so I could caress the imprinted cover, touching ever indentation. Crafted with a tree of life design, the swirls of the branches and the encircling leaves thrilled me. Boy did I want to open it!

As I placed the pen ever so attentively to where it had been, it was then that I saw it, a framed poem nailed to the slightly ajar wooden door leading to the bedroom. A strange place for a poem, I thought, but at the same time, I was delighted to find such a thing; and even more delighted still, that I have the exact same poem framed in my studio. I’ve read it so many times, I have it memorized.

It Was a Memorable Day

A beautiful time-breaking –

Bands of white deer tails, like

Hanging commas, and dashes,

Into the light brown woods

They draw us from hibernation

Walk us around our garden –

To spy a lone chip-monk,

Hiding beneath Lenten roses

With decayed edging, yet deep –

Green centers, tropical shaped,

A springing prayer of buds,

Yellows meant for the four-legged

Back inside,

Ink changes a blank page,

Whirling the pen uncontrollably –

It was a memorable day

              – Author Unknown

It has me wondering if Harry wrote anything in his journal after I left. There would be so much to pick from: the lightning speed with which he reached for me to stand from the table, pushing me backward to the bedroom, devouring each other in between the silky satin sheets, dessert in bed, our long meandering conversations, tender touches while we did the dishes after.

Or maybe Harry is writing about the thing I don’t want to mention but will. Did he catch my reservation when he said he wanted to see more of me.

I told him he could still sit with me at chemo during his off weeks, and go with me to walk after. He said he had already planned to do that, but he wanted to see me more than that. I told him that would be complicated, to which he said let’s get complicated.

Those words did give me butterflies in my stomach. Can you imagine that? A woman my age? I kissed him to settle myself. Complicated it will be.

When Annie came upon a photograph of herself, she was taken aback.

“I had been so young then,” she said as her host, Kimberly, took a breath.

“Who took the photo?” asked Kimberly.

“I really don’t remember,” she replied. “My guess is that it was one of my siblings. I had ten of them, you know. Obviously, someone snuck up from behind, not wanting to disturb me while I was painting.”

Kimberly nodded. She watched Annie’s face fall. She waited.

“But I remember the cape that’s around my shoulders. It had been my grandfather’s. Men wore them, you know, at the end of the nineteenth century. They weren’t seen as theatrical then, like they are now.”

“My twin brother used that cape to complete his Dracula costume. He wore it to a Halloween dance at our high school. Grandfather said that he didn’t need it back, that it was high time he got something contemporary.”

“Did something bad happen there?” asked Kimberly. “Because you look sad.”

“Donaldson, my brother, died in the First World War. He was twenty-one years old. I’m remembering that part. When I learned this, I threw myself on his bed. I remember opening his closet to look at his things, to try to recreate him. It was one of the saddest days of my life.”

As Juliette read the invitation to tea from her half sister it sounded more like a summons.

‘What now’, she pondered. ’What’s our father’s latest plan in the suitor stakes. No doubt the recent dinner party will be on her agenda.’

Juliette was shown into the small parlour and Sophia was already pouring the tea before Juliette was seated. No plates on the table. No tasty delicacies from the kitchen. It would be a short encounter. Sophia finished her tea in haste but, slowly and deliberately, Juliette sipped ignoring Sophia’s agitation as her hand moved between her lap and her face.

‘Father is very disappointed that you rejected Algernon Ashwood’s advances. His estates and his country manor ooze wealth. A marriage to him would ease the pressure on Papa’s continuing losses.’

Juliette was ready. ‘Between the entrée and the main course Algernon described each of his five children in detail – their many talents, their outstanding behaviour and their deep sadness at the loss of a maternal parent. Before the dessert he suggested a picnic where I could engage with the children and they could get to know me. When I responded that I prefer animals to children due to the way one can control animals’ behaviour or return them to stables, cages or kennels he couldn’t eat his apple charlotte fast enough.’

While Juliette ate the dessert, visions of her squat overweight dinner companion in the bedroom had her almost choking. Five children!

‘Father has arranged with Aunt Maud for you to be her companion on a Mediterranean cruise. She will be assisting you to seek out any promising young men. She will check their backgrounds.’

‘How thoughtful of father. Aunt Maud is a treasure.’ Juliette was serious. Aunt Maud, her father’s oldest sibling, was a sweetie. A couple of pre-dinner sherries and a wine topped up during the meal should have her tucked into bed early.

Juliette was already visualizing the ship’s officers, their impeccable uniforms, attentive and Italian.

Behind her tea cup, Marie-Louise said the words, knowing she could never withdraw them.

“I will be working at the Sorbonne in the physics laboratory beginning next week,” she told her best friend, Amelia.

“What do you mean working?” Amelia asked.

“Professor Gabriel Lippman has requested my presence in his laboratory and, with his assistance, I have matriculated into the Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne.”

“If you do, you will lose your suitors!” cried Amelia.

“But better for you, no?” she responded, knowing that Amelia pined for Monsieur Pierrie Defreine, and would replace Marie-Louise’s standing as soon as word of Marie-Louise’s tasteless showiness was spread, which would undoubtedly be forthright.