Page 39 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms
She looked from one to the other, then back at her mother.But there were no answers, only expectant, waiting faces.
‘I want…’
A burst of fury and a dash of raw pride tied a knot in her chest.
No.
She would not back either of them.
She would back herself.
‘I do not know what I want!I have never been allowed to even think about it, I have always had to be what others wanted from me.I have always been Miss Holt, Mrs Murray, and now you’d like me to become Mrs Hempel?I will not be only someone’s daughter or widow or wife.I will not be defined by which man rules me.I wish to bemyself.My messy, broken self.My name isFlorence.All I do is live as a mistake.The surgeon’s mistake, George’s mistake, your mistake!’She jabbed a finger at her father.‘Every bloody man who fails, I live with their mistakes.Do what you like.Fight till you come to blows.But I will not have you take my blueprints and use them to make me bend.Maybe I will find myself in an invalid home one day, but it will be my own path that brought me there.Submit your plans.Leave me to make my own.’
‘But… I love you.’Light fell around Johannes, casting creases over his frown and the hurt twist to his lips.The ready response sat light on her tongue, but she bit it down and swallowed it whole.She felt it.She wanted to say it.But those words were chains, and she’d forever be a slave to them.Hemmed in, bristling, colouring plans, and discussing ideas…
Never master of her own mind and her own destiny.
‘I can’t.Love has not done me any favours.’Florence turned her back on the office.Mama was waiting for her with a drawn smile.She offered her arm in assistance, and together, they inched their way up the stairs.Her hum continued like an anxious bee until she let her worry buzz into words.
‘You don’t want to see the surgeon.And you’ve given up your chance to marry.What will you do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Florence said.She forced her gaze ahead as Johannes edged into the periphery of her vision between the stair rails when he walked down the hall.After a silence that was long enough for him to don his coat and hat, the door opened, then closed.With its snip, a piece of her heart caught on an ache.‘I don’t know,’ she whispered again, to herself, mulling over the phrase and letting the uncertainty grow.Because from the ache came relief.Despite the vacuousness of those three small words, in them lay the seed of liberation.She did not know what the future would hold.How she would manage.But for the first time, it was her own future to be uncertain about.‘But I am excited to figure it out.’
Chapter Twenty
Fromthelandingofhis home at Number 3, Johannes cast a longing eye across the paved road of Honeysuckle Street to the dilapidated ruins of Number 6.The overgrown grass and broken bricks sat as scattered and useless as his fractured heart.He leant back until his head knocked against the stucco wall.
It had been a good plan.There was nothing wrong with it.It was full of familiar places.A loving family.A future.A set, steady, no-surprises future.
And she had said no.Even when he’d spilled his heart onto the floor before her, she’d turned away.He and Mr Holt had parted ways, and who knew what would become of the submission.Johannes couldn’t find it within himself to care.
In trying to keep Florence safe, he’d somehow lost her forever.
Johannes placed his hand on the door handle, then braced himself for the chaos of home.Perhaps Elliot would want to explode some rockets tonight.That might take the edge off his hurt.Or Ammie might want to go to the park.He could take Thaddeus and Hazel to see the ducks by the pond and surround himself with distractions until he could come up with a new plan.He tipped an ear to listen.The shouts and calls of his siblings could usually be heard down the length and breadth of Honeysuckle Street, but this afternoon, no noise carried on the breeze.
‘Johannes!’Just a few feet away on the landing of Number 1, Beatrice bent across the rail.‘We’re all in here.Rosie’s having the baby.’
‘The baby’s arriving?’He clipped down the stairs, strode the short distance to the other house, then ran up the mirror set of stairs.‘Do Rosie and Phineas want people in their house for this?’
Beatrice laughed, high and shallow.‘As if they have a choice.’And then even the brassy hollowness of her laugh left her next words.‘Mother has called the doctor.’
‘The doctor?’An icy hand wrapped around his heart, and for a moment he could not breathe.‘What about the midwife?’
‘She said something about the baby being the wrong way around.They needed help.They’re all up there.Even Phineas.’
His feet carried him over the threshold.The quiet unease of his siblings hummed ominously through the air.In the front room, Ammie and Nova sat along the window seat with their legs dangling, while Ottile and Thaddeus curled into one of the large chairs.Nanny Abagail rested in the other, plucking the frills of her apron straight.Elliot leant against a wall and scanned the library for books he had no intention of reading.Even little Hazel sat quietly as she picked at tufts of loose wool on the rug.
Beatrice tapped the tip of each finger against the opposite hand before she rubbed her knuckles together.‘The baby started coming in the night.Rosie sent for Mother mid-morning.A few hours ago, Mother sent the housekeeper Letitia to tell Father to call the doctor.He came over, and we all followed.No one told us to go, so we stayed.’
Never one for inaction, Father stalked the library, then moved out into the hallway, where he paced in a circle by the bottom of the stairs.He stared up into the cavity for an age before marching back into the library again.As he entered the room, all the children lifted expectant faces to him, but when they found only the thin, grim line of his lips, they returned to their small distractions.
Rosie couldn’t be having a hard time.Not at this, not at something so commonplace as having a baby.She wanted to be a mother, and Rosie always got what she wanted.She took the world and shook it with a single-minded determination and demanded nothing less than everything.Every hazy memory, almost every single moment of his childhood that he’d shared with her seemed to flood Johannes at once.The way they’d run through the park or weaved through scaffolding at the hotel.The way they’d sneaked into the kitchens to steal cake and ice cream, even though sneaking was pointless as Grandpa Robert gave them everything they asked for.There couldn’t be a world without Rosie because that wasn’t a world that made sense.She was in every page of his past.Shehadto be in his future.
And all his family.They anchored him.Gave him a place.He knew who he was with all of them, even if that was the son who didn’t quite fit.Even Garnett’s loss was a shared presence between them.They all made sense, every single one of them with the other, even as they squashed into small bedrooms and jostled around the dining table.Nothing could change.
Johannes crossed the room.Ammie scooted over to make a space on the window seat, and as Johannes sat, Nova crawled onto his lap and cuddled against his chest.He remembered every one of them coming into the world—even Elliot was a blotchy memory of pudgy fists and kicking limbs.And there, just across the road, in the rubble of Number 6, was the place where he’d thought to take that next step in what was, really, a very good plan.Marry.Start a firm.Take on work.Build a reputation and a career, then a life.
Slow, yet steady.Predictable.A world at his pace.
