Only Eighteen

The first thing Romy did in Ceveth’s care was spit milk down the inside of her collar. Denzil, who had been asleep throughout the journey, woke at his sister’s satisfied belch and began to scream.

“Yes,” Ceveth told him. “You shall have some too. There is sufficient for everyone, including my underclothes.”

The woman who had brought them laughed, then looked relieved that she had been allowed to. She put the second basket on the floor of the nursery. Beside it she left a bag of clothes which smelled of dried lavender and a little notebook recording what the twins ate. They were six weeks old.

Ceveth had worked in children’s households for almost two centuries. The home had hired its first elf caretaker for her experience, her patience, and her willingness to sleep in a room that shared a wall with the nursery. These were her first human babies. She had read about their development before accepting the post; she knew when to expect teeth, speech, the astonishing business of walking. There were tables. She liked a table.

Eighteen years of care, perhaps longer if they needed it. She had owned her indoor shoes for forty-three.

By midnight she had learned that Romy liked a firm hand beneath her bottom and Denzil required his head at precisely the wrong angle for Ceveth’s wrist. By morning she had forgotten which basket she had put the notebook in. There were no tables concerning the sour patch between her shoulder blades, or how to scratch it with a baby occupying each arm.

She rested her cheek against Romy’s head. The scalp was hot, with an unexpectedly peppery smell. Denzil stopped crying to listen to something she could not hear.

“Oh, good,” she whispered.

He began again.

For several months she wanted, above all else, to put them down.

---

At five they wanted the story of the hedgehog who stole a bell. Ceveth knew it from a country where she had lived long before coming to the home, and the children liked her to tell it because she could make the bell sound inside her closed mouth.

“Now, the tower in which the bell hung,” she began, “had been built by three brothers, although the eldest—”

“Hedgehog,” said Romy.

“We are coming to him.”

“He’s already at the tower.”

“There are things you must know about the tower.”

Denzil, who had his toes tucked into the gap between Ceveth and the arm of the chair, raised a hand. He had recently learned this at lessons and sometimes stood in the privy doorway with his hand up until someone noticed him.

“Yes?”

“I need to know why he wants a bell.”

“To wake the moon.”

“You said for his mum.”

“Did I?”

“His mum was deaf.”

That version did sound familiar. Ceveth had learned the story a hundred and sixty years ago from a woman who changed it according to how much mending she had left. She attempted an explanation of this, but Romy began ringing an imaginary bell and Denzil pushed her foot off his knee. By the time the fight was settled, both twins insisted that the hedgehog had already stolen it. They only wanted the sound.

Ceveth obliged. Romy pressed her ear against Ceveth’s chest and laughed at the vibration.

“Again. But enormous.”

Their feet were filthy. Someone had wiped a nose on her skirt. She rang the enormous bell until she was short of breath, and Denzil asked whether they might skip the hedgehog tomorrow.

At nine, Romy made a play of the story in the yard. She cast Denzil as the tower and tied a bucket to his belt. He resigned before the first performance. Ceveth, who had been promised a seat in the audience, spent the afternoon standing with the bucket at her waist while Romy crawled between her feet.

She had sewn little silver leaves along the cuffs of their festival coats that spring. The work took evenings, and she enjoyed the quiet precision of it after the children’s noise. In autumn Denzil put his coat on and could no longer straighten his arms. Romy’s still fitted, but she wanted her leaves removed. She had decided she disliked silver.

Ceveth unpicked them. It was tedious, and Romy kept asking whether she was cross.

“I am concentrating.”

“Your ears go back when you’re cross.”

“They do not.”

Romy crept behind the chair to check. Ceveth turned and snapped her teeth at her, and the child fled shrieking with delight. At supper she asked if the leaves might be sewn onto her stockings instead.

At fourteen Denzil was taller than Ceveth. She made him hold out an arm so she could let down a sleeve and found a burn on the soft inside of his wrist. He had been helping in the home’s kitchen after lessons.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It was not nothing when it happened.”

“Well, you weren’t there when it happened.”

She fetched ointment; he said the cook had already seen to it. Ceveth found she was annoyed with the cook, a sensible woman whom she had liked perfectly well at breakfast.

That night Denzil came to her room with a ridiculous question about the tower. Hadn’t the three brothers been giants? Romy was sleeping in the room next door, and he glanced that way before asking.

“Two were,” Ceveth said. “The third had married into the family.”

“Then he wasn’t a brother.”

“Sit down. I will explain it.”

He sat on the rug. She took a long time over the explanation, but he did not interrupt her.

---

Four summers later, Ceveth stood holding three pairs of socks outside a closed bedroom door.

“Denzil?”

“Yes.”

“I have your socks.”

“Put them down somewhere.”

“They ought to go in the bag before you fasten it.”

The door opened. He had cut himself shaving under the chin. Her own face had hardly changed while his had acquired, in quick succession, freckles, spots, whiskers. Ceveth reached toward the bead of blood; he rubbed it away before she could speak.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the socks. Then he shut the door, carefully, against her next sentence.

They were catching the noon coach. They had chosen the same day so they could travel together as far as the river crossing. Romy would continue south to join a troupe she had spent the spring pestering. There would be a bunk in a wagon, canvas to scrub, costumes to mend, and, if she proved useful, small parts to play. Denzil’s apprenticeship was at a bakery in the town on the other road. Ceveth had gone with him to see the attic room above the ovens, and had eaten a bun so good it had made her briefly resentful.

Both had turned eighteen in the wet week at the beginning of the month. Ceveth had made a cake. Romy had made another because she did not trust Ceveth to use enough sugar. They had eaten both, and Denzil had been sick behind the shed.

They did not have to leave. Their beds were theirs until they chose otherwise. Ceveth had told them so in winter, when leaving had been a thing which might happen after a number of other things. She had written Denzil’s first letter to the bakery herself because he had spent three days on a salutation. She had helped Romy work out what the troupe’s offered wages would actually buy.

Now Romy’s bag was in the passage, standing on a pair of boots. It had been there since dawn.

“What if the coach is early?” Romy called from downstairs.

“It has never been early.”

“It could start.”

Ceveth went down and found her peering through the front window, wearing her new green coat despite the heat. The lining was striped yellow and blue. It was a great deal of coat, and Romy had been showing people the lining for a fortnight.

“You will roast,” Ceveth said.

“I’m taking it off on the coach. I want to arrive in it.”

“Then you would be better to carry it now.”

Romy made a small, strangled noise. She turned, snapped her coat open, and stood displaying herself among the muddy boots and walking sticks.

“Look at it.”

Ceveth looked. The green set off Romy’s brown face, and the turned-back cuffs showed how prettily the sleeves fitted. She had put her hair up, badly. All the pins were on one side.

“You look splendid.”

“Thank you.” Romy closed the coat. “That’s what I was doing.”

Ceveth wanted to fetch another hairpin. She clasped her own hands instead.

In the kitchen the younger children were being coaxed out to the garden by another caretaker. The twins had endured their farewell at breakfast: sticky kisses, an argument about who could now have Denzil’s seat, a small boy crying because he believed the coach would take their beds as well. Ceveth had asked for the rest of the day free. There was no work she could honestly claim to be needed for.

She took the travelling food from the cupboard. Denzil came down with his bag half shut and Romy immediately said, “You’ve forgotten your brush.”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s on the washstand.”

“That’s yours.”

“Mine has red thread round it.”

“So does mine. You tied it on both.”

“Why would I do that?”

He looked at her. Romy made a face and went upstairs.

Ceveth wrapped the bread more tightly. The cloth had already been folded; she was putting different creases in it. Denzil sat at the table and reached for a plum from the fruit bowl, rolling it beneath his hand.

“Is something troubling you?”

“No.”

“The baker will meet you at the stop.”

“I know.”

“You mustn’t worry about finding the house.”

“I’m not.”

The kitchen clock ticked. Ceveth could hear Romy opening drawers overhead, though she had been certain the brush was on the washstand.

“There is another coach on Thursday,” Ceveth said.

Denzil stopped rolling the plum.

“If you felt you wanted a few more days. I could write. You are only eighteen.”

Romy had come back to the kitchen doorway. She was holding two brushes.

“We’re eighteen,” she said. “You were there.”

“I was speaking to your brother.”

“He wants to go.”

“Leave it,” Denzil said.

“You do. You’ve been talking about that bakery since—”

“I said leave it.”

His voice was loud enough to startle them all. Romy set his brush beside him and took hers into the passage. Denzil slid it into his bag without looking at her. Ceveth heard her pull the straps of her bag tight.

Denzil rubbed the plum against his trousers. “Now she’ll be like that.”

“She is excited.”

“I am too.” He bit into the plum, which was not ripe enough, and grimaced. “I just feel a bit sick.”

Ceveth had a hundred things for that. She could offer cool water, bread, a damp cloth. They rose readily to her tongue.

“Do you want Thursday?” she asked.

He chewed for a long time. “No. I’ll be worse on Thursday.”

She set the parcel of food beside his bag and went into the passage.

Romy was undoing one strap and redoing it, gaining nothing.

“I said only eighteen because it seems very quick to me,” Ceveth said.

“It wasn’t quick. I had to go to lessons every day.”

“Yes.”

“And I had to be seventeen for ages. They wouldn’t take me last year. I told you.”

“I remember.”

Romy pulled too hard and trapped the edge of her finger under the buckle. She sucked it furiously.

Ceveth remembered much less than she wanted to. There were winters she could not separate, birthday meals at which she could not place the guests. Yet she could remember a particular afternoon when Romy had laughed milk out of her nose, down to the wet crescents on her upper lip. Somewhere around that afternoon Ceveth had felt she was beginning to get the hang of them.

“I would like you to stay,” she said. “That is making me tiresome.”

Romy let go of her finger. “Well.”

“I am sorry.”

“You can come and watch. When they let me do something.”

“I would like that.”

“Not in ten years.”

“Before ten years.”

“Ceveth.”

She had, in fact, put off visiting an old friend for eleven years because the journey involved an inconvenient ferry. “Send me the date. I will come for that date.”

Romy nodded. Then she turned around. “Can you do the back? It’s coming out.”

Ceveth removed two pins, held them between her lips, and caught the slipping weight of hair. Romy had cut a section of it herself the previous autumn, denying it even while loose clippings clung to her collar. The shorter strands escaped Ceveth’s fingers now. She smoothed them in with the rest as well as she could.

“Don’t pull it tight.”

Ceveth loosened her hold.

---

The road lay in white sunlight beyond the shade of the home, and a fly followed Denzil’s food parcel with infuriating persistence. Romy walked ahead of them, swinging her free arm. Once she turned to make sure they were watching, and opened her coat again.

“Yes,” Denzil called. “It’s got an inside.”

She stuck her tongue out. Ceveth laughed; it came so easily that the morning loosened for a moment. She wanted to go on walking. They could follow this road through the fields, eat their bread under a tree, come back by the narrow path behind the laundry. Denzil would complain about his shoes. Romy would get bored and take a shortcut which wasn’t one.

At the stop they still had twenty minutes. Romy put her bag beside the milestone and stood in the road to look for the coach.

“Off the road, little one,” Ceveth said.

Romy glanced back. Ceveth raised her hands in surrender. Romy moved as far as the verge.

Denzil sat on the low wall. His boots were broad and new, his trouser cuffs a little too short. She had made them the right length. She knew she had. He brushed grit off a space beside him, and she sat down.

“Does she know about the window?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The baker. That I like it open.”

“I don’t believe I mentioned it.”

“Good.” He picked at a loose thread on his bag. “I can tell her.”

Beside the milestone, Romy had found a white stone and was trying to balance it on the toe of her boot. She dropped it, picked it up, dropped it again.

“If I don’t like it,” Denzil said, “the bakery. I don’t mean the window.”

Ceveth waited.

“Could I come back for a bit? If it turns out I can’t—if it isn’t what I thought?”

“Of course.”

“Even if it’s quite soon?”

She pictured him back at the kitchen table before the month was out. He must not see how much she liked that.

“Whenever it is.”

He nodded and scraped at the thread again. Then he leaned sideways, his shoulder bumping hers. She put an arm around him. It did not reach as far as it used to. His hair smelled of the harsh soap he had insisted on buying, and beneath it, faintly, of his warm scalp.

“Your ears are going back,” he said.

“They are not.”

“I can see one.”

“It is a very bright day.”

He put his head against hers and stayed there. Romy stopped trying to balance the stone.

Then the coach came, early after all, and there was too much to do.

The driver wanted their bags. Romy had the tickets but could not find the pocket she had put them in. A woman leaning out of the coach window asked whether this was the stop for the mill. Denzil dropped the food; Ceveth caught it against her knee and said something she hoped the woman had not heard.

“Not till the next village,” Romy told the woman. “Ceveth, which pocket did I show you?”

“The one inside.”

“They’re all inside.”

She found them while Denzil was saying goodbye. He put both arms around Ceveth and lifted her an inch off the ground, whether by accident or intention she could not tell.

“Mind your back,” she said into his shirt.

“It’s a very old elf. Heavy with years.”

“That is a dreadful joke.”

“I know.” He set her down. “I know.”

She kissed his cheek, and he made no attempt to wipe it away. The driver was strapping Romy’s bag to the luggage rack. Denzil went to watch and offer advice which was not wanted.

Romy stood in front of Ceveth, tickets crumpled in her hand.

“Well, then,” she said brightly.

Ceveth opened her arms. Romy stepped into them with the haste of someone hoping to get a thing over with; then her whole weight changed. Her face pressed into Ceveth’s neck.

“Oh,” she said, muffled and angry.

Ceveth held her. One of the pins dug into her cheek. She would have stood there until nightfall with that pin digging into her cheek, but Romy pulled away, blinking.

“I’m getting on.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t look like that.”

“I don’t know what I’m looking like.”

Romy wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. “Neither do I.”

They laughed badly. Ceveth touched the green sleeve, then let it go.

The twins climbed aboard and found a window, quarrelling briefly over which of them should sit beside it. Romy won, but she shifted forward to let Denzil lean past her. The driver called to the horses. The coach shuddered.

“Do the bell,” Denzil said suddenly.

Romy turned on him. “What?”

“Just do it.”

Ceveth closed her mouth and made the deep, ridiculous sound. It shook her lips. Denzil tried to answer it and produced a thin nasal hum. Romy covered her face, laughing. The woman going to the mill leaned away from them.

The wheels began to roll. Romy uncovered her face and waved with both hands.

Ceveth waved back. She walked three steps with the coach, then stopped before she had to run. Denzil called something she did not catch. She cupped a hand to her ear, but he was already too far away, and Romy was laughing at whatever it had been.

They were still leaning out when the coach reached the bend. The green sleeve disappeared last.

Ceveth went back to the wall and sat in the space Denzil had cleared for her. Dust settled on her shoes. She was still wearing the smile she had wanted Romy to see when the first sob bent her over.