? and Rosaline

by Vanessa Hardy

The new maid was too rough. Rosaline raised her hand to the girl’s cold bony one and slowed the movement of the comb. 

‘Softly, like this Maria,’ she said. She could feel the girl tremble as she guided her. For the thousandth time in the past week Rosaline wished her former maid had not left. But she had gone and got herself married. 

Marriage. 

Love. 

It was all that these servant girls thought about. All any girl, servant or lady, thought about, as far as Rosaline could tell. And how pointless it all was: the quivering, the breathlessness, the relentless giggling. She had chosen Maria because she seemed to be a girl for whom marriage was less of a risk. She was ugly. She walked with a limp, and when she spoke, she could barely be heard. Rosaline was starting to realise she should have used different criteria. 

There was a knock at the door and a familiar voice shouting,

‘Rosa, Rosa!’ 

Maria started, dropping the comb. Rosaline sighed.

‘It’s only cousin Bella, let her in.’

Bella swept in, starry eyed, swirling her dress for Rosaline to admire, candles flickering in her wake. She was followed by her maid, whose demeanour matched that of her mistress: excitable, frivolous, impractical. 

‘Beautiful, darling,’ Rosaline said as her cousin came and gave her a kiss. 

‘Your hair hasn’t even done.’ Bella groaned. She shoed Maria away and motioned her own girl to take over. 

‘Why are you in such a hurry, Bella? You know it is just going to be another party. The same as the last and the next.’

Rosaline couldn’t help smiling as Bella’s eyes widened in horror and her hands shot to her hips. She had sparked the reaction she was hoping for. Eventually, Bella realised she was being teased and, laughing, took a different tack. 

‘Oh, why are you so serious, Rosa? Will you never fall in love?’

Bella gave her a meaningful look and a sly smile.

‘Or should I ask if you are in love? What about you know who?’ 

Rosaline stood in irritation as the maid finished her hair. 

‘Bella, you know I told that ridiculous boy there was no hope. He won’t be troubling me again.’

‘But you are cruel, cousin,’ Bella said, taking Rosaline’s hand. ‘I heard that he is sick with love for you. He barely leaves his room. He cries. I wish a boy would be in love with me like that.’ She sighed before continuing, ‘Have you no pity? Have you no heart?’

Rosaline did have a heart. But as her mother daily paraded a list of the names and desirable qualities of every eligible boy in the region, her heart grew heavier. As her friends and cousins endlessly discussed the suitable, and more to the point unsuitable, boys on their own lists, hope faded. She didn’t want to marry any one of the foolish, smooth, good-looking boys. They were just boys. She could barely distinguish them. The man she wanted to marry would have a depth of feeling these boys couldn’t know. How could she make Bella understand? 

Shaking her hand free from Bella’s grasp she said,’I do have a heart cousin, only it aches for something more.’

‘What do you mean more? More than a boy crying for you, starving for you? I have heard he barely eats…’

Rosaline drew a deep breath and spoke with a solemnity only ever known between girls of a certain age.

‘He cannot understand real love, true passion. True passion is daring, it’s bold, it knows no barriers. It lasts for ever.’ She began to pace the room as she warmed to her soliloquy. ‘I want a real love, like Odysseus and Penelope, like Mark Antony and Cleopatra, a love that people will remember in a thousand years. I want…’ 

Rosaline paused before saying the words she had been afraid to say out loud, ‘I want someone who would die for me.’ She stopped, embarrassed to have revealed so much. 

Bella was gasping dramatically, holding her throat, eyes trance like. By the fireplace, the maids were quivering too. Poor Maria swayed with the emotion of it all. 

Bella rushed to Rosaline’s side, hands outstretched and eyes ablaze. 

‘We will find loves like that,’ she said, as she linked arms with Rosaline. Before Rosaline could protest Bella added, with a sideways glance, ‘But how can you be sure his isn’t such a love?’ 

‘My sweet, loving Bella. These men no longer exist. There is no chance of such a love anymore.’ 

‘Well I shall not give up so easily. I am going to go to the party and hope to find my Mark Antony.’ She planted a kiss on Rosaline’s forehead. Looking at Bella’s beautiful smile and large searching eyes, Rosaline could almost imagine that her cousin could defy the odds and find a love for the ages. But Rosaline knew better, and it was silly to fool yourself. 

‘You know you will have to choose someone sooner or later,’ Bella said with a squeeze to her cousin’s arm, as they moved towards the door. 

‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ Rosaline said but with less conviction than she would have liked.

As they entered the cold corridor, Bella whispered in Rosaline’s ear

‘Why not give him another chance? You know you could do a lot worse than Romeo Montague.’

© Vanessa Hardy, 2020