Chapter Text
By the end of the first week of Pen’s days spent at Heston Grange, somehow the family’s daily pattern of life morphed into fitting her into their activities. And though Pen was not one for wall building or repairing (orders from Richard Alderson himself), she managed very nicely around the horses, in the garden, or doing housework alongside Lou. Jenny didn’t mean to pawn Pen off on her stepmother so frequently, but the two of them got along so well and it gave Jenny time alone with her dad that it was hardly fair to complain that she wasn’t spending more time with Pen like she agreed to.
Once another evening rolled around and Pen had stayed for dinner with the family (Lou had insisted and she couldn’t turn her down), she made up her mind that if she could pick any family she could’ve been a part of, it would be the Aldersons. She had offered to do the dishes, if only to spend a little more time around them and get a peek into their domestic bliss of home life after the animals had been checked on for the last time that night. Their evening spent together as a family was something she couldn’t even compare to her own family as it was rarely seen in her own home.
Pen was an only child, perhaps a bit spoiled if she thought about it enough and compared herself to other girls. Her father was a well-respected surgeon turned head of his department in the hospital he worked at. Long hours meant he left early and seldom returned home at a decent hour, so she had never seen much of him, except for the rare occasion when he remembered her birthday or around the holidays. However, those moments were filled with fond memories of his undivided attention and affection expressed through presents of one kind or another, perhaps to make up for all the times he missed watching her as she grew up from a little girl to a young lady. In any case, Pen loved him all the same and she knew he loved her, even if from afar.
Her mother, on the other hand, was home all the time, but seldom paid any more attention to her daughter than she did the houseplants she took care of for appearance’s sake. Pen was another one of her mother’s life achievements that a woman in her social circle was expected to give to her husband. After the long struggle she had in labor, she had vowed never again to have another child, and so unbeknownst to her, Pen was doomed to be an only child from the start. For many children this wouldn’t have been the sorrow it turned out to be in Pen’s case, but for such a quiet and shy girl, it would’ve been a blessing for her to have a built-in companion and playmate. Alas, her father had always given in to any request his wife had, and this was no exception. He was pleased with his only daughter, healthy and quite pretty, and the matter was settled.
The most love Pen had ever known came from her first nanny, but as she grew, the nanny was replaced by a governess who ruled with a strict hand as directed by Mrs. Peabody, teaching young Penny how to become the respectable young lady she was expected to grow up into. There was a reprieve from the governess during each summer when Pen spent them away from her immediate family and shared them instead with an aunt or uncle, other times with her godfather Hugh. Either way she was out of her mother’s hands for the most part, which was just as her mother liked it. It allowed Pen a little more freedom than other girls her age, but for the most part she knew her place and stuck to it so as not to disrupt life as she knew it.
Growing up Pen had very little to say in fear of getting in trouble or setting her mother off in one of her frightful moods, where she’d complain and fuss over the most minute detail. So instead she learned from a careful observation of her surroundings and found solace in finding out about the world through pages of books, where characters found only in ink and paper became her closest friends and her imagination took her away from her dull life and into new worlds.
The scene before her at Heston Grange seemed straight out of the pages of one of her novels. It was so simple, everyone doing something that really amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of things, but they were happy. Even more impressive, they were together. Jenny was sitting on the floor next to the unlit fireplace, book in one hand while she stroked Scruff with her free hand, stopping every once in a while to turn the page before returning her hand to pet her Spaniel’s soft coat. Their older Border Collie, Baxter, lounged sleepily in his basket nearby. Louisa played the piano softly, a melodic tune drifting throughout the whole house, while her husband sat relaxed in his comfortable chair and flipped through the pages of the newspaper.
Pen slowly dried the dishes she washed so as not to disrupt them, but she eventually had dried the last plate five times to the point that if anyone was watching they’d be wondering if she was trying to rub the floral pattern off of it. It was ridiculous to feel so sentimental over three people and two dogs she had known for only a week, but there she was, her heart longing to stay with them instead of returning back to Hulton Manor, a large house filled with many things and grand rooms but missing the closeness of a family.
“I suppose I should be getting back now,” Pen spoke up, gently setting the very dry plate down onto a towel on the counter. “I wouldn’t want Hugh and Margot to worry.”
Jenny looked up from her book. “Already?” she asked, checking to see if Pen had completed her self-inflicted assignment. “I hope your hands could take it.”
“They’re fine,” Pen said, looking down at her hands that started to turn red and dried out from the hot soapy water they were submerged in for so long. At their appearance contrary to what she claimed, she hid them behind her back.
“Isn’t it a bit late to ride home by yourself?” Louisa asked, glancing at the clock. She couldn’t help but worry for the girl’s welfare riding horseback when it would surely be dark by the time she arrived at her destination.
“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine,” Pen assured her.
Richard’s newspaper made a rustling sound as he raised his eyes from the page in front of him. “I can call Hugh and let him know you’re ready to go. He can send someone here, pick you up,” he suggested, knowing how his wife wouldn’t approve of the girl going home all alone in the dark of night. “You can keep your mare here and bring her home tomorrow.”
“Oh, would you?” Pen said with a smile, stepping over near the fireplace and kneeling down next to Jenny and Scruff. “You’re a darling!”
Richard only grumbled a little bit at the endearment but made no effort to get up out of his chair and instead went back to reading his newspaper. Louisa noticed this, and with a raised brow, asked him, “And when are you planning on telling Hugh?”
“Soon. I’ve got to go down to the road,” he replied simply, to which Jenny and Louisa shared a knowing look.
Pen, meanwhile, was very surprised. “You don’t have a phone in the house? I know I’ve been around for a week but I never noticed you don’t have one…”
“Richard doesn’t believe in them,” Louisa told her, casting a look at Richard who chose to ignore it.
“Her not noticing shows we don’t have much need for one. And we don’t need one in the house when there’s one that works just fine right down the road,” Richard said, tuning the page of his paper.
Jenny sighed. “But think how much easier it’d be if it were just down the hall in the house instead of down the road.”
“I’m not an old man. I can still walk,” Richard said, reluctantly standing up from his comfortable position and placing the newspaper down on the seat.
“Sometimes your knee gets bad,” Jenny pointed out. “Then what would happen?”
Richard looked between his daughter, his wife, and the newest waif Jenny brought home. The three women were ganging up on him and he didn’t like it, so he reasoned that it was going to be best to make his retreat down to the phone box off the road sooner than later. “I’m not the only one with legs ‘round here,” he said, giving Jenny a pointed look that she knew meant for her not to make any more remarks that would get the other two more riled up for their cause. “Bloody hell,” he muttered as he walked to the front door.
“Better yet,” Louisa called out after him, causing him to stop forward progress. “If Pen would like, she could stay in the guest room.”
“My old room?” Jenny said with some surprise. “It’s a lot smaller than what you’re used to,” she warned Pen.
“I’d actually really like that. It’d be an adventure — part of the whole farm life experience — sleeping in the farmhouse,” Pen said happily. “That is, if you truly don’t mind.”
“And do I still have to go down to the phone?” Richard asked.
“Only because we don’t have one in the house,” Louisa smirked. “But yes, you should still tell Hugh. We wouldn’t want the Hultons worrying that we’ve kidnapped their Penelope.”
Richard rolled his eyes as the womenfolk couldn’t see him from where they were. “Bloody hell,” he muttered again.
Pen waited until she heard the door close before saying with a smile, “I think you’ll get your phone after all.”
“We’ve been working at it, haven’t we Lou?” Jenny laughed. “Months now.”
“One day. One day we’ll wear him down,” Louisa winked at the girls.
When the house was quiet and dark, Pen tiptoed through the narrow hall from the bathroom back to the small room that Jenny used to call her own before she moved into Helen’s room once it was vacated. Every floor board seemed to creak, and not having been there often enough to learn what areas to avoid, she seemed to notice it even more the harder she tried to be quiet. A sliver of light crossed the hallway runner, its origin giving away the fact that Jenny was still awake at the late hour. Pen debated whether or not to go see her. On the one hand, she was tired from the day’s work, but on the other hand, she was curious as to what her friend was doing. Her curiosity won out.
She lightly tapped on the door with two fingers, not wanting to alert Jenny’s parents to the two of them awake and wandering the house late at night. A shuffling sound from inside Jenny’s room ensued, and then quieted down to silence. “Who is it?” Jenny called out in a hushed tone.
“It’s me — Pen,” she responded. “Can I come in?”
The sound of feet crossing the room got closer until Jenny opened up the door, her gaze traveling up and Pen, taking in her appearance. “Glad to see Helen’s pyjamas worked for you,” she commented, stepping to the side to let Pen in her room before closing the door. “You need anything?”
“Oh, no,” Pen said quickly. “I just happened to see your light on and wondered what ever you could possibly be doing. I thought farmers went to bed early. There’s the saying, ‘Early to bed, early to rise…’”
“‘Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ Yeah, I know that one,” Jenny said with a smirk. “I’m already healthy, no need to be wealthy, and as for me being wise, that’s debatable, but I manage.” She went back over to her bed and sat back where the covers were turned down, crossing her legs beneath her. “I’ll get to sleep soon, just wanted to finish a letter first, though he probably won’t get it in time anyway before he gets home.”
Pen’s eyes lit up. “A letter? To whom?”
Jenny’s hand discreetly reached behind her, making sure that the letter was safely tucked beneath her pillow before answering. “To Tris,” she said nonchalantly, hoping that if she treated it as a casual letter that Pen wouldn’t be interested in reading it or pressing for more details. Of course, that was all wishful thinking.
“Your boyfriend?” Pen asked.
“Sort of,” Jenny shrugged, not at all sure how to describe Tristan to anyone.
“He’s the one you’re in love with?” Pen continued.
Jenny hesitated before nodding. “Yeah, he’s the one.”
“Does he write you back?”
“We always write to each other when he’s away in Doncaster,” Jenny explained. “But it’s mostly things that don’t mean much. Silly stuff really.”
“Has he told you that he loves you yet?” Pen asked.
“No,” Jenny admitted. “But I should hope he doesn’t do it through a letter. I want to hear him say it with me own ears.”
Pen’s eyes softened as she crossed the room, sitting down on Jenny’s bed and taking her hands in her own. “I promised I would help you win the heart of your Mr. Farnon. And I shall. I haven’t forgotten. Even if he doesn’t appreciate you now, we’ll find a way that he won’t even be able to look at you without realizing how much in love he is with you.”
“Tris appreciates me,” Jenny countered, saying the words as if to reinforce it in her own mind before Pen filled her thoughts with doubt of Tristan’s genuine affection for her. She pulled her hands away from Pen’s touch and folded them in her lap. “He’s just busy. Caught up in the war. He’s not one of your society gentlemen you like to read about who don’t seem to do anything but pay social calls on people and hunt and ride and walk around their estates. Tris is a soldier, and a working vet when he’s back here.”
“But how long does it take to say ‘I love you’?” Pen said, her tone low as she gazed into Jenny’s eyes.
“And you’re all-knowing on what goes on inside a man’s head and heart?” Jenny said wryly.
“I have some experience,” Pen said, tilting her head up confidently. “Why, just the other day I got a call from Johnny-“
“Right. Your boyfriend whom you decided to talk to while I were stuck with Hugh waiting for you to come back,” Jenny remembered.
“He’s not my boyfriend. At least, not anymore. We went steady last year, and he thinks we should pick it back up this year, but I don’t think so,” Pen shrugged it off.
“And so you tossed him aside cause last year’s model weren’t good enough for you?” Jenny asked.
“It’s not that,” Pen quickly said so as not to let Jenny get the wrong impression of her. She sighed and dramatically flopped back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as she thought of her relationship with her last boyfriend. “It’s just that no one seems to live up to the standards of this ‘perfect’ man I’ve made up in my head. And so I wait for him to appear one day and I’m starting to think I’ll never find him.”
“You’re not even twenty,” Jenny reminded her, leaning over to give her a playful shove on the shoulder. “You’ve got time.”
“Easy for you to say. You have a prospect at least,” Pen sighed.
“But if it weren’t Tristan, then who’s to say it wouldn’t have been someone else I’d have eventually fallen for?” Jenny said, though thinking more about the question, she couldn’t come up with an answer as to whom she would’ve loved so strongly as she did Tristan. “You know it’s not perfect. He hasn’t told me he loves me yet. He hasn’t kissed me or taken me out on a date. We’re no more than close friends right now, at least to anyone else who knows us.”
“I know,” Pen admitted. “But you’re still a very lucky person, and I hope you realize it.”
“Because of Tris? Or because I’m a Dales farmer who loves what she does and got to be born and raised here?”
Pen turned onto her side and propped herself up on her elbow. “Because you’re you. You have a lovely family who works together, you’ve got your own house and land you get to work on, without having to share a garden with a neighbor or have their house cast a shadow on your own. You have neighbors who respect you and a man who might just be in love with you. And you’ve got a purpose in life. Your farming isn’t just a job — it’s a way of life and you enjoy it. You couldn’t have asked for better.”
Jenny moved over so she too could mirror Pen’s position, the two of them facing each other so their hushed voices could be toned down even more. “And what about your life? With your big houses and fancy clothes and people who work for you and will drop everything to answer your every need? You’d miss it if you took on the farmer’s way of life.”
Pen let out a small chuckle, thinking of the irony of it all. “This sounds funny, I know, but if you asked me that a week ago, I would’ve agreed with you. I’d miss it because it’s all I’ve ever known. But coming here, seeing you and your family… it’s stirred within me this feeling like I’m homesick for your way of life, a sense of nostalgia for something I had never before experienced. I know it sounds strange and maybe I am crazy for wanting to be you, but I’m somewhat… jealous of you Jenny. And if it was possible for us to switch places, I’d gladly become you.”
“Better watch what you wish for,” Jenny warned her. “It’s not all sunshine and roses. You’ve seen us all at a good time. Things are running smoothly now,” she paused to reach over and give a light knock on her wooden side table, “but it’s not always that way.”
“You wouldn’t be human if things were perfect,” Pen agreed, knowing the reality of life. “But you and your parents are pretty close to it. My family isn’t like yours. Father works long hours and Mother means well, she does, truly, but she’s so busy with benefits and charity galas and any event that her friends have, that she forgets that it’s sometimes nice to spend a night in with family. It leaves me feeling as though I don’t know where my place is in the family anymore; other times I see how much they do for others and I feel as though I’m not doing enough.”
Jenny listened carefully and for the first time, felt somewhat sorry for the situation her rich friend found herself in. Before she truthfully thought Pen spoiled with the carefree way of life wealthy children grow up into. Now she saw glimpses of cracks in the perfect facade of Pen’s life, such as the thought of not doing enough. That thought wasn’t new to Jenny. She too had felt the same way before being reminded by a certain vet that she was doing enough — not in the same way as others, but she was doing her bit by working the farm that, in effect, served the country with goods and food. But Pen didn’t have the same satisfaction of working on a farm that belonged to her family, through no fault of her own, and this thought made Jenny feel more sympathetic to her situation in life. “You alone a lot?” she finally asked.
Pen ran a finger along the embroidery of the quilt on Jenny’s bed. “I live in a house full of people — servants, guests, family who drop in when they are passing through and want to use our house as a hotel of sorts — but there are times when I feel like I’m all alone in the world. No one’s ever particularly paid much attention to just… me. I’m usually the afterthought.”
“You’ve got me now. I’m your friend,” Jenny said, reaching out to push a golden curl back behind Pen’s ear.
Pen reached up to gently take Jenny’s wrist, slowly pulling her hand down until their fingers intertwined. “I do have you,” she said gratefully. “But I’m only here for the summer. Somehow it’s like I’m living in a dream that I don’t want to wake up from, though I know morning will soon dawn and I will be back to my old way of life, away at school, home for the holidays, letters sent and phone calls made the only times I communicate with my parents. And maybe that would be bearable if only I had some purpose in my life. Like you. You’re a farmer and you do what you love. It benefits others and you can go to sleep each night knowing you’ve done your part in the world.”
“I chose farming because it chose me long before I ever had a choice. There were work to be done and I were here. Even when I were nowt but a little girl, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about it. Don’t need proper schooling to be a farmer, just the know-how passed on by your family,” Jenny said softly. “Now? Maybe I’d rather be a vet or a nurse or summat where I’m more useful, but I know me place and I made me peace with it. You though, you’ve gone to school. You’ve got a whole world of opportunities open to you.”
“One would think so, yes,” Pen admitted. “But my schooling is how to be the perfect daughter, then a young lady in society, then charming girlfriend, devoted fiancée, loyal wife, doting mother, then back to the proper lady who hosts galas and charities and dinner parties for my husband’s business associates so he can continue to further his career he’s built up for himself.”
“That sounds terribly old-fashioned,” Jenny scoffed.
“It’s our way of life.”
“Not you too,” she groaned softly, shifting to lay on her back. “You sound just like Hugh.”
“Hugh understands the ways of those in our social class, but he does have it better than a woman. At least he has a job,” Pen said. “Now that I’ve had a taste of real work, I want it more than anything.”
“So get a job,” Jenny suggested, the words sounding so simple as a fix to her complaints.
“My parents won’t let me,” Pen replied.
“Then run away,” Jenny said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Do what you want. It’s your life, not theirs. They have their own lives to live and if they like it they can keep it. You should live your life the way you want. And if that’s being a farmer or anything else, then do it before you get trapped even more in the way they want you to be and you lose who you are.”
“I wish… but I have an obligation to them. I have to finish my classes,” Pen explained.
“Innt there anything you could do? While you’re at school?” Jenny asked. “How about writing a book? God knows you've read enough of them.”
Pen raised her head at Jenny’s suggestion. “Me write a book? I’ve written silly little things here and there but never a story for others to read. I don’t think I’d know where to start!”
“Just pick a beginning and go from there. How hard could it be?” Jenny suggested, though she didn’t know the first thing about writing a book. It just sounded logical in her head.
“But what would I write about?”
“Whatever you feel like,” she said as she adjusted her position so her head was on the pillow. She crossed her arms behind her head and closed her eyes as the time was late and she was getting tired. “If you write about what you know, it’s got to be easier cause then there wouldn’t be so many guesses.”
“I don’t think I’d care to write about myself and my parents would be horrified if I wrote about them or any of their friends, even if I did change their names. Besides, we’re not interesting enough…” Pen said thoughtfully. “Not like you… I could write about you.”
Jenny opened up one eye. “Me?”
“Yes, you!” Pen laughed softly. “You do things and your family life is so much more interesting than mine. And you’re in love with a solider. Everyone loves a romance!”
“You’d write about me and Tris?” Jenny asked skeptically, now opening up both her eyes and sitting up again. “What would there be to write about?”
“Lots of things!” Pen reassured her. “First of all, your childhood and how you grew up here. And then how you met Tristan, when you fell in love…”
Jenny only chucked at the thought before lying back down. “Aye, like that would be interesting in a story. I could write it on less than a whole page. I’ve lived on the same farm for all me life, raised mostly by Helen since Mum died when I were nine. Dad’s cared for us, always, but I’ve gotten closer to him since Helen got married and left. And Tristan… we’ve known each other for as long as I can remember. Grown up together, so I never really paid attention until I saw him in the church at Jimmy’s christening, same day he returned home for the first time in years. But that were two years ago and hardly anything’s happened since then. No one would read about that.”
“Surely something’s happened in your life since then? You can’t just be in this little cocoon of happiness here at the farm!”
“We are, in a way,” Jenny admitted. “If you only based your story off a farm girl — who’s not me — who’s in love with a vet turned soldier — who’s not Tris — you could always throw summat more interesting in the story. Like while they aren’t speaking to each other because the lass is upset at her lad’s refusal to acknowledge that she’s in love with him, she meets up with a different soldier. He could be discharged from the army because of an injury of some sort. They meet at a party and he kind of likes her, maybe loves her, but he’s already married and he doesn’t tell her.”
Pen’s eyes got big as she eagerly listened to Jenny’s story. “Oh, that’s good! What would happen?”
“Nothing,” Jenny simply said with indifference.
“Nothing?” Pen repeated.
“Nothing,” Jenny said with a sigh. “Good thing too because he weren’t all that incredible like he thought he were.” Pen couldn’t help but chuckle, catching Jenny’s attention. “What’s so funny?”
“You are,” Pen continued laughing, though trying to do so quietly enough so as not to wake Jenny’s parents down the hall. “You and the rest of the people up here in the Dales.”
Jenny propped herself up yet again. “What’d we do that you find so funny that you can’t control your laughter?”
“I was just thinking how if I wrote a story that takes place in the Dales that I’d have to make sure I capture the dialect,” Pen laughed. “Or at least the words you use. All that ‘owt’ and ‘nowt’ and ‘were’ in place of ‘was.’”
“It’s the way we talk,” Jenny said, not understanding fully what Pen was referring to. “Don’t everyone talk that way?”
“If you mean doesn’t everyone talk that way, the answer is no,” Pen replied. “At least, not the people I’m usually with. I don’t mean it in a bad way, it’s just different.”
“Different?” Jenny repeated skeptically.
“It would add local dialect,” she assured her.
Jenny was still unconvinced but she knew there wasn’t much for her to say to persuade Pen otherwise. “You know what I think?”
“Hm?”
“I think you’re daft,” Jenny said with a smile. “And full of ideas that probably won’t come true. But it don’t cost anything to dream. So if you want to write a book, you should write it, even if it is about a farm girl like me and no one else finds it interesting.”
Pen, in a moment of unsophistication, perhaps brought on by the very unusual situation she found herself in — in a small farmhouse bedroom, sprawled out on her friend’s bed in someone else’s pyjamas sharing whispered words simultaneously full of both meaning and teasing — that she reached out to grab the closest pillow and playfully hit Jenny with it.
After recovering from the shock of what Pen did, in good-natured retaliation, Jenny took her pillow and whacked Pen in the arm. “You want to play that way, huh?” she teased, suddenly being taken back to her childhood when after her bedtime she’d sneak into the very same room to be with Helen. They would talk most times, but other days they’d playfully fight with pillows as weapons and blankets as shields, and some other times they would just simply be together, no words or actions interrupting their time together as sisters.
“I give up!” Pen laughed, holding up her hands placatingly after getting attacked multiple times by Jenny and her feather pillow.
“I hadn’t even begun to fight,” Jenny laughed with a playful sparkle reflected in her eyes, her pillow still raised and ready for one last hit. “But since you gave in I’ll let you stay this once.” She leaned back and patted the spot next to her under the covers. “Come on.”
“You want me to stay with you?” Pen asked.
“Why not?” Jenny shrugged. “There’s enough room for the two of us. Helen and I used to share sometimes when the other room got to be too lonely.”
Pen crawled over and slipped under the covers, reaching forward to grab the pillow that had been flung around and fluffing it before putting her head down on it. “I think for the first time in my life I’ll be sad once summer is over, because it means all this is over too. I really do love it here,” she whispered after Jenny turned off the bedroom light and the room was filled with darkness.
Jenny smiled, though she knew Pen wouldn’t be able to see her expression in the dark. “I know how it is. I live here and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. And… I think — no, I know — I’ll miss you too.”