Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards by Kit Brennan

that this was a hardship, as I liked them very much, and the young maid was often the admirer of my wickedest pranks. That particular Christmas, she had a cousin arrive from London and had brought him over to eat with us one evening. I wish she hadn’t. He was the very sort of handsome brand-new fellow (cheeks still raw from first shaves) that I would look at sideways on Sundays when the group of us young misses were allowed towalk, crocodile, from the school to the church and back again. Did I know how to speak to the rougher sex? Of course not; I’d had no practice. Did I know what they wanted? No. Did I know what I wanted? Not at all. Just a restlessness, a coal burning somewhere inside. I never knew his name, I didn’t even want to. It wasn’t about a connection that would go on into the future, it was about clothing and flesh and lips and yearning. There were so many layers to what I wore! Eventually we found a way. I helped him with nimble fingers, and the strangeness and shocking immediacy of that burning heat thrust deep inside me was an awakener—I woke up! I smelled India: the searing sun, the flowers, vivid colours, flavours that made you sweat rather than gag. No more oatmeal, no more interminable cups of tepid tea. Give me this! Give me more! I cried out, I laughed, grabbing at the boy’s buttocks, and before we knew it, we were off again.
    Of course, it was a terrible mistake. Of course the gods of irony were up there, waiting. It was all too repeatable. My mother, fourteen when she’d had me, had passed on her insultingly easy fecundity. At first I didn’t know what was happening. I began to eat like a horse—all the girls remarked upon it—but then shortly thereafter I also began to throw it back up. I cried a lot, and I’d been a girl who would never cry, never show fear or dependency, ever. The elder Miss Aldridge was a canny woman and it did not take her long to understand what had happened. One day the maid was in fits of tears, and then disappeared, dismissed. To my horror, Miss Aldridge called me in to her office to inform me that she’d written to Sir Jasper Nicolls.
    At the Nicholls’s, confined to the upper floor, I was terrified as I grew larger. Eventually, of course, I figured it out, thanks to the servants who tried to be kind. I felt so ashamed to realize I was like my mother, that I was repeating her history—but with no military husband’s good name to protect me or the child I was carrying. And as usual, I had no idea what to expect would happen afterwards. I only believed it would not be nice. The baby was born, once the normal course of such an event had picked me up and swept me into it, in about one hour, and this shamed me as well. I was fifteen by then. The baby, a little girl, was given to a wet-nurse who lived elsewhere, and I waited, breasts leaking, alert to the patriarch’s towering rage two floors below.
    The mails, of course, travel at the same rate as passengers, so it was not until several months after I had given birth that my stepfather’s reply arrived. There was a package for Sir Jasper, with apologies and instructions. Craigie sent me a separate letter, and it made me weep. He explained that he loved me very much, that he had decided upon a course of action that he hoped would satisfy all concerned, and that he had decided not to tell my mother of my predicament and its consequences. He hoped I would approve. And I did. I did not wish her to know anything about me, not if it would put me in her debt. Oh, he knew me well, and I have often wondered why. Not only the little girl I had been for the few years I lived with them, but also the changing creature I was at that time. He put himself into my position, and into my mind as he had known it and as he imagined it. He is a sterling man.
    Aunt Catherine arrived; she was to take my baby. Uncle Herbert came with her, and together they did their best to stand up