Posted on 2010-04-22

The day was hot and sticky -- an almost unheard-of rarity for so far north, but not this summer. Lydia Wickham wiped away the sweat trickling down her forehead and hung another sheet on the clothesline. Both were most likely a wasted effort, just as everything else was.

It was doubtful things would dry quickly in this kind of weather, but she thought she could leave it out for the rest of the day, in the hopes the sun would have an effect. So here she was, airing her laundry and her grievances. Unfortunately, her husband had disappeared at the break of dawn, as usual, and her eldest son had escaped immediately after breakfast, so all she had left was her eight-month-old, Samuel. Her captive audience gurgled and sucked on the side of a rock he had somehow got hold of.

"It's simply not fair, Sammy," she said as she reached down for another threadbare sheet. "Your father had no right at all to speak to me like that last night, and what could I say about it? I'm just the stupid wife who has to sit at home and do all the chores and raise all of his children." She scowled and added darkly, "As if I want another from him."

Samuel threw his rock a few inches away and gurgled again, clapping his hands. "We're already in near penury, and all because he spends everything on going out to the pub with his mates and those loose women," she said, shaking out a gown and grimacing as she put her finger through a newly discovered hole. "I know he's had several in the past week alone. He comes home reeking of them. And while he does that, I'm standing here in aging undergarments."

Lydia sighed and threw the gown in an already full basket of mending. She would put those up near the end of the line to keep them separated from the few pieces of clothing that were still whole. It would be easier later, when she took them down. She reached back into the basket and pulled out a petticoat to hang, and wished it were her husband's neck she was stringing up, instead.

"And the way they all look at me. As if their husbands are any better," she said. She paused, a stocking in hand. "You know, Sammy, I don't know why I ever thought he'd make a good husband. Mary would no doubt quote me some passage about making my bed, or deals with the devil, or some such rubbish, but--"

"Good day, Mrs. Wickham."

Lydia sighed when she saw the source of that cheerful voice. Mr. Hammond, the rector of the local parish, had a basket in one hand and the ear of her eldest child in the other. "What's he done this time, Reverend?"

"Oh, just stealing apples from Mrs. MacDonald's orchard," the priest said. He pulled the boy a little further by the ear and then, with a gentle swat on the back, ushered him through the gate. "Master Wickham is quite a scapegrace. Harmless, for the most part, but stealing apples can quickly lead to other crimes. I've set him to come by Mrs. MacDonald's tomorrow to do some weeding in her garden, to make up for the apples he ate."

Lydia scowled at her eldest and told him to go inside and make up his bed. When he had disappeared through the door, stomping heavily and grumbling beneath his breath, she turned to Mr. Hammond. "I'm really very sorry. He should know better, at six years old, but I don't really know what I can do to stop it. He gets no direction from his father, and it's just me here..." She scowled again, this time at an un-mendable hole in a table linen. "Things just keep getting worse."

Mr. Hammond set his basket down on the ground and leaned up against the fence post. "Anything you would wish to talk on with me?"

"I'm just getting tired of this, Reverend," Lydia said, waving her hand vaguely towards the laundry, the house, Sammy, who was now eating dirt. "Seven years, and I've nothing to show for it. I don't get any help from my husband, the house is a shambles, Peter is an unmanageable scamp, we have no money, and I haven't had a new gown or anything in at least three years. I know I'm not maybe the most deserving person around -- I think I've learned that the hard way these past few years -- but it seems like all I get are troubles. Why can't they be easier?"

"Troubles are never easy: that's why they're troubles," Mr. Hammond said with a smile. He looked down at the basket on the ground and poked it with the tip of his black shoe. "Mrs. Hammond thought you might like some of our bounty of fresh lemons from Mr. Todwell's hothouse. I never liked the fruit myself, sour as they are, but she always manages to make the best and sweetest lemonade for a hot day like today -- and that I don't mind."

Lydia frowned at this strange non sequitur, but thanked him, though a trifle doubtfully. "I don't know if I will have time to make lemonade, Mr. Hammond," she said. "I have quite a few things left to do for the rest of the day. And tomorrow will no doubt be as bad."

"Might you consider asking one of the village women to help out a bit? Give you an afternoon's rest?"

"And what could I give them in return?" Lydia said. She felt tears threatening, but held them in, embarrassed to show such a weakness in front of someone else. She'd endured enough mockery from her husband to know tears didn't help gain her any points anymore. "I don't have anything to share, and the few pennies I am able to keep back from George have to go to the household accounts."

"You could ask your son Peter," the parson said, a wry tilt to his lips. When she looked at him askance, he elaborated: "I believe it was his hand I saw dip into the offertory last Sunday." Lydia's cheeks flamed in embarrassment and she tried to stutter out an apology, but he waved it off with a chuckle. "Ah, there. It goes to the poor, in any case."

Lydia's cheeks couldn't get any more painfully warm if she had been inches from the sun -- which, in this heat, it felt like she might be. "I don't like charity, Mr. Hammond," she said softly. "I can't deny that I used to -- I was once accustomed to writing to my sisters, and to my mother before she died, to beg some pounds to cover our expenses. Mr. Wickham certainly pushed for it. But I just can't do it anymore."

"There's nothing wrong with a little charity. We all need it at times, and we all need to give it, at others."

"Perhaps, but I'm tired of being on the receiving end," she said. "I'm tired of all of this. The house is never clean, the children never give me a moment's rest, nor my husband a moment's notice. I haven't had a kind word from him in who knows how long, and all we seem to have are arguments."

The rector looked at her kindly. "It takes two to argue, my child."

She pursed her lips. "Maybe so, but he starts it. Always. He comes home after..." she lowered her voice and leaned toward the rector, "he consorts with prostitutes, Reverend."

He shook his head slowly. "It is a sinful world, Mrs. Wickham. All I can do is pray for their conversion."

Sammy, at this point, had crawled over to Mr. Hammond and was getting dirt all over his cassock as he attempted to pull himself up. The priest scooped the little boy up and steadied him on the fence, where he played with the buttons on his garment.

"But what can I do? How can I live with this, day after day?" Lydia asked. "I just don't know what I'll do when the boys get older. The women around here are nasty gossips who I've no doubt would share their opinion of us to our faces, and I just can't stand the thought of my sons hearing that. I don't want to become like them -- I don't want to be a bitter old woman, Mr. Hammond."

The rector didn't answer for a moment, choosing instead to dangle his pocket watch in front of the little boy and hear him laugh and watch him try to stick it in his mouth. At last, though, Mr. Hammond looked up at her and said, "The trouble with lemons, Mrs. Wickham, is that they always stay lemons. They'll always be mouth-puckeringly sour. Unless, of course, you put a little work into making them something else."

Lydia was completely baffled by such a change in subject. The priest, taking note of her expression, laughed softly and said, "When you make lemonade, my dear, you turn what could be sour and bitter into something sweet and refreshing, especially when it comes to weather like we've been having. Oh, I'm not saying it won't sometimes still be sour, or that it'll always be a comfort, or that everyone will like it, but I'm sure you'll find that a little bit of sweetness and effort goes a long way, even if only in how you look forward to the rest of the day. And there'll always be people -- like Mrs. Hammond and myself -- who'll never be averse to a nice, cool glass and a bit of your company on a day like today," he added with a smile.

"Now, I remember you when you first got here, Mrs. Wickham," he said, coming through the gate to set Sammy back down on the ground. "A young, blossoming flower, full of hope and happiness. But sometimes, it seems, especially when we're attached to a certain kind of tree, it's a bit inevitable we'll grow into something a little more sour. And we'll no doubt stay that way unless something is done about it -- but it takes some effort," he said as he handed her the basket of lemons.

He paused then and tipped his head back to glance up at the sky from beneath the broad brim of his black hat. "It is rather hot out here, Mrs. Wickham," he said. "You and your sons could no doubt do with a cool drink. Might I suggest making some lemonade?" And with a grin and touching the brim of his hat, he departed through the gate, whistling as he went up the lane.

Mr. George Wickham, later that evening, was surprised, to say the least, when his wife commented on how hot he looked and how difficult it must have been for him to train out in the heat all day and offered him a glass of lemonade that had been chilling in the cellar. He took it with a grain of suspicion and wondered if she weren't trying to poison him. He threw it back quickly, wiping his mouth with his sleeve afterwards, and waited for it to take effect. It'd be better than listening to another lecture from the missus.

But it turned out to be nothing more than a cool, refreshing glass of lemonade, and the only side effect was a regret he had drunk it so quickly. And if that weren't enough to make George uneasy, his wife had cooked him his favorite dish for dinner and had not a negative word for him the whole night, except to scold him for not telling her he had cut his hand earlier in the day. She bandaged it carefully and told him to take it easy for the rest of the evening. She'd put the children to bed and retire early after laying out his nightclothes.

After a few days of this kind of odd behavior, George began to wonder if maybe his wife was cuckolding him and assuaging her conscience and his suspicions by playing the part of the dutiful wife. So he started to spend as much time around her as possible, to see if he could sniff out the dastard who dared try to fit him with horns. But he didn't discover anything, other than that his wife had a dab hand with a pot of stew, and his eldest son had a good eye with a catapult, and his youngest was just starting to say "dada."

But all this domesticity couldn't help but raise the fidgets in George, and he was soon driven out of the house by a new suspicion that perhaps his wife was trying to kill him by lulling him into a false sense of security. He couldn't help notice, though, her pleased expression when he came home, or the way she was welcoming him to her bed again, or the way in which she called him by his first name, like she had when they first married. He started to actually want to come home and to want to be worthy of that devotion.

And after a while, he started not to notice that he hardly went out to the pub anymore or that he hadn't looked at a woman other than his wife in weeks, if not months. And he started to not feel guilty when the smiling rector, Mr. Hammond, shook him by the hand after church and said he hoped things were going well in the Wickham household. And then one day the following summer, when the weather was hotter than usual and his wife was out in the garden hanging the laundry, George saw a bunch of lemons sitting at the bottom of a basket in the pantry.

"I thought I'd make some lemonade," he said when he'd brought two glasses with him out to the garden and handed one to his heavily pregnant wife.

Lydia took a sip of the drink and her eyes nearly popped out of her head. He clearly hadn't put in enough sugar. But after a moment she laughed and gave him a kiss on the cheek, anyway. "It's perfect," she said. "Lemonade is exactly what I was hoping for."