[Y] Out of My Mind

The tennis ball hit the ceiling with a sharp thump, and fell down right past her outstretched hand. She sighed and leaned her head more back to see where the offensively bright yellow ball bounced. It hit the chair leg, and rolled from there to her right where it stopped next to the windowed wall. She scowled at it, the stupid thing, which by all means should have been caught by her on its way down. Sophie rolled over to her stomach and reached to the opened package of tennis balls lying on the floor half under her bed. She turned it upside down and a single ball fell out. She glanced at the ceiling, trying to see if she’d dented it yet, accidentally, of course. The pale ceiling showed no sign of her activity, however, which meant she could continue tossing tennis balls at it to her heart’s content. Except that she really couldn’t care less.

Sophie dumped the final tennis ball back into the cylinder, and rolled onto her back again. Her head hung over the edge of the bed, and she once again sighed. It was no use. One could only repeat a certain number of activities over and over again before they got so mundane and boring that throwing tennis balls at the inoffensive ceiling trumped them all. Of course, during the day, she could ride Flaithrí. She’d taken to hacks across the moors and through the forests lately. Once she’d ridden home to Wooley Park, to show the horse to her uncle – who had obviously seen it before, since he was the one who bought it, but who admired it all the same. They’d shut the horse to the kitchen garden, since the old stable wasn’t exactly in prime condition anymore, and she’d eaten lunch at home, before riding back to Rosings.

She’d reached the point of numb boredom a week or so ago, and now she wondered how it had taken her so long. Maybe it was the steadily worsening weather, which forced her to stay inside.
The phone rang, and Sophie couldn’t have answered it faster.

“Yes, hello?” the words came out in a jumble.
“Hi,” it came as a soft laugh, one she was very familiar with. It was Mary, of course. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Well I was in the middle of the very important business of denting the ceiling for the future generations to enjoy.”
“Ahh… I see it’s a bad time. I’ll call tomorrow?”

Sophie laughed and asked:
“How’ve you been? Did you get back to school alright?”
“Actually, I’m not there yet. I’m skiving a bit – we went to Paris with mum.”
“Paris again?” Sophie felt a tinge of jealousy, even though she wasn’t really even overly fond of the city. What was it with her today?
“I knew you would have liked it. I told you to stay in London for the summer.”
“I like it here.” Sophie retorted, pursing her lips. “Besides, didn’t you spend most of the summer travelling? It would’ve been just me and mummy.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t. And I wasn’t away the whole summer. But seriously, what have you been up to lately? How’s the horse?”

It bothered Sophie more than it perhaps should have that Mary called Flaithrí that. She had never really been into horses that much, though that hadn’t stopped their uncle from teaching her to ride and buying her a pony. Father had talked about buying Mary a horse – that was a line of thought she did not want to follow.

“Flaithrí is wonderful. You should come up and see him when you have time. I’ve been riding him a lot. You could too, he’s very nice.”
“Oh, I’ll visit, don’t worry, but I actually do have to attend classes, you know.” Mary went quiet for a bit, and then said with a more serious note: “I really am sorry I haven’t visited yet.”
“That’s all right. I’ve been keeping busy, anyway.” That was an outright lie, but Sophie wasn’t going to own up to it.
“Really? Doing what?”

Or maybe she’d have to. Or she could distract her sister:
“Well… Besides riding, I’ve been, you know, walking a lot, sometimes with the dogs. Puppy’s growing up and getting dimmer every day. And painting! I’ve turned the parlour into an atelier. I’ve been trying to sketch Flaithrí for days now, but can’t seem to get some details right, and then…”
“You’ve been chucking tennis balls at the poor innocent ceiling because you have nothing else to do.”

She was good; Sophie had to give her that.

“You’re going to tell me I should’ve applied to a school, aren’t you?”
“Oh no,” Mary laughed “, that’s mother’s job.”

Sophie chuckled. Jokes like this were the norm, and she knew she could trust Mary not to tell on her to mother. Mummy would launch on that, claiming she’d been silly to think she could amuse herself shut up in an old mansion, with the company of three dogs, the help and her old uncle. She could hear Mary moving: she heard soft thumps of her footsteps on the carpet, the door closing and then another opening when she passed through the hallway to the hall.

“Hold on, I’ll pass to her. She’ll be glad to hear from you.” her sister’s voice echoed slightly in the spacious room.
“Wait, what? Mary!”
“Mum?” Sophie could hear Mary say“, I’ve got our Northerner on the line.”

She cursed her sister to the deepest level of hell in her mind. Wasn’t she supposed to be on her side? Sophie did not need a lecture on her studies and prospects and whatnot. Especially since her own thoughts had started drifting that way lately, just in passing moments, but even that was too much. Succumbing to them would mean her mother and her teachers had been right. She had no idea what to study though, so maybe she wasn’t completely without hope. Besides, what had Mary meant “their Northerner”? She was that, of course, in the sense that she never introduced herself as being from London. But it was the tone of Mary’s voice when she’d said it, like it was something endearing, like she was a child. She wasn’t!

“Hello, Victoria.”

Ugh. Why did she call her that? It was so stiff, formal, and came with a whole lot of pomp and circumstance; like she was supposed to act like a queen. She’d told them all she was to be called Sophie when she was nine.

“Hi, mummy.” she sighed exasperated. “How are you?”
“Never mind me, what have you been up to? You never call, really: I never know what you’re up to.”
“Riding. What else is there?” she snapped, and then regretted it that instant.
“Nothing else? I told you you’d get bored up there with nothing to do.”
“I’m not bored! I’ve got lots of things to do!”
“How are your friends?” her mother switched subjects.
“They’re fine. Susan started school, but she said she’d visit the first chance she’d got. And – “
“I meant the friends you have over there.” her mother corrected her. Oh, she was sly.
“They – they’re fine, too. I mean we’re all very busy, because owning a horse takes up so much time. And some of them they’re older than me, so they have jobs that take time, too.” Sophie thought of Evelyn, who was the first person she’d spent time at Rosings with. She’d talked to her the most – twice! That was a lot, wasn’t it, what with their busy timetables and horses being living in different wings of the stable. Sophie felt miserable at her own excuse even as she thought it up.

“You could come home.”

Mother was leading her on, trying to get her to admit this bright idea of hers might have needed a little more planning than she’d spared for it. She wouldn’t give in. This was her home, not Mayfair.

“No, I love it here. It’s so nice to be in the middle of nature again. And if I get tired of it, there’s always Newcastle.”
“But you can’t have enough to do there besides riding!” her mother contradicted.
“I do! Ask Mary, I just told her. I do lots of things besides ride. Like take walks. I’ve walked home from the stables on a couple days when the weather was nice.”
“Walked? Why on earth?”
“The weather was nice.” she repeated. She’d gotten up from the bed and stared looking for her sketch pad. She could tweak the sketches of Flaithrí while her mother talked.
“But what did you do with our equipment? Why didn’t Jones come get you?”
“Carried them with me, what did you think? Because Jones has a life and other duties in addition to giving be a five minute ride to the stables, mother. It’s not a long walk at all, less than an hour by far.”
“What if you would’ve gotten hurt? No one would know where you were.”
“Gotten lost and managed to hurt myself following a single road? Come on.” she snorted. “Mum, mobile phones exist; I could’ve called for help if I needed to.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Victoria. Not if someone had attacked you.”
“In Slaley? What would my dreaded attacker be, mother, a rabbit?” she cut her off. Her mother couldn’t be serious. This was getting utterly ridiculous.
“You wouldn’t know. You don’t know enough of the world to look out for yourself.”

That was it. She was ending the call.
“I’m going now, I have to meet up with a friend.” she invented.
“It’s night time!”
“It’s ten pm. I’m going.”
“Going where? Jones must take you, if you really insist on going.”
“Slaley.”
“What could there possibly be there that would interest you at this hour?”
“Uhh…” she was running out of ideas. What did they have in Slaley? It really wasn’t a place she visited often. What did every English village have?
“The pub! I’m going to the pub to meet friends.” Ha. There, she couldn’t beat that.
“The –” Sophie was sure her mother would faint. She wondered if Mary had stayed around to eavesdrop on the conversation. Mother might need catching. Best escape sooner than later.
“I’m late already. Going now. Bye!”

She tapped on the screen of her phone to end the call, not bothering to listen to her mother retorts. Then she set it on silent to avoid answering. Trouble was, she thought, sitting back on the bed, staring out into the darkness of the fall evening, now she’d have to go, or at least pretend to be gone for an hour or so. Mother was sure to call uncle to make sure she didn’t go, which meant she would have to disappear fast. Jones was definitely not taking her. If all went according to her non-existent plan, Jones wouldn’t even need to know about this all.

Her attire changed from pyjamas to jeans and a jumper. She grabbed the first pair of shoes she could find, and threw her phone, purse and keys in a small canvas bag she’d gotten from Newcastle, and set off towards the door. But then she stopped, turned round and strode to her desk. She tore a piece off of a failed sketch she’d left lying there, and fumbled around for a pen. She’d have to leave a note for uncle first. She’d put it on the table of the small dining room, so he’d find it easily. She’d be back in a couple hours, though she didn’t put that in the note in case mother would make uncle read it to her. She could walk to Slaley and back, that would take enough time to sufficiently annoy mother.