Monologue

I was originally going to use this for my coursework this year but I decided on another topic. Anyway, I still have it saved so I thought I would share it (:

I was just a privileged child, brought up in a flamboyant home. Of course I took everything for granted; flurries of maids and butlers scurrying around my home was the norm for me. They’d fret until they turned green if they’d forgotten to fluff a pillow, but what did it matter to me? I used to think them silly panicking over the smallest of things – I mean, if I’d dropped a fork onto the carpet I’d hardly have been scolded for it! Who was I to know, the spoilt little heiress prancing proudly around daddy’s spacious manor house.

I’m relieved to say my knowledge of the world wasn’t all jaded by deliciously jewelled chandeliers and generic portraits of important people; I mean I frequently saw the town, all thanks to the house keeper Mrs Rawton. Oh she was good to me, making sure my spoilt little head was fixed on the right way at least sometimes, leading me across the cobbles of reality.

I was sixteen when the War came, hardly frightened out of my wits though I must admit. I thought it was hilarious the day the kitchen maid scrambled through the ballroom wheezing and bawling; I’d believed it undeniably ridiculous of her – what was the threat when we were so safe inside the mansion? The thing itself was worth over a billion so it was bound to be protective for goodness sake.

I’d been banned from entering the town due to bomb threats for at least three months. Mrs Rawton did eventually lead me tightly by the hand out of our front gates soon after, much to my mother’s disapproval; but even she couldn’t argue against my father’s opinions and his tone of finality: ‘It’ll do her good!’

 It did more than that.

There was a little girl curled up in a ball outside the bakers; she was crying because her father had been killed in a bomb attack at War. I saw a man feeling his way along shop walls, stumbling here and there on a cobble. His sight had been snatched during a gas attack. For a moment he glanced my way and his milky eyes, though blinded, seemed to gaze into mine with pity, as though it were I who needed saving. They were wrecked at the hands of our enemies.

I remember the man on the bench, the man in the muddy brown uniform, eyes fixated on the floor. Those eyes had no doubt seen horrors enough to etch themselves into the mind forever; had he seen his friends die? I don’t know.

The world had changed since I had last stepped out of the house and I hadn’t even noticed...

I’ve changed dramatically since then. The Victorian brat who would pester the cook for night time sweet foods is only a shameful memory. Life no longer revolves around how generously my jewellery sits along my collarbone, or how tight my garments are. It never will again.