SERIAL STORY #1

Running Free

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Vivienne Chester is living a seemingly perfect life as a wealthy British citizen, charaded by Tutors, Chauffeurs and doting parents. However, all is not as it seems, as Vivienne finds herself trapped in a pressured lifestyle of fake smiles, strict deportment and total lack of freedom.

 As she enters her fourteenth year, Vivienne begins to despair, as she finds no escape from her pressured lifestyle. Beginning to give up hope, she starts to succumb to the pressures and withdraws into an emotional shell. However, her mood is soon changed as she discoverers a set of mysterious writings that lighten up her soul and begin to change her in a different way. Drawn to the calling of the wild, Vivienne must make a fateful choice.

To discover yourself, you must loose everything

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Chapter One – ‘A Pleasant Girl’

Vivienne Chester did grow up to be a beautiful child, as well as being able sing, dance and play the play the piano. She was skilled in etiquette and deportment, polite and cordial and could speak French fluently.

You’d think this fulfilled her Mother’s wishes; but like most spoilt individuals, there were many times when Lavinia Chester was not satisfied with her daughter. She had planned to raise a celebrity of the next generation, but her daughter seemed to have other ideas. Oh yes, Vivienne could sing. A pop star, perhaps? Lavinia had pondered as she ordered a first class vocal teacher to attend to her daughter and create an artist. But when Vivienne had been asked what she wanted to sing, the teacher, after a pause, had been surprised at the answer from the quiet little girl; “Folk songs, please. Songs that tell stories. Songs that mean something.”

And so, instead of Vivienne returning from the lesson to belt Katy Perry at the top of her voice Lavinia had been haunted by a warbling rendition of ‘Scarborough Fair’ for a fortnight.

It was the same with the other planned talents; with French Vivienne had obediently learnt the language and then proceeded to ignore a French army sergeant at an important dinner and instead talk the Gaelic she’d learnt from the scots chef to a Scottish Businessman. With dancing, Vivienne would not sail around in a waltz or jig to the latest pop anthem, instead turning on the chaotic ‘In the Halls of the Mountain King’ and preceded to stamp passionately and completely independently, throw herself around the room. And as for playing the piano, after begrudgingly accepting a course in piano lessons and repeating scales and arpeggios for two months, she and her Mother had walked into a music shop to buy a new grand piano. And what did Vivienne do? After passing the impressive instruments Lavinia was viewing, she had decided to enquire after a fiddle and was soon attempting to play the instrument. When an irritated Lavinia had questioned ‘why?’ after dragging her away from it, Vivienne had answered defiantly:

 “The Piano’s to well behaved. I want something wild.”

So when esteemed guests of the Chester met the ‘perfect’ daughter of the house, their answer was always the same. Instead of telling a hopeful Lavinia that Vivienne was ‘charming’ or ‘a treasure’, their answers were usually along the lines of ‘your daughter is a pleasant girl’.

These replies tended to be because of Vivienne’s attitude. After reaching the age of ten, she began to question her Mother’s tyrannical rule, she began to rebel. Of course this is expected in any pre-teen, but Vivienne actually had reason to.  Lavinia was incredibly protective over her; she wasn’t allowed to walk on her own; she wasn’t allowed to go round to the houses of her private school friends without Lavinia’s permission; she had to have contact twenty-four seven and was forced to be followed by a Tutor, Nanny, Nurse or family member whenever outside the house. And when she reached eleven years old and waved goodbye to primary school, Lavinia pulled her daughter out of school and submitted her to a private life of tutors and governesses.

To be honest, Vivienne didn’t miss socialising as much as she’d expected. She was a quiet girl; endlessly daydreaming and imagining. Always watching. She’d get into trouble because she disliked the noise and crowd that accompanied her Mother’s parties, and more often she’d be told off by Lavinia for staring. She liked watching people, assessing them just by looking. But her penetrating gaze often unsettled people and Vivienne was soon put in her place for ‘looking’.

No, what she really missed was nature. Being confined to walking with a member of staff or her smoking father who watched her every move from behind completely distracted her from what she enjoyed on walks and when she wanted to go through the woods or climb up to the hills, she couldn’t enjoy nature. That was, if she was even allowed to walk through the woods or climb up to the hills. She couldn’t run, she had to walk, she couldn’t get her expensive footwear muddy and she most definitely could not paddle barefoot in a fresh spring.

So Vivienne gave up. She loved the wind and the rain and the earth, she loved the calling of the birds and the droning of the bees – but she couldn’t enjoy it. Pressures at home made her further lose hope; she had exams and assessments and inspections from various officials, she had to learn to waltz and foxtrot and sing empty pop songs, she had to learn German and Spanish and add to her political knowledge.  And worst of all, she had to act.

Lavinia had never given up on her daughter becoming a theatrical celebrity and she tried her hardest to involve Vivienne in acting classes and drama clubs; she even got her cast as the lead role in a teen play thanks to a little bribery with the manager. But it was useless. Some people can act and some people can’t; and Vivienne was one of those who are completely and utterly useless at it. Perhaps it was partly Lavinia’s fault that Vivienne couldn’t act – to be an actress you have to become someone else, and that was something Lavinia had been trying to get Vivienne to do her entire life. As a result, Vivienne had rebelled. She’d accepted herself and refused to change. She’d obey her Mother after answering back or a verbal battle, she’d do as she was told with a push. But she wouldn’t change herself, and in Lavinia’s eyes, that was Vivienne’s biggest fault.

Another thing that would annoy Lavinia was how Vivienne looked. By the time she reached twelve, Vivienne was behaving moderately and looking moderately. By the time she was thirteen, Vivienne was behaving the same but looking entirely different. She matured visibly within a very short space of time, gaining high cheek bones, loosing her freckles for them to be replaced by fair, blushed skin, she grew to an elegant height that did not tower her over masculine individuals but still made her look slim and lithe. Vivienne’s hair, after a trim, decided to curl slightly and match her features nicely. And her eyes, though they had always been large and starry, caught a nice feminine glow that luckily did not clash with her sharp and arched eyebrows that always accented her mood when she was rebellious and defiant.

But of course, this didn’t satisfy Lavinia. She was beautiful but she was strange and she looked nothing like either of her parents. Instead of having the shining straight blonde hair that Lavinia possessed, Vivienne’s waving locks were a dark shade of brunette-red, a dark shade of auburn that looked flaming when it caught the sunlight. Instead of Roderick’s dark grey eyes, Vivienne’s irises were coloured a strange, bright honey-brown which glowed when they caught the sunlight. Instead of Lavinia and Roderick’s handsomely tanned skin, Vivienne possessed a fair and completely unfashionable pallor that blushed softly in the sun.

Vivienne loved the sun, the light. She seemed to give off a heavenly glow in the bright sunlight, and she loved the warmth. But even more she loved the moonlight. It made her look like a ghost, eyes seeming paler and skin pale in the white beams. But she loved the night. She loved the dark. She loved everything that was close to nature. And most of all, she loved to run.

From a very young age Vivienne, with her long, athletic figure and strong legs, could sprint enormous distances. Before she was taken out of primary school, she was top in their cross-country club, had beaten the long-jump record and could sprint at least a hundred metres, which, for an eleven-year-old child, was extraordinary. However, Lavinia didn’t care about what her daughter could do when it came to sport. She wanted a graceful debutante, a perfect daughter, a celebrity starlet. And as you already know, Lavinia always gets what she wants.

And so Vivienne was turned away from what she loved and encased in a lifestyle of pressures and exams, of days spent working trying to make her Mother happy. Because no matter what either of them did or said to each other, no matter how much Vivienne rebelled or how many times Lavinia handed out another threat to keep her daughter ‘in line’, they loved each other. Vivienne had been raised to love her Mother and Lavinia had raised her Daughter in love and devotion.

So that’s where I leave you to enter Vivienne’s fourteenth year, a year that changed her life forever…

***

Vivienne sighed again. Algebra again. Something she couldn’t stand…again. She turned to look at the clock in the study but the second her head turned Mr Hayes was in her face again.

“Vivienne, pay attention, please! See, you have to balance the equation…balance. Not solve. Balance.” After snapping, the Professor blushed slightly and began in his calmest tones. Irritated, Vivienne continued to look at Mr Hayes but slowly moved her eyes down to rest on her silver Rolex watch. Five to eleven. Only three hundred seconds to go. Vivienne moved her eyes upwards to find herself staring at the Professor’s nostril hairs and counted.

One.

A second seems like a long time when you’re staring up someone’s nose. Or perhaps it was just her. Diverting her eyes, she turned her gaze off a ranting Mr Hayes to look at the double bay window to her left. They were on the bottom floor, in her favourite study. Mostly it was her favourite because it was plain, old and not filled with modern day junk, lacking computers, televisions and the fish tanks that seemed to find their way into every other room in the Chester Mansion.  

Outside the day was perfect; a warm, sunny May morning, blue sky dotted with white clouds, a warm breeze, butterflies. Vivienne sighed as she thought of butterflies. It felt very ignorant, the sort of thing a five year old would do, but she did love them, and the bees, and the birds, and the squirrels, the hedgehogs, the foxes.  All attracted to the Chester garden because of it’s great abundance of flowers, huge chicken pen and finely pruned hedges that hosted a variety of wild life.

But Vivienne wouldn’t get to see it that day. There was a dancing lesson to be attended, then singing, in which she was forced to learn Taylor Swift, and then an hour of Chemistry revision because she still couldn’t remember what protons and neutrons were.

So, with a sigh, she turned her eyes from the window and entered the dull reality of her maths lesson once more. Luckily, before she was forced to stare at Professor Hayes’ nostril hairs again, the clock began to chime.

Vivienne was up straight away, and Professor Hayes, with a sigh, flopped down into the chair with a sigh.

“You may go, Vivienne.” He said, mopping his forehead faintly with a somewhat filthy handkerchief. She almost laughed out loud at this, knowing full well that she could give him any order she liked and that her, the daughter of the house, was in charge here, rather than the mousey little professor who was still mopping his brow as if he had been trying to teach a tribesman PHD physics. Still, Vivienne was not the ordering sort.

It was as she was making for the door that her Mother entered, smiling the usual wide smile and opening her arms for an embrace, which Vivienne hesitantly accepted.  Her Mother liked to make her feel small and patronise her – sort of showing off her ultimate power over Vivienne. 

Lavinia drew out of the embrace and smiled. “Vivienne, you’re orders from Hollister have arrived – I told Harold and Stefan to put them up in your suite.”

Vivienne smiled a fake smile. You mean your order, she thought. To be honest a pair of jodhpurs and a plain shirt were fine for her, but ever since she had become a teenager her Mother had been continuously buying clothes, shoes and accessories to encumber her with. Vivienne sighed quietly to herself. She hated high heels, loathed skimpy dresses and disliked the process of removing earrings. And now, there was another load of clothes to be forced into wearing. Fashionable, yes. Comfortable? No.

Her Mother looked at her sharply, sensing her lack of enthusiasm. “Aren’t you going to say thank you, Vivienne?”

She looked up at her mother and didn’t bother to feign the interest any more. “Thanks.” She said flatly.

Lavinia sighed. “Vivienne, they’re nice clothes – and very expensive. Don’t moan.”

“I wasn’t moaning.”

Lavinia looked at her daughter grimly. “No? Then you’ll say thank you nicely?”

“No, because I already said it.” Vivienne felt her temper flare up as her Mother treated her like some naughty child. She’d already expressed her views on the clothes several time before, but Lavinia was never happy.

“Vivienne-“

“Erm – excuse me, Mrs. Chester, but I – er – need to go.” Professor Hayes cut across a fuming Lavinia with an unintentionally good impression of a mouse.

She turned to survey him and calmed down slightly. “Yes, of course, Professor Hayes.” She looked at me again. “The sooner the better.”

Once again he smiled, hurriedly passing through the door, leaving Vivienne to the fate of her Mother’s wrath.

“Vivienne, how many times have I said I’ll have none of this defiance? You may think you’ve got the power over me, but you’ll be facing my threats if you don’t stop acting like this! I am the one with the power here and you are my child whom I can order. It is not the other way round!”

“Just stop. Just shut up and leave me be.” Vivienne answered under her breath.

Lavinia raised one eyebrow suspiciously, small eyes still flashing. Vivienne looked at her Mother blankly, but inside she was just as angry. Always the same thing happened. She didn’t act as wished, her mother blew up for a small reason, she retaliated and suddenly the threats came.

“What did you say?” Lavinia questioned her last comment, eyes hard and unfeeling. This perfect daughter was proving to be a perfect nightmare at the moment.

“I said what were you coming to say in the first place, besides to tell me about the clothes?” Vivienne said in tired tones. She already knew that Lavinia had come to bombard her with more than one thing. Her Mother was busy and visits like these usually involved pressuring Vivienne to greater heights.

Her Mother looked at her daughter closely before smiling. “Mrs. Dunnark says that Cyril would like you to come over. He has something to show you. Isn’t that sweet?”

No, she thought, it’s terrifying. What on earth did Cyril, of all people, want to show her? Usually all he did was sit there whilst she played the piano, sang, or attempted to dance. No, Cyril had never really contributed to the other side of the conversation.

Cyril Dunnark was one of Vivienne’s only associates in the isolated world her mother had created. Everyone who was potentially a ‘friend’ had to be approved of by Lavinia first, and since Vivienne had always enjoyed the company of wild, unusual people, most of the people she had wanted to get close to had been sent packing due to Mrs Chester’s disapproval. Cyril Dunnark, however, had been introduced by Lavinia herself, and though Vivienne utterly disliked the boy even at the immature age of ten, and had never really got close to him. Cyril wasn’t spoilt, or ugly, or snobbish – despite him being heir to millions and an eighteenth century estate – he was just ‘boring’, as Vivienne had once told her mother, sparking off a famous storm that Lavinia still referred to whenever Vivienne attempted to make a violent stand.

But it was true – Cyril had no substance. It was plain he adored Vivienne – alarmingly in more ways than one – but Vivienne hated his company. Whilst she wanted to break the rules, go racing across fields and attempt to ride the wildest horse in the Stables, Cyril reported everything to his mother and was the model son. Handsome, he was. Polite, he was. Suitable for Vivienne, he was not.

Yes, Lavinia had her heart set on a marriage springing up between the two. They were both attractive individuals – that was clear from puberty – and to her and Mrs. Dunnark, well suited. Of course, the splendid days of arranged marriages had passed, but Lavinia was doing everything in her power to make it come off. And Lavinia Chester, as we know, was not one to lack power.

But Vivienne, as she followed her Mother’s wishes and trudged up the carpeted stairs and found her way to her room that was piled high with packages of clothes, sighed a long and weary sigh. She was beginning to think there was no way out of it. She had started to back down from the raging arguments and just let her Mother win. She was losing hope.

© Lilia Le Fay