Abigail (3 page)

“I haven’t told you the nub of it yet. The real point is that if women—women as a class—are ever going to change their station—our station—we are going to need thousands of such misfits. Need their intellect, their money, their social position, their contempt or pity for their sisters—and, not least, their ability to frighten men and other animals. Their discontent will be the steam to drive our engine forward. From station to station.” She laughed at her own pun, but with little humour.

“Not a school, but a hotbed of discontent,” Nora said.

“A seedbed of Womanism!”

“Whatever that may be.”

“Yes. I often wonder what it’s going to be.” This time her laugh was genuine.

At that moment Abigail came in, so innocently that Winifred’s eyes narrowed at once. “Have you been eavesdropping?”

“You bray like Stentor. It’s hard to avoid.” She took the peach Winifred had earlier toyed with. “Anyway, I see no dilemma.”

“Oh?” Winifred was torn between a desire to have someone—anyone—lay out an answer to her ethical doubts, and a lifelong unwillingness to accord any wisdom whatever to her younger sister.

“Yes. Who says the average ill-educated girl is happy with her gay hussar? Only three-decker novelists—and only in the final chapter even then. And what’s wrong with discontent? Especially if it leads you to
do
something. You’ve swallowed the very notion of happiness you reject as the proper goal for a modern woman!”

Nora laughed and clapped her hands. Abigail had not one-tenth of Winifred’s persistence or intellectual rigor; she could never master a subject with that utter thoroughness of Winifred’s. But every now and then she had these flashes of insight that were worth a year of plodding inquiry. Even now, as she spoke the words that would surely banish all of Winifred’s qualms, she seemed much more interested in skinning the peach without getting its juice all over her.

Winifred stared at Abigail, mouth open, testing her words for flaws and finding none.

“Cause and effect,” Abigail said absently, still working fastidiously at the peach skin. “If the cause is right, we must pursue it with all our heart, and leave the effects to God.”

Winifred stood and ran across the room to her sister. “Abbie! You angel! You are so very, very right, of course!” And she hugged her.

Abigail looked at the spilled peach juice on her arms and Winifred’s hands. “Some of the effects, anyway,” she said solemnly.

The heavy rain was a mere squall at the leading edge of the shower. Abigail stood beneath the cedar, halfway up the driveway to Winifred’s school, and watched it pass, a filmy sheet of gray falling with a tender slowness on slate roofs and among bare branches. It unfurled wetness on Parliament Hill, over Gospel Oak, Tufnell Park, Kentish Town…on into London. The names, not the cold, made her shudder: those ghastly suburbs, filled with ghastly houses, all built and rented by her mother. Worth eight million one day soon, she said. Abigail wouldn’t have given a penny for them, those awful furnished tombs where lives were whiled away in furtive cheeseparing and carefully graded public show.

A few nights ago, when Winnie had spoken of those foolish qualms to their mother, the vision of domestic bliss that had presented itself to eavesdropping Abigail was the loathsome one-percent life in those pinched, meanly grand houses of her mother’s where men and women behaved like bulls and cows. It seemed absurd that anyone could have qualms about rescuing girls from such a destiny. She had wanted to say as much, but thought it would hurt their mother, and so had made her point another way.

The light shower followed the rain down the hill to London. Patches of blue showed between the clouds, but of the sun there was no sign. In that cold, blue light everything seemed to be made of pewter or lead. Abigail looked around before lifting her skirts ever so slightly to step out over a patch of mud at the edge of the drive. But at that moment she became aware of someone else, also sheltering under a branch. The tree was a large, spreading cedar and the other person, a girl of about her own age, was at the farther end of its shade. She came smiling toward Abigail.

“You could paint it all with chalk and soot,” the girl said. “But I wouldn’t advise it. Not here. Don’t let them catch you painting here!” She laughed and took Abigail’s arm, walking her toward the school. “You’re new, aren’t you? Well, of course, we all are. But you are very new. I am Celia Addison.”

“I am Lady Winifred’s younger sister Abigail.”

Celia dropped her arm at once.

Abigail smiled. “But that doesn’t mean I’m her spy. I’d treasure anything scurrilous you may have to say about her. Have you an older sister, Celia?”

“Yes.” Celia smiled too.

“Then you’ll understand, I’m sure.”

Celia laughed and took Abigail’s arm again. “Don’t say you’ve come here voluntarily! Was she always such a gorgon, at home I mean?”

“Gorgon?”

“Oh yes, everyone here goes in dread of her, you know. Aren’t you all terrified of her?”

“Well, that’s interesting, but hardly scurrilous.”

Celia shrugged. “I suppose that means she isn’t. It’s so hard to imagine her as anyone’s sister. Or daughter either. I’ve always thought of Lady Winifred as having come into the world already fully grown. Do you go to school? How old are you, Abigail?”

“I was eighteen at Christmas.”

“I’m going to be eighteen this summer.

“We had a tutor. He was drunk most of the time, but he was also a very brilliant man. Winnie and he used to talk Latin and Greek—conversations, you know—when she was twelve.”

“Winnie!” Celia dared only to whisper the name. Then she giggled. “It’s devastatingly unimaginable!”

“He doesn’t teach me now. Only the younger children. I just read all the time. Read and read and read. I adore it, don’t you? I read anything. I want to read the whole of English Literature before I’m twenty. I do three books a week. In summer I can do five when there’s more light.”

Still arm in arm they walked past the old house—once a private asylum—that formed the nucleus of the Girls’ College. The path stopped abruptly at a river of clay mud, the demarcation line between building workers and girls.

“We’re allowed to come as far as this, but we have to turn back at once,” Celia said.

Abigail appeared not to hear her. “These are our own workers building this, I suppose you know. My mother calls it my father’s ‘penance.’ He’s paying all the wages and costs.”

Celia looked in agitation at the old house, at Lady Winifred’s window. “Why ‘penance?’” she asked, tugging Abigail’s arm.

But Abigail did not move. “There, now I’ve told you something disreputable about her. You owe me that.”

“Come on!” Celia said. And only when Abigail, at last, began to move back toward the house, did she relax herself sufficiently to add: “What’s disreputable? I don’t understand that at all.”

“Our father wanted her to marry. A foul, detestable young man, too. And when she refused, he kidnapped her and sent…”

“The awful young man?” Celia asked.

“No! The Earl. Her father. He kidnapped her from my mother’s house—because the Countess took her part, of course—and he sent her away to an odious private prison in France, an
école corrective et temperante
for recalcitrant girls who won’t obey their fathers. But in the end he had to relent, because all Winnie ever wanted to do was teach. Now he’s building the school for her. It’s like a sort of penance, isn’t it?”

Celia stopped in the middle of this story and stared openmouthed; then her eyes narrowed: “Are you making it up?”

“Of course not.” Abigail was annoyed. “If I was, d’you think I couldn’t do a lot better than that?”

Celia, afraid of that anger, took Abigail’s arm again and squeezed it. “Of course I believe you. How exciting it must be to have such stormy lives. You are lucky. My mother’s greatest dramas are about when to go from black to purple mourning or who took a quarter pound of cheese from the pantry!”

“And your father?”

“Papa doesn’t have dramas. His lips go white and he takes his hat, his coat, his leave, and a cab.” They both laughed. “That’s what my brother Peter always says. I’d adore you to meet him, he’s such great fun!”

Abigail, who had stiffened at this trespass on their slight intimacy, forced herself to relax.
You have to meet lots of people,
she told herself.
Every writer has to.

“But fancy Lady Winifred refusing an offer of marriage!” Celia went on. “I’m sure I’ll never have such a chance. I’ll have to take whoever offers.”

Now it was Abigail who stared openmouthed. “But why?”

“Because both Papa and Mama say it is so. There’s a great surplus of females, they say. The men have the pick now, and we shan’t get two chances—we may not even get one.”

Abigail pulled her arm from Celia’s grasp. “You fool,” she shouted, stamping her foot in anger. “You stupid fool!”

Celia looked back at her in horror at this sudden reversal of mood; then she burst into tears and ran away.

A sash window screeched up. It left a black space in the red brick. And there, framed in that black, was Winifred. “Abigail. Will you come in here, please,” she commanded. She hauled the protesting window down again without waiting for an answer.

Abigail smiled at the wizened rose hips and rusty heads of shrivelled hydrangea that bordered her way to the private front door.

“Where is your chaperon?” Winifred asked at once.

“I made them wait by the gate.”

“They should first have delivered you to the door. That is quite unforgiveable.”

“I wanted to walk.”

Winifred made an angry face. “Want? What you
want
has nothing to do with it. You just mustn’t get into the habit of sending whoever is chaperoning you away—however justified the errand. You mustn’t get the reputation for doing that sort of thing.”

“Sorry, Winnie.” Abigail smiled disarmingly. “I felt the chances of being socially compromised on the front drive of the Highgate Girls’ College were fairly slender.”

“It has nothing to do with being socially compromised.”

“With what, then?”

Winifred coloured. “If you don’t know, just take it on trust.”

That blush and the heightened pitch of Winifred’s voice alerted Abigail: This was part of The Secret! My God, that’s what they were afraid of! That’s what all this chaperoning was for! To stop her and some man from “putting the difference together,” or “letting Nebuchadnezzar out to graze” (whatever that meant). How little they knew her!

Winifred went on: “What did you say to upset young Celia Addison like that?”

Abigail sat on a stiffly upholstered and very upright chair. “How can you live in this fireless cell! Miss Celia Addison upset
me
,
as a matter of fact.”

“So you struck back as only you know how.”

“It is her view that every girl is obliged to marry the first man who asks her, because women are in a surplus. Is that true?”

“Yes. There are between half and three-quarters of a million more of us. That’s another reason why it’s so important not to compromise your reputation.”

Abigail closed her eyes and shook her head; but it was a gesture of pity, not of defiance. “I could have the pick of two dozen,” she said. “And I’ll turn them all down. And silly little Celia would take anyone.” She laughed bitterly. “Life may be hard, but some people don’t do much to soften it for themselves, do they!”

Winifred smiled, trying to keep any hint of patronage out of her voice. “How can you possibly know that! You could be swept up tomorrow.”

“I know I won’t be. The same way I know if I like strawberries or not. Or if I really believe in God. Or if a page is worth keeping or crumpling. It’s only
your
kind of knowledge one acquires. All the really important knowledge one is born with.”

Winifred glared at her, trying to be angry; but in the end she burst into unwilling laughter, looking guiltily over her own shoulder as she did so.

“Oh, Abbie, Steamer always says how easy it is to become angry with you, and how difficult to stay angry.”

“I can’t think why.” Abigail shrugged, unable to handle the compliment—indeed, uncertain that it was a compliment.

The carriage drew up outside.

“For the same reason that one cannot sustain one’s anger at a child. What are you going to do when you grow up?”

“Grow up some more, I hope.”

Winifred sighed with half-despairing humour and then grew serious once more. “When you say you won’t marry—I hope that has nothing to do with my decision not to marry?”

Abigail puckered her face in a would-be wicked grin. “To be sure, it has not. We are like Mr. Dangle and Shakespeare—two minds hit upon the same thought, and Shakespeare made use of it first, that’s all.”

“Because it would be extremely silly if that were the case. I have every good reason for staying unattached.”

“So have I. Excellent reasons, if you must know.”

“Yes,” Winifred said firmly. “I would very much like to know.”

Abigail was suddenly flustered. She had not meant to open up the subject at all. “The book,” she said. “Lord knows when I’ll finish that.”

Normally it would have deflected Winifred; any mention of the book made her eager. But not this time; now she sensed something bigger and more important behind Abigail’s assertion—and her confusion. She stared Abigail out, making her speak again.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with
men
,”
Abigail said defiantly.

“Oh? Why not? This misanthropy is something new. What are you reading at the moment?”

Abigail tossed her head. “That has nothing to do with it. It’s simply that I’ve found out…something.”

“What?”

“I’ve found out…that I just don’t want to marry. That’s all.”

Winifred smiled, greatly relieved. “Oh! Well if that’s all!”

This direct devaluation of what Abigail considered the most profound and permanent decision of her life stung her into saying what she would otherwise never have said: “I’ve found out why men and women are…as they are. Why they are different. And I think it’s appalling.”

Winifred’s smile vanished, replaced by a great pity, deep and tender. She rose and came quickly to her sister, taking her by the hand. Later she thought of all the things she ought to have asked—like, “How did you find out…?” “Who told you…?” “In what circumstances…?” and so on. But Abigail’s appealing eyes and the thinly masked terror in her words put such practical thoughts from her. All she could think to say was, “You mustn’t let it affect you like that, darling. Don’t think of it like that.”

Abigail was astounded. The possibility of any other response had not even occurred to her—even though Annie had called it “the greatest fun.” Annie was working class; her opinions and judgements counted for less than nothing.

“How else can I think of it!”

Winifred shook her head, still in pity. “Is there no one?” she asked. “Do you feel no…especial…I mean, at a ball for instance, is there no young man for whom…”

“I prefer older men. Their conversation is more intelligent.”

Winifred laughed, trying to wean Abigail from her wide-eyed solemnity. “And older men prefer you?”

“Yes! They do.”

“For the same reason? Your conversation?”

To give time for the notion to sink in, Winifred went to the door, opened it, and looked up and down the corridor. It was an empty gesture; no one, girl or teacher, would dare even to loiter there, much less to eavesdrop.

Abigail was speechless.

“Surely,” Winifred said, “even you never supposed it was for the profundity and breadth of your conversation?”

Abigail was too dry in the mouth to answer.

“It’s the way people are, darling,” Winifred said gently. “Wait until you’re a bit older.”

“People?” Abigail croaked. She swallowed, and licked her lips. “You mean people like
us
?”

Winifred nodded.

“You?”

“Only in thought, of course. Anything else is out of the question. But if a scullery maid may dream of Cinderella—and probably be a better scullery maid for it—I suppose an old maid of a headmistress, or even a young maid, come to that, may dream of…of a Great Otherwise. And be the better for it, too. You’ll see. When you’re older.”

Abigail retreated from her. “I’ll never feel other than I do now,” she said. “I’m sick just thinking of it.”

Winifred smiled a wistful concession. “Well, my life would be a great deal easier if I could feel as you do.”

But then the importance of the thing would not permit her to leave it at this easy half truth. She had to add: “Yet I doubt I’d be a better person for all that. Because what we are talking about, darling, is love.”