Miss Appleby's Academy (12 page)

She could hear the faint noise of merriment. It was just a hum and comforting in a strange sort of way. For a few minutes she wondered if the owner might come upstairs for any reason whatever, but he didn’t, and she began to relax and thought herself foolish for being nervous. Why would he?

The bed had been stripped but she did find some blankets and pillows on the floor in the corner. There were various pieces of furniture, all large, which she dared not explore, they looked so intimidating. Finally, trying to reassure George, they lay down and he went to sleep.

Emma wondered again what she had done. How on earth had she got them to this place? She wished now that she had never left. She wished she had put up with the marriage plans. Even the Judge looked safe and secure from her present situation.

*

When Emma awoke she thought she was in her bedroom at home, and then she opened her eyes and was disillusioned. Sunlight was coming into the room and showing every mark on the windows, which hadn’t been cleaned in years.

One of the curtains lay in a heap where she had pulled it off in her attempt to close them; she could not now think why it had been so important. The other curtain
hung half off. They were velvet and at one time had been dark raspberry-coloured. They were moth-eaten, almost in holes, and they had gone orange where the damp had reached them.

She turned over. George was sleeping. She was desperate to use a chamber pot. She slid from the bed, got down and looked underneath it. A large green object was there, dusty when she recovered it from the floor, but clean.

Relieved of her problem she went across to the dressing table where a jug stood in a bowl. The water in it smelled foul because it had been standing for a long time, but nevertheless she rinsed her hands, wiping them on her dress because there was nothing else.

The day was bright. The room somehow looked worse in daylight. The furniture, like the curtains, had been good once. Now it was battered, had had no polish, had lost most of its handles, some of its doors. A thick layer of dust covered every surface.

‘I’m hungry.’

She turned around as George spoke. She was so hungry herself that she felt sick. The bed was bad too, the mattress stained and sagging. The blankets which had covered her in the night were also in holes.

She ventured from the room, George close behind her. There was nobody about, it was a wide landing with various doors off it and a long passageway from there, and she followed that and when she pushed open the door she found narrow backstairs, no carpet, and so dirty that she almost slipped on the thick covering. When they
reached the bottom they were right beside the back door. Rooms led off on either side. One was the kitchen.

A greasy smell pervaded the air. She followed the smell to the back of the house and opened a door. The room was full of smoke and somebody was coughing. It was the dirtiest kitchen that Emma had ever seen, and when she could make out the barman of the night before he was ladling something from a blackened frying pan onto a plate.

Emma backed away noiselessly and beckoned George beyond the back door. It was sunny, but the wind driving the snow tore up the road and almost knocked her off her feet. She drew George in against her.

They began walking back down the main street, partly because it was shielded from the wind but partly because she could remember having come past shops, and if she went either of the other ways beyond the Black Diamond there seemed to be nothing but houses going along flat to one side and down a steep hill on the other. She could see some sort of church across the road and another at the far side, but the rest of the town, such as it was, was back where they had come from the evening before.

There were shops on either side of the road, but they were not the kind of shops where you could buy anything to eat unless you were in a kitchen and had a range at your disposal. There was a hardware store and a shoe and boot shop and an apothecary’s and a butcher’s. The butcher’s had a good smell coming from it, and when she and George ventured across the street there were pies in the window.

She left George with the bags and ventured inside. There was
a queue. As she joined it every woman in front of her turned around and stared and they looked at one another. They wore what was almost a uniform: shawls to keep out the wind (very sensible, she thought), stout boots and dark-coloured skirts and blouses, and it was only at that moment that she knew she stood out even before she spoke.

These people were poor. They weren’t wearing rags, but their clothes were well-worn, and in colours which would show no dirt. She must have looked very stylish, though she had thought her clothes modest when she was in Mid Haven. Her hat, which was well made, had ribbons, and her cherry-red coat was fitted to her figure. Her black leather boots had little heels on them, most unsuitable since she had left home, and she had black leather gloves neat to her wrist. She had never felt so out of place.

She could see the dead animals hung up in the back room and another butcher further inside cutting up a pig (at least she thought it was, but she didn’t like to look too closely). She didn’t understand much of what the women were saying; they kept up some form of banter with the butcher. He was a well-built man who obviously liked his own meat and pies.

There were two seats in the shop, as though he encouraged people not to leave and even when they were served they would sit down as though they had been on their feet for hours, which they probably had, she thought. Their faces were worn and some of the women had children around them or in their arms, and more children played outside.

It was difficult to tell what age the women were: they had deep lines in their faces and broken veins, probably because of the weather. Their heads were covered with scarves, like pictures she had seen of women in hot countries, as though for modesty, but here she thought it probably had more to do with the biting cold wind. Their clothes were shapeless and their figures were either skinny or very fat, their bodies like balls on their thin and buckling legs.

Under the gaze of the local women Emma could feel the blood rushing to her face. They had no manners, but then they did not often see someone like her, she thought in dismay.

She heard shouting. It sounded loud, though she could not hear the words, and for some reason it drew the attention of most of the shop. Several of the women went back to the doorway and huddled there together, pushing for a better view. Emma had a bad feeling about it and she was right. When she had asked them, very politely, to make way and they did not, she shoved because the noise had increased and it was taunting.

When she got outside she could see three children and they were throwing stones at George. Others stood back jeering. She could not make out the words, but she understood what they were doing. George had taken it well so far, but he had picked up a large stone to fling back at them. Emma made short of the space between her, George and the crowd.

‘Put that down this minute!’ she said.

George, not used to her raising her voice in that way,
turned and dropped the stone instantly. Emma swung round to the children. She felt six foot tall, she was so angry. But she didn’t do anything, she just looked at them. Silence reigned.

One of the women came out of the butcher’s.

‘Are you shoutin’ at my bairns?’

Emma very slowly took her in.

‘Are these children yours? Do they usually throw stones at people because they don’t know them?’

More women came out of the butcher’s. Curiosity, Emma thought, was a bad onlooker.

‘Foreigner!’ somebody shouted.

Emma stared them down and went back into the butcher’s as though nothing had happened, but this time she said curtly to George, ‘Come with me.’

Finally she reached the front of the queue; by then most of the women had gone. The seats were free, but some women lingered outside, talking and darting sideways looks at her as though she were the subject of their discussion. She asked him for two pork pies.

‘You’re not doing my business any good, Missus.’

‘It’s Miss,’ Emma said. ‘Miss Emma Appleby.’

‘Is that right?’

‘That’s exactly right.’

‘Is it now?’ He glared at her. ‘We don’t want the likes of you around here with your bairn. We have enough whores as it is, even if they make themselves look like fine ladies. You’re no fine lady. You get out.’

Emma didn’t know what to say to that, but the crowd
was pressing into the doorway again and the butcher was a very big man. He made as if to come round to the front of the counter so she retreated. She was horrified by what had happened. She didn’t move quickly but the crowd jeered more. Emma walked very slowly, George by her side, until they were a long way down the street.

It was only then that she noticed a woman had followed her and she turned.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Are you the competition, pet?’ the woman said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, you didn’t get them clothes round here unless it were from a man.’

‘I’m an American,’ Emma said. ‘I came here to find my family and it’s nothing to do with any man.’

The woman looked familiar to Emma, though she couldn’t have said what it was about her, just that she thought they had met before, but it was clear they had not. The woman was short like her, and she had lived in this place or somewhere like it, Emma could tell, because she had careworn eyes. There was something brave about her, she kept on looking straight at things even though she had long since seen enough.

‘Do you know the Applebys?’ Emma said.

The woman’s face changed at that point and she was no longer even remotely friendly. ‘There’s nowt left for nobody to come to. You might as well go back to where you came from.’

‘I have no money and I need some place to stay.’

‘Can’t help you there. There’s no livin’ here for the likes of us except up against a wall. If you’ve come down in the world, pet, I’m sorry for it, but you’d make more in Bishop Auckland or Durham where the men have money. It’s mining here and the ironworks and nowt much else, no plump pockets, just dark alleys and pennies, you see.’

Emma didn’t know what to say and beside her George moved about as though he half understood and wished he didn’t.

‘There were hotels at one time, but the coal’s almost gone and the ironworks is doing badly, people don’t come to stay any more. You’d have to get a train out of here to Bishop Auckland or Durham: plenty of hotels there.’

‘Is that far?’

‘Oh aye, quite a long road.’

The woman walked away. Emma wanted to question her further, but was exhausted, and still they had had nothing to eat. She and George picked up their bags and went further. There was not another butcher’s and even if there had been her courage was almost gone, exhaustion was setting in. There was no pawn shop but she had nothing left other than the pearls and several books so it didn’t matter.

She had brought only her favourites, even slim volumes were heavy, but when the weather had been bad and she had almost turned back she would read the poetry of Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman, and be cheered by their words. The books had been gifts from her father and it would take a great deal to make her part with
them. She comforted herself with the idea that nobody in a place like this would have heard of American poets, much less want books by them.

She didn’t want to go back to the Black Diamond. She couldn’t think what to do next. She tried to be cheerful for George’s sake, but suddenly there was nowhere to go. The street went down to the railway crossing and then up the hill, and beyond that there were pubs and churches and one or two shops – ladies’ clothing and another which sold yarn – and that was all.

She badly wanted to look for her grandparents’ graves, if only to reassure herself that this really was the place they had lived. In a way she hoped it wasn’t. She could not bear to think that she had reached the right place, that she had come thousands of miles to this, but if it was not then whatever was she to do?

They went to the graveyard. It was, if such a thing had ever been, a perfect place for the dead. It was high up and clean, and there were no sunken places where a sudden rain shower could flood the graves since it sloped down into fields. Nothing was soaked or neglected, nothing had sunk, and the sun came out and it turned the stones butterscotch in its own bright warm way in remembrance of the dead.

There was a good view of the fields as they went down into the valley beyond the horizon and at the other side was the little town and its pits. She thought that if you had to be buried somewhere, and indisputably you did, it was as good a place as anywhere.

The wind keened over the gravestones as though in affection, and she looked for anybody of her name, but she couldn’t find them. It was not that big a graveyard, she thought, and yet they eluded her. Had she come to the wrong place?

It was George who found the first. He danced about, ran, stopped, read, started up again, and she was glad of him there, darting about like a sprite. He shrieked her name and pointed and she went over, slowly at first, not that she thought he was wrong, but because she feared he was right. He was. The gravestone read:
John McLoughlin, father of Kathleen
.

It was her grandfather and she could see that her mother had erected the stone. She knew that her mother had left the town after her own father had died; she could not have done otherwise. She had put her name upon the stone as though it would bind them together still, and there it was. Emma could not help tracing a finger upon the indented stone where her mother’s name was inscribed, even though her mother was not buried there.

How far away she seemed. How could she have left. But she had a husband and a small daughter and there was a new world waiting for her. Emma thought of her parents and of their delight and of their success in finding Mid Haven.

She knew that she had been right to come back here where her grandfather was buried. George pointed and she saw her grandmother’s name. They were side by side not underneath or on top. They were equal in God’s eyes
and in the eyes of everybody who came there, and she liked that.