Miss Appleby's Academy (16 page)

‘You must wait until everyone has some. Then we will all eat together,’ she said, half expecting the girl would ignore her, but instead she put down the spoon she had picked up, sat back in her chair and watched as Emma served out the last of the pudding.

After this she gave the girl what was left of their meal, heating it in a pan over the fire first. The girl demolished it quickly.

They left the table for easier chairs. Mr Higgins went to sleep and then apologized and got up, thanked her and went off back to the bar.

‘Would you like to go outside and play a game with George?’ Emma said.

The girl looked disparagingly at him, but George just went on returning the look stonily and in the end they went.

*

Emma was more and more aware of George having nobody his own age, and then she saw Mr Castle arrive and the child fling herself at him, and she realized that this tiny ragged girl was his. She was astonished. Finally he stood back and the girl went to George and Mr Castle came inside, awkwardly.

‘I didn’t mean for her to bother you.’

‘She’s not,’ Emma said easily. ‘She’s eaten and she seems happy.’

He glanced out of the window.

Emma had no idea what to say. His face was completely unreadable.

‘What is your daughter called?’

‘Connie.’

‘She goes to Mr English’s school.’

‘Not often,’ he admitted.

‘She isn’t happy there?’

He looked at Emma and she explained what had happened.

‘I have offered to send her away to school, but she doesn’t want to go. I don’t know what else to do.’

And that was when Emma had the idea.

‘I’m not going to send George there,’ she said. ‘I teach
him myself. I’m not a teacher, but I had a sound education. I could teach Connie if you like. My father was a scholar. I know some Spanish.’

She didn’t know why she said such a foolish thing, it was just that the idea rushed into her mind and confused her.

Mr Castle began to laugh. She was amazed. She hadn’t seen him laugh before very often, it took years off him. He really wasn’t so very old, probably not as old as she was.

‘How could I refuse?’ he said.

‘Mathematics and literature and I play the piano.’ This was ridiculous in a way, because although there was a piano in the bar she had never touched it. She didn’t think anybody had played it for years and though her fingers had often itched to do so she didn’t dare.

‘I don’t think Connie is at all musical,’ he said.

‘You say that now, but you know everybody is musical given the chance and everyone has enormous talent. It might be worth a try, or – or would Mrs Castle object?’

He hesitated, but she could see that it was mostly surprise, and then he said, ‘I don’t want Connie here at the Black Diamond.’

Emma was rather taken aback at this, she hadn’t expected such delicacy about his child. He was right of course, she didn’t want George here either except that even she acknowledged it was harder for women and even worse for a girl, but she couldn’t suggest that she should take George to his house. Whatever would his wife think?

‘I own a building just up the road, it looks straight on to the moors,’ he said.

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

He stood silent for so long that she became impatient, but when she began to speak he said, ‘You could live there and teach the children.’

Emma looked at him, it was a scathing look, she knew.

‘Alone?’

‘Not necessarily. You could have a dog and Jack lives a couple of doors up and – and I would come by every day and, and bring Connie to school—’ He stopped there because he had not meant to say such a thing.

‘A school?’ Emma hesitated. This was taking the idea much further. She thought in general that was what men did best, they took the idea and ran away with it faster than you had thought. ‘I don’t know whether I could manage a school.’

‘I didn’t mean anything general, just that—’ and there, she thought, he ran out of ideas.

‘You cannot have a school for just two pupils,’ she said. ‘It’s ludicrous.’

‘Then what do you suggest? There’s nowhere to send either of them.’

‘I could tutor them at your house though it would be most days and—’

‘No,’ he said definitely.

He was silent again and she had no idea what to say, she felt so out of her depth, so far from anything she knew.

‘The other house would be better.’

Practicality came to Emma’s rescue. ‘You’d have to pay. I don’t have any money.’

‘I had already realized that,’ he said drily. ‘Why don’t we have a look at the building tomorrow? We could invite other people to send their children. There isn’t much here, you said so yourself, just the nuns and Mr English. We could charge people.’

And wasn’t that just like a man, Emma thought. Money in everything. ‘Nobody would come. The people here – they don’t like me. Most of them don’t even speak to me. I’m a stranger, and an incomer, even though my parents came from here.’

The children burst in and Constance Castle, looking like an ordinary child, said to her father, ‘Can I come back tomorrow? We have plans.’

The house stood alone with a high wall around it to stop the winds from disturbing the building or its garden, Emma thought, with some satisfaction. It was big and solidly built, the kind of house which most people wanted when they dreamed of families and the future, and yet it was empty.

She followed Mick Castle through the black iron gates and into the grounds and there she liked everything she saw. She wanted to run about like an excited child among the trees and the overgrown flowerbeds, but it was enough to watch Connie and George do that.

The view was of the tiny square fields below, the grey stone walls, and the very bottom of the valley where the river just at that moment caught the sun and turned white.

Inside, the rooms were big, the kitchen contained a huge stove and all the rooms had big wide fireplaces. It was very cold. She shivered, and he noticed and said, ‘I’ll send you plenty of coal.’

‘Mr Castle—’

‘Connie means everything to me,’ he said, and he didn’t look at her, as though the cost of saying it had been huge.

‘In that case I will do all I can to make her happy and to teach her as she should be taught,’ Emma said with some dignity, and went into the next room.

The morning sun was already taking the worst of the cold from the rooms at the front and Emma thought what it would be like to watch the sun rise in such a place. She could already see the children there, not arranged in silent groups as they had been at Mr English’s school but crowded around the kitchen stove, eating cake and drinking milk and her reading them a story. She knew it was an idealized version of what she wanted, but she felt so good that morning and did not hurry. He did not seem to need to be away and went after her around the place with slow steps as though it meant something to him, and watching how his face changed she said, ‘You were born here?’

They were upstairs and he was at the window as though he could take deep breaths of clear air. He smiled just a little at her perception and nodded and turned. ‘In this very room.’

It was the room with the best view, the one she had thought she would take for hers and every morning push back the curtains and see the dale spread out before her as though for her to take possession of the day.

He went off into the other upstairs rooms as if he didn’t want more conversation. Emma accepted this and said nothing. She thought particularly about the garden and saw in her mind healthy children running about outside, making snowmen and snowballs in the winter, being
shown the way that the garden came alive in the spring, sitting outside while she read to them in the summer, under the trees which edged the garden and sheltered it from the road, and watching the falling leaves while she explained the seasons to them and how things worked.

There would be picnics and perhaps even something where she could let the parents and public come in, stalls to raise money for some cause – perhaps her own if most of the children could not pay for their education – and in the autumn – would it be like the fall at home?

‘What about furniture?’

She had not heard him come back in. She had not considered something as mundane as what she would need. When she didn’t say anything he added, ‘Desks?’

‘There won’t be any desks.’

‘Chairs?’

‘Yes, lots of those, some of them comfortable, and I will want a very big long table for the kitchen and benches so that the children can sit around it. I will also need quite a lot of beds.’

‘It’s going to be a boarding school?’

She heard the surprised note in his voice and realized that she had not known until that exact moment that it would be, that she would want children there who needed to be with her for whatever reason.

*

Mr McConichie’s shop was one of the most exciting places Emma had ever been to. It was up at the top of the main street, just before you got to the Black Diamond, so it was
a place Mr Castle knew well since he went inside and greeted Mr McConichie with the usual laconic ‘Now, Bert’, which Emma had discovered was the way men around here greeted their fellows.

‘Mick,’ Mr McConichie nodded.

Mr Castle introduced them and Mr McConichie looked as if people came into his shop every day looking for lots of furniture especially as Mr Castle told him exactly what was going on. Emma was not used to this much frankness.

‘No desks though,’ Mr Castle said.

‘Just as well, don’t have none,’ Mr McConichie said. And then he looked curiously at Emma and said, ‘Could order some in.’

‘It’s not going to be that kind of school.’

‘No?’ Mr McConichie said, a little surprised.

‘It’s going to be a very special school, an academy such as we have where I come from. It will be called Miss Appleby’s Academy.’ Emma was inspired by her own idea, and Mr Castle seemed pleased, and even Mr McConichie looked approving.

‘Place needs more schools,’ he said.

Delighted at this sudden enthusiasm Emma beamed at him. ‘You think so?’

‘Lord, yes, keeps them young ‘uns off the streets and out of my shop. They’re never done thieving things, those lads. They comes in here in twos and one talks and t’other takes handfuls of things. They think I don’t see, that there’s summat wrong with my eyes.’

‘I need a table and some chairs,’ Emma said.

Mr McConichie had a long wide pine table and benches for either side. He had a great number of easy chairs to choose from too, and George discovered a dappled rocking horse and urged Emma to buy this. It was very expensive. Mr McConichie, who obviously didn’t have a possible sale for a rocking horse every day, looked hard at her and said he could do her a good deal. Emma remained firm. She didn’t think Mr Castle’s purse could be expected to run to such lengths.

He had bedroom furniture. Emma baulked at the idea of second-hand beds.

‘Could get some new ‘uns,’ Mr McConichie said. ‘How many you wanting?’

‘Six singles and one double, I think.’ Emma was unused to dealing with men like this, but she liked it especially when Mr McConichie quibbled about delivering the furniture and Mr Castle said, ‘Howay man, Bert,’ which she took to mean ‘you can do better than that’, and Mr McConichie said that since she was buying so much he would deliver it free to her door.

‘And bring it inside,’ Emma insisted.

Mr McConichie told her she was driving a hard bargain, and she said how on earth was she supposed to get the furniture inside without help, and this he allowed.

Next they went to the hardware store down the street which smelled of paint and oil and the general fustiness which Emma knew pervaded such places. She bought chalk, a dozen slates, pens, paper, ink, cutlery, crockery
and various kitchen utensils, bowls and pans and matches, and after she had ordered all this to be delivered – Mr Barron had a horse and cart so that wasn’t a problem – they went further down the street and past the Cattle Mart Inn and up the hill and there was a drapers which sold pillows and blankets and sheets and pillowcases.

All this was to go on Mr Castle’s account at the various shops and Emma was embarrassed about how much she was spending. After that Mr Castle said he had to get to work and gave her the key to the house and told her that he would tell the butcher and the fishmonger and the greengrocer and the general grocer that they were to give her what she needed. She tried to thank him, but he hurried off as if he were being chased.

Alone with George in her domain she wandered around, amazed at how things were turning out, while George ran about upstairs, saying, ‘Can I have this bedroom?’ and ‘Can I go and have another look outside?’ and when she had allowed him out into the unseasonal cold weather he dashed back and said, ‘We’ve had coal delivered and kindling.’

The coal had been unceremoniously dumped in a huge glittering black pile, great big pieces, not far from the back door but to one side so that it did not impede anyone’s entrance, but Jack was there and he began to knock at the big pieces with a hammer so that it was small enough to go into the buckets he had found or brought with him.

Emma discovered old newspapers in the bottom of the kitchen cupboards; she tore these up and opened the door
of the range and proceeded to twist the newspaper into butterfly shapes – George was entranced by the idea and eager to help. She put good thick sticks on top and finally a little coal. She lit it and stood back, closing the door to allow it to pull and watched in sheer joy as the flames licked their way around the coal and began to give out a little heat.

Various things had been left in the house, but they were all in need of cleaning and she set to straight away and scrubbed the pantry shelves and all the cupboard shelves.

Mr Barron arrived with his horse and cart and brought in the brushes and pans and buckets and cutlery and crockery and all the other things she had bought from him and put as much of it on her new big kitchen table as he could because Mr McConichie had arrived almost at the same time. There was a slight contretemps about whose cart would stand nearer the house, but when she remonstrated with them they took it in turns and she thought how fast men were to help when they were being paid.