Miss Appleby's Academy (21 page)

Emma stared at his back and couldn’t think of anything to say and then asked, ‘Why does she do such a thing?’ As she said it a memory half came back to her, something nudged at her mind. She was too upset to work out what it was, but it niggled there and would not leave.

‘She used to be a dressmaker but her eyes failed. Workmen here, they make good money and when they come out of the pub most of them still have copper to spend, especially on paydays.’

What Emma said next really upset her. She didn’t know
how it got past her lips. ‘Do you think people know that we are related?’

‘Some of them might have worked it out. It didn’t occur to me so maybe not to them either.’

‘They will know now,’ Emma said bitterly. ‘I’m sure Mrs Summers has told everyone.’

There was a long silence during which Emma could see a big moon rising in the sky in the garden.

‘I never had a sister before. I always wanted one, I disliked Laurence and he always despised me. To think things should come to this. Mrs Summers thinks I should leave.’

‘I don’t think you should go anywhere,’ he said.

‘But whatever am I to do? People didn’t like me anyway, but now—’ She couldn’t think beyond how appalling the whole situation was.

He said nothing more and she thought he was right: the best thing to do when you didn’t know what to do was nothing.

When Mick left she went outside with him and Hector stayed at her heels, even though his idol was present. He was her dog now. Mick Castle looked at Hector. Then he got down and took hold of Hector by the ears in such an affectionate way and Hector licked his face, perhaps in apology or regret.

‘Good boy,’ Mick said, and then he walked away. Neither of them said goodnight.

*

It was very late when Emma went to bed, and it took all
her courage: the last thing she wanted to do was lie in the darkness thinking, but there was nothing else to do at this time of night so she went, and then she stared up at the ceiling and she remembered the woman who had spoken to her outside the butcher’s. She remembered what the woman had said.

Was that Nell Whittington? The woman must be older than she was, but not that much, and yet she had looked so used up and her eyes were defiant and full of sorrow. Emma went over again and again the scene in the front street so soon after she had arrived here. She had not given that woman a moment’s thought since.

She was guilt-stricken and sat up in bed, as though there were more she could do upright, and then lay down again, but she could not put from her mind the image of the woman whose face she had recognized. Yes, she thought now, she had seen her own face looking back at her, even though they had different mothers. She and Nell looked alike.

So Mrs Summers had been right and all the awful things she had said were true. Mick Castle had confirmed them, but she had not accepted what he had said as completely as she did now. She did have family here; it was what she had wanted, but to find them in such a way, in such awful circumstances, and to know that her father was not the man she had thought him was, a bitter blow.

*

There were two bars in the Black Diamond, the bigger one looked out over the main street and was the lighter of the
two rooms. Not that it made much difference, but the other room looked out across the yard, where she had hung clothes when the weather was dry and windy, even in the cold. At this time of day the place was not full, but there were quite a lot of men, most of them older, some playing dominoes. She could hear the clack as the dominoes were put down on the table or turned over the other way. Where the room got the light two men were playing darts.

Some of the men sat on their own and even though she had not seen him before she could see immediately the man who was her half-brother. It was the way that he sat, he looked just like Laurence, so exactly like him that she was taken aback. She couldn’t think what to say or how to approach him. He was Laurence without the fine clothes and attitudes; Laurence as he would have been had he been poor and neglected.

She began to understand just a little at that point why her parents had emigrated, but she could not reconcile herself to the mess and pain that they had left behind. They had thought of themselves only. Would she have done such a thing for John Elstree? If he had offered to leave his wife and children for her, would she have gone with him? She didn’t think so and then she thought that she had no right to judge.

She knew nothing of men. She had not even been kissed. If John Elstree had kissed her and held her in his arms and assured her of his love would she have lost her mind and gone with him? Knowing that she had no life in the little New England town, would she have left?

Her half-brother sat with a cigarette in his dirty brown fingers. He looked like somebody who had given up: his face had caved in, his cheeks were sunken and had deep wrinkles as if somebody had taken chunks out of his face. He was older than Laurence, and she felt a sympathy such as she could never remember having felt for Laurence because there something defenceless about his whole body. He sat by the fire and the light of it played on his face and it was filled with sadness.

‘Are you—’ she spoke very softly, ‘are you Laurence Appleby?’

She thought he didn’t hear her, but it was just that he hadn’t noticed her approach him, and then he looked up and her impression was that he was so like his namesake that she didn’t know what to say.

After that she didn’t speak and he went back to regarding the fire as if it were his only friend, his gnarled fingers clenched around the tankard they held.

‘I think we’re related,’ she said.

He looked at her as though he thought she might be speaking to somebody else, and then stared.

‘Did you know we had the same surname?’ she said.

He didn’t say anything, he just looked disbelieving and something else, as though his interest or even basic curiosity had long since been sated.

‘Our father was the same man.’

‘I never had no father,’ he said roughly, taking a great pull at the half-smoked cigarette which he held as though it were a part of him, turned in toward his hand. ‘He
buggered off and left me mam. She had two other bairns, lasses, older ‘n me.’

‘But your name—’

‘It was his name.’

‘His?’ As far as she knew her father had not been called Laurence. There was a glimmer of hope in her before she remembered it was his middle name.

‘That’s what she said. She said he were a soldier, but it weren’t true, he were a bastard.’

‘He was a scholar.’ Emma couldn’t help correcting him.

Laurence shook his head. ‘A hewer. But clever like. Me mam said he were always at his books. He didn’t like work.’

It was her turn to stare.

Emma wanted to deny it. Her body felt as though her stomach had been pulled out of her and there was an enormous hole and she would never eat again.

‘He knew how to talk, me mam said he could talk anybody into owt. He had another lass and she were expectin’ and that were why he left us. After the babby were born he were here for less than two years and me mam on her own. They went overseas where nobody knew them. Me mam said he were a rare talker – he talked her into marrying him and t’other lass into going with him and runnin’ off with him.’

The babby. It took Emma some time to realize that he was speaking of her. He said nothing else and she could think of nothing more to say to him. She staggered out of the bar. She went the back way, past Mick’s office.

Ulysses came after her, and as she was crying nuzzled his wet nose into her hand. She went out into the yard, she needed the air, there were so many things she needed to get used to. She took a lot of deep breaths, trying to absorb what had just happened, and then she heard movement behind her and glanced back.

‘I’m going to find out where Nell lives and go and see her. Do you know her?’ she asked as Mick followed her into the yard.

‘You shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘It isn’t going to help.’

‘I’ll just ask somebody else if you don’t tell me,’ she said, wiping away the tears with the knuckles of her hands.

*

Road Ends, Emma discovered, stood apart from the rest of the village. It was about half a mile away.

The view was clear across the valley. On a fine day like this it was blowy because the wind had nothing to stop it. When she reached the very end house she saw how poor it was: the windows were rotten, the walls were crumbling, the door had no paint. She banged upon it and when it opened she had the weirdest sensation of all.

The woman who opened the door looked so exactly like her that it was like looking into a mirror, and Emma couldn’t think of anything to say. She had been right, this woman was her sister. It made her feel worse. As with the brother, Nell looked older because of what she had been through, no doubt, Emma thought, despairing and adrift. She had always thought she looked like her mother, but the resemblance here was so strong that it was undeniable.
Nell was dressed in dull cheap clothes. There was a smell of broth on the stove, of vegetables cooking.

She didn’t speak, she just stood there in an attitude of defiance, her eyes blank and huge black smudges under them, her cheeks bright with broken veins. Beyond her, two children were sitting close to the fire. They were silent. The room was damp, dank. It made Emma shiver even to be there. The anxious look conveyed a message to Nell and her face filled with dismay.

‘Do you remember us meeting outside the butcher’s in the main street? I’m Emma Appleby. May I come inside?’

The wind was making her dress cling to her ankles. There was nothing to stop it, no other buildings around here. These terraces beside the road must have been built for a special purpose some time back and they had wonderful views for miles and miles, but up there on the tops the weather was king and a cold wind whipped across the bare land.

‘What for?’ Nell asked, half closing the door as though Emma would attempt to push her way inside.

There was no point in putting off what she had come here to say.

‘I think we have the same father,’ Emma said.

She expected to see surprise, even denial on the other woman’s face, but Nell merely looked down as though she had suspected it, as though she had known all along and was bitter about it. She went white but tossed her head as though to get rid of the information, as though it didn’t matter one little bit.

‘It’s nowt special round here. Lots of lasses don’t know who their bairns’ fathers are.’

‘May I come in?’

‘Nay, what’s the point?’

‘Do you remember your father leaving?’

Nell looked as if she wasn’t going to answer, she stood back even further and closed the door so that it was no more than a crack from being shut, and then she said, ‘Aye, I remember him going on living here after he left my mam and how she begged of him not to go, and him and her just over the town, and then she heard they had a bairn. She was so ashamed she couldn’t keep her man. People called it her fault.

‘She never looked at another man. She was having our Larry at the time and Larry wasn’t normal, he’s a bit simple. Him leaving, that finished my mam off and I think Larry is like he is because of it. He was the only man in the family and the youngest of us. She went cleaning to other folks’ houses and left us until the day our Larry set the house on fire. It weren’t much, but it stopped her going far until we got older.’

‘I knew nothing about you.’

‘Well, now you do,’ Nell said and she closed the door the inch or so it was ajar which was as effective as though she had slammed it in Emma’s face.

When Emma got back to the house Mr English waved a piece of paper in her face.

‘I got a letter from the authorities. I have to go and live in my house and run the school by myself or I’m going to lose my job,’ he said.

Emma made up baskets of food and clean dry bed linen which she and the children carried and they helped Mr and Mrs English back to the house on the fell. The house smelled damp and as though out of humour the rain began to fall. George shovelled coal from the coal house and staggered in with bucketfuls and Connie, who had with pride learned how to lay a fire, sorted out paper and sticks and soon there were fires burning in the downstairs rooms. Emma decided that she would talk to Mr Castle and get him to send them some more coal.

Mr English and George moved the bed into the big kitchen and pushed the table and chairs right to the back wall. The table folded down at both sides until it was no more than a few inches across, the chairs went underneath. This, Emma thought, would be a permanent sick room for Mrs English. She sorted out the lamps too and heated food on the stove. She determined that next time
she came she would bring thick curtains to go over the doors to keep out the cold this coming winter. When they left, the children and Hector ahead of her, Mr English said, ‘Thank you, Miss Appleby, nobody could have done more.’

When they got back she put the children to bed. She went into the garden with Hector and the stars came out. She heard the gate but Hector wagged his tail so she knew that it was only Mr Castle.

She told him about the Englishes and that they would need some coal and he said, ‘Do you want me to keep the whole bloody village?’ and Emma lost her temper and retorted, ‘Well, somebody has to in this godforsaken place. They have nothing.’

‘They have a lot more than most people.’

Emma was shaking with temper. She had never felt so angry. Her cheeks burned and her hands had made themselves into fists. She tried to swallow and then she said, ‘They need coal.’

‘All right.’

She would have turned away and gone back into the house, but when she half turned he got hold of her and to her astonishment brought his mouth down on hers and it was exactly right. Emma didn’t hesitate for a second. Having never been kissed before she found it was the one thing that mattered. She wanted it to go on and on.

She felt his hands on her back and drew closer. There was no part of her that reminded her who she was or what she was trying to do in her life. No respectable
inkling saved her. She slid her hands up his body to his shoulders and it was the comfort as much as anything that she needed and the reassurance somehow that somebody cared to be that close when nobody had done so before. Her gratitude would have sickened her had she given it a moment’s thought, but she didn’t because she was so intent on his sweet mouth and the closeness of him was such exquisite joy.