Miss Appleby's Academy (22 page)

She had long imagined what a man’s body close to hers would feel like, but she did not know that she would immediately feel ownership, some strange kind of assurance that he was hers, when she knew he was nothing of the kind. Her imagination had not taken her anywhere near what it felt like to have him there; his body was taut and lean and his mouth was better than she had ever thought anything like that could be. She was immediately shameless and gave her mouth completely and drew him very near as though, she thought later, she knew all about such things.

Perhaps you instantly did, perhaps it was instinct, it certainly was hunger, and she was not the woman who did not take advantage of a situation when she could. It was as if she had loved him, longed for him, and it was not so. She didn’t think she had for one second thought lasciviously about Mick Castle, but maybe she was pretending to herself because she had no intention of letting him go, of letting him go home, of letting him go not just out of sight but even inches away from her. He was her captive, he was all hers at that moment.

*

For the first time in her life Emma turned the key in the lock of her bedroom door. Hector, who was usually to sleep by the bed, accepted that he must stay in the hall. She heard him lie down, slump there, and that was the last thing she heard outside the room.

There was no light, but then she had not closed the curtains, and shadows of every hue decorated the walls. All she knew was that somebody wanted her and he was not a stupid young man who cared about his place in society and he was not an old man with foetid breath and a desire for younger flesh. It was nothing like that. It was just that he was there and she had known how he would feel, that she would not be uncomfortable or old or out of place or that he had any motive beyond the meeting of their bodies. The honesty was entirely disarming.

Mick’s skin was smooth and firm and his mouth was gentle at first and so were his words and then he was just what she needed him to be, no more or less, he didn’t expect things she didn’t know or intrude. And he was hungry and that was fine. She had been hungry for twenty years.

He didn’t even lie and tell her that he loved her. She knew very well that he reserved that for Isabel. She didn’t care. She was glad he was warm against her in her bed. She liked the way that he gathered her close. Being against him was the safest place that Emma had ever been.

She had never had too much chocolate or too much wine, and she thought it was high time that she had too much of something, but she didn’t think she could ever
have too much of Mick Castle. Even when his body had completely satisfied hers she didn’t let go of him. She was afraid that he would disappear into the darkness like so many hopes and dreams, that everything went the same way, that all was insubstantial.

He had very good instincts, she thought: he didn’t let go of her, he held her there every second and his hands were gentle as though he knew exactly how much she needed him and if he didn’t she told him so and made him laugh quietly, his breath sweet upon her face and his voice the sound of her dreams. She thought she would never get enough of any of it. She wanted the night to go on and on as a night never had, because he kept away the horrors of the darkness, the reality of her life, all the things she felt she must shoulder and hold up and go back to – they were all gone now that he was there. She felt safe, she told him she felt just as secure here with him as she did when Hector was in the room and he laughed so much that he had to hide his face against her neck.

*

In the darkness he stirred. Emma came back to consciousness slowly, having finally fallen asleep, and heard him say softly, ‘I have to go. It’s almost dawn.’

Emma opened her eyes, not sure where she was or what was happening and then she remembered and she was aghast at herself and smug and she felt stupid and a whole host of other feelings ripped through her so that she was obliged to discard them. She listened and he was right, some bird had decided that the day should begin. How
irritating. Worse, how impossible. She felt cheated. It was like one bite of chocolate cake and then somebody snatching it all away when you had never had chocolate cake before and were desperate to eat the whole thing yourself.

‘It’s pitch-black,’ she said.

He chuckled against her. She thought it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. He kissed her neck and then he kissed her throat and just when she waited for him to kiss her again he drew back. She let him. She didn’t want to and then she was afraid.

‘Mick—’ and when he started to get out of bed she said his name more urgently and he came back to her.

‘You don’t want the children to find me here.’

She let him go again and then she said his name again and he laughed and he said, ‘If you don’t stop saying my name like that I will never be able to go.’

‘But—’

‘I will come back.’

‘Do you promise?’ She had always thought badly of women who might say such things to men, it was ridiculous and pathetic, and Miss Emma Appleby, that schoolteacher and righteous woman, would never have lain in her bed naked with a man and said such things.

‘I promise,’ he said, and he kissed her so full on the mouth that she thought she would always remember it afterwards.

She hadn’t realized that that was exactly what she needed him to say. She didn’t ask him to say it again, but
she held the words in her mind and tried to believe in them though she knew that nothing good ever lasted.

He dressed and then he leaned over and kissed her again, and just when she thought it would never end he stopped and held her face in his hands for a few seconds and then he was gone and he had been right, the dawn was breaking grey and heavy in the sky and the bird had stopped singing.

*

Mick got home before the light, but even then he caught that curious pink-and-grey dawn which few people are awake to see. He opened the front door. The shadows were softer and were mingling with the breaking of day, and just as he closed the door, noiselessly as he had thought, he heard Isabel’s voice from the sitting room, ‘Mick, is that you?’ just as she had always done and he went into the sitting room and she was on the sofa there, gazing at him, and it was the stupidest nearest thing to those pictures of the Sleeping Beauty when she awoke after a hundred years. Where had the prince gone who kissed her?

She looked crumpled: the dress she wore was grey with age and sweat, but when she lifted her face she looked young and beautiful, the way that she always had, and her eyes were filled with tears.

‘Where were you?’ she said.

‘At work.’

‘Where is Connie?’

‘She’s at Miss Appleby’s. Don’t you remember?’

‘I want her here. I’m so tired of everything.’

She leaned against him and would have fallen had he not caught her and so he held her in his arms and when she fell asleep he carried her upstairs and into their bed for the first time in months. She went on sleeping as though everything were all right.

*

Emma awoke in a kind of blissful languor. She could hear the children making a noise downstairs, moving about, but she lay there and thought about the night and what his body had felt and tasted like and how good he was close against her. She had to get out of bed when she heard Hector begin to bark outside her door, so she put on some clothes hastily – the ones she had scattered the night before – and opened the door.

‘Couldn’t you have let Hector out?’ she said to the children as she went past the kitchen and flung open the door.

She felt like someone different: she could have laughed and shouted for joy and run around the garden like a small child with a new toy. She had never felt like this. Somebody had wanted to be close and it was somebody that she cared for. She cared for him. That had not occurred to her. She had thought it was hunger and neglect and the need for someone to acknowledge that she was a living, breathing woman.

She let the sunlight fall on her uplifted face and smiled. She didn’t care what she had done, she was so pleased, so grateful, she mattered in the way that men and women mattered to one another in the most basic sense and she
had given up hope long since that such a thing would happen to her. She went over every moment of the night and then she wished she could see him, she wanted to run to him, to tell him how she felt. She walked around and around, and then she stopped when she was almost beside the gate.

Something else was different and it had nothing to do with Mick or with the night. She couldn’t tell what it was, she stood a few moments longer, but she couldn’t rest so she went back and put on some shoes and walked all the way to the gate and there she saw the sign, MISS APPLEBY’S ACADEMY:
Boarders and Day Pupils
. Somebody had daubed in big white letters right across the sign WHORE. As she stood there, shaking, Jack arrived. He didn’t say anything, he just looked and then he said hastily, ‘Don’t worry, Miss, I’ll get rid of it.’

She nodded and went back inside and tried to be normal with the children, but as she sat down to breakfast with them, she couldn’t eat – all she had was a cup of coffee. She thought of how the dreams had gone wrong and of what she had done last night, and guilt and horror swept over her. She should never have come here. She had achieved nothing. She would have been better staying in New England and leading the life which Verity and Laurence had wanted for her. She had been mad to do what she did. Nothing could be worse than this. She felt dirty, used, stupid. She had slept with another woman’s husband and in a place like this where everybody knew everything.

She excused herself to the children and then she went back into her room, but the memories were as warm as the sheets and everything here reminded her of him. She stripped off her clothes and then she poured water from the jug into the bowl and she washed her body vigorously until it showed red in protest and even then she cried because she was so ashamed of herself.

She had lost control. She was indeed her parents’ daughter. She was no better. She had prided herself on knowing who she was, but the woman she had thought she was would never have done such a thing. Even when she was dried and in clean clothes she didn’t feel any better. She sat down on the bed and wept until her eyes were swollen and raged bitterly at herself.

What had given her the right to do such a thing? And as for Mick Castle all he wanted was a willing woman, someone’s body to make him feel better because his marriage was a travesty. She tried not to blame him for that, men were weak, hadn’t her father demonstrated that so very clearly?

Had someone seen or was the word on the sign just a coincidence? She didn’t think it could be. Somebody knew that she had taken another woman’s husband into her bed. She made herself wash her face in cold water. She had to go downstairs and see the children and thank Jack for his help though she didn’t know what to say to him.

The children were easy: she gave them some difficult sums to work on at the table and she went outside. Jack was still busy. She dragged her feet over to him.

‘Jack—’

‘It’s disgusting, Miss, that’s what it is,’ the lad said, and at first for a second she thought he was accusing her and then she saw he was angry with whoever had done this. ‘Nobody likes change,’ Jack said, ‘this is because you tried to do summat different. It’s nowt to do with you. Don’t you think it.’

‘You know, don’t you?’ Emma said, and she watched the heat rise from his shirt collar up his neck to where his brown hair was cut short.

‘What folk do before you’re in a place is nowt to do with you,’ Jack said, and then she realized they were talking about quite different things. ‘I’ve heard what folk say and because of Nell, and there’s nowt wrong with Nell but what happened and it weren’t her fault they call you the same. Don’t you take no notice, Miss.’

She smiled at his back. He couldn’t see. He was a lovely lad, kind, loyal, and he liked being part of her small family, she could tell. He often stayed when he needn’t have. He played football with George and Connie and when he didn’t have to go to one of the pubs to help or back to his mam to see she was all right he felt at home here and Emma knew then that that was what she had wanted to do.

She wanted children and young people to find some place to be themselves and to grow. She didn’t feel better about herself after that, but it did make her feel more calm, and when he had done everything he could to remove the lettering and not managed it, he went back into the house with her to sit down for a little while
before he tried again, and he stayed until he had to go to the Black Diamond.

She wondered if he would tell Mick and whether Mick would come storming up here, but she thought, no, Mick would think too that they had been seen and he could not come back. Perhaps they would never be like that again, and it was for the best. She lifted her chin and brought herself under the rigid control in which she had always kept her obviously foolish nature. She swore that she would never do such a thing again and hoped to be forgiven for this one slip, this one time, but it seemed so awful to her that the single memory was tainted and spoiled.

*

When Mick awoke Isabel was staring at their bedroom as though she had never seen it before.

‘It’s such a mess,’ she said.

It was just as usual. He had not observed that the wallpaper was hanging off, the dressing-table drawers were open and the wardrobe was spilling clothes. The sunshine coming in through the big gap in the curtains showed it all up.

‘How do you feel?’ he said.

‘Sick. Suddenly yesterday I felt so ill and I – I retched and retched and then I felt worse and I was going to have another drink and – and I couldn’t somehow. I was on my own with that stupid girl – was she meant to be looking after me? I got rid of her and then I went outside, I saw the state of my house, my kitchen. What happened to it?’ She began to cry. ‘How did I get like this, Mick?’

She moved forward and he took her into his arms for the first time in months. She stank of gin and vomit and sweat and her hair was tattered and tangled.