Miss Appleby's Academy (25 page)

It was a very long week in some ways. In others it was too short and by Friday night it was galloping and George sweated in bed so much that he had to throw off the covers and he lay there for hours wishing it was not Saturday. He only went to sleep by convincing himself that he would not go and that it was the right thing to do.

When he awoke early he changed his mind and the time crawled past. He let it go until mid afternoon and then he walked slowly over the road and down the hill and into the back lane on the edge of the village where the lads as usual were playing football. He thought they were the same ones, there were certainly seven of them. They noticed him immediately and stopped and there was hilarity. George’s lower lip shook.

‘Can I play?’ he said. ‘You’re one man down.’

‘It’s the lad from the lasses school,’ the one who had knocked him down said and then another lad came out from behind, taller than the others and he looked across the ground between them and he said simply,

‘Why aye, you can play, Geordie lad. Howay,’ and George recognized him as John Wearmouth, one of the big lads he remembered from going to Mr English’s school and his Aunt Emma had read Hiawatha and they had told stories. John smiled at him and the others fell back.

George, feeling defeated and relieved at the same time,
couldn’t move for a moment or two but he knew that his moment had come, he was ‘Geordie lad’ now to the other lads in the village, John Wearmouth had said so. His joy was brimming over ten minutes later when he scored a goal and the others clustered around him, yelling in triumph.

*

Emma went to visit Mrs English. She took George and Hector with her. Connie had not come back to school even after three days so Emma declared a holiday. The weather was cold and fine. Hector, always keen for a walk, dashed about through the scrub, chasing the smell of rabbits. George was silent. Emma knew he missed Connie but perhaps he was so used to losing people by now, she thought sadly, that he didn’t ask where she was.

George accepted what happened. She wished she could do the same. After forty years of being alone her body craved Mick Castle and she was disgusted. She had thought she was a repressed, middle-aged woman. That was gone, she had never felt so vital or so needy or so angry with anyone. She thought that if she had had a weapon to hand she would have killed him.

She had awoken the morning after she had told him she would have nothing more to do with him and the loneliness settled over her like a carpet, it was so heavy, so dark. She tortured herself thinking of him taking his wife to bed. Was that what he had done? Of course he had. The jealousy that she felt after that almost felled her. She sat and cried and then was angry with herself. She
had been better off without him, better off without any man. All they had brought her so far was grief. She would put him from her mind forever.

She set to cleaning Mrs English’s house as though the skies might fall if she didn’t. She scrubbed floors and polished what furniture there was and brought great buckets of coal into the house, though there was enough already for the living-room fire. She had made and brought cake and a stew and some bread.

Had she still had any sense of humour she would have laughed at the stupid woman who kept herself so busy because she missed a man who had used her. And just once. Somehow the just once made it worse. It could not even be thought of as anything lasting, anything that mattered. She could have clung to the idea that he had cared enough to be there, to have forsaken his wife even just a little.

She could not go back to thinking of how very good it had been, the best night of her life. It was not that in her mind any more, it was a mistake, an error of judgement, a stupid lapse. She told herself that she should have known how it would be and avoided it.

Worse, he had turned up at her house looking so much younger, clean-shaven and smart with shiny hair and calm eyes, and she had hated him the more for that. It was as though she had loved someone else and he was obliterated from the earth. This man looked almost rich, he looked sophisticated, a successful businessman. He was not hers, he never had been, her scruffy
northern man had vanished, perhaps she had only conjured him.

When Mr English came and told her that the school was just as bad as it had been before he met her Emma had an idea, one she had hoped to put into operation long since.

‘Why don’t you bring them to my school for a visit and we’ll go for a walk?’

‘What, all of them?’

‘You could call it a nature outing.’

‘But it’s cold,’ he said.

Emma could have cursed Mr English’s lack of imagination. Were all classical scholars this way?

‘You could talk to them about the geology of the rocks and tell them about the various seasons and I could make food for them and we could do the Romans, how they came here and all the marks they left on the land in the north.’

Mr English brightened up at this idea. The Romans were the saving of him, Emma thought.

‘Has Mr Castle’s little girl come back to the school?’ he asked. ‘I understand that his wife is much better.’

Emma went home, determined to think about her venture and to forget all about Mick Castle and his family, only to find him on her doorstep with his child.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t bring Connie back sooner—’

‘There’s no need to apologize, Mr Castle,’ she said smoothly, and she thought it was easier now that he had turned into this different person. She thought, in one way
I am like Isabel Castle, I have no friends either. She could have felt sorry for Mick had he not gone to bed with another woman to combat his difficulties and she was able to congratulate herself for this thought and the one which followed, which was that if she had had a pan within reach she would have hit him with it, right round the head.

Connie took her suitcase back up the stairs with her and George followed eagerly, so he must have missed her a great deal, Emma thought. And not least of all was the fact that Mick Castle was paying the bills. She must carry on being civil to him, no matter what. That required several deep breaths, after which she told him about Mr and Mrs English and the scheme for the pupils to spend a day with her.

‘You took down the sign.’

‘Jack couldn’t get the paint off. He did offer to paint over it, but it seemed nothing more than an invitation so I left it.’ She said goodbye to him briskly and went inside and stood against the door, breathing heavily as though she had run a long way.

*

The nature-study day was cold but fine. It wasn’t easy. She deputed several older girls and boys to look after the rest so that they were in small groups and then Mr English stopped from time to time to tell them about the landscape and the history of the area and Hector ran about wildly, being patted all the way along.

At the furthest part of the walk they came to what Mr
English called ‘a sharp sand quarry’ and he launched into the history of iron – and steel-making, and after that Emma decided they had had enough and took them all back to the schoolhouse for soup and cake. They sat as well as so many of them could, one lot in the kitchen with her and the other lot in the biggest sitting room with Mr English, and naturally the boys went with him and the girls stayed with her and they had a pleasant afternoon.

*

Things went backwards. That was the only way Mick could think of it, but Isabel, in her very clean house with her very clean kitchen, no longer cooked. There was no need because Mrs Hobson did the cooking and Mrs Dexter was very keen on polishing and dusting and hanging out the clothes. The smell of warm ironing greeted him one afternoon when he came home early, worried somehow that he might find Isabel comatose on the sofa, with empty bottles and the sweet disgusting reek of gin, instead of which his wife sat like a statue in a very neat dress, staring out of the window.

It was a lovely clear day He asked Isabel if she would go for a walk – Ulysses would go with them – but she refused. He asked her if she would like to go into Durham and look for new clothes; it had been so long since she had had any and the dress she wore was years old.

She looked at it in surprise, as though somebody else had decided what she would put on, and he had a vision of Mrs Dexter reaching into the wardrobe – Isabel no longer got up for breakfast as she had done before she was so ill
 – and encouraging her to wear the prettiest of her dresses. Mrs Dexter was trying to please him for some reason and had picked out the dress which men might like.

‘Shopping?’ she said, as if he had suggested something improper.

‘We could stay at the County and go dancing. We used to do that, do you remember?’

‘I didn’t care for it then,’ she said. ‘How could you possibly have forgotten?’

Exasperated he said, ‘What would you like to do, Isabel?’ and her lips twisted and she said, without moving, ‘I would like just one large glass of gin.’

It was the first time since she had been so ill that she had mentioned it.

‘Sam says another might kill you.’

‘Dr Blythe is a liar. Besides, how would you notice? You have your woman.’

The awful thing about that was it was literally true. He not only loved Emma Appleby, he had gone to bed with her, so nothing rescued him here. Excuses would not do, he hadn’t even made those to himself, though he had tried. He wanted to say to her that she was the only woman in his life, that he cared just for her, but it would have been such a huge lie that he couldn’t utter it.

The evenings were endless. He tried not to go back to work, he was there less now than he had ever been and there were so many problems: there were fights, the beer did not arrive or was off, the pubs were becoming fustier and neglected and at the Black Diamond Ed had influenza
and had taken to his bed. There was only Jack he could trust, and although Jack was nineteen Mick had taken to getting Jack to go to each of the pubs in turn to report what was going on.

He remained at home where he and Isabel sat at either end of the table and did not make conversation. Mrs Hobson’s culinary delights did not much stretch further than corned beef pie and potatoes, or fish with parsley sauce – he hated that most – and there was no roast on Sunday because she insisted on having that day off and he could not blame her. He had thought it might encourage Isabel to cook, but they had bread and cheese on Sunday. She made no comment.

*

Sunday morning arrived and with it fine weather. He had always hated gardening, but it would give him something constructive to do since he did not feel he could go to work on Sundays any more, but the ground was solid with frost, there was nothing to be done outside.

He and Isabel had hardly slept at all and that was because when he had spoken softly and reached for her because he thought he should, she had said in a strained voice, ‘Don’t touch me,’ and turned from him.

The way that she had told him what she really wanted had altered everything. He got up and went downstairs and wondered what they should have for breakfast and suddenly there was a knock on the front door and a half-grown boy with a note in his hand which he said was from Mr Higgins. He read it swiftly. Jack had been hurt
in a fight and Ed was ill. Could he come in to open the Black Diamond?

There was nobody at his house on Sundays and he had reserved it so that he need not leave Isabel. He slipped upstairs and found her sleeping well. She would probably sleep for hours, she did so now once she got off, and it had been several days since she had slept for any length of time. He practically ran into the village and found Ed at home, ashen-faced in his tiny sitting room, holding a blanket around him.

‘How badly hurt is Jack?’

‘He’s at home. Got into a fight. I was in bed. There’s nobody to open up and in any case it was too much to ask the lad to do everything himself—’

There were people to help at every pub. Mick had carefully organized this.

‘Nobody came in,’ Ed told him. ‘You know what folk are like.’

‘What about the other pubs?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there,’ Ed said shortly. He tried to get up, swayed, and Mick helped him back to bed, offered him tea, but Ed had a drink of water and lay down.

First of all Mick went to Jack’s house. He cursed himself. The boy was in bed, whey-faced where there were no bruises. He tried to sit up, he tried to say that he was sorry. Mick sat down on the bed and shook his head. ‘Don’t be daft, lad,’ he said, ‘you did your best. I asked too much of you.’

‘Nay, I didn’t get it right, Mr Castle. And now – now what am I going to do?’

‘You’re going to get better and I’m not going to let you try to run things.’

‘You won’t get rid of me?’ The boy looked scared.

‘You’re the best worker I ever knew, saving Ed Higgins. Lie down, go to sleep and stop worrying.’

*

He sought out Sam and discovered that Jack would be all right.

‘He’s lucky. He could have been killed. They kicked him. They didn’t aim very well, but next time they might.’ There was a look of censure on Sam’s face, though he tried to hide it.

‘There won’t be a next time,’ Mick said roughly. ‘I’ll employ more people.’

‘Won’t that make it worse?’

‘What do you want me to do?’ He glared at Sam.

‘I want you to put Isabel into the mental hospital where she should be.’

Mick swore, turned aside. Sam went on looking doggedly at him.

‘Her illness is ruining everything. How bad do things have to get before you let me do that? Think about your child, man.’

Mick was so furious that he turned on his friend. ‘God damn you, Sam, what the hell do you think I’ve been doing?’

‘You’re putting off the inevitable and Connie is suffering for it and so are you. Put her away.’

‘I cannot!’

Sam eyed him for a long while, so long that Mick couldn’t hold his gaze. ‘This was not your fault.’

‘How do you know that? Maybe I made her ill with how I went on.’

‘Nonsense,’ Sam said in the brisk way that his patients had come to rely on.

Mick didn’t say anything to that and his friend and doctor eyed him for even longer this time and then he said softly, ‘What are you not telling me?’