Miss Appleby's Academy (34 page)

From her kitchen she turned out miracles. The food got better and better. Each night he was required to tell her how wonderful it was, that he had not tasted anything which could surpass it in the whole of his life, and between his home life and his debt to the bank and the way that he didn’t seem to be able to manage all the pubs and keep on making money at the rate which his debts demanded Mick was only glad when he fell asleep. It was like being in a deep dark hole where nobody could reach him.

Isabel didn’t sleep. Often he would wake to find that
she was gazing wide-eyed up into the darkness. She began to roam the house at night, like a polite ghost, never making a noise for fear of disturbing him, so that he noted every second, every movement, the way that she would open the curtains just a little to see if there was a moon. What else could she be looking for?

He found concentration difficult when he was at work. It should have taken up every moment, but he kept thinking of her, scrubbing floors and washing windows and ironing bed linen. He dared not suggest that Mrs Dexter and Mrs Hobson would be happy to help. He was still paying them even though they objected to his largesse. He felt guilty and told them it made him feel better and they would never know when he needed them. Isabel wanted no one in her house, it was just as if it had always been that way.

When Connie came home at weekends the house was so clean that the sheets crackled. Connie looked in wonder at the elaborate food on her plate.

‘It’s boeuf en daube,’ her mother said. ‘You do like it?’

‘Oh yes,’ Connie would say, and indeed Mick was certain that it was delicious. His head told him so, but his taste buds seemed to have given up and the meat stuck in his throat. Connie chased the stew round and round on her plate, and when her mother was not looking and had gone into the kitchen for extra bread, she did not hesitate to scrape the contents of her plate onto the floor beneath the table where Ulysses must have thought all his birthdays were upon him. Mick knew, and she looked at her father apologetically. He simply shrugged.

Ulysses could end up very fat if things did not get better was the only thing he could think of to cheer himself.

*

Something compelled Mick to go home just after noon on that particular day several weeks later. He was tired, but had convinced himself that things were good. Connie was happy at school and Isabel seemed resigned to accept this. There was peace at home: it was not an entirely happy peace but he had settled for it.

When they had been happy – or when he had thought they were, at the beginning their marriage – he could not wait all day to see Isabel again and would go home during the day. He didn’t often do it any more. Work had become his refuge, but for some reason on that particular day he could not stop himself. He just told himself he was being stupid, but his feet took him back to the house which he had bought when they were first married, when he had been so much in love.

Taking over Henry’s business had made an immense amount of extra work, and he was spending a great deal of time in Newcastle and in Durham, making sure that what was going well in the business went on doing so and what was not would slowly be brought up to the standard of the rest.

In business he knew that there was nothing as effective as one’s own presence for making sure that things went well. In the end, with a business too complex for him to see to himself, he had to rely a great deal on other people. He would learn in time the people whom he could
trust and replace those who were unreliable. Until then he must work, making sure that everything ran as it should, so he did not understand the feeling that compelled him to go home when he should have been in half a dozen other places at once. It was just that he had tried so hard for so long.

He had briefly considered moving, but it was too soon and he was not convinced that Isabel would enjoy the city. He did not care for it himself, but he had the idea that they might be able to buy a summer cottage on the coast in Northumberland, and that she might be excited by this. Since nothing had gone wrong that day with the business and he knew Connie was safe at school, he thought he might go back and talk to her about it and they might even take a trip to have a look and see if there was anywhere which would do.

He was tired of course, but he was always tired now. He didn’t expect to be happy. And then a small jolt of warm feeling made him remember kissing Emma and realizing that no matter what had happened she did care about him, and he must concentrate on his family and his work.

He knew something was wrong when he opened the door. There was nothing in the house which was disturbed, but the whole place seemed to have about it an air of loneliness, a silence so complete that it could have been death. Then his ears strained and he heard a very light footstep, and then another, and Isabel came down the stairs.

She looked as young as she had been when they had first met, so lovely and full of life that he was taken aback and realized at that moment how much he had loved her.

She wore a velvet coat with matching hat and gloves in a mid-blue colour which made her hair look more golden and her eyes bluer. The gloves accentuated the slenderness of her wrists and arms. He had forgotten how very beautiful she was.

He was so surprised she was going out that he stopped just inside the front door, and the flood of daylight seemed to contain them both.

‘You look lovely. You’re going shopping?’ he asked, in wonder.

She hesitated, and looked dismayed. ‘No.’ She shook her head.

He waited for her to tell him what her mission was. She looked at him and there was a hint of pity in her eyes. He waited such a long time for her to speak that he had to prompt her. ‘Where are you going then?’

‘I wish you hadn’t come home. Why do you have to make this so difficult?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Are you all right?’

She shook her head and the lovely little hat which perched on top of it moved precariously.

‘I’m leaving you,’ she said, and she looked down and then glanced at him and her eyes were like sapphires.

‘Oh,’ he said. It was a stupid thing to say, really not much more than a sigh. He stared at her and went on staring for a very long time, not quite sure whether he
was still breathing, listening to the thick silence in the house which spoke of the future.

‘I’m so sorry, Mick,’ she said, and she looked honestly at him, possibly for the first time. ‘Henry is sending for someone to bring my luggage downstairs and to take me to the train. There isn’t much luggage. I seem to have nothing to take with me somehow.’

He spent time trying to understand. It felt like a long time, but in fact he knew it wasn’t. Time had become unreal long since.

‘Henry wanted to take Connie, but I knew you would never stand for that and would fight us for her and I’m too exhausted for such things so I’m leaving her here with you. She’s a lovely child, but she always preferred you to me. I think she’s very like you, which is strange in the circumstances.’

‘Where are you going?’

She was at the bottom of the stairs now. ‘I have no idea. I don’t really care. Henry has a great deal of money since you bought him out and he has promised me the world. His wife will go to London and live near her children and I think that Henry and I will go to Italy.

‘Perhaps when we are settled, in Florence or in Rome, you will allow Connie to come and visit. I understand there are wonderful places to see and she will like to see a little more of the world, and I’m sure you wouldn’t stop her. Do tell her the truth – I hate people who tell their children myths. I’m so very sorry and after all you have done.’ She shook her head.

‘Don’t feel like that about it,’ he said, suddenly understanding.

She looked at him in surprise. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You and I have tried so hard to make this work, but it hasn’t for a very long time. We shouldn’t have married.’

‘I wanted to marry you.’

He stared at her. ‘But because of Henry.’

‘No.’ She smiled suddenly at him. ‘Because I thought it stood a chance, I knew I couldn’t have Henry, he was so very married, and you, you were different, perhaps the future.’

‘But Connie—’

‘I thought she was yours, truly I did, and I even hoped because if she was then you and I could have had half a dozen children and I think then I would have been more content.’

Mick couldn’t think of anything to say. The conversation reached to the very heart of him, or wherever it was that men knew their worth in life, and he didn’t seem to have any, not that way. He couldn’t father a child; he hadn’t admitted it to himself before.

She walked past him.

‘Isabel.’

She was about to open the door, but she turned back to him when he spoke.

‘I hope you and Henry have a future together. I hope that you get what you want.’

She smiled at him and then she came back to him and
when she kissed him on the mouth it was a warmer kiss than he had felt from her in years, and then she touched his chin with her fingers and was gone.

Dr Blythe called on Mrs English. The rain had been falling day after day and it seemed to make her condition worse. It was the middle of the evening and she was at the academy, so Emma got to see him briefly. She would have merely nodded her goodbyes except that Dr Blythe stood in her kitchen after he had seen Mrs English in the little back room and said, with slight humour, ‘My wife has ordered me to tell you that we would like our eldest child, Adrian, to come to your school next term.’ He paused and shifted his feet a little.

Emma smiled at him. ‘She ordered you?’

‘She did,’ he said gravely. ‘Would you consider taking him?’

‘I would be delighted.’

‘I have to tell you though that shortly, much to the relief of us both since I work for the most part from home, the other two will be following with your leave and yes, I will be happy to be your school doctor. My wife considers that since we have three children we will also be obliged to pay for all of them and I will be your school doctor because these children are my patients and I am glad that you are here to help educate them in a way that my wife
approves of. My wife has said, as well, that she would like to come and take tea with you in the morning on Wednesday, if that suits you, and that she would like to look round the academy.’

Emma could not help feeling completely triumphant when Sam Blythe left. If the doctor, who held such respect in the village, sent his children to her school she felt certain that other people would follow, but also that she might make a friend of his wife. Not many men would have gone about it in that way and when Mrs Blythe did come and see the academy with the dubious joy of watching her children run around the rooms, shouting with glee at being let out, she said to Emma, ‘I wondered if you and the children would come to chapel with me on Sunday. My husband is Church of England and even though we were married at the chapel he makes that an excuse not to go, unless he can’t get out of it. I don’t know what you feel about these things, but I do know that the Ogilvies are kind people and would be happy to have you there and I would enjoy the company.’

Emma said she would be pleased though when Mr Higgins came for Sunday dinner he did look hard at her as she explained that the meal would be a little late as she had been drinking tea and socializing at the Methodist church.

She found people likely to accept her when she went there and was grateful to Marjorie Blythe for this but also Mr and Mrs Ogilvie greeted her like an old friend and introduced her to Mrs Barron, the wife of the hardware
shopkeeper. Emma already knew Mr Boldon because they owned the draper’s shop in the high street and she had bought clothes there for the children and Mrs Boldon said she had heard that Miss Appleby’s school had many merits.

Emma had no idea who she had heard this from, but since Mrs Boldon had two small children Emma was inclined to smile and be pleased. Mr and Mrs Barron also had children and Mr Barron told all who might listen that Miss Appleby was a fearsome businesswoman and that she had taken on Jack Allen, whose mother was well respected in the place, and that Jack was going to be a fully-fledged teacher in time.

*

Mick came to the school on the Friday to pick up Connie for the weekend and Connie ran to him as she always did, chattering about what had happened so that he would be caught up with the doings at the school. For once he did not seem happy to see her, and since several other children were around and they were involved in some game he told her that she could have a few minutes more. He asked Emma if he could see her in her study and, somewhat reluctantly, she agreed.

Once inside he seemed to have nothing to say and wandered about as if he were waiting for a late train.

‘I have the feeling you don’t know that Isabel has left me,’ he said, swinging round suddenly as though if he didn’t tell her his breath would cease.

It seemed like an age to Emma before she heard what
he said, and before she understood. Her heart beat hard.

‘I thought she was ill.’

‘She’s gone to Italy with Henry Atkinson,’ he said evenly, ‘and I have to tell Connie. I bought Henry Atkinson out, you see. I thought it might give us a chance to be a family if he wasn’t there.’ Mick shook his head.

‘But – but that’s extraordinary,’ Emma said. ‘What about his wife and children?’

‘Isabel says that his wife doesn’t care and she has gone to London to be with his children and since they have plenty of money now they can do as they like.’

‘You own Henry Atkinson’s business?’

He pulled a face against his own situation.

‘The bank owns it and me.’

‘Oh, Mick.’

‘I know. So. I thought maybe I could tell Connie while I’m here and perhaps if she doesn’t want to come home you would keep her for the weekend.’

‘Would you like me to tell her?’

‘I’ll do it myself. Could I have the room for a few minutes and would you send her in?’

*

Connie came into the room as though she would be bitten when she got there.