Miss Appleby's Academy (36 page)

Laurence sat gazing at her and Margaret altered herself,
maybe deliberately, Emma thought, and became the person she really was. She held herself differently, she began to speak in a soft southern voice about what she had done and where she had been. She had travelled through Europe as a governess; she had been luckier than most women, she said, because of the family who took her on: the husband was a diplomat and there were three children.

She had been with them for twelve years. She had lived in Greece and in the Far East, she was good at languages, she said, and Emma could not help thinking that this woman, with all her knowledge and experience, would be a perfect teacher for the school. Emma waited, as she did not want to discompose her guest, who was now showing herself as she really was: interesting and learned.

Mick Castle was taking George and Connie to Carlisle.

‘I don’t ever want to go much further than that,’ Connie announced when they were waiting for her dad to come for them.

George said nothing. He hadn’t thought much about it before. He looked away toward the dale. He ignored the fact that she was looking at him. He knew the anxious way she did so since her mother had gone away. She seemed to want to grab people to her, not actually, but it seemed to him that when she went to see her dad for a day or two she almost fell in the front door of the academy, desperate to get back to his Aunt Emma.

It had surprised him that he felt the same and when he and Mr Castle were together he would move closer, hoping that in a way somebody might think that Mr Castle was his dad. He needed a dad and Mr Castle was not so old that he couldn’t have been. He was much younger, George realized now, than his and Emma’s father had been. That was comforting.

They stood in Carlisle cathedral. Connie was always restless and wanted to see everything immediately but
George stood there silently with Mick and hoped that passers-by saw them as family and thought, ‘What a nice lad’. He was proud to be there with Mick.

Aunt Emma said that he must always call ‘Mick’ ‘Mr Castle’ but in George’s mind Mick was closer to him than that.

Mick didn’t go after Connie now, had learned not to, George thought, sure that she would come back or that they would catch up with her. George liked Mick’s pace but he also liked that Mick took them to a lovely hotel right in the middle of the town where George was given a room of his own. He had never thought such a thing might happen.

Mick stood tall and in perfect command of himself. They stood there for so long that in the end Mick put a hand on his shoulder and smiled into his eyes and said, ‘Shall we go back and have tea?’

George nodded, hoping he didn’t look as enthusiastic as he felt.

‘And dinner later.’

‘Can we do other things?’ George couldn’t help the words and when they were out and Mick’s gaze searched his face George pretended he hadn’t said anything and looked away but Mick prompted him.

‘Like what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Howay man, George. Do you want supper too?’

George shook his head and smiled at the attempted humour.

‘Nothing, it’s just that …’ and he blurted out what he had not known he was going to say but what he realized had been on his mind as a request for some time.

‘I couldn’t maybe come to work with you some time, could I?’

Mick looked surprised.

‘It isn’t all like the Black Diamond,’ he said.

‘I didn’t mean like that. I want to see what you do.’

Mick looked even more surprised and then the look became pleased and the smile lit his gaze.

‘In the spring, when the weather gets better, you could come round the hotels with me, but you know your education is the most important thing.’

‘Aunt Emma says that education is not what happens inside the classroom, everything is part of it.’

‘Aunt Emma has a habit of being right,’ Mick said, and then, as though he was rather pleased at the idea, ‘Are you sure you want to, George?’

‘I think I’d like to start helping you, ‘George said.

‘You could,’ Mick said and they went back to the hotel.

*

Through the sunshine in the cathedral the stained-glass windows showed blue, red and yellow upon the floor. Mick liked being there with the children. They stayed in a good hotel. Connie was getting used to these, but George had never stayed in such a place so Mick had the joy of watching him dress neatly to have dinner in the dining room and order what he liked from the menu; though few children stayed up to have dinner Mick
insisted, and the staff would not deny him since he spent money.

He showed them the castle and told them about the history of the place, making it sound exciting and bloody, it having been a border stronghold through many conflicts. George discomposed him slightly by saying that Mr English had told them all about this, but Mick was able to tell them more and could not help being quite proud of this.

He told them about the Lake District and promised that when they had more time they could climb the mountains and walk around the lakes and over the high fells where the Herdwick sheep, coffee-and-cream-coloured, grazed, and see the wild ponies. He wished he had had longer: he wanted to take them to all kinds of other places and he wondered if there would come a time when he could get away for a week.

He was sorry to have to take them back to the academy. He had soon grown to hate the circumstances of his life. He was obliged to see Emma while he could not even justify a private conversation with her. It was easier for him not to meet her eyes, not to hold conversation, and he thought she felt the same because she dismissed him with relief each time he went from her.

He comforted himself that the children had enjoyed their weekend and he had liked being with them. If that were to be the future then there were worse things. He found his work troublesome as he had far too much to do. Every time he left his office he felt guilty.

He didn’t like being in the house alone. For him it was
a place where he could remember being happy. All that was gone now. It was as though a kind of cold perfection had taken its place; everything was cleaner than it had ever been. Mrs Hobson left food for him, which very often he did not eat; he usually ate at the small hotels which he had bought. It was a good way of checking their efficiency.

He often stayed in Durham. Remembering how he had hated city life so much when he was young he now took pleasure in the places he had been to with his parents. He could not believe how much he missed them now that he had nobody but a child to himself.

He took some pleasure from working in front of the fire in whatever room was available to him, and in Durham there was always the river in the background. He could not regret Emma, but he did regret that theirs was an impossible love and he tried to accept that it was likely he would never be able to spend any time with her.

It was the biggest loss of all, to have her so near and not be able to touch her. He hated going to the academy now: it was a particularly cruel form of torture. Neither did he think about Isabel because he had fallen in love with her at a dance in Durham and in his mind it was always now a tawdry thing. He felt like a fool.

His work became so important that he wished he did not have to go back to the country so often, and he determined to find somebody to take charge of the pubs there. At weekends he would take Connie and sometimes George into the city, and the sounds of it, the river and the street cries and the cathedral bells, were easier to bear than the
low noise of the wind through the bare gorse and scrub which had always been home.

*

Christmas was somehow more difficult than ever. He tried to bribe Connie with ideas about going away, but she looked appalled and said that she wanted to be here with George and her friends and the two Miss Applebys and Uncle Laurence who did party tricks (she had heard), and that Jack and his mother had also been asked to the academy for Christmas, and Mr and Mrs English.

‘What on earth would you want to leave your friends for at Christmas?’ she said.

He was obliged therefore to face Emma on Christmas Day. He had been dreading it. He made it easier for himself by buying presents, something he had never done before. He had not had enough money to buy special things when he was first married and since Isabel would never go to see people at Christmas he had watched other people making merry, dressing up for parties and wishing one another all the best.

On Christmas morning he saw his child open her presents and for the first time fall in love with a dress. It was the same blue as her eyes and had a big white sash, but he had made sure to buy her many books, about the Romans in Britain (which she insisted on taking to show Mr English), novels which he thought she might enjoy and travel books about Italy so that she could imagine where her mother was.

She wore the new dress and was much admired by
everyone at the schoolhouse, so she even did a twirl and then she distributed the gifts which she and her father had bought between them: a lovely red sledge for George, which she insisted they would both fit onto; dolls dressed in velvet for the two girls; and a thick shawl for Mrs English because she felt the draughts around her shoulders. Mick had bought Mr English a bottle of single malt whisky.

Mick had not thought to make a friend of the schoolmaster, but he found that Mr English was rather like his father, gentle and learned. He bought chocolates for Emma, handmade from the city. They had made up a food hamper for Jack and his mother. Ulysses and Hector had a special dinner and romped in the garden.

That morning a lot of people came to the schoolhouse. He was delighted to see Sam and Marjorie, Mr and Mrs Ogilvie, drinking ginger cordial, friends Emma had made from the Methodist church and several of the business people, including Mr and Mrs Barron and other shopkeepers who had been kind to her. Mick had never thought to see the place so full of people eating, drinking and making lots of noise.

In the afternoon they played games. It snowed a little and the children went outside and threw snowballs at one another, and before it got dark a snowman appeared with coal eyes, a carrot nose and a red scarf which Emma had hunted everywhere for.

In the quiet of the evening the snow stopped and the stars came out, and his child held his hand and told him that it had been the best Christmas ever.

New Year was a series of drunken revellers causing problems both in the city and in the country, and after it he felt nothing but relief that it was over.

*

The Three Tuns had become his retreat during the week. Tired of Mrs Dexter’s polishing and Mrs Hobson’s dreadful food he kept a room there for himself and enjoyed being waited upon and even having various business meetings in what had been Henry Atkinson’s office.

It was here on a cold February Friday, when he had decided that trying to get back to the country for the weekend was a waste of time, the ice and snow were bitter even here in Durham, that he had a visitor.

It was early afternoon and almost dark, the fire blazed bravely in the grate and the woman he had taken on to deal with the intricacies of his deskwork, Miss Calland, came in and told him in her flat, expressionless voice that Mr Atkinson was there.

He looked up from his papers in surprise. The last thing he wanted was to see this man. Henry Atkinson would no doubt tell him that he had been back to London for Christmas, that he and Isabel had made a home in some wonderful place in Italy, perhaps even that she was here in Durham, at the County, just across the street.

It made his heart beat hard and uncomfortably; he did not want to be reminded of the past and of the bearing it seemed to have on the future. He just wanted to be left alone with the enormous amount of work and the knowledge that he had done his best for his child.

Most of all there was a huge hole and in it a gaping mouth of fear, all fangs and red blood, which told him that Atkinson had come back for his child, that they were going to take her away from him and that no law in the land would be on his side when she was not biologically his child, when her mother and real father could make a home for her in another land so that he might never see her again. It was the one thing that he knew he could not bear.

To lose Connie now after what had happened made him want to run away, hide in a cupboard, not face this man who had from the beginning thought nothing of him; this man had taken almost everything, and here, it seemed to Mick now, he was coming to take the last thing of all, the most important.

He listened to Henry Atkinson’s footsteps on the stairs and couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know whether to get up or whether to sit where he was. The fire had gone down and the room was cool. Outside people walked through the icy day and went about their business. He wished he was one of them and not about to meet once again the man who had seemed to steal away from him any happiness.

Mick didn’t look up as the door opened. He didn’t want to meet the man’s eyes. It was cowardly he knew, but he was shaking, cold, despairing. All Mick said was, ‘Come in,’ and when Henry, did so, Mick was surprised and horrified by what he saw.

Henry Atkinson seemed to have become an old man. He had not looked that way a few months earlier, but his
face was now grave and grey and his hair almost gone. He was as neatly dressed as ever in sombre clothes, but his body was shrunken as though it had caved in under impossible pressure. His clothes were much too big, his skinny white wrists protruded from his sleeves, his eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks yellow. The smile was something he deliberately held on his face as though he had grown used to putting it there.

He gazed around him. Mick followed his look. The office was neat. It surprised him too. Not a paper was out of place, and through the mirror on the other side of the room he could see himself: expensively dressed, clean-shaven, glossy hair, bright eyes (if he had been a dog, he thought, he would have been said to have been in peak condition). Hector would have been proud of him. He thought of Hector and Ulysses with some dismay. He moved around so much that Ulysses had gone to live with Emma too. It seemed cruel and incongruous that he could not do the same.