Miss Appleby's Academy (37 page)

Henry Atkinson was stooped, skinny, his face had gone into lines so deep that one sagged over another. Mick got up to shake his hand instinctively, but Henry Atkinson waved him away with a cane Mick had not noticed until then.

‘How is the business?’ Henry asked as they sat down.

It gave Mick some satisfaction to be able to say, ‘Thriving.’ He had been to see the bank manager that very morning and all was well. He was on his way to being successful. It made him want to laugh. Was that business? Was how successful you were determined by your misery? If so, then no wonder the hotels and pubs were making money.

‘I’ve never seen this office so tidy.’

Mick could have told him that he had one of the tidiest existences in the world. Everything was neat, slotted into place, he ran things to the minute, even to the second sometimes. It was driving him mad.

Henry sat back as though tired to his very bones, and then he looked Mick in the face for the first time.

‘I thought you were in Italy,’ Mick said.

Henry shook his head. ‘Isabel took ill as soon as she left here. I thought we would get away, I thought we would have what we wanted. I thought she wouldn’t drink when she was with me. One of my children was taken ill and I went to London. That was a mistake. Isabel could not bear my attention to be away from her even for a few hours.

‘We were staying at a hotel there, just for a day or two, but as soon as I was gone she started to drink and by the time I got back she had forgotten how to stop. I saw then what you had gone through. She thought and I thought that I was some talisman, but it wasn’t true.

‘She told me that she loved me, but not nearly as much as she loved the taste of brandy. I found it impossible to stop her. I did think that if we had married when we had met this would not have happened, but I cannot be sure of it now. I did everything I could, I got doctors to see her, I tried taking it from her, exactly as you tried to do. She blamed you for it and that was not true either. I can see how hard you fought for her and I’m sorry.

‘Within days she had gone to nothing. By the time that she died she didn’t want to live any more, she hated
herself so much. Why have they no cure for such a thing? People should not have to live and die like that. I held her in my arms, but she didn’t want me, she didn’t want anybody. I hadn’t known how much she despised the very self that she was and how she did not really believe that she was worthy of love, even of life, that she thought she did not deserve to be here.’

His voice broke. He was a man heavy with grieving. He was alone in the world with his loss, left in the most solitary place of all with nothing to save him.

Mick was glad he was sitting down and that they were in the privacy of his office. He couldn’t have done with anybody seeing his countenance at that time and the awful thing was that he and Henry thought exactly the same. Why was it that with so much perfection in the world people were fatally flawed? Even a pine cone was perfect in its symmetry, but people were condemned to miseries which the Church would say were of their own making.

He didn’t think this was of Isabel’s making. She had been disappointed. It seemed such a small word, but disappointment had started it. It was as though she had been born into the wrong place at the wrong time and had not been able to get out. This had led to boredom and boredom had led to depression and depression had led to despair. In a way, he thought, Isabel had destroyed herself because she could not bear her life.

Had it been that the dream of her time with Henry Atkinson had been spoiled because it was not perfect and she had realized? Perhaps, he thought, we are not meant
to have those things we dream of, they are best left in the air, longed for but not gained.

*

Mick did not go to Emma to tell her that his wife had died. At first she wished he had, and then not. She had the news from a whey-faced Jack who had been to the Black Diamond when Mick finally arrived home, two days later than he had planned. She had been anxious and then told herself it was just that he was working so hard.

Jack had not even greeted the children, he had come straight through into her study and without asking. For the first time he had closed the door. She had not realized that Jack understood the relationship between herself and Mick Castle, but she saw then that he did.

The lad said, ‘I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, Miss, but Mrs Castle – the one that ran off – she’s dead. That Mr Atkinson, he came special to Durham to tell Mr Castle. She died of drink and now it’s all over the village, and Mr Castle he has a lot to do and he said to me would you keep Connie over the weekend and then he would come to the academy and tell her about her mam.’

Emma didn’t remember what she said, just that she felt faint, possibly for the first time in her life, and had to sit down: Jack had to steady her and he went off to get Margaret, who made her a cup of tea and sat by the fire with her and said nothing though she looked hard. Emma couldn’t tell her about it; it was not her story to tell. She felt guilt, she felt dismay, she felt sorry for Isabel Castle
and for the life that was so wasted, just like Nell’s life. Were women never to have a decent place on this earth?

Margaret was a discerning woman. She took the children and left Emma to drink her tea; it was the only thing she could do. Emma kept her tears for when she was alone that night and there she cried long and hard into her pillow. The final sting was that Isabel was dead and she felt responsible. She knew it was nonsense, that she had not ruined Mick’s marriage. She remembered first meeting him: he had looked like a scarecrow, the Black Diamond had been such a mess and Connie had been lost amidst the wreckage of her parents’ marriage.

Mick came to the academy. It took all Emma’s fortitude to greet him formally in front of other people and then she gave him the study to tell Connie about her mother.

Emma made sure she was not within earshot. They were in there for a long time and in the end she walked the dogs around the garden in a freezing wind and then suddenly the golden-haired child burst from the door, screaming her name. She hurtled through the bitter day and flung herself into Emma’s arms, and Emma had never been as glad to comfort a child since she had first found George.

*

After that Mick no longer came to the academy. It was just as well, Emma’s sensible voice told her. She became glad of the day-to-day things: of the work which she had taken on, of her friends and family. Laurence had taken to Margaret as if she were Nell, and was happy to leave her and go to the Black Diamond on cold winter afternoons
and drink by the fire and come back and find her there waiting for him.

*

It was the longest winter of Emma’s life. The snow and the ice meant that on many days they could not go far. She would read by the fire if she had any leisure time and she was glad of Margaret’s company. She did not think she could have stood it without her sister’s help.

One bitterly cold day she sat down at her desk in the study and composed what she knew would be her final letter to Laurence and Verity. Through her new pupils paying in advance for their education she now had the money which she hoped was sufficient to pay for the pearls. She no longer wanted to say bitter things to her brother. In her honest moments she knew that her half-brother meant more to her than her true brother had ever meant. He had worked his way into her heart with his neediness, but also in the way that he was good with the children. He played games and listened to them reading, and though Emma knew that sometimes he did not fully understand what they were doing or saying he could always join in because he himself was in some way still a child and she loved him for it.

So the negative feelings had gone and she could tell Laurence and Verity that she was happy here as she had not been in her earlier life, that she had found family and friends and that her school was beginning to do well.

During March the snow was worse than ever, making everyday life difficult, and she longed for the spring. It
seemed forever before the thaw arrived – it was almost Easter by then and she had seen nothing of Mick.

When Connie went home for the weekends Jack took her and she did not talk of what she did at home, nor say that she missed her father. It seemed to Emma that every time Connie came back to her there was nothing but relief and gladness in her eyes, that at the academy she had found the home that she had lacked, and Emma could not help being glad of that and of thinking that it was something she had managed to achieve.

In the spring finally Emma had a good reason to ask Mick Castle whether he would call. She sent a note to him and he replied saying that he could not get away for several days but he would call the following Tuesday.

It should not have mattered, she told herself, but every day until Tuesday was a fortnight. On the day chosen she watched for at least an hour before he was due and finally, half an hour late, when she was beside herself with tension, she watched him stride in at the gate.

He was like somebody from another world, not the man she had fallen in love with. He moved briskly, cleanly somehow, as though he could not wait to get on to the next thing, whatever it might be.

She went into the study. You could not call it hiding, she told herself. Margaret was there to receive him and she heard their voices at the door and then the scuffle of feet and Margaret brought him into the little study and went straight back out again and closed the door.

Neither of them said anything, and neither looked at
the other. Emma wasn’t even sure they had greeted each another as the study seemed completely silent, but then Mick said impatiently, ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Not exactly.’

He waited until she sat down before he did so. She glanced at him, sitting on the edge of his chair as though he couldn’t rest.

‘It’s about Connie,’ she said.

Now they looked at one another. She had his attention. He frowned.

‘I thought she was happy and doing well.’

‘She needs to move on.’

There was a moment before he sighed and then he relaxed and let his gaze roam the ceiling in frustration.

‘She needs to go away to school,’ Emma said. ‘She is extraordinarily clever and we have taught her all we can. She needs the best possible education so that she can go to university—’

‘How likely is that?’

‘Things are changing,’ Emma said. ‘Universities allow women to attend lectures, not to take degrees yet, but perhaps they will soon, and I believe Connie has a great future. Don’t deny her it because she’s a girl.’

That made him smile. ‘As if I would dare, sitting here,’ he said. ‘She’s very young to go away.’

‘She’s beginning to get bored, and you know what happens then. She needs to be with people of her own age and ability, so that she isn’t the only bright spark in the class. She could do so much. It would be wrong not
to send her. Mr English has some ideas about this. I thought that perhaps he could come to the house and you could talk about it when you are free.’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,’ he said bitterly. ‘Do tell him to come at his convenience.’

At that moment the door burst open and Hector bounded in, followed almost immediately by Ulysses, and having not seen their idol in weeks they both threw themselves at him so that Mick was immediately covered in black Labrador. Instead of getting up and being more bitter, as Emma thought he would, he tried to hug both of them together and she heard an indistinct voice from black fur, saying, ‘My boys, my boys.’

The door being open Connie and George also came in, Connie demanding, ‘Where on earth have you been? You never come and see us,’ and George saying, ‘You promised we could go to Edinburgh as soon as the weather got better and the weather’s been better for three weeks and you haven’t said anything.’

‘I’m busy,’ Mick protested, trying to disengage himself from the dogs.

‘You always say that,’ Connie said.

‘And the weather is awful.’

‘Nothing but excuses,’ Connie said. Emma could hear her voice in the child’s, that was one of her expressions.

Connie had sometimes been very detached since her mother had died – one of the reasons why Emma thought she should go away to school. She wasn’t altogether convinced that the child was happy.

George went back out with the dogs, but Connie remained, looking from one to another and finally declaring, ‘I am not going anywhere.’ She looked hard at Emma. ‘I heard you talking to Miss Margaret last night and I am not leaving my dad. I don’t care if I never learn another thing. My mother is dead and he has that awful Mrs Hobson making him eat fish in parsley sauce all the time which is why he stays in Durham.’

‘Connie—’ he said.

She fixed her burning gaze on him, her eyes glazed with tears and her mouth wobbling dangerously. ‘You don’t understand. I want you to be happy and if I go away is that going to make you happy?’

She would make a fine lawyer, Emma thought, if it were possible, and it would be.

‘It’s your happiness that matters to me,’ he said, and that wouldn’t get him anywhere either, Emma thought.

‘And you think I’m going to be happy in some awful place like Jane Eyre went to?’

‘It isn’t like that.’

‘I don’t think it would be much better. Cold rooms and having to wear the same knickers for days on end. Miss Margaret has been to such places and she told me.’

‘Connie!’ Emma reproved her lightly.

‘Well. What is the point in having children if you’re going to send them away from you? I won’t go, I won’t ever go. It’s totally ridiculous.’

Another of her own sayings, Emma thought. Connie was acknowledging in the silence which followed, Emma
knew, that she had scored points here.

Connie said what was next on her mind. ‘Miss Margaret has made mince and dumplings for dinner with carrots, so you don’t have to go home to tepid fish,’ and she left the room.

‘Do by all means stay,’ Emma’s manners prompted her.

‘I have to get back to work.’

They got up and went into the kitchen. Everybody was sitting around the big table and steam was rising and two seats were vacant.