Miss Appleby's Academy (7 page)

‘No!’

‘Sit down.’

Mick finally forced himself into a very uncomfortable chair across the desk from where his friend sat just like a doctor, watching carefully for any visible signs, for any clue.

‘Isabel’s drinking.’

‘How much?’

‘A lot.’

‘How much is a lot? Two or three glasses of sherry or—’

‘A bottle of brandy at a time, a bottle of vodka. Connie keeps running off and … being difficult.’

Sam didn’t say anything and Mick wasn’t surprised. He stared out of the window to give his friend time to get used to the idea. There was nothing but the backyard beyond, big square flags for its floor, the washing line stretched across from corner to corner. A great wall
surrounded it, keeping out the fell, the streets, and no doubt the wind.

‘She wanted more children and it didn’t happen. I shouldn’t have come here.’ He would have left, but Sam eyed him, quelled him.

‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ Sam said gently.

‘I don’t think she cares for me any more. I think she wishes she hadn’t married me.’

‘And do you wish you hadn’t married her?’

Mick glowered at him. After a few moments Sam said, ‘People have holes in them which they try to fill and sometimes they can’t have the sort of love they crave and so they fill themselves with other things. With some people it’s relatively good stuff, the church or gardens or embroidery, and with others it’s stuff that destroys them. Either way it’s the same thing, obsession, passion, people try to disappear because life isn’t what they want or they don’t feel as if they should be here, as if they deserve it. Would you like me to talk to Isabel?’

Mick shook his head.

‘She mustn’t know I was here,’ he said.

Emma could not sleep. The Judge called the following day. She was not surprised he did so, she had expected it. He must have wondered at her rushing away like that when he had made her such an offer. She made sure that she was not at home and was obliged to listen to Verity, when she finally returned mid afternoon, saying that the Judge had been there. Verity was agog to know what was happening, but Emma made an excuse and said that she would go to see the Judge as soon as she could.

Laurence said heartily over the evening meal that he and Verity were having a dinner party: the guests were to be married couples only. She wouldn’t mind having her meal on a tray in her room that Friday evening, would she?

To make it worse, one of the couples was Mr and Mrs John Elstree. John had been one of her suitors in the period before her mother had taken ill and needed care, but then he went away south for a while and came back with a bride.

The night of the dinner party, with a plate of cold food and a jug of water in front of her, she watched the carriages arrive and the people alight, saw the men in evening dress and the women in lovely gowns, and in particular Amelia Elstree in blue, her blonde hair so pale against the gathering
evening light and her soft southern voice as gentle as a stream as she spoke intimately to her husband and he smiled at her.

Emma could not help thinking of what happened beyond the bedroom door, of the caresses and the kisses, but most of all how each could turn in the night and be reassured that the person they loved more than anyone in the world was close and they had children from their marriage, people who looked like them, who would go on for them, who would own the earth and satisfy the longings which people had.

Emma got up and closed her door and then her curtains, but she could hear the distant irritating tinkle of laughter. The smell of good food wafted up the stairs and she had seen the champagne brought up from the cellar, the claret decanted, the best cutlery and china washed. She had caught a glimpse of a huge white linen cloth being thrown over the dining table.

After dinner there was music, as Verity played the piano. Emma could not help feeling satisfaction that Verity’s playing was so bad. She stumbled through a Beethoven sonata which would have been so easy for Emma, but they applauded anyway because they were her friends. Though it was late when the guests left Emma lay awake in her bed, her stomach having somehow turned into a stone.

*

She was so upset that she did not sleep. If she had been married to the Judge they would have been there together, part of things. It was as if some tide were sending her
irrevocably towards an old man and his brood of children. She thought of his bed and felt sick. Finally, when the dawn broke and somehow reassuringly the birds began their chorus, she fell into an uneasy sleep.

She could hear her mother calling to her in that beautiful accent: ‘Bairnie, howay in now. Supper’s on the stove.’

She could see the birds in the clear air around the house, swallows or house martins, they had sharp wings and sharper flights, they made a swirling eightsome around the place, wherever it was, they swooped and dived and went up again, managing to avoid one another as though it were a dance, intricate and never to be seen again. Nothing could be repeated.

She could see the land way behind the little village. The moors were covered in a velvet purple and everywhere there were enormous bees, the kind that did not sting, round and furry and buzzing loud, going about their business as they had done for hundreds of years.

It was warm though the sky had cleared and the cold was coming down with the evening and she was running down the road to meet her father as he came back for his tea. He was reaching down for her. They were going home.

She awoke and there was a feeling of loss as though her parents had been so close to her, but she could hear the morning sounds downstairs, she was back in her brother’s house. She thought bitterly that that was what it was now: she had no place here. The only place she had was in Judge Philips’ house.

She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but
she could not though her mother’s voice and her father’s presence stayed with her until she finally roused herself to go down to breakfast.

Her mother had been of Irish extraction. Nobody here had been told of that, she did not think Laurence knew of it. Their mother had been taken by her family to northeast England, where they had lived in poverty as ironworkers and coal-miners. Her parents had come from the same small area. They had met when her father was teaching at the university in Durham and her mother was very young. They went for picnics into Durham in the summer, made sandwiches and lemonade and sunned themselves on the riverbanks.

*

The Judge was invited to dinner; it was taken for granted that Emma had accepted his offer. He made a joke of asking her again in front of them. Her mouth was so stiff she could say nothing.

Emma watched him chewing his food. His teeth were mostly gone, those that were left were brown with age or black with decay, and his mouth opened so that you could see what he was eating, his tongue was coated yellow and the saliva in his mouth frothed. He drank so much that his cheeks went shiny red. He wheezed when he got up from his chair and his knees clicked because he was so overweight that they objected to carrying him.

Verity brought up the subject of the wedding, but the Judge said that was women’s business and he would leave it all to them. Verity spoke to Emma later of how they
would decide what sort of stuff she would want for her wedding dress and what kind of flowers would bloom. The Judge said that he had envisioned a wedding soon; he did not want to spend time idle while his bride-to-be lived just across the town.

When it was late Verity said she was going up to bed and Laurence called Emma, as she would have gone too, and they went into the library and he closed the door. Emma was surprised. Was he going to offer her a way out? Had he finally understood?

‘I can see that you are worried about this marriage,’ he said slowly. ‘Is there something else in your life? Is there another man?’

Had Emma been in a different mood she would have laughed. How stupid. How could there possibly have been anyone? There was nothing in her life beyond the house and the garden and a child she considered hers. She would have settled for that, but it seemed that she was not allowed to.

‘I thought for a moment that you were going to refuse the Judge, that you were going to take hysterics, and then I remembered how sensible you have always been and I’m proud of you. A hysterical woman is not something to be lightly considered. I know that Mabel Thomas was such a woman and we all know where she ended.’

Emma’s breath was all over the place. Her brother was threatening her. Her hands trembled. Her whole body shook. Mabel Thomas was in an institution for the mentally ill. She had been forcibly married to a man three times
her age, whom she did not care for, and somewhere between the church and the bedroom she had screamed and thrown herself on the ground and was deemed to have lost her wits.

She had been eighteen and like a cow, Emma had always thought, was given by her parents to a man who had a great deal of money. There had been another man, Emma thought, though she didn’t remember the details, and Mabel Thomas had not been allowed to see him again because he was young and poor. She was taken away in a locked carriage and gradually she had faded from people’s memories.

‘Marriage is right for you, Emma,’ Laurence said, smiling a little. ‘It is just that it has been such a long time in coming. You will become used to it in a short time; you will wonder why you had no husband and house of your own before this and then you will be happy. And in time you will learn to love and respect the Judge and his children.’

She said nothing, at least nothing she remembered afterwards. She made the kind of noises which her brother thought passed for compliance and then she wobbled her legs up to her bedroom, closed the door and leaned back against it.

‘You must come and see the boys now that it is settled you will be their mama, and we will announce our intention to the world,’ the Judge had said, and so she made a visit to his house. She had been there many times before, but she looked at it differently and was horrified when
she could see herself there imprisoned as this man’s wife and regarded as nothing more. Panic set in. She had to get away, she had to get out of here.

Emma could not think how to put any plan into action, she felt as though she had mud up to her neck and was about to be swallowed completely.

Verity insisted that she must have a new dress for the betrothal party, and Emma went along with the idea because she could not think of a single reason not to. In the meanwhile she told herself that if she did nothing she would become the Judge’s wife because she had no means of leaving.

She had no money. With a jolt she realized that all she owned were her clothes and a few books which people had given her over the years as Christmas and birthday presents. She was trapped here, suffocating.

The Judge’s six children were noisy and ran about unchecked every time she saw them. They ignored her as they ignored all adults, and the Judge, being a man who controlled things outside his home, did not strive to do so inside it, so that everything was turned upside down and in spite of the maids protesting, the boys ran in with filthy shoes, threw their clothes on the floor and turned up when they liked for meals. Emma almost regretted that she would not be there to bring order to such a place, and then she shivered for having even thought it.

Also it had not occurred to her that the Judge was mean. He did not buy her a betrothal gift of any kind, and a quick look at the household accounts showed her
that he spent no penny he could avoid. So much for his ideas that she should have everything she wanted. Even her wedding ring was to be second-hand. The Judge boasted of how he had bought it very cheaply for such a good ring when he went into the jeweller’s in town.

Verity seemed to think Emma would look her best in a white dress for her betrothal party. It wasn’t actually white, it was cream, with horrid little pink flowers on it that not even an eighteen-year-old girl could have carried off, but Verity insisted and Emma was so distracted with the idea of not being able to get away and how tired she had become that she didn’t care enough to argue.

On the night of the betrothal party, however, she saw herself in the mirror and thought how ghastly she looked. Verity gazed at her and frowned. ‘You’re very pale. Do you have any jewellery to go with the dress?’

‘I have a string of pearls.’

They had been her mother’s, but when she put them on they looked worn and old and yellowed, rather like she was.

‘You can’t wear those,’ Verity objected, and she found some pearls which even Emma realized were expensive. ‘They were my grandmother’s. You will be careful with them, won’t you? They are real.’

They were exquisite, large and had a diamond clasp, and there were pearl drops for her ears. Somehow, Emma thought, they made the dress look worse and herself look older, and as she saw the image in the mirror she thought that Verity had a great deal of jewellery, that her grandmother
on her father’s side had been a wealthy woman and Verity, being the only granddaughter, had inherited all of it. That was when Emma’s face burned because she imagined how much money that jewellery was worth, and she dismissed the idea straight away but it came back later when she had had the congratulations of all the Judge’s friends.

They were his age for the most, at least the men were. Several young women were his friends’ second wives, and they all had babies. Most of them were having a child a year or every two years, and they also had their husband’s children from his first marriage. They looked tired, were very quiet, and none of them seemed happy though they smiled and greeted one another gaily enough.

They were dowdy, the lot of them, she thought, as though they no longer cared about such frivolous things as dress. Their husbands ignored them, clustered together and talked business and smoked cigars and drank a great deal. Emma was inclined to drink a great deal too, but she was not offered of course – the ladies seemed to take nothing stronger than lemonade.

The Judge’s house was large and the rooms were filled with dark clumsy-looking furniture. The maids slept in the attic in horrid bare little rooms which reminded Emma of the cottage. They must be freezing in winter and stifling in summer. The single beds were old, and there was something so awful about a single bed, she couldn’t bear it. Emma was horrified. Her father would not have kept servants in such places. That was another
thing she thought she might have achieved had she been staying: she would have fed them well and given them heated rooms and decent clothing and presents for their families, but it could not be enough to hold her – she could not give up her liberty even to save other women.