Miss Appleby's Academy (8 page)

On the evening of their betrothal party the fires were small, the food was modest. Nobody else seemed to notice. Emma did not think she betrayed herself. Her brother came to her smiling and said he had known all along how sensible she would be, just as she had always been. He kissed her cheek, the first time she could ever remember. She wanted to scrub her face with nettles.

The party finished and they went home. She was first upstairs, wanting to rid herself of the stupid dress which made her look ridiculous. She thought of Verity’s idea of her bridal gown covered in more roses and felt sick. She took off the pearls and the earrings and strode into her sister-in-law’s bedroom to replace them. When she opened the top of Verity’s lovely wooden jewellery box she was taken aback at the glitter of diamonds, rubies and emeralds.

She put down the pearls and then in her mind she saw herself taking the box itself and running away in the night, and just as she took the box in her hands the door opened and Verity came into the room. Emma put down the box very carefully.

‘I have just put the pearls back.’

‘My grandfather brought them from some far-flung place where the boys dived for them which is why they are all different. They mean a great deal to me.’

‘But you have other jewellery which you wear.’

‘It is all from my grandmother. She loved rubies and sapphires too, and I have a lovely diamond necklace which I never wear. It would be quite out of place in Mid Haven, but Laurence has promised to take me to Boston in the spring and there I will be able to buy new gowns to match. Such finery,’ Verity said. ‘You must come with us. The Judge I’m sure could take time away. We will go dancing and shopping and stay in a fashionable hotel. What do you think?’

It was the first time Verity had made her feel like an equal.

‘It sounds perfect,’ she said.

There was to be no sleep for Emma. She paced the floor, sat by the window watching for the dawn and wondering how she would live out her life in this place with these people. When the dawn finally came, she made up her mind. She must steal Verity’s jewellery. All she had to do was walk into the room after she had packed a bag, secrete the box in her bag and leave.

She could not do it. There must be another way to come by sufficient money to get her out of here.

*

The following day she approached Laurence in his study. It was Saturday, he was working at his desk at home and she said that she needed some money. She did not like to ask, but there were some gifts she wished to buy for people who had been good to her. He looked puzzled and she hated that she had to ask, that he had not offered.

‘I’m sure the Judge will be more than generous when
you marry. I have so many people to keep, I can’t afford to be open-handed.’

Emma was stung. ‘He has shown no signs of it so far,’ she said, and then wished she hadn’t.

Laurence frowned, but she was so angry that her cheeks burned. She felt she had put up with so much from Laurence lately.

‘That would hardly be delicate.’

‘I doubt anyone would call the Judge delicate.’

Laurence’s face darkened and she thought how little he was like their father.

‘Don’t you remember what our parents were like?’ she said, she didn’t care now, she was beyond that. She wanted to try to summon any regard that he could ever have had for her; she wanted to probe beyond the distance where he had put himself. ‘They were happy together. Do you really think I could be like that with a man twenty years older than I am?’

‘I can’t see what difference it makes.’

‘How would you feel if Verity was sixty?’

‘That’s quite different.’ He was not looking at her and his mouth had gone thin.

‘And what is the difference?’

‘I’m surprised you need to ask.’

‘Tell me then.’

‘I’m not going to do anything of the kind. You forget yourself.’

‘You’re the one who has forgotten,’ she said. ‘We used to talk about home—’

‘This is the only home I know.’

‘You treat George as though he doesn’t matter because he’s Irish, yet our mother was Irish, Kathleen McLoughlin.’

Laurence’s eyes blazed though he said nothing, and that was the first time that Emma thought they had eyes the same colour, deep green like emerald fire.

‘Her parents left Ireland for a better life, just like our parents left Durham, to make things better for us.’

‘And they did,’ Laurence said.

‘And now you’re destroying what there is between us by insisting I marry that old man.’

There was silence. Emma was stunned at herself. What on earth was she doing, challenging her brother like this? She wanted to run from the room, she wanted to cry, ached to, or at least move her gaze from his, but she wouldn’t let herself; she held his eyes with her own.

‘I have insisted on nothing,’ he said softly. ‘I’m trying to help you, I’m a better man than my father.’

Emma wanted to hit him.

‘How could you say such a thing?’

‘Because it’s true. He was never as good as you thought he was.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I went through all his papers after he died and some of them made very pretty reading. Believe me, Emma, I want you to marry a good man who will look after you.’

‘What papers? Where are they?’ Emma was reminded of the last conversation she had had with her father. She
had not forgotten what he had said about wishing that he had behaved differently.

‘I burned them.’

‘You’re a liar!’

He moved. She thought he was going to come around the desk and hit her for the first time since they had been small children, and she thought at that point if she had moved too, if she had shown fear of any kind, he might have done it, but she stood there.

Nobody said anything for so long that Emma began to tremble. She couldn’t control it, her whole body was in shock. He picked up a pen and threw it down again and he looked at it and at the desk and then back at her and he said quite clearly, ‘I have never lied to you, whatever you think of me. I burned the papers because I didn’t want you to find them. I didn’t want you to know what kind of a man he was and I wasn’t ever going to tell you, and even though you accuse me of awful things now I won’t.’

‘Why not? Why should you try to shield me from the truth if you think it’s so, and what kind of being do you think I am that you should take from me the right to know?’

‘Because I care for you,’ he said, and that was when Emma cried.

*

Emma was even more angry now and determined to leave. Laurence had treated her like a possession, like something he could control, and he had talked of their father in that
awful way. She thought how happy they had been as children and she wondered how he could do such a thing. She had made him angry and he had not cared what he did or said.

The next day she went into Verity’s bedroom and lifted the lid on the jewellery box. Verity did not even lock it or put away the valuable things. She had so much trust, and why should she not? There was little enough crime in New Haven, no one had much worth stealing. When the people went out to church they did not lock their doors.

There was a further problem. Such distinctive pieces would surely arouse suspicion should she try to sell them locally, yet what else could she do?

Frustration became her main mood. Emma put the pearls from her mind, but the idea surfaced again when she went to bed. She could not steal from her family. Her worse self told her that they had stolen from her – her house, her future even. That was petty, she argued. She fell into a doze about an hour before they usually got up and it was as if the almost sleepless night had made all the difference. When she awoke from this doze she could see everything clearly before her. She had no alternative; they had left her none. She waited until Laurence had gone to work, until Verity was gone to the shops with a brief goodbye, and then she went upstairs.

Emma could not believe the person who picked up the pearls. Further over on the window ledge was a box into which Laurence emptied the loose change from his pockets, and since there was a good pile she took that
too. She stowed the pearls in the bottom of her suitcase and she put only what was really necessary on top, a few clothes, fewer books, her mother’s pearls, she didn’t see the irony quite, and then she left. It would be some time before they knew she was gone. Verity was going to have lunch with some friends and she would no doubt stay there half the afternoon, gossiping. The roads were dry and the streets were deserted. She took the first train to Boston which was the nearest place she could take a ship for England.

Boston was so big that it frightened her, but she found her way to George’s school and her heart lifted. She longed to see him, he came home for such short periods and no matter what she said or did he had nothing to say. Things would be different now, Emma thought resolutely.

The school was a lovely place as schools go. It was laid out on generous grounds, the campus covering a large hill. The buildings were grey and there were plenty of grassy places for the children to play games.

She was directed to the principal’s office and impressed upon him that she would very much like to see her nephew, she had come so far and indeed his aunt was very ill and one could not say such things in a letter. The principal was all kindness, yes of course she must spend the rest of the day with George and bring him back after tea.

The boy who came into the principal’s office was almost a stranger: taller, thinner, he looked older and his face was set. He did not smile or look anxious or seem pleased to see her. He mumbled some form of greeting and did
not look her in the face. It was as though he had become resigned to his fate and no longer cared. He was not interested in why she was there, perhaps she had just wanted to see him, such things did happen at prep schools, she knew.

The principal said little except that he would expect George back at six. Emma was euphoric for a few moments. The minute they were outside and walking past the triangle of grass towards the school gates George stopped. He looked away at the playing fields.

And then he said suddenly, but with vehemence, ‘I wish you hadn’t come here. It makes it worse. I’m in trouble all the time. I hate team games and I hate math and—’

‘George—’

Still he didn’t look at her. ‘I would rather have been in that awful little cottage than here, at least I would have been with you, but I can’t because my Aunt Verity wrote and told me you’re going to marry that smelly old man and I’m to be sent to live with other people. I knew how it would be. I just wish you hadn’t come, that’s all, because I already know and I don’t want any tea and you can just go home and marry that – that fat old bastard and I don’t care. I’ll go and live with other people and I hope I never see you again!’

Bastard was the worst word he could think of, she knew. He was trying to shock her, and suddenly he was all child, he didn’t look so big or so old. He was about to run from her, she thought she heard the intake of breath that was almost a sob and he lowered his eyes as children do when
they are about to cry, so she said quickly, ‘I’m not going to marry him.’

George didn’t look hopeful, he didn’t even look up.

‘I’m not going to live in the cottage either.’

That was when he looked at her, light beginning to dawn in his eyes which still gleamed with unshed tears.

‘I hope you didn’t leave anything valuable when we came out because you’re not coming back here. We’re going to run away.’

He didn’t believe her, she could see for a few seconds, and then he looked dubiously at her. ‘How can we do that and where to?’

‘We’re going to England, to where I was born, to find my family, to some kind of life which will suit us better than this.’

George hesitated for just a second. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

She booked them into a small hotel. They did not eat in the dining room where she thought a single woman and a boy might be remarked upon; they walked a long way before they found a tea room, and there they had sandwiches and cake. She only hoped she had sufficient money to get them to where they were going.

*

She had worried about it, had carried the pearls in her pocket onto the train, but she might just as well have had a sign which read ‘I have stolen jewels from my brother and his wife’, she was so certain it was obvious on her face, but nobody noticed. That was the thing about trains:
nobody looked at you, nobody talked to you, nobody saw anything or anyone. Nobody heard how hard her heart beat, so that her heart and the train went together, and that in the end was comforting.

She was a different woman by the time she got to Boston and its intricate streets, by the time she had gone into the first jeweller’s and told them a story about her husband dying: ‘I need to sell these, they belonged to my grandmother.’ She offered the pearls and saw greedy eyes.

She came out of the shop when he made her a low offer. She walked a long way before she came to another jeweller, and this time she was more nervous than she had been with the first because his response was the same: he offered her a small sum. Despairing, she almost came out of the shop, but as she opened the door to leave he called her to come back and then he said apologetically, ‘I am sorry, ma’am, I did not realize how fine they were and I could give you a little more.’

He had a better face than the first man, she thought, or perhaps it was just that she needed him to be a finer man.

‘They’re valuable, I know they are.’

‘You’ll find with jewellery that when you buy it it’s expensive; when you sell it back to a jeweller it’s worth very little.’

‘I could go to a pawnbroker.’

He shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t do as well.’

‘I need the money and I will find someone who will pay,’ she said, and he looked at her once again and then
he went into the back of the shop and came out and he counted out the money in front of her.

She wasn’t sure whether it was enough, but what could she do? She thought he was right and that everyone would cheat her and the more desperate she looked the worse it would be. She picked up the money, stuffing it into her purse.