Schooling (20 page)

She stands, brushing grass from her skirt.

Betts squints up to place her against the sun . . . Back at half past, Evans. And don’t find trouble.

A stuffed rabbit plays a tune on bagpipes. Through the shop window, the muffled strains of Auld Lang Syne. A short man appears by her side, smelling of attic. No, smelling of mothballs. Mothballs in a closet full of dresses useless in Maine a closet full of shoes.

Well that’s hardly an Easter tune . . . he raps on the window, encouraging the rabbit to come to its senses.

One day in London she rode double deckers from Knightsbridge to Deptford. Back to Notting Hill. Hammersmith, Chiswick, Richmond, Twickenham. Sat up top, in front, chin on hands. Watching waiting women spot the bus, the small glad twitch when it came into view.

The man appears inside the shop pointing out the rabbit’s deficiencies to a salesclerk.

The landscape changed, became green, then grey again. It was the beginning of a feeling she never had in America.

Gilbert finds her on the steps to the library, looking at a parking lot . . . Nice view.

I’d like to go to Greece someday.

I thought we were off to France . . . he sits next to her.

Greece is white and clean like this, don’t you think?

Supposedly Athens is filthy. Rabid cats, begging children— Rome then.

Are you enjoying the Romans?

She looks at her shoes, in them, Arabia. I like the desert because it is clean. To have a battery of horses at your command.

A motorcycle pulls into the parking lot across from them.

Gilbert nudges her . . . Why so quiet? Trouble with the Romans?

No more than usual.

I saw you watching that funny rabbit in the shop.

A short man came up next to me and I looked at him, and I thought this man has a head flat enough for chess.

That’s very funny.

It’s not funny. It’s cruel. It’s Easter and.

And what?

Mr. Stokes said when I look at him it’s like being caught in crosshairs. Maggone called me petulant. I had to look it up. She asked why it is that I can’t take delight in things.

That’s absurd. If you could see the way your face lights up when you speak of the lepers in Ben Hur. You take delight.

Not the right way, not like the others.

With a naïveté you mean, delight in—

I’m a cynic you said.

I was warning you. It’s boring not to trust people.

If you always think they have motivations, you mean?

Exactly . . . Gilbert fans out his fingers . . . I’m getting dishwater hands now that you don’t wash up in the lab anymore . . . he reaches for her hands . . . Did yours survive?

She tries to pull away. They grapple. He wins. For a moment he considers her ravaged palm, the skin hard and cracking. Blooms of dried blood.

What is it?

Eczema. From the weather changing.

Hum, has it changed? . . . he touches the ropeburn marking her wrist . . . And this, also eczema?

Yes.

Lightly outlining the patch of paler skin on her palm where it frills at the base of the thumb. He looks at her, they are close, huddled over her hand as if over a rare object . . . It looks painful. Don’t you have medication?

Bergamot. Borne on a breeze.

Mr. Gilbert.

Gilbert puts down her hand. Fi Hammond stands before them in her yellow pullover, hands on hips.

Mr. Betts sent me to find you.

Gilbert stands . . . Did he. Well, here I am . . . brushing off his trousers . . . I’ll do some research on your eczema, Evans. There must be a solution.

Spenning rushes up as they approach . . . Madame Araigny has arrived as has the Wharton boy . . . Spenning is sweating, almost shouting, a vaudeville of the scatty academic . . . They are collecting lunches. In a few moments Madame will be available to speak with your group about Tartuffe, Mr. Gilbert.

I don’t know if we’re ready for that yet.

Yes well when you are when you are . . . Spenning looks down at his tie, scratches at a spot then looks up at her . . . Rest and rust, Evans. Go join the others.

Moving away, back against a wall to look up up at the fan vaulting Thorpe at the Abbey orating
We must harken back to a time when a king
had the sort of power
the scalloped effect. At the low end, very small. For all Thorpe’s thundering Prayers, zeal steadily forcing one strand of hair over his forehead dooming him to spend his lecture taming it by hand or breath, for all his rabid hymn singing, Thorpe is exhausted. They are saintless, they have failed him
I beg you to imagine this nave
the words come again and again her ear against the shell his words lapping. That day after chapel. Finger tracing the wall behind her, the old stone. That is a lovely dress, he said. It was striped and together they looked out over the fields, cricket, hockey. She brought down her cuffs to warm her hands. She wanted things but it was enough that he was there next to her, that she knew about Rosie and he admired her new shoes from Father. An evening breeze delivered the smell of grass and was it for having just seen Father that weekend or was it the grassy smell stirring in her, England, a giving in. Gilbert’s hand tapping the back of the bench, a gladness for him, the evening and looking toward Follyfield, Brinton, the age of it all. Liking the shape made by the outline of School House and chapel. The smoothness of the banister in her hand on the way up to bed. Gilbert’s tapping hand kept tapping and the wind kept stirring the smell of grass, the landscape stayed the same but she saw the piano and railed against it all.

2

On the way to the Roman baths, she stops by a tree, hand against the bark to steady herself. They will think she’s been at the glue. To feel Bath bark, here she is, in Bath. And she will try, yes she will. Overhead, a tremendous whoosh. Running out from the park, she stumbles into the square. Above, a flock of swans fills the sky, a great feather bed soaring above Bath, erasing the blue.

3

On the way to the Roman baths, Betts and Owen Wharton catch up, smelling of smoke and coffee.

Catrine Evans . . . Betts asserts . . . I imagine one doesn’t find this sort of thing in your country.

Not any more.

Owen stops to pet a dog tied to a lamppost.

Don’t agitate it, lad . . . Betts shakes his head . . . It’ll garrote itself. I’ve seen it happen.

Owen leaves the dog. They continue on.

Actually it was an anecdote about a rabbit tied to a car. Child left it there a minute . . . Betts makes a face . . . That’s the thing about children, what is, simply is. Don’t yet have a polished sense of logic, of—

Hypothesis? . . . Owen smells his hand.

Foresight. A notion of What If. A child will think, if a car’s parked, why would it move?

Inability to extrapolate.

Precisely. You see it in the first formers, no detachment . . . Betts tears a leaf from a bush, absently tests it with his teeth . . . Poor bunny kept up as long as it could.

No doubt it avoided a certain death by myxomatosis.

There you go . . . Betts throws down the leaf . . . There’s the bright side, Wharton.

I don’t like dogs . . . she says quickly to rid the bloody rabbit image . . . They seem. Pointless.

They stare. The wrong thing to say.

Don’t they?

Betts smiles indulgently . . . Everything has a point in your world does it?

They protect you. Keep you company . . . Owen looks over her head to confirm it with Betts . . . They lead the blind.

I’m not talking about the blind.

What about pastries? Art? Not much point in most things if you follow that logic. Music, theatre. Dogs for dogs’ sake, after all . . . Betts walks faster . . . Don’t tell Shakespeare what’s pointless.

Yes, but you don’t have to feed him. Or smell his breath. Have him on your leg all the time needing to go out.

Betts stops . . . You’re right. Shakespeare is marvelously well behaved. You only take him out on your terms. There’s an essay for you . . . Betts looks over at Owen.

For Royal College.

Well, perhaps not Royal College.

And they laugh like old friends and talk about some lecture series and she falls into the role of mute dog-hater. They will dissect her afterwards, Fancy saying there was no point to dogs. There’s a girl with no detachment. A third former mind you, not one of the younger ones, but old enough to know about consequences.

I heard about a kid, a kid in America . . . interrupting their lecture projections . . . Who dropped a—a bowling ball off a—a bridge to see what would happen. Onto a car.

Ah . . . Betts looks confused.

In terms of detachment . . . switching between them to see if they understand . . . What you were talking about before, the rabbit. You see, the boy couldn’t understand that a person might be hurt. Because, like you said, he had no foresight.

What happened to the man in the car?

The man in the car . . . she picks at her hand . . . The man in the car ran off the road. And. They didn’t see what happened next.

They?

He, I mean. The boy. Never knew if the driver was hurt . . . again they look at her oddly . . . It happened to a friend of mine. A personal friend.

Well, personally . . . Betts picks up, Owen still watches her . . . I think it’s a problem of early attachment. Some children are too reliant on parents to make decisions for them. Especially moral ones. A boy drops a bowling ball because he has had no previous experience making decisions. Everything laid out before him, tea, bed, mummy with a dishcloth tied about the waist. Put that boy in the service, see what happens when he has a revolver pointed to his head.

An odd silence. Then old Betts is off and running on ex-pats, T. S. Eliot’s book of cats after all she is American, does she agree that poetry is in fact an escape from emotion rather than a headlong hurtle toward it. And while she’s turning that conundrum over, Owen’s getting pebbles caught in his treads. Finally they leave him stooping to scrape them out with a twig.

Upon reaching the baths she is the first to see the group, Araigny, Devon, Spenning, and most interesting of all far more fascinating than the English teacher’s fondness for poetry or Wharton’s for pebbles, or even Spenning cantering up in slow motion to ask if Betts wants to lecture next and where is Thorpe or should he himself talk about the baths for he can’t find his notes, what is equally interesting is the sight of Gilbert, jaunty, one knee bent, foot on the railing, leaning forward, smiling down, pointing out something to Fi Hammond who sights along his outstretched arm much as she herself has done on more than one occasion.

Old Spenning . . . Owen arrives . . . The man’s a gibbon . . . pulling her to sit on the wall next to him.

She reaches into her blazer for cigarettes.

What’s this? . . . Owen snatches the pack, launching it behind him . . . Smoking’s not in your character. I’ll have to have a word with Sophie Marsden.

Simon Puck lands under a nearby tree, staring beadily at them. Owen waves him away. . . . What are you seeking there in the dust, Evans? America?

No.

Then what are you up to?

Pebbles by his boots make the head of a man.

Careful of inventions . . . Owen glances over his shoulder at Gilbert . . . They’ll invent you back.

You don’t know what I’m thinking.

Let’s play a game. It’s called Hazard a Guess. What’s the date I think to myself. Hmm, what could it be. Hmmhmm. Now here’s a coincidence, looks like we’re coming up on Easter, and lo the girl goes gloomy. Why might the clouds hang on her so? What do we recall happening at Easter besides the resurrection of old whatsit.

She stands.

Owen yanks her back down . . . Resurrection doesn’t sound right. What else could it be, let me think, just a minute, it’s right on the tip of my—

Owen, please.

I’ve got it!

Don’t.

I’ve suddenly remembered what happened at Easter exactly one year ago.

Shut up shut up.

Your moth—

She turns, Betts, Araigny, someone.

Sorry,
bach
. No one interrupts me . . . Owen grins . . . Wouldn’t dare. Easter month. Your mother died at Easter, am I right?

What’s that, Evans, say something?

A fear. Fearful meditation. Sad mortality.

Well now, you see, that’s Shakespeare you’re quoting. And in fact, I’m asking
you
. Give yourself the speech for it, Catrine. Suit the word to the action and the action to the word, if you will.

I can’t.

Surely you know what must happen if you don’t. Why make yourself go through it.

I can’t hypothesize.

For god’s sake, you’re not a rabbit lashed to a car.

I can’t.

Open your eyes.

But she’s fallen asleep in the forest. She will wake with rabbit ears.

4

A man from the town appears wearing a peaked cap emblazoned with a crest.

Our resident expert . . . Spenning jabs him as if the man too is mesolithic . . . Mr. Reggio.

They all watch the man describe the baths, rounding his eyes though it soon becomes clear that the alarm is in fact impediment. The man organizes them into a line to drink stinky water from paper thimbles. Araigny wrinkling her nose in a petite French moue. Fi Hammond. The girl is clean you have to say that. White socks to an exact length and short so no need of constant hitching. The water tastes deliciously bad. White shirt tucked into skirt, yellow pullover draped over her shoulders as if after eggwater she might well engage in a set of tennis. Shiny hair girl, bergamot lass.

Guaranteed to cure any illness, after all it was rumored beneficial for Leprosy . . . pop-eyed Reggio circulates, refilling cups.

Like a garden party . . . Gilbert says it right into her ear, coming up behind her.

She starts.

We were interrupted earlier.

Sipping, she studies him silently over her tipped cup, taking in his long nervous fingers strumming the railing, the other hand grasping, that’s right, his waist, one knee thrust out to show he is relaxed, the sort of young master capable of joking with his students, of not taking it all too seriously. He smiles at her, she takes away the cup, looks into it. Listens to the song, Another outing, To paint this time, Somewhere with nicer food.

Don’t tell me that if it’s not true, Mr. Gilbert.

She watches him run a hand through his hair as he walks away. Don’t let go. In Howlands, struggling for portraits, the sound of his sleeve as he reached for the light. She can’t. Can’t seem to hold on.

Three steps away, Gilbert swings around . . . You like those lads in leather do you? Wharton, I mean. Best stay away from him. Another Paul Gredville if you ask me . . . Gilbert crumples his cup . . . Wednesday then.