The Madwoman Upstairs

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To my beautiful parents

CHAPTER 1

T
he night I arrived at Oxford, I learned that my dorm room was built in 1361 and had originally been used to quarantine victims of the plague. The college porter seemed genuinely apologetic as he led me up the five flights of stairs to my tower. He was a nervous man—short and mouthy, with teeth like a nurse shark—who admitted through a brittle accent that Old College was over-enrolled this year, and that the deans had been forced to find space for students wherever they could. This tower was an annex to Old College. Many tragic and important people had lived here before me, apparently: had I heard of Timothy the Terrible? Sir Michael “the Madman” Morehouse? I shook my head and said that I was sorry—I was American.

The porter, Marvin, dropped my bags inside. The stairs had left him breathing heavily, and a thin line of sweat appeared in the crease on his forehead. He was not making direct eye contact with me, I noticed. I wasn’t sure if this was due to sheepishness over the condition of my room or because he had nearly choked over my last name when I first introduced myself and hadn’t quite recovered.

I made a quick inspection of the room. Whoever had quarantined the plague victims had done a thorough job. The walls were covered in peeling red paint that gave the chamber the look of a giant, bloodshot eye. In the corner was a boarded-up fireplace and a horrible painting of a woman, who, by the look of it, was halfway through drowning.

“Well, Miss Whipple,” Marvin said with forced optimism. Fuzzy, uneven scruff covered the lower half of his face like a failing garden. “Will you be happy here?”

I didn’t know what to say. This was not a dorm room; this was the sort of place people dumped you when they secretly thought you were insane.

“Very happy, thank you,” I said. “That woman in the painting—who is she?”

He looked past me. “The Governess. Beautiful, isn’t she?”

“May we get rid of her, please?”

Marvin’s eyes widened as though I had suggested castration. “Pardon?”

“She reminds me of someone,” I explained.

“Miss Whipple, she is part of the tour.”

I said, “Ah,” not understanding the reference, and we suffered a small moment of silence. I could tell he wanted to leave—his upper lip was twitching like a small, impatient alarm. I didn’t blame him. I wanted to leave too. After one last look around, he reminded me about the meet-and-greet tea in the quad tomorrow, gave me a hasty good night, and closed the door.

With Marvin gone, I was alone with
The Governess
. Something, surely, was not quite right. From the two nights I had spent in college during interviews last December, I knew that everyone else’s rooms would not reek of feet and damp meat. Some had windows. The room in which I had stayed even had friendly blue walls. So friendly, in fact, that during those two nights, my room was the watering hole for all the English literature candidates. We sat on my bed and looked at the pale blue walls and bonded over the fact that applying to Old College was one of the more miserable things we would ever have to do. I felt at home in that cozy blue room—at least, up until Shelly from Portsmouth asked me whether I was really a Whipple, and did that mean I had an automatic advantage over the rest of them?

My cheeks burned. Shelly from Portsmouth was a leggy redhead whose arms were covered with mysterious moles. At the time, I said, “Of course not.” Insulted, I had also added a “Good night, I’m a little tired.” But the next morning, I wondered if Shelly from Portsmouth hadn’t been right. It was clear from the moment I walked into my interview that Dr. Margaret King from the Old College English department wanted nothing more than to interrogate me about my family. I was impressed that she managed to restrain herself for as long as she did. She was a pinched woman whose crooked flamingo legs ended in two pointy black shoes. There was a girlish smear of lip gloss on her lips and front tooth, and she smelled of artificial watermelon. Her interview questions had pertained to Aphra Behn, about whom I knew very little, but judging from the sort of novels scattered around the room—
Belinda, Love in Excess, Emma—
I assumed that she was a woman, a writer, and dead. I launched us into a discussion about proto-feminism and offered a borderline insightful comment about male hegemony, but it wasn’t enough. The pointy shoes started to tap.

“And, of course,” I said, “Behn’s work paved the road for the Brontës.”

It may not have been true, of course, but it didn’t matter. The name Brontë was like a drumroll. The pointy shoes stopped tapping and one of the flamingo legs crossed over the other, freeing the right foot to wag.

She had found her excuse to launch a series of questions at me—all of which I had been asked before, all of which I knew how to answer well.
How did the lives of the Brontës affect the vitality of their writing? Yes, that’s very true, Miss Whipple, interesting insight. How did Emily Brontë revolutionize the modern conception of the novel? Yes, that she did—right, right.
The interrogation began to acquire a more personal nature:
I gather you’ve read the press surrounding the Brontës, especially about their surviving family? Oh goodness, Tristan Whipple was your
father
? Well, I admit I did wonder whether he might be a relative. . . . If you don’t mind my asking, were you two close? Ah, I see. A fascinating man, your father.

Then, as it always happened, Dr. Margaret King became Maggie again, a schoolgirl ogling her literary heroes. The Brontës pulled their age-reversing magic trick and there she was, a wide-eyed teenager who wanted nothing more than to traipse over the brooding English moors like Catherine and Heathcliff. I nodded and smiled and prostituted my ancestors until, together, we’d exhausted every nuance of
Jane Eyre
.
But what does the wedding veil
mean
, Miss Whipple? Oh, goodness, how clever! Is that what your father thought too? Oh, I’m being so insensitive—forgive me, dear.

I usually became a “darling” at this point in the conversation, but “dear” was okay too. Whenever I became a dear, I fell mute. A dear couldn’t explain what she really thought about her relatives.

When King stood up at the end of the interview, I did too. Even in heels, she was several inches shorter than I was. She smiled, but timidly, like a brainy child who’s forgotten how to make a friend.

“Well, Samantha,” she finished brightly, “are all Americans this tall?”

“Just the tall ones,” I said.

I headed for the door. She called after me, “May I ask—do you also write?”

I fumbled for an apology and told her that no, the talent in my family had unfortunately been squandered in the last century and a half. My father had been the exception, not the rule. She walked toward me, hard heels clanking on hard tiled floor. I thought she might like to say something else, but she just opened the door and tilted her head to the left, just like my mother used to do when I did something right. But it wasn’t I who had impressed her. As my sneakers plodded back down the polished hallway, I once again tipped my hat to my three dead female ancestors. Even in the grave they managed to exert the power I could not.

The cell phone on my lap gave an aggressive buzz, alerting me to three new e-mails. Apparently, my tower had wireless internet, but no windows. The first message explained that the meet-and-greet tea party would begin at 10:30 a.m. in the quadrangle, and no one was to walk on the grass, if you please. The second e-mail provided me an excuse not to attend: my professor—a Dr. James Timothy Orville III—had arranged a preliminary meeting tomorrow morning to discuss the objectives and requirements of our tutorial and to supply me with a list of important deadlines, which I would be left to peruse at my own convenience. He signed his note
O
.

The last e-mail was from B. Howard from the trusts and estates division of the British National Bank. The blood drained from my face. B. Howard had already called once this evening, after I landed at Heathrow. Ours had been a brief conversation, in which she informed me that now that I was at Oxford it was time to discuss my late father’s somewhat confusing will.
I know that this must be painful for you, Miss Whipple,
she told me over the phone,
and I gather you have only just arrived in England this evening—yes, Customs will be straight ahead, surely; just follow the signs—but as you know, this is a sensitive matter and now that you will be at Oxford it must be discussed in a timely fashion. Can you still hear me, Miss Whipple? Miss Whipple?

At the time, I explained that I was in a terrible rush and that I would call her later. Really, I had just been sitting by the baggage claim carousel, chewing on a soggy British sandwich. The thought of discussing my father’s will turned my heart inside out, in the way of all unhealed despair. I had a vague and unpleasant idea of what was in that will, and it was not something I wanted to discuss—not with Marvin, not with Maggie the Mortician, and not with B. Howard of the British National Bank.

I walked to my bed. Beneath my feet, the old floorboards creaked and cracked like old bones. On the rectangle of wall directly underneath
The Governess
, I noticed a series of scratches and carvings, etched deeply into the stone. There were gouges and stick figures and what appeared to be several Roman numerals. I was half expecting to find the name Byron, but the only legible letters were the initials
J.H.E.

I took a seat. My gaze rested upon
The Governess.
For several moments, the woman in the painting and I stared at each other in unpleasant recognition. She was clutching something in her hand—a folder? A book? The Bible? Behind her was a half-submerged mast, on which sat a bird, dark and large, wings flecked with foam. In its beak was a gold bracelet. The bird was staring at the Governess, but the Governess was staring straight at me. She had bright eyes, thin features, and the expression of a caged animal. I remembered her well. I had read about her, once upon a time—or, at least, I had read about someone very much like her.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity,
she once told me from within the pages of an old, terrible book
. They must have action, and if they cannot find it, they will make it.

I couldn’t look at her any longer. I switched off the lamp on the nightstand and fell into darkness.

Sunshine has a way of softening the recollection of the previous evening. But when I walked outside in the morning, the sun was nowhere to be found. The sky was a dull shade of concrete.

I had dressed in three layers of black for my first meeting with James Timothy Orville III. In his e-mail last night, he had introduced himself as a research fellow in nineteenth-century British literature. I sincerely hoped his interests extended to the twentieth century as well, because I had made clear in my personal statement that I had a well-developed vendetta against the Victorian era. If James Timothy Orville III turned out to be a George Eliot enthusiast, then I might have to quit here and now. There would be no switching professors and there would be no switching courses. Old College was unique (and famous) for its rigidity. Whereas other Oxford colleges offered classes and seminars in addition to tutorials, Old College students suffered one hour-long session each week, alone with a single tutor. The hope was that the intensity of the relationship would trump any diversity of instruction. What it really meant was that my entire education and mental health rested in the hands of one person.

I walked around the perimeter of campus, making sure to steer clear of the lawns. (I had once read that the last student who walked on the Old College lawn was chased off by a porter wielding a stick.) I found the exit gate, which, as Marvin had explained last night, was not the same as the entry gate, and please don’t confuse the two. Several members of the college staff were transporting tablecloths inside the quadrangle. The meet-and-greet tea, I presumed. I was relieved that I didn’t have to go. Orientations only highlighted my dissimilarity to other people my age. My father had homeschooled me for as long as he was alive, which meant that I had spent the first fifteen years of my life living in a pleasant anachronism. His idea of a Friday night was to fill up the paddling pool on the front lawn, stir up a margarita, and read me Shelley until it grew dark. He disliked Shelley—it was actually my mother’s middle name—and Dad would read every verse with dripping sarcasm.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I BLEED!
It was the sort of joke only the two of us found funny. I couldn’t remember why we needed the paddling pool.