A Song Twice Over (42 page)

‘So you have turned schoolmaster again, Daniel.'

‘One takes what comes to hand. I don't expect it to last long.'

‘No. I expect not.'

He saw that she was living in cramped but comfortable surroundings. Luxury, he knew, for her. He saw that she was busy. In control. Beautiful. A woman who seemed the natural extension of the girl he had met on the open deck of a boat from Ireland.
His girl
. Not his woman, of course, although the certain knowledge of that did not stop him from wanting her.

‘Is the shop doing well?'

‘It is. For its size. And as soon as I can get rid of the miserable old skinflint of a grocer next door it will be doing better. The moment his lease is up then out he goes, down comes the dividing wall and
I
move in.'

‘Yes. Very good.'

‘Yes. So when you are headmaster of a public school, Daniel, send your wife to me and I'll dress her like a queen.'

‘I doubt if any schoolmaster can afford a queen, Cara.'

‘No. I suppose not.'

He left her, feeling bruised, exhausted, finding the school-house almost a refuge although he did not plan to hide, nor even to go on asking himself why he had taken this step. He was here. He had agreed to it and had no intention of letting that brave little brown girl down. He would apply himself, therefore, to discovering those bright, quick minds she wanted, no easy task and one which gave him little pleasure since his instincts were not scholastic, his patience by no means inexhaustible, his knowledge of working-class children below the working-age of nine even less than he had imagined.

Miss Wren, his predecessor, had done little more than hand out scraps of material to the girls and slates to the boys, setting the male sex to practising their letters, the female to hemming and tacking and stroking gathers. A realistic goal it began to seem to Daniel when his first attempts to instil into them a spirit of enquiry were met by an apathy which may well have stemmed from undernourishment and overcrowding, but which struck him as impenetrable nonetheless.

But.
‘I know you will succeed, Mr Carey,' Gemma Gage told him.

He doubted it. Was success of the kind she envisaged even possible with these little mites who seemed in far greater need of good beds and good dinners and a motherly woman with
time
for hugs and kisses and to delouse their heads and wipe their noses, than a man like himself with a short temper and a classics degree? And furthermore, as he quickly discovered, children of that age bored him. Yet he had stated publicly and loudly, over and over, his belief in the right of every child to an education. Of what use, after all, would be the People's Charter to a people who could not read it and who, having won the right to vote and make laws, could not write them down? Education – how often had he said it? – was the best weapon a man had against exploitation, an essential ingredient of the Liberty and Equality he so prized. And so now, being faced with the raw material of humanity and the sadly tedious business of instructing it not in the glorious Rights of Man but the Alphabet, what else was there to do but get on with it as best he could?

He worked hard. Hating the routine, of course, as he'd always hated it. Deciding, more often than not, that he was wasting both time and talent. But he had done that often enough before – too often, he knew full well – and although he had no intention of staying long, never losing for a moment the sense of those trains steaming in and out of their stations, ships gliding smoothly from their moorings, he nevertheless delayed.

He owed her that. Steady, quiet-eyed,
hopeful
Mrs Gage, the very portrait of strait-laced middle-class womanhood whose audacity in employing him had aroused his curiosity. And, having glimpsed the beautiful husband, the stern father, the exquisite, ambitious sister-in-law, the child-mother in her background, she had also aroused his compassion. Poor little brown girl. How could she be happy with them? And if this was the only escape she could find, then he – who understood escape – would do all he could to help her.

Not much, he supposed. And not for long. But what he could.

Inevitably he saw a great deal of her. She came, quite regularly, to read aloud for a valiant hour or two from the story books of her own childhood. She came, sometimes, on cold mornings, with cans of hot soup packed in hay boxes or, when March and April had turned to a warm Spring, a dusty, stifling June and July, with baskets of oranges and lemons. Every Friday evening he spent an hour at the manor in the little circular parlour she used as a study, reporting to her on the week's progress or lack of it, acquainting her with the names and natures of any new children – colouring it all with the vivid paint-brush of his imagination, for her pleasure, when the reality seemed too pale – while she, sitting behind her battered oak desk, listened intently, never giving him orders but making suggestions, asking his advice and often reading into it innovations
he
had never thought to make; deeply and seriously interested in everything he had to say.

And whenever she invited Mr Ephraim Cook, the mill manager, and his wife to dinner – perhaps twice a month – along with a few other academic or musical or ‘social reforming'guests to whom Linnet and her mother referred as ‘Gemma's oddities'she would include Daniel too. Delighted – as she made no secret – to have him at her table. Delighted to see him welcomed by her other friends, most of whom she had met through the Ephraim Cooks, as one of themselves. Delighted, above all – he could see it very clearly – to have this new circle of acquaintances who were exclusively her own, on no more than nodding terms with her mother and not even that with Linnet.

But they were not alone together for any appreciable length of time until an evening towards the end of August, a Friday when, coming as usual with his weekly report and looking forward to presenting it this time since he had unearthed, at last, a boy with a talent for drawing and a girl whose mathematical memory had astonished him, he found her as usual in her little circular office. Quietly awaiting him. Accustomed to waiting. Trained for it, as all women of her class were trained to sit placidly, passively indoors, ready to make the best of whatever was brought to them from the real world outside. And because tonight his news was good – although he needed her to tell him to what use a girl pupil might put a mathematical gift – he could hardly wait to lay it at her feet with all the flourish he could contrive.

She deserved it. Not that it would amount to much in the end, he supposed. Unless the boy could be diverted from drawing trees and flowers to engines and industrial machines. Whereas the girl, who came from a desperate family in St Jude's passage, must certainly be destined for the mill at nine and maternity at thirteen unless Mrs Gage should bring about some drastic alteration. Could even she, with those steady brown eyes, convince a family of half-Irish tinkers that one of their
girl
-children deserved a higher education? He would give a great deal to be present when she tried.

‘You look very pleased with yourself, Mr Carey.'

He began to tell her why, noticing, not quite at once, that she was dressed to go out yet seemed in no hurry to do so.

He paused. ‘Am I detaining you?'

‘Oh no. I was to dine at the Jacob Lords but Amanda has had her baby sooner than expected. I was already dressed when the message came. Fortunately my cook is very even-tempered and doesn't
seem
to mind getting something ready at a moment's notice.'

And so engrossed did they become in their conversation, so pleasantly did the time pass, that it seemed entirely natural to them both when she invited him to take pot-luck with her in the dining-room.

‘I have given cook carte-blanche, I must warn you, so it could be anything from Yorkshire puddings to Irish stew.'

‘Or both together?' he said. ‘They might blend very well. Why not?'

And because he had meant nothing by it, because it had been merely the first thing that came into his head, he did not remember, until later, that she blushed.

The table, of course, was exquisitely arranged with the crystal and silver to which Gemma had been accustomed every day of her life, the meal turning out not too badly to be mutton chops in onion sauce, cold custard tart, fruit-cake and cheese, quality and quantity filling up the spaces where imagination had been lacking. And since Daniel kept no regular meal-times, eating when the opportunity presented or simply when he happened to remember, he was able – to her evident pleasure – to do her food full justice.

‘Do have a little more, Mr Carey.' She served him herself, heaping his plate with tart and cream, as anxious to nourish him as so many other women in so many other places had been. He knew the signs. His lean, dark looks, his air of hungers never really stilled, appetites never fully satisfied, had always tended – to one degree or another – to make women want to heal and nurture him. He knew – with those other women – where it had led and how it had ended. Yet, because this was the serious-minded, faintly unhappy, admirably well-intentioned, thoroughly responsible Mrs Gage, he did not believe it could come to that.

He knew, of course, that sending him her brooch had been a gesture not lacking its element of romance. He also knew – how could he not? – that her interest in him contained its whisper of an attraction which seemed appropriate to a woman who had been reared in total ignorance of her sensuality and taught, instead, to replace it with sentiment. The feeling, he supposed, that some medieval lady in her ivory tower might harmlessly extend to a knight-errant. A kind of dalliance, no doubt. And yes, there had been times, lately, when he
had
flirted – slightly, easily, because it came naturally to him. But touching her had never crossed his mind. He did not believe it had crossed hers.

And, in that case, being perfectly willing to play any role she might allot him, knight-errant or wandering minstrel or court jester, whichever should please her best, he allowed himself to bolt his food with a schoolboy relish he knew – because other women had told him – to be charming, relaxing readily into the atmosphere she created. The house which she had made
her
house, the warm, dim room with its unexpected pools of light scattered like green and topaz and purple jewels through those shadows of deep, polished brown. Her brown hair so neatly parted, so plainly coiled on her short neck, her shoulders looking small and square, not fragile in the least but nevertheless vulnerable above the low neck-band of a brown satin dress embroidered, here and there, with fleurs-de-lys in gold.

Her brown eyes watching him, steadily, as he watched her; a quietness falling.

‘What a pretty dress,' he said rashly to break that quietness, although he knew ‘pretty'was not the right word for it. Handsome, he supposed. Unusual, with that coppery sheen to the material, the simple, probably beautifully cut skirt and wide sash with its golden lilyflowers making her waist – now that he looked at it – seem smaller, the wide, puffed sleeves giving an almost fashionable droop – that air of vulnerability, he supposed – to her shoulders.

A dress which softened the resolute stiffness of her little body and which had a plainness he recognized as elegance.

‘It suits you perfectly.'

He had never paid her a compliment before yet she took it very calmly.

‘Thank you. It is not at all new. Heavens – it must be the first dress Miss Adeane ever made me.'

‘Ah …' He should have thought of that. Too late now, though. She had seen the recognition in his face, heard his exclamation; although there was no reason, after all, to suppose him unaquainted with his fellow Irish. More surprising if he were not.

‘Do you know Miss Adeane?'

‘Yes.' To lie would be to make more of it than was strictly needful. ‘And her family.'

‘Family?' Leaning an elbow on the table, her chin on her hand in a gesture of friendliness and spontaneity, – almost of familiar ease – Gemma was greatly interested. ‘How amazing. In fact, I rather think, how
sad
. I have known Miss Adeane for something like three years now without being aware that she had a family. I always assumed her to be – well –
alone
.'

Had she meant, ‘I assumed her to be
free of all that
,' he wondered? But then, did she know the private circumstances of her own parlourmaid or the dour man who drove her carriage? Probably not.

‘No. She has her mother with her.'

‘Does she really?'

‘Oh yes – a rather pretty and very tender-hearted little Frenchwoman who does exactly as her daughter says …'

‘But that is Madame Odette, who is in the shop sometimes …'

‘Yes. Mrs Adeane's name is Odette.' Seeing her delight in this glimpse through Cara's back door, there seemed no harm in giving her full measure.

‘But how extraordinary. I had simply no idea they were mother and daughter. They are not alike.'

‘No.' He would have to talk about Cara eventually, he supposed, to someone. Why not prove to himself now that he could do it with calm? ‘I suppose Miss Adeane must resemble her father, although I have never met him. He ran off to America some years ago and left the three of them stranded …'

‘Three?'

‘Yes.' He had not intended to tell her this. Nor did he wish to do so now. It was simply that he felt an even stronger wish not to deceive her. And he trusted her too. ‘Miss Adeane has a son – about five years old.'

‘And her husband?'

He lifted his shoulders in a brief shrug.

‘Oh – I believe he may have died.'

She smiled, her eyes very steady again. ‘And I believe you think me incapable of understanding, without recourse to my smelling-bottle, that she may never have married at all. I am hardly so naïve, Mr Carey.'

‘I am very glad to hear it, Mrs Gage.'