Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych (5 page)

The vicar had a daughter. The vicar's daughter sang behind a hedge. The vicar's daughter sang like a linnet. She took a large book behind the hedge. She took a cup of overdrawn tea. Hours are always passing. The books are bound in buckram. The little book is mensuration. The large book, voyages and lives. The vicar's daughter sang. The poplars swayed. The vicar was afloat in the mill pond. His clothes were folded on a stone. The tea grew very dark and cold. The vicar's daughter climbed into the gig. Linnets sang along the roadway. Beside the manse, the children played with sticks and cords. They tipped her trunk. They dragged her dresses through the mud. They struck her face with clods. Hours are always passing. The large girl is Mistress Ann. The little boy is Master Charles. The vicar's daughter crawled into the fire. She held a little, singeing book. She chased the children through the mole traps in the garden. She ran behind the peat house. She followed sounds into the stables. The vicar's daughter climbed upon a three-legged stool. She cut the dog down from the beam. The dog sagged. The rope thudded on the straw. Weasels were nailed to the fence posts. The mole traps swarmed with flies. Down the wooded bank, primroses peeked from twisted roots. The vicar's daughter sang. She sat in the brook. The boy stopped kicking beneath her. The water felt good. The vicar's daughter let the water numb her hands.

Tamworth wiggles in her chair. She makes fists of her fat little hands. Ragbaby, says Tamworth. It wants ragbaby. She puts the fists to her ears. The squealing noise does not stop. Tamworth wiggles. The reddish lids twitch against the bulge of her eyes. Tamworth is grown. She makes a smell that comes from her lap in the chair. Her dress is bunched in her lap in the chair. The fabric is gray. It smells. She puts her fat little hands in her lap. She wiggles. I hear the air move in her mouth, through her lips. She is grown. Tamworth shifts in the nursery chair. Her thighs hang over the sides of the chair. She needs a new dress, a big dress, for the ball. There is a ballroom in the house. The house is grand. There are towers and there must be a ballroom. There is a music Master. He crossed the moat. He wore gloves. His coat split in the back like a bird's tail or the hoof of a pig. He had a fine high voice and he sang as he crossed the moat. He whistled as he crossed the moat. Tamworth must learn to play music. A lady plays music. A lady goes to a room. Not the nursery. A lady does not suffer the mess of the nursery, the smell of the nursery. A lady goes to a drawing room. It is called a drawing room. Beneath the ballroom of a grand house, there is a drawing room. There is a drawing Master. He carried paints across the moat. He dropped the paints into the moat and the paints lay on top of the water. Yellow lay on top of the water. Red lay on top of the water. Flies settled on the red. The drawing Master made paint with urine from the dairy. The cows lifted their tails and let out their urine and the drawing Master crouched beneath with a bucket. He carried a bucket across the field. The bucket billowed in the cold. In a cup, a clod. In a cup, a pour of blood. Red flies followed the drawing Master into the house. A lady sits at an easel. She licks the tip of a brush, the fine white hairs of the brush. She dips the brush in a paint. No, a lady does not. She does not dip. She strokes. She strokes a string. She strokes a string with the tips of her fingers. Her guests cannot hear her brats when they squeal in the nursery. The string makes a fine high sound. The drawing room is delighting to guests. It is filled with fine high sounds. There is no smell. There is a smell, but guests do not notice a smell. A lady does not notice smells. Tamworth must not study smells. Tamworth must study the different sounds of the strings. That is how a lady does not notice the squealing. When the wind comes from the dairy, from the fields of the farmer, from the lanes of the town, the open ditches of the town, the coal bins of the town, the earth closets of the town, when the wind comes down the staircase, across the mess on the staircase, from the nursery, from the crib in the nursery, there is a smell, but a lady does not say, There is a smell. A lady sings between her lips, which are open only slightly. She does not say, There is pus in the milk. There is ocher and water in the milk. There is piss in the paint. There is a bucket of piss behind the curtains. There is a drawing Master with my daughter. They are behind the curtains. There is squealing. They are squealing in the curtains. The guests are in the drawing room. They cannot see behind the curtains. Only from the orchard could they see behind the curtains, through the glass to the backside of the curtains. A lady pours the milk from the pitcher in the tea. I have failed in my lessons to Tamworth. Smells and rocks are not for a lady. Squeals are not for a lady. Tamworth must listen to the sound of strings. She must put her ear to the hole in my foot. She puts her ear to the hole in my ear and listens for the chiming, the pealing, the thin sound of metal striking metal in the hole.

I walk to the crib and touch the iron rails with my fingers. I look down at the crib, at the rags in the crib. The rags are piled very high. The squealing is very loud. I put my hand in the crib. I apply pressure to the rags. The rags compress. The rags compress. They are cold and damp. Nothing moves in the rags. Nothing moves. There is squealing. Give it ragbaby, says Tamworth. She gets out of her chair and crawls on the carpet. Her skirt does not cover her thighs. Spot crawls after Tamworth on the carpet. He pulls Tamworth's skirt. Ragbaby, says Spot, Ragbaby, but it is Tamworth's skirt, the folds of her skirt. I take the knife from the tray and stroke the rails of the crib with the knife, so that they make a high, fine sound, and I sing a note that is louder than the squealing, a high fine note. Make this note, I say to Tamworth. She struggles with Spot on the carpet. He has taken off his shirt to truss her hands. He trusses so her hands are palm to palm, and she slips her hands free. She shrieks. She hits with her hands. She kicks a leg of the rocking horse. She kicks a leg of the table. Spot laughs. His cheek spiders with cracked veins from the hit. He kneels on her thighs. Spot does not know how to truss. He does not know knots. He must study knots. Boys must learn knots. The nursery is damp and the smell is stronger. I drop the knife in the crib. I back away from the crib. I feel Tamworth's damp hand close around my ankle. I look down at her face. Her hair has come loose from her braids. The colorless hairs stick to the wet skin of her face, the pink veins that raise the skin of her face. The walls of the nursery come closer. They come closer. The nursery is damp and cold. A nursery is a crib with high walls and a lid. It is a crib of damp stone. I crouch. I cover my face with my arms. I am pushed against Tamworth and Spot. I am pushed against Tamworth and Spot by the walls of the nursery. They breathe hard. They move beneath me.

The tray is empty. The pitcher is empty. Flakes fall from the corners of Spot's mouth. White flakes fall. Tamworth rubs deposits from her teeth with the hem of her dress. The deposits are white. That is where the milk has gone. It has dried on Tamworth's teeth. It has dried in the corners of Spot's mouth. Children need milk. Children need milk to grow. On the carpet, there is narrow-necked bottle. It has a rubber nipple. It has a pigskin tube. I pick up the bottle. It has deposits in its narrow neck. The rubber nipple is cracked and hard. It is clogged with deposits. It smells. There is no milk in the bottle. Where is the milk? I ask. Where is the milk? There must be milk in the kitchen. There is milk in the moat. From the high window, I see milk in the moat. The moat is gray with the milk. The cook throws bad milk in the moat. She throws brown apples. She throws white scraps, the white scraps the Master cuts from the meat. The white things that crawl from the meat. The green slime that she carves from the meat. The blisters of meat. I see the blisters of meat on the moat. There are white flies on the blisters. There are black flies on the blisters. The moat is buzzing with flies. Things have died below the flies on the moat. They bump the flies from the below. The flies ripple up and down on the moat, the skin of flies on the moat. I could walk across the moat, on the thick skin of the moat. I could walk to the orchard. In the orchard, the Master lifted her dress. He pulled the skirt over her head, he covered her head. He covered the mess of her head. Her long pale hairs had blackened with fluids. He hid her hairs with the dress. He hid her face with the dress. He stroked her face through the thin cloth of the dress. Above, he stroked. Below, he jerked. The Master's dogs came around. The Master's dogs came around the Master. The Master jerked. The Master put his knees on the apples. He had a stick. He hit the dogs with his stick. The dogs whined. They climbed on the Master. They pressed against the Master. They pressed the Master in the apples. The dogs jerked against the Master. They jerked against the jerking back and legs of the Master. He swung his stick. He hit the dogs. They whined. The Master whined. Poor little dogs. The Master rolled over. He held the dogs. He held the dogs with his knees, with his elbows and knees. With his hands, he pulled the ears of his dogs. He stroked the heads of the dogs. Poor little dogs. They dripped blood from their mouths. They put their mouths on the Master's neck, on the Master's mouth. The Master opened his mouth. The dogs put their mouths on his mouth. They put their mouths on his chin and his mouth. The Master's mouth dripped with the blood from the dogs. She wiggled out of her dress. She uncovered her hair, her face. She crawled through the apples. She tried to climb the black boughs of the tree. She dragged a rope. The Master knelt beneath the tree. She stood on his shoulder. She hooked her leg around the branch. The Master pushed her fat bottom. She clung to the branch. I pushed her fat bottom. She dragged a rope. I gave her the farmer's rope. She knotted the rope on the bough. She swung down. She dangled.

The woodcutter had a daughter. The woodcutter's daughter was big like the woodcutter. Her arms were big. Her legs were big. Everyone said what a big girl the woodcutter's daughter, a very big girl. If only the woodcutter's daughter were a son, the son would go into the forest with his father. He would help his father cut the wood. The woodcutter's daughter did not go to the forest. She went to the town. She did the washing in town while the woodcutter cut wood in the forest. The woodcutter's daughter sat on a stool and did the washing. Water ran down the legs of the stool. The woodcutter's daughter wore a dress. The dress became dark. The woodcutter's daughter lifted her hands from the tub. Water ran down her arms. Water ran down her legs. Water ran down the legs of the stool. Water pooled around the tub. The woodcutter's daughter bent over on the stool. She gave birth to a son. The son was big. He lay in the tub with the washing and the crown of his head touched one side of the tub and the heels of his feet touched the other. He was a big son. The woodcutter's daughter took the son home, but the woodcutter did not come home. He did not come home from the forest. The woodcutter's daughter went into the forest. She found an ax in a stump. The metal of the ax was dark and there were hairs on the metal, white hairs that were the length of a man's hairs or the hairs on an animal. The woodcutter's daughter pulled the ax from the stump. She used the blade of the ax to cut the hairs on her head. She held the ax steady and rubbed her hairs back and forth on the blade until the hairs broke. The blade cut into the back of her head as she cut the hairs that grew in the back of her head. Blood ran down her neck. Blood ran down her shoulders. Blood ran down from her neck and across both her shoulders. Her dress became dark. She took off her dress. She put her dress on the stump. She took a shirt from a dark bush with red thorns. The red thorns had pulled white threads from the shirt. Beneath the brown leaves on the path, she saw trousers the color of leaves. She put on the trousers. She walked through the forest. She entered a town. The town had a baker. It had a butcher. It had a farmer. It had a man who boiled bones and a man who sold worsted cloth from a wagon and a man who removed what thickened beneath the tongues of chickens and horses. It had a blacksmith and a vicar and a rich man who owned a mill on the water, but the town did not have a woodcutter. The people of the town smiled when the woodcutter's daughter took the dark ax down from her shoulder.

The orchard is altogether changed. Where are the apples, the soft, rotten apples? The orchard is not brown. It is hard and gray. The walls are hard and gray. They drip. They are stone. The trees are stone. The trees have grown together. The faces in the knots of the trees are gray. Every face has an open mouth. The mouths are filled with fluid. The fluid drips down the walls. The pigs press around. They dig in the orchard. They grunt. They squeal. They move against me. They push with wet faces, hard, wet faces. The teeth are inside the faces, behind the thick skin of the faces. They have white hairs on their faces. White hairs cluster around their eyes. They press against me. They dirty the dress. They smear dung on the dress. I can't breathe with them against me. I can't breathe. They are squealing. It is coming from the crib. It is coming from the carpet. The pigs are digging through the carpet. There is earth beneath the carpet. The pigs put their noses in the earth. They open their mouths. They eat the earth. They eat the tubers in the earth, the white roots in the earth, the tapered root that comes from the earth. They dig deeper than the dogs. They dig a deep hole in the nursery. I wait for her to come into the nursery, to hook her fingers on the edge of the hole and climb up into the nursery. I would sever her neck with the housekeeper's shovel but I have only the covers of books.

You can see into the orchard from the tower. You can see into the orchard from the forest. On one side of the orchard, tower. On the other side, forest. I saw through the bushes in the forest, lights in the tower, shapes in the orchard. The house lit the orchard. It made shadows in the orchard. I sat in the bushes. She held the bough of the tree with her hands and her knees. She clung to the bough. She kicked her feet. She swung down. She dangled. Her face was red and wet. The spots on her face were red and wet. She lifted her knees as she dangled then she let her knees drop. She dropped to the earth. She lay in the apples. The Master lay in the apples. He pulled himself through the apples with his elbows. He slid through the apples. She pulled herself with her heels through the apples. She slid beneath the Master. He jerked against her. He jerked against her. He lifted her shoulders and her head fell back. The hairs on her head hung down to the apples. The crown of her head hung down to the apples. Her head hit the apples. She jerked up and down. Her head hit the apples. The brown skins of the apples clung to her neck. They clung to her shoulders. She slid. The Master pushed on his belly through the apples. Her back slid through the apples. The Master lifted his hand. He hit her head with an apple. He hit her head with a rock. The rock was brown like the apples. It was long and brown. It was a stick. The Master hit her head with a stick. He beat her head with a stick. He jerked against her. He beat with a stick. Black fluid darkened her head, it darkened her hair. Her body dripped with rain. Her body dried in the sun. She thinned in the sun. She withered.