Fools of Fortune (17 page)

‘The telephone rang,’ a lank girl with spectacles informed him.

‘Ah, thank you, Cynthia.’

I was aware of garish colours on the walls: in the hall an excess of murals had all the appearance of being the work of the Gibb-Bachelors’ charges over the years. There was a lakeland scene, and an alp, and halfway up the stairs a castle with birds.

‘How d’you do, Marianne?’ Firm and jaunty, much shorter than her husband, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor was suddenly there. She was neatly dressed in different shades of mauve, her salt and pepper hair permanently waved. ‘Come please with me, Marianne.’

She led the way back to the room she had just emerged from.

‘Please sit down,’ she invited, placing herself behind a table and gesturing at a chair. There had been chairs of the same kind in the hall and in the verandah: cushionless, a loop of canvas for seat and back. Bare boards, I had noticed also, were the order of the day, with here and there a woven rug.

‘I am delighted to welcome you to Montreux,’ Mrs Gibb-Bachelor continued briskly, in a throaty Scottish voice. ‘Culture is the byword in our villa, but otherwise we live in the local manner. Classes are given daily by our friend Mademoiselle Florence, and my husband instructs in the history of the cantons and of the country. The regime is not arduous, but we do like an early start to the day and all conversation with Mademoiselle Florence is of course conducted in French. Thank you, Marianne.’

I rose and in turn thanked Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.

‘The other girl from your school…’ Mrs Gibb-Bachelor poked through papers on her desk.

‘Agnes Brontenby.’

‘Ah, Agnes Brontenby. Of course. Agnes is quite delightful. We have as well, this autumn, Mavis and Cynthia.’ Mrs Gibb-Bachelor paused. ‘Are you quite healthy, Marianne?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘You’re a wee little creature, but you mustn’t let that worry you, you know. Any disadvantage is better than gawkiness.’

I said I had become used to my diminutive size, but Mrs Gibb-Bachelor appeared not to hear me and continued with her theme.

‘It doesn’t mean you are unhealthy, Marianne. Your teeth look sound, eh? Well, that is excellent. Your mother will probably have told you that artificial teeth have ill-bred connotations.’

‘I don’t think my mother did, actually.’

‘Ah, well.’ Mrs Gibb-Bachelor paused again. Her head slipped a little to one side. ‘In our Swiss home we do not ignore the manners of the past. You understand, Marianne?’

‘Yes, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.’

‘Excellent. You will share with Mavis. She suffers a little from rashes, but I do not believe the trouble is in the least way infectious. Your time here will be happy, Marianne. No girl has ever been unhappy in our home.’

‘So the Professor said.’

‘I can see the Professor has taken to you already. Now that is excellent.’

Following Mrs Gibb-Bachelor, I carried my suitcases upstairs. We crossed a landing which featured further murals, and entered a cell-like chamber containing two beds, one unmade. Mrs Gibb-Bachelor gestured at the room’s window, stretching to the floor and draped with net. She crossed the room to it, undid a latch and pushed the two curtained frames outwards: below us in the twilight lay Lac Leman and the twinkling lights of Montreux, towering above us the snow-peaked Alps. ‘One of the finest views in Switzerland,’ Mrs Gibb-Bachelor stated with confidence, and went away.

I closed the window and sat down on the edge of the bed, not yet unpacking. Ever since I had left Ireland I had found it difficult to be with other people. On the journey back to the rectory, and after we’d arrived there, I had longed to be alone, to escape from my mother’s worry about leaving you, and my father’s sympathetic murmur. ‘We must pray for his peace of mind’: more than once my father had bent his head over clasped hands, closing his eyes. When eventually I left the rectory to set out on my second journey the sense of relief made me feel ungrateful.

‘Hullo,’ a voice said. ‘Are you Marianne? My name is Mavis.’

‘Yes, I am Marianne.’ I stared back at the speckled face that stared at mine. I asked about letters, but when I went to the letter-rack in the hall it was empty. I didn’t know why I’d asked or had gone to look. Of course there wouldn’t be a letter yet.

The bosom of Agnes Brontenby was more shapely than it had been beneath a gymslip, her beautiful blue eyes more liquid even than I remembered them at school. In the dining-room she sat across the table from me, with the bespectacled Cynthia beside her and Mavis next to me. The Gibb-Bachelors ate privately, at some different time.

Free of murals, the dining-room was on the gloomy side. Its walls were a shade of gravy, as were the velvet curtains that all but obscured the windows. The pine boards of the floor were sprinkled with French chalk.

‘The food’s inedible,’ Cynthia informed me, and Mavis said that lastyear a girl had run away. But the sweetness of Agnes Brontenby already pervaded this gathering atmosphere; already, I guessed, she had stifled gossip on its utterance and discovered silver linings. She scooped up pale soup with vermicelli in it and said it was delicious. Only that afternoon Mrs Gibb-Bachelor had confided to her that the girl’s running away last year had been due to a misunderstanding. ‘Oh look, let’s not be horrid,’ she protested when Cynthia said she doubted if Mrs Gibb-Bachelor had ever told the truth in her life.

‘He’s
awful,’
Mavis said.

‘Oh, quite beyond the pale,’ Cynthia agreed. She added that Mrs Gibb-Bachelor’s letter to her parents had categorically stated that each girl had a room to herself and that Mademoiselle Florence instructed in German as well as French. ‘Then why are we suddenly sharing?’ she demanded. ‘Have they mislaid some rooms or something? And how is it that Mademoiselle Florence can miraculously teach German since she says herself she can’t speak a word of it?’

‘Oh, you are funny, Cynthia!’ cried Agnes. ‘Mislaid some rooms!’

She tinkled with laughter and then became serious. She insisted that there had clearly been another silly misunderstanding. She couldn’t remember how Mrs Gibb-Bachelor had written to her own parents, but wasn’t it in any case best to be cheerful?

Mavis and I did not contribute to the argument that followed. Duties in the dining-room were to be shared among us: it was mine, that evening, to clear away, and Mavis’s to give us each a plate of sliced apple and cheese.

‘Another thing,’ said Cynthia, ‘there was a distinct reference to domestic staff.’

‘Oh now, the Gibb-Bachelors do do their best, you know. And actually I quite enjoy the kitchen-work course. Mrs Gibb-Bachelor’s going to show me how to make toad-in-the-hole.’

‘If you ask me these appalling people are doing extremely well for themselves—their house decorated, their food cooked, dusting and cleaning, early-morning tea carried to their bedside. Not to mention the way the Professor stands so close to you.’

‘Oh, Cynthia, you
are
amusing! But you’re missing England, aren’t you, Cynthia? You’ll love it here in the end, you know.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ said Cynthia.

When we had finished, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor was waiting for us in the hall.

‘Girls,’ she announced, ‘the Professor’s lantern lecture is at nine.’ She inspected each of us closely, as if for dirt. She fixed Cynthia with a stern eye. ‘My dear, I have to inform you that a napkin must be opened across the knee, never tucked into a garment. And it is ill-bred to prop ourselves on our elbows when drinking a cup of tea or other beverage.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.’

‘These are wee little faults I have noticed during the course of today, Cynthia. You understand too, Marianne?’

‘Yes, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.’

‘Then that is excellent.’

She strode jauntily away, her scent lingering behind her.

‘Foul old pussy,’ Cynthia said.

The Professor’s magic lantern showed us pictures of English landscape and houses which he attempted to relate to literature. He quoted the poetry of James Thomson, illustrating it with slides of Hagley Park. He quoted George Eliot and Mrs Gaskell, and in particular Wordsworth. ‘Here, by Nether Stowey, he walked with Dorothy. Here we see his house at Rydal Mount.
And I have felt a presence that disturbs me…a sense sublime
…’ He showed us Lyme Regis, and the Temple of Apollo at Stourhead.’/
have through every Garden been,’
he solemnly intoned, ‘
among the red, the white, the green.’

The reedy, academic voice came and went, as did the pictures of woods and meadows and mazes and rose-beds. I thought about you, unable not to. ‘
But there’s a tree, of many, one,’
the Professor continued.
‘A single field which I have looked upon
…’ Trees and fields appeared on the sheet which Mavis had been requested to pin up as a screen, oak trees and beeches, Scotch pines, alders, ash and apple. The fields were shown in different seasons and there was talk of ploughing and then of mellow fruitfulness. ‘Will the wretched man never cease?’ Cynthia muttered beside me.

I dreamed of you that night, among the landscapes of the magic lantern show. Your warm body warmed mine, your lips were passionate, as they had been.

Non,
non,
Marianne,’ cried Mademoiselle Florence. ‘You do not make the effort.’

I tried. I apologized. I did my best to speak and smile.

… so very busy,
wrote my father,
with all the preparations for the Harvest Thanksgiving. Your mother has spent two days in bed, her nerves fallen all to pieces after the turmoil of the last few weeks, Ireland and then the arranging and rearranging of your journey to Montreux. My blessed child, you are in all our prayers.

In the famous castle by the lake the Professor stood by the pillar on which Lord Byron had scratched his name.

‘You’re troubled, little Marianne?’ he sympathetically enquired while the others marvelled over the flowing signature.

‘No,’I lied. ‘No, not at all.’

‘You may always come to me, you know. You may always tell me.’

He stepped a little closer and placed a hand on my shoulder. He was my friend, he said.

Again, that day, I looked in case there was a letter. In the early morning I had written down the Gibb-Bachelors’ address in Montreux and had placed it on your dressing-table. Then I had crept away while still you slept.

‘Visiting cards,’ decreed Mrs Gibb-Bachelor, ‘are placed on the hall salver or on some convenient table. Engraved of course, never printed.’ A married lady left one, and two of her husband’s. But should the lady called upon be unmarried or widowed then only one of the husband’s cards might be placed on the hall-stand or the convenient table.

I prayed, listening to her voice. I asked for forgiveness. I promised that I did not seek to excuse my sin, that I would live with it and suffer for it if I might be given a little mercy now. ‘Dear God,’ I pleaded. ‘Dear kind God, please hear me.’

Mrs Gibb-Bachelor smiled at each of us in turn.

‘And do not presume that hem-stitching is beneath you. The plain girl who is acquainted with the art of caring for her garments has the advantage over the pretty girl who is slap-dash.’

That day, too, I looked in the letter-rack, although I had resolved I would not any more.

The Professor said:

‘Little Marianne, you did not listen to a word of my lecture on Wordsworth’s sense of rhyme.’

‘Oh yes, I did indeed, Professor.’

‘Ah no, my little girl.’

To my distaste, he laid a bony finger on my lips and did not take it away. His wig moved slightly as he shook his head. We were alone in the library.

‘For me you are a special girl, Marianne. Your discontent is all the more distressing because of that.’

Again the finger, cold as ice, was laid across my lips. A fresh smile engaged the Professor’s own, drawing them back until large teeth protruded, like pale tombstones. We stood in the alcove of a window, I with my back to it.

‘Much of what I say when I speak of Wordsworth is specially for you, little Marianne.’

‘Please, Professor—’

‘You are labouring under stress, little girl.’

Again he came close to me, pressing me back against the window. His breath had garlic of a day or two’s duration on it. His hps touched my flesh, high on my left cheek, just below the cheek-bone, and while they did so the palm of a hand slipped down my thigh, as light as the touch of a butterfly. I pushed him away, shuddering and feeling sick in my stomach. How could I tell him anything? ‘We might go to Kilneagh,’ you’d said. ‘It would be nice to show you Kilneagh.’ How could I tell him that no day in my life had been as happy? The men in the mill-yard had shaken my hand. In Lough you’d pointed out Driscoll’s shop and the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven. In Fermoy you’d pointed out the ironmonger’s and the draper’s where you’d done your Friday shopping. We’d been too shy to say what really we felt, but somehow that hadn’t mattered.

‘Now, my dear,’ Mrs Gibb-Bachelor announced breezily in her office, ‘a wee little bird has told me you have fallen in love.’

‘If Agnes—’

‘I did not say Agnes, dear. But it isn’t difficult to know when a friend’s in love, now is it? There are time-honoured signals, are there not?’

‘This is a private matter, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.’

‘To be sure it is. On the other hand I cannot have my girls distressed. Our monthly visitation—clockwork regular, is it? Oh no, don’t look askance. I do assure you I have known love to upset girls mightily in that department. Quite topsy-turvy it all becomes.’

‘I would really rather not talk about this, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.’

‘My little bird is a reliable wee creature.’ Head on one side, Mrs

Gibb-Bachelor smiled, looking for a moment like a bird herself. ‘There need not be a secret between us, Marianne. Other girls before you have fallen in love with the Professor, my dear.’

In astonishment I denied that charge. Repelled and outraged, I spoke as firmly as I could. ‘I am not in love with your husband, Mrs Gibb-Bachelor.’

Mrs Gibb-Bachelor softly replied that love, too often, was not a matter of choice. It was understandable that girls should love her husband: the Professor was notably attractive, many girls had found him so.