Miss Appleby's Academy (33 page)

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Mr and Mrs English moved into the village. Mrs English did not worry about the smallholding.

‘I’ve had more than enough of it,’ she said, ‘and to be fair the owners were glad, I think; they need somebody young and in good health to make it work.’

Mr English got home a lot sooner now that he didn’t have to trudge back to the farm, and Mrs English said privately to Emma, ‘He goes out, you know, to the Black Diamond and drinks whisky there, very bad for him, with Mr Castle.’

Twice a week Mr English went to the pub, and Emma had Mrs English to the academy to see the children and Hector and to sit over the fire or by the window at the back where the view was the best that Emma could remember, even at home in New England which she had thought she loved so much. But it was only a memory now; this was home.

Mrs English loved looking down upon Weardale and the little farms which were so like the smallholding, but she liked best going back to her tiny house where she and Mr English slept downstairs and when the weather was bad they built up the fire and lay there in the darkness watching it before they fell asleep.

It seemed strange to Emma that she should have dreamed this place and made it her reality and now that she thought she had come home she dreamed of New England and her father and mother, at the same time she dreamed of Laurence and Verity as they were when she left, and she awoke one morning and missed New Haven and her past life for the first time.

Why did she care now? Why did she regret leaving what she had not been able to bear? It was not the reality of the present she yearned for, rather the future that could never be: marriage to John Elstree, being part of Verity and Laurence’s circle. She would have loved that, she could have stayed there and known nothing of her family here, and though she had achieved so much, the loss of Nell was affecting her in ways which she had not thought of: it made her want other people for her family. She wanted somehow to bring it all together and have it fixed, have it work and it wouldn’t, and she was sad that morning.

It was strange therefore that when she went to open the front door in the middle of the day she found Mrs Jones on the doorstep. Mrs Jones worked at the post office. It was a place Emma managed to stay out of mostly. She had no one she wished to write to and the post office was
the main source of gossip in the village. Mrs Jones and Mrs Dunwoodie discussed everything and everyone there, according to Mr Higgins, and because it was a service everybody must use there was no escape.

Emma’s only knowledge of Mrs Jones was that her mother had complained when she married that she ‘found the only Welshman within forty miles’. Most of the people who hadn’t spent generations in Durham were Irish and Mrs Jones’s mother was not an admirer of the Welsh. Mrs Jones was called Eve and she was a broad-hipped, bonny-looking woman with thick black hair and dark eyes, and there were those who said she painted her face.

‘I thought I had better bring this personally,’ she said, ‘rather than send it in case it got lost on the way, because it is not an ordinary letter. It comes from America, the address is on the back.’

Instead of handing the letter to Emma Mrs Jones turned it over. ‘It comes from a relative of yours, I gather, who lives there. It isn’t properly addressed to you, you see, just the village name, and though he had an idea that you had come here there is no mention of where you are living and I was concerned because I would have thought that if you had some family in such a place you might have let them know, it would be only common courtesy after all, and that in time, seeing how things are here, you might want to return home.’

Emma wanted to slap her for her curiosity, for her rudeness. She did not know whether she thanked Mrs Jones; she only knew that within half an hour of its reaching the post office the whole of the village would know of its
existence and as much as Mrs Jones had discovered about her past life. There were those who would already be hoping she would leave. She panicked and closed the door while Mrs Jones hovered, doubtless hoping for more information which Emma might feel obliged to give.

Once inside, Emma felt her hands trembling. She could hardly hold the letter; there was no way in which she could have opened it. She put it into her pocket and then changed her mind and went into the study and pushed it into the top middle drawer of the desk, which she then locked as though somehow that would make it go away.

She left it there and tried to forget about it. The rest of her day was so full that she almost did so, but when she went to bed she couldn’t rest. Why would Laurence write to her now? She thought he would only have written with bad news, but then they were so far apart why would he write to her at all? She knew that she would not sleep until she had seen what it was about, but she had the feeling that she would not sleep after she had read it either.

She tried to talk herself into waiting for the morning, hoping that she would sleep first, but she couldn’t. She put on a shawl and went down, and there by candlelight she unlocked the drawer and held up the letter as though she might be able to see through the envelope and not have to open it. Then she tore it open and spread out the thin sheet and even his handwriting made her want to weep: he had almost exactly the same way of making his letters as she did – they had been taught together by their father. It was quite formal.

Hector had come downstairs and shuffled into the room; he looked puzzled as to what she could be doing in the study at this time of night, but he settled himself under the desk as he had taken to doing when she worked.

At this point Emma lit a lamp and sat down to compose a reply. She had to stop herself from writing the way that she felt, to put in the anger, and after that she sat still for a long time in the cool and silence of the night and thought hard about what she must say.

In the end she put her feet on Hector’s warm sleeping body and wrote to Laurence and Verity, saying how sorry she was that she had done such a thing as to take the pearls in the first place and that of course she would send the money for the pearls as soon as she could raise such a sum, but it was such a great deal of money that they must give her time.

She told them about her school and about how George was progressing and that she did not feel sorry for having come here since this was truly now her home, but she wished them well, she hoped they would have a good
future together and that the boys would grow up well and happy and they could be proud of them.

She felt so much better when she had finished this and sealed it. She would get Jack to take it to the post office. She felt that she would never want to go there again and then she went back to bed.

In the morning she went to the graveyard and told Nell’s headstone all about it. And the thing she had been holding at the back of her mind came to the front as she thought of Nell. Money. She had none except the money which Nell had given her. It was a great deal, but Emma had been hoping that money would pay for things which she did not want Mick to have to pay for, but now it would have to be saved towards the cost of the pearl necklace.

She apologized to Nell and Nell would have said, Emma felt sure, that the children would have had no one to take them, look after or educate them if Emma had not run away from New England. It was sound reasoning, but Emma was not sure she did not feel huge guilt that she must use the money in such a way.

She needed a great deal more than that. She had no idea how she was to achieve it. Nothing else brought in any money. The idea of leaving and starting again in another place was impractical. She must take on more pupils, people who might pay. The trouble was that she could not go out and talk to people because she felt that most of the village was still against her. She didn’t know what to do; it made her tired just to think about it.

Mick left the bank with a lighter step and then thought ruefully to himself of how much money he now owed. He didn’t want to think about it too much; he felt as though he had put his entire fortune on the spin of a roulette wheel. People did such things, for instance, people in London who were feckless and reckless. Then he laughed at himself. He didn’t know anybody who would take such a risk and yet he had accused Henry Atkinson of being a risk-taker; maybe you had to be to go forward. Sitting comfortably at the fire was never going to get a man anywhere, certainly not into the kind of trouble which he had just leapt into.

He didn’t want to go to any of the public houses, either the ones he already owned or the ones he had just bought. All it had taken was a good solicitor and Henry’s signature and then his own, and it was done. Everything mattered now.

He was excited too. He wanted to go back and tell Isabel. He thought he had just ensured their future. Surely now she would see how much the family meant to him. She had tried hard and he was not going to let anything stand in his way. With Henry Atkinson in London, and temptation elsewhere, Isabel would remember her
marriage and her child, at least he hoped so.

It was four in the afternoon when he reached home, and as always he half thought she would be drunk, but his wife was asleep by the fire. The coal shifted in the grate as he walked into the sitting room and she heard it or him and sat up and looked vaguely at him.

‘Is it that time already?’ she said.

‘No, I came home early.’

Isabel sat up, an enquiring look on her face. Mick didn’t know what to say; he had no idea what her reaction would be.

He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve bought out Henry Atkinson.’

She looked for several seconds as though she didn’t understand and then she said, ‘Why would you do that?’

‘Well, he told me that his children are all in London and that he misses them and that if he could he would go and live there and—’ Mick stopped. He waited for her reaction, for her to shout and scream, and when she didn’t he didn’t know what to say.

‘How could you afford it?’ she said.

It was not something he would have thought she would be concerned about. ‘I can’t. I went to the bank and they agreed to lend me the money.’

‘They must think a great deal of you.’

‘I’m a good talker.’

‘You always were.’

‘I know it isn’t perfect, Isabel, and I’m sorry. I wish it was, but it was the only thing I could think to do that might help.’

‘Yes, I can see how you might,’ she said. ‘I think it’s very brave of you.’

‘You’ve been brave and I know what it’s cost you and I want to try and do everything I can to help.’

She drew nearer and kissed him, but neither of them was used to that kind of affection and it was awkward. He didn’t know what to say or do, and neither did she.

For days and days after that they maintained a charade that things were better and Mick began to wish that he had not tried to be so clever and correct things which he was not certain would ever be corrected. He went to work, she stayed at home, and in the evenings they sat together over the fire as he had always wanted them to do, and it was the most uncomfortable way that they had ever lived.

Sometimes deep in the night they drew close and that was the worst of all. He was aware of every sound, of every patient breath his wife took, of how thankful he was when she let him go when it was over, and she would turn from him and he would turn from her, and the relief was such that it hurt him. He did not think that she felt any better.

She stumbled to make the kind of meals which she had made when they were first married and he told her how wonderful they were, and they were not, and he didn’t think that she believed him. She grew thinner and paler week by week and around her was a band of unhappiness. They tried to talk.

‘Isabel—’

‘No, don’t say anything.’ This in the middle of the night when even the birds were silent, even the rain didn’t fall.
The bed dominated the room; it had grown and was not a refuge any more. During the warm days it was sweaty and during the cold days it was icy, and however near they drew they could not warm one another or reassure one another, and nothing made any difference.

Mick had not thought anything could be harder than to have his wife drink. To have her not drink was worse. Sometimes he thought he could see through her, and although she tried to hide beneath smiles and talk there was somehow no place for either of them to go. She was anxious when he left and when he came home. She worried that the butcher would forget to call, that there would not be sufficient potatoes for dinner. She cleaned and cleaned so that he hardly dared step into the house for the shine on the windows and the doors and the hall floor. Even Ulysses looked confused and hovered outside when he got the chance for fear that his paws might leave prints on the black-and-white tiled floor which Isabel washed every day.