The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (16 page)

Her belly rumbled. Margaret was hungry for words. None on the walls, except an edifying motto in cross-stitch hung over the ewer. Curling patterns on the curtains could sometimes be suggested into letters and then acrobatic words, but by now the light was too honest. She shut her eyes again, and called up a gray, wavering page with an ornate printer's mark at the top. "The History of the Prim-dingle Family," she spelled out, "Part the Fifth." Once she worked her way into the flow, she no longer needed to imagine the letters into existence one by one; the lines formed themselves, neat and crisp and believable. Her eyes flickered under their lids, scattering punctuation.

The black trunk sat in the hall, its brass worn at the edges. Dot caught her winter petticoat on it as she scuttled by.

The governess was in the parlour, sipping cold tea. Mistress Mary, her employer called her; it was to be understood that the Irish preferred this traditional form of address, and besides, it avoided the outlandish surname. Her Ladyship showed no interest in wages, nor in the little school Mistress Mary used to run in London, nor in her recent treatise on female education. Her Ladyship's questions sounded like statements. She outlined the children's day, hour by hour. They had been let run wild too long, and now it was a race to make the eldest presentable for Dublin Castle in a bare two years. The girl was somewhat perverse, her Ladyship mentioned over the silver teapot, and seemed to be growing larger by the day.

Mistress Mary watched a minute grain of powder from her Ladyship's widow's peak drift down and alight on the surface of the tea. She had been here one hour and felt light with fatigue already. The three children were the kind of hoydens she liked least, the fourteen-year-old Margaret in particular having an unrestrained guffaw certain to set on edge the nerves of any potential suitors. The governess asked herself again why she had exiled herself among the wild Irish rather than scour pots for a living.

"But your mother was a native of this country, was she not, Mistress Mary? You are half one of us, then."

"Oh, your Ladyship, I would not presume."

But that bony voice did remind the governess of her mother's limper tones. Bending her head over the tea, Mistress Mary heard in her gut the usual battle between gall and compassion.

Behind an oak, Margaret was shivering as she nipped her muslin skirts between her knees. If she stood narrow as a sapling she would not be seen. The outraged words of two languages carried across the field, equally indistinguishable. Dot would carry the news later: who said what, which of the usual threats and three-generation curses were made, which fists shaken in which faces. It had to be time for dinner, Margaret thought. She would go when the smoke rose white as feathers from the second thatch.

"Stand up straight," her mother told her. "You have been telling your sisters wicked make-believe once more. How can I persuade you of the difference between what is real and what is not?"

"I do not know, madam."

"You will run mad before the age of sixteen and then I will be spared the trouble of finding a husband for you."

"Yes, madam."

"Have you forgotten who you are, girl?"

"Margaret King of the family of Lord and Lady Kingsborough of Kingsborough Estate."

"Of which county?"

"Of the county of Cork in the kingdom of Ireland in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-six."

"Now go and wash your face so your new governess will not think you a peasant."

In November the evictions were more plentiful, and Margaret wearied of them. The apple trees stooped under their cloaks of rain. Mistress Mary had been here three weeks. She and the girls were kept busy all day from half past six to half past five with a list of nonsensical duties. So-called accomplishments, being in her view those things which were never fully accomplished. Mistress Mary kept biting her soft lips and thinking of Lisbon. The children churned out acres of lace, lists of the tributaries of the Nile, piles of netted purses, and an assortment of complaints from violin, flute, and harpsichord. The two small girls could sing five songs in French without understanding any of the words, and frequently did. The harpsichord was often silent, on days when Margaret, blank-faced and docile, slipped away with a message for the cook and was not seen again.

Sometimes, losing herself along windy corridors, her air of calm efficiency beginning to slip, Mistress Mary caught sight of a long booted ankle disappearing round a corner. On the first occasion, the matter was mentioned to her Ladyship. Bruises slowed Margaret's walk for a week, though no one referred to them. After that, Mistress Mary kept silent about her pupils comings and goings. She would conquer the girl with kindness, she promised herself. Tenderness would lead where birch could not drive.

"Need the girl sleep in her stays, your Ladyship? She heaves so alarmingly at night when I look in on her."

"As your Ladyship wishes."

Considering her governess's animated face bent over a letter, Margaret decided that here was one doll worth playing with. She knew how to do it. They always began stiff and proper but soon they went soft over you, and then every smile pulled their strings. Mostly they were lonely, and despised themselves for not being mothers. The Mademoiselle in her last boarding-school was the easiest. Watch for the first signs—vague laughter, fingers against your cheek, a fuzziness about the hairline—and seize on her weakness. Ask her to help you tie the last bow of ribbon on your stomacher. Take her arm in yours while walking, beg to sit next to her at supper, even bring her apples if the case requires it. Mademoiselle, the poor toad, had reached the stage of hiding pears in Margaret's desk.

By December, Mistress Mary was astonished at her power over this sweet little girl. The dreadful laugh had muted to a wheeze of merriment between wide lips. Margaret sat on a footstool below her governess's needle, and chanted French songs of which she understood half the words. At night, she had taken to pleading for Mistress Mary to come into her bedchamber; not Dot, nor any of the servingmaids, nor either of her sisters, only Mistress Mary might lift off the muslin cap and brush Margaret's long coarse hair. "My little friend," the woman called her, as a final favour, though when Margaret stood up she had a good inch over her governess. They shared a smile, then. Mistress Mary would have liked to be sure that they were smiling at the same thing.

Another thing the governess could not understand was why Margaret loved to read and hated to write.

Words were a treasure to be hoarded and never shared.

On Margaret's twelfth birthday two years before, an event marked only by one of her Ladyship's sudden visits to the schoolroom, she had been discovered sitting under a desk with a very blunt quill, writing "The History of the Quintumbly Family, The Third Chapter." Under interrogation in the parlour, Margaret could offer no reason for such an outlay of precious time. She licked the corner of her lips. Nor could she explain her knowledge of such an unsuitable family, who, it seemed, kept tame weasels and sailed down the Nile. Her Ladyship was disgusted at last to find that the Quintumblys were merely fanciful, a pretend family. The rest of the journal pleased her even less, being a daily account of Margaret's less filial thoughts and sentiments. Having read a sample of them aloud in a tone of wonder, her Ladyship picked the limp book up by one corner and held it out to her daughter. Margaret was halfway to the parlour fire before her mother's voice tightened around her: did she mean to smoke them out entirely? Dot was called for to carry the manuscript to the gardener's bonfire, where it would do no harm.

From that day on the girl would write no words of her own, only lists of French verbs and English wars. In the strongbox behind her eyes, she stacked volumes of stories about her pretend families. She sealed her lashes and reread the adventures only in bed before it was light, in case anyone might catch her lips moving. By day she stole other people's words: romances, newspapers, treatises, anything left beside an armchair or in an unlocked cabinet in the library. Margaret swallowed up the words and would give none back.

Laid low by one of her periodic fevers in January, the girl was starving for a story but could not concentrate enough to form the letters. What she did remember to do was to clamour for Mistress Mary to hold her hand. The governess flushed, and consented, after a little show of reluctance. Humouring the patient, she agreed to petty things, like brushing her own dark hair with Margaret's ivory brush. By suppertime, the girl was too worn out to think of anything endearing to say, but Mistress Mary leaned over and hushed her most tenderly.

In her sleep, the girl made hoarse cries, and threw even the gentlest hand off her forehead. "There was a girl in Dublin used to sleep in her stays," Dot remarked, "that died from compunction of the organs." The governess heaved a breath and knocked on the parlour door. "Most dangerous in her state of health, your Ladyship ... eminent medical gentlemen agree..." The stays came off. Margaret tossed still, picking at invisible ribbons across her chest.

The girl woke one February twilight to find that her lie had come true. She could not bear to let the governess out of her sight. Her puzzled eyes followed every movement, and her voice was cracked and fractious. She insisted that she could not remember how to sew. There was nothing comfortable about this love.

Scrawny children plucked at Margarets skirts as she walked between the burnt cottages, wheezing. She shared her pocketful of French grapes among them. Their ginger freckles stood out bold on transparent skin.

Hungry for the familiarity of words, the girl stole into the library. She knelt on the moving steps and pressed her face against the glass cases, following their bevelled edges with her lips. One of the cases would be left unlocked, if she had prayed hard enough the night before. Tides in winking gold leaf reached for her fingers. At first she looked for storybooks and engravings, but by March she had got a taste for books of words about words: dictionaries and lexicons and medical encyclopaedias. One strange fish of a word leapt into the mouth of another and that one into another, meanings hooked on each other, confusing and enticing her, until, after the hour or so she could steal from each day, Margaret was netted round with secret knowledge.

"There was a farmer went for the bailiff with a pitchfork last month," Dot said. "When they hanged him in Cork town his bit stuck up." Margaret knew about bits and the getting of babies and the nine months; Mistress Mary, flushing slightly, said that every girl should know the words for things.

"Why was I not born a boy," Margaret asked her governess while walking in the orchard, "or why was I born at all?" Mistress Mary was bewildered by the question. Margaret explained: "Girls are good for nothing in particular. In all the stories, boys can run and leap and save wounded animals. My mother says I am a mannish little trull. Already I am taller than ladies like you. So why may I not be a boy?"

"There is nothing wrong," began Mistress Mary cautiously, "with being manly, in the best sense. Manly virtues, you know, and masculine fortitude. You must not be afraid. No matter what anyone says. Even if they say things which, no doubt unintentionally, may seem unkind."

Margaret kicked at a rotten apple.

"You must stand tall, like a tree," explained the governess, gathering confidence. "No matter how tall you grow you will be my little girl, and your head will always fit on my shoulder. Tall as a young tree," she went on hurriedly, "and you should move like one too. Why do you not romp and bound when I say you may; why do you cling to my side like a little doll?"

"My mother forbids it."

"She cannot see through the garden wall. I give you permission."

"She may ask why we spend so long in the orchard."

"We are studying the names of the insects."

And the governess tagged her on the shoulder and, picking up her skirts, hared off down a damp grassy path. Margaret was still considering the matter when she found her legs leaping away with her.

In the April evenings, Mistress Mary entertained the household with recitations and English country dances. Her Ladyship looked on, her hair whiter by the day. They argued over the number of buttons on the girls' boots.

When she grew up, Margaret had decided, she would make the bailiffs give all the rent back. The redheaded children would grow fat, and clap their hands when they saw her coming.

By May the air was white with blossom. Margaret could not swallow when she looked at her governess. Their hairs were mingled on the brush; Margaret teased them with her cold fingers. She could not seem to learn the rules of bodies. What Mistress Mary called innocent caresses were allowable, and these were: cheeks and foreheads, lips on the backs of hands, arms entwined in the orchard, heads briefly nested on gray satin skirts. But when Margaret slipped into the governess's chamber one morning and found her in shift and stockings, she earned a scathing glance. Gross familiarity, Mistress Mary called it, and immodest forwardness. When she had fastened her last button and called the girl back into the room, she explained more calmly that one must never forget the respect which one human creature owed another. Margaret could not see what respect had to do with dressing in separate rooms. She hung her head and thought of breakfast.

"Has any of the servants ever tried to teach you dirty indecent tricks?"

"No, Mistress Mary. Dot is always busy, and besides, she knows no tricks."

It was June by the time she found that there were words for girls like her. Words tucked away in the library, locked only until you looked for them.
Romp
and
hoyden
she knew already.
Tomboy
was when she ran down the front staircase with her bootlaces undone. But there were sharper words as well, words that cut when she lifted them into her mouth to taste and whisper them.
Tommie
was when women kissed and pressed each other to their hearts; it said so in a dirty poem on the top shelf of the cabinet.
Tribad
was the same only worse. The word had to mean, she reasoned, along the lines of
triangle
and
trimester,
that she was three times as bad as other girls.