In Memories We Fear (15 page)

Papa complained about being surrounded by “filthy” children, and Mama pretended not to hear him. She pretended that nothing was wrong and that all was right in their household. Maxim’s brothers and sisters accepted her premise.

Maxim did not.

He found his family dull and witless. He was like a dark pebble thrown among a pile of tan stones. But for as much of a stranger as he felt among these people, they certainly did not disagree. His two elder brothers used any opportunity to kick him under the table or elbow him hard in the chest. He feared being alone with either of them.

“You think you’re better than us,” his elder sister, Edith, accused.

He didn’t argue. He did think he was better, and they hated him for it. As a child, Maxim didn’t know what he truly wanted. He knew only that he envied other children with clean homes and clean clothes and papas who cheerfully brought home bread and cheese to share.

Of his parents, Mama was the one given to intermittent bouts of kindness.

One night, as the family began preparing for bed, the crusty dishes from a supper of near-sour milk and two-day-old bread still littered the table. The threadbare rug was soiled by filth and crumbs, and both of Maxim’s younger sisters were covered in grime. Papa glared daggers of blame at everyone before striding off to bed alone.

The other siblings began slinking away, and Maxim was so filled with despair, he could not keep silent. “I don’t belong here,” he told Mama.

She looked up from her chair by the low fire, drinking ale from a tin cup.

“What do you mean?”

He was surprised she responded to such words. That wasn’t like anyone in his family. Except for Papa, they all pretended everything was fine. But then . . . Papa never did anything to try to improve the situation. He just placed blame.

“I think your baby was taken and someone put me in its place,” Maxim said. “I don’t belong here.”

“Why do you say that?”

Pent-up anguish poured from his mouth. “I don’t look like any of you. I’m not
like
any of you!”

She watched him for a little while, and then stood up. “Come here.”

Hesitantly, he followed her to a small chest she kept in the kitchen. Opening it, she took out a miniature portrait of a dark-haired lady.

“Look closer,” she said.

He did, seeing a small woman with pale skin, fine features, and blue-black hair.

“This was my mother,” Mama said without any feeling. “You look just like her. I named you after her father.”

Something inside him crumbled. He’d been wrong. He wasn’t a changeling after all . . . and this
was
his family.

Mama looked at him. “She was just like you, too, always wanting something better, thinking she was better than everyone else. She looked at me, at my hair and face, as if I were dirt.”

“What happened to her?”

“She drank . . . wine at first, gin later. Fell down a flight of stairs when I was seventeen.”

For the first time in his life, Maxim was moved by something Mama said. Even though she had just devastated him, he realized she’d been trying to make him feel better, to feel that he belonged. He wanted to say something, do something, for her in the moment, but he had no idea what that might be.

In the year that followed, he slowly came to terms with the fact that he indeed was a member of the Carey family, and that as soon as he turned twelve, he would be out on a fishing boat with Papa and his brothers, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Other men seemed to hate him, and he’d learned to fear them. The prospect of a life among them—netting and gutting fish—was like a death sentence.

Then, in 1816, a miracle happened, and the vicar of the local rectory died of a massive stroke. Besides resulting in his being excused from Sunday services for a few weeks, this event meant little to Maxim until the old vicar’s replacement arrived.

But when Maxim saw Alistair Brandon up on the pulpit at the Sunday morning service, he knew something in the world had shifted. For one, Vicar Brandon smiled at the people in his congregation, and the smile reached his light blue eyes. He had a round face and thinning red hair even though he was young—almost too young to be a vicar. This was the first time Maxim had ever looked upon another man without feeling fear. Its very absence affected him.

Vicar Brandon’s voice was clear and deep, and instead of making “his flock” feel guilty about a week’s worth of past sins, he gave a sermon on the virtues of avoiding the pitfalls of undue greed, and instead of a Bible, he held up a book called
The Iliad
written by a man named Homer, and he began speaking of something called the Trojan War. Maxim was on the edge of his church pew.

Apparently, in the story, Achilles was asked to give up a war prize—a girl—and he didn’t want to, and this made him behave badly.

“Most people see Achilles as a hero, a brave warrior,” Vicar Brandon went on, pushing back a few strands of red hair, “but he was plagued by greed and arrogance, and he neglected the needs of his men, leaving Odysseus to tend to such duties. Succumbing to the call of greed can bring out the worst in the very best of us, and we must ever guard against it.”

Just then, Maxim noticed that his two elder brothers were nodding off to sleep, and his father was frowning at the new vicar in disapproval. How could his brothers possibly fall asleep during such a story?

After church, most of the adults murmured to one another in quiet voices, but on the way out, as Papa tentatively shook Vicar Brandon’s hand and introduced himself, Maxim stared up, and Vicar Brandon looked down at him. Their eyes locked, and a jolt passed through Maxim. He did not know what it meant, although he did know it had nothing to do with fear. The vicar quickly looked away and nodded politely to Papa.

At supper that night, Papa asked, “Does the new vicar have a wife?”

Mama shook her head. She always knew the gossip. “Not yet. He’ll be a catch for some girl.”

But Papa’s frown deepened.

For the following five days, Maxim pestered Mama a good deal to send him on errands that might take him past the rectory. He hung outside the rectory garden as long as he could, not certain what he was hoping for . . . but only that he was hoping for something.

On the fifth day, a side door of the rectory opened, and Vicar Brandon stepped out. He wore a plain shirt and trousers, and he carried a hoe in his right hand. He stopped upon seeing Maxim.

“Well, hello,” he said. But his voice sounded different now, almost cautious. Had he felt the jolt back at the church door, too?

Maxim didn’t answer. He didn’t know how and just stood outside the gate as Vicar Brandon approached.

“Can I do something for you?” the vicar asked. “Do you need something?”

Feeling as if he were about to burst, Maxim had the sense that this meeting was critical and that he had to say the right thing or the moment would vanish forever.

“What happened to Achilles?” he asked.

By way of answer, the vicar’s face broke into an open smile, the first one ever aimed directly at Maxim. He wanted to smile back but didn’t know how.

“You come inside, and I’ll show you the book,” Vicar Brandon said. “Can you read?”

“Yes . . . some.”

Mama had taught him his letters, but his family had no need for books.

Maxim spent the next hour sitting beside Vicar Brandon, listening to him read sections of the precious, faded copy of
The Iliad
, all about a Trojan horse and a fierce battle with a man named Hector. It was the best hour of Maxim’s life. He nearly wept when it ended and he had to go home.

Two nights later, lying in his bed, he heard his parents engaged in an open fight—something they rarely did.

“No!” Papa roared. “Something ain’t right about him. You tell him no.”

Maxim wondered whom his father meant, but he didn’t expect to find out, because whenever Papa took that tone, Mama would fall silent in a hurry. To Maxim’s surprise, she shouted back.

“That boy don’t belong on a fishing boat, and you know it! He’ll be less than useless to you, and I think . . . I think it might kill him.”

“So it’s good enough for me but not for the boy?”

“No, I didn’t mean . . . Please, give him a chance. He could make something of himself. The vicar ain’t even asking for money. He says the boy is gifted. Please.”

Maxim nearly gasped. They were talking about the vicar and him. He didn’t sleep much that night.

The next day, Mama took him aside. “Vicar Brandon’s made an offer to be your teacher. He says he needs help there at the rectory, and if you’ll run errands for him and do some of the gardening, he’ll pay you a small wage and give you lessons for a few hours a day.”

A few hours a day? Every day?

Lessons
and
a small wage? Maxim’s twelfth birthday was rushing toward him, and it seemed he was being given a reprieve from becoming a fisherman. He could hardly believe it. At first, he thought his brothers would be green with envy—and they might even make him suffer for his good luck. But instead, they appeared relieved that he would not be joining them on the boat. Perhaps his presence made them as uncomfortable as theirs made him.

While Papa still expressed silent displeasure at the situation, the only one to openly object was Edith, Maxim’s sister. Stunned by the news, she cried, “No! He already thinks he’s so much better than us.”

He looked with disdain at her lank hair, doughy face, and stout figure. Then he forgot about her. Nothing was going to stop him from taking Vicar Brandon’s offer.

In the following years, a new world opened up for Maxim. Under the vicar’s tutelage, he studied history, literature, philosophy, and theology, literature being his favorite. He learned that Vicar Brandon was the third son of a family “of name,” and that he had studied at a grand university called Oxford. Maxim never tired of hearing stories about the university and the professors there.

Such men must command great respect.

But he also loved the quiet of the rectory. He loved its cleanliness and its order—so different from his filthy home bursting at the seams with people. Whenever possible, he arrived early enough to share oatmeal and apples with Vicar Brandon for breakfast, marveling at the taste of fresh milk laced with honey. In the afternoons, the vicar always put out a lunch of ham or cheese and fresh bread. The two of them planted a strawberry patch in the garden.

About the time Maxim turned eighteen, he heard rumblings at home and could sense his father gearing up to insist that he finally take his place among the fishermen. The small wage he earned at the rectory could hardly make up for the additional help of one more man on the boat—even if that man was Maxim.

“Papa’s going to take me away,” he told Vicar Brandon, unable to keep the fear from his voice. “He’s going to force me onto the boat.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

And a second miracle occurred. To Maxim’s astonishment, a number of families in Hastings suddenly began offering him part-time work tutoring their young sons. Within a few weeks, he was earning good money, most of which he handed over to Papa, and any talk of the fishing boat ceased.

But the families he worked for were . . .
better
than his own, and although he took great care with his personal hygiene, his clothes were still those of a fisherman—or at least those of someone from a fisherman’s family—and the shame was surprisingly sharp. He felt caught between two worlds.

Without Maxim saying a word, Brandon gave him enough money to buy his first tailored suit—dark gray with a black shirt. The colors suited him, contrasting with his pale skin. Looking in the mirror at the tailor’s shop, he finally saw himself as a tutor, a teacher, who belonged among the better families of Hastings.

He looked different. He was different.

In addition, although he would never be tall, he’d gained some height and felt comfortable in his slender body. He wore his hair a bit longer than was fashionable, with thick bangs hanging over one eye, and while the vast majority of men disliked other men who were “pretty,” Maxim found that women had no such objections.

When he walked down the street near his home, the girls would follow him with their eyes. He enjoyed their admiration, but they were just fishermen’s girls—like his sisters—so he never spoke to them.

The following year, he met Opal Radisson when her parents engaged him to tutor her younger brother. The Radissons lived in a fine house a good distance from the docks, and the first time he saw her, she was standing near the bottom of a staircase with a large vase of roses behind her. Nearly as tall as he and quite slender, she was wearing a peach muslin dress. Her chestnut hair hung in curls to the small of her back with her bangs pulled up at the crown. She was beautiful.

As they looked at each other, he could see she found him beautiful, too, but this was the first time he’d returned any girl’s admiration. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He wasn’t certain what to do.

She solved the problem for him.

When he’d finished tutoring her younger brother that morning, he was forced to walk through the parlor to reach the front door. He heard music before even entering the parlor, and he tensed upon seeing Opal behind the piano.

Without stopping her playing, she looked up. The lightest shadow of freckles covered her milky skin. “Do you like Mozart?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. It never bothered Maxim to admit ignorance on a topic. Such admissions usually led to further education. “Vicar Brandon was never a student of music.”

“Then come and listen. I’ll play some Bach for you, and you can decide what you like.”

He walked over to stand behind her, and he was still standing there when Mrs. Radisson walked in a half hour later and froze at the sight of them. Maxim looked at her calmly, as if he belonged there, and she smiled slightly, taking a closer look at the cut of his suit. After all, Vicar Brandon had recommended him. Surely he must be a respectable young man.