Miss Appleby's Academy (6 page)

‘I want to ask you something, Judge.’

‘Why of course, my dear, anything.’

His tone was so warm and his eyes so reassuring that she began to think marriage to him would not be so bad after all. It could be her only chance, the Judge was important. The trouble was, she thought ruefully, that he was an old man and the idea of having to share a bedroom and, even worse, a bed with someone whose flesh was sagging and whose teeth had gone brown, whose breath was sour and whose pate was bald – she tried to see it in a good light and couldn’t.

She didn’t want to sit down, but because the Judge couldn’t sit down until she did, he was too much the gentleman for that, she took a chair.

‘You need have no worries,’ he said. ‘Anything you wish for you shall have. I’m not a poor man, as you know, and although my children are boisterous there are plenty of servants and you would not have to do anything you did not wish to do.

‘I’m sure you will want to alter the gardens, of course. I know how dear your own house and garden are to you and although I could say nothing it has been hard for you to see the home where you lived with your father taken from you. I have very large gardens and the gardeners will be there to do your bidding. We shall all be there to do that. There will never be any work for you to do and you will have all the gowns that you desire and you will have beautiful jewellery—’

‘I have only one concern. George.’

The Judge frowned as though he had never heard the name before. ‘The Irish boy. Of course. I understand he has gone to school in Boston. A very good idea. My boys will go too of course, though at present they are rather young.’

‘George is like my own child.’

The Judge wrinkled his nose at this and then waved an airy hand. ‘You would not think so if you had one of your own. One’s own children are so very dear.’

‘He is very dear to me.’

The Judge smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, well, when you become the mother of my boys you will appreciate the difference.’

‘When Laurence and Verity suggested that I should go
and live in the cottage they wanted me to take George with me.’

‘I can understand that. They want only their own family and they thought that you would be alone, but you will not be, you will be the wife of the most respected man in the area. How is that?’

‘George will live with us then.’

The Judge hesitated. ‘I would like to say yes, but I’m afraid I cannot. When he is home during the vacations you would wish to see him from time to time and I feel sure that there are many families who have no child and would be prepared to take him in for a little – help.’

Emma could think of nothing to say. She felt some relief that she could not now marry him. How close she had come to giving up so much for George, and yet she would not have been unhappy because he would have been there, at least in the holidays, and she might even have enjoyed the house and the garden and new dresses, and the Judge might have been persuaded to take her away from time to time because she had always longed to see what was beyond the place where she had lived for all her life, but had not wanted to go without her father. Travel sounded so exciting and she had only been to places in her dreams and in the books that she read.

She stuttered her way out of the house – she must have made the right noises, she could not remember afterwards. It was an icy cold day and the sky was overcast. She made her way slowly back to Laurence and Verity’s house and considered what to do. She thought of the
cottage, she thought of having no money, she thought of the weeks and weeks when George would be away at school, and she could not help thinking of when George would be old enough to leave her, that he would go away and get married and she would be left alone there in the cottage. Was that a better fate than marrying the Judge? None of it seemed like a bargain, but it was all she had to consider. Whatever would she do?

The smell of burning came to him as soon as Mick opened the front door. Black smoke was pouring from the kitchen. He ran, shouting his wife’s name. The smoke was coming from the oven. He found a cloth and opened it. Whatever it had been was unrecognizable; it was now a charred piece of meat.

He managed to get the roasting tin on to the top of the stove. There was no other sign of activity in the kitchen, the vegetables were still unwashed in the sink. Dirty crockery and cutlery from earlier in the day littered the surfaces. The milk and butter from breakfast had not been put away. He opened windows in the kitchen to clear the fumes and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

He called Isabel’s name several times and then found her in the sitting room, unconscious. There was an empty brandy bottle and a glass lying beside her.

He got down on to the floor and said her name several times, but there was no response and in the end he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. Here too was evidence of all the things that had not been done. The bed was rumpled where they had left it. Clothes were
scattered on the floor as though she had thrown them there deliberately, some powder was spilled upon the dressing table, a pink satin powder puff lay like an upturned mushroom. He put her down and stared at her unconscious body. What was happening here? How could she do this now, and why?

She would not have help in the house. When he had pointed out that it would free her to do whatever it was she wished to do she said that she didn’t want people in their home, seeing the way that they lived and reporting back to the village.

He had not wanted her to be a prisoner there alone on the hillside and besides he had wanted them to make friends with other couples, to have dinner parties and play the married game.

He knew everybody and was great friends with Sam Blythe, the doctor, and his wife Marjorie; the local quarry owner Tom Robson, who was married with two children; and Will Wearmouth, who was just married, the solicitor he had known since they were small children. They had caught minnows in the stream below the village, and stayed out later than they should, making plans for running away as the houses lit their lamps in the cold distance.

Always Isabel had wanted to be alone with her husband. He didn’t mind at first because it was fun, but the idea haunted him now. His friends had withdrawn, some of them merely nodded to him in the street and sometimes he and Sam and Tom and Will had gone off into Durham
and had dinner there and stayed late, but he had not liked to leave her alone the past year or two because he had begun to realize that things were changing, that she didn’t like the loneliness of the house and felt rejected.

The company of other people didn’t matter so much now – his friends had children and he was at work most of the time anyway – but it troubled him. He thought back to when they were first married and Isabel was pregnant with Connie. She had been so excited, so pleased. He was setting up the business very young, and there was not much money. There had been no more children since.

She stirred, opened her eyes and winced. Then he heard Connie’s voice from her bedroom. He went in. She was sitting, wide-eyed and rather shocked, he thought, on the bed.

‘Is Mammy all right? She couldn’t get up off the floor.’

‘She’s fine now,’ he said.

*

The following day he decided to leave work early and collect Connie from school. The doors opened, the children streamed out, tumbling over the steps, boys shouting, running, pushing, the girls in small slow groups, the odd child alone, hanging back. Some of them had dirty faces, badly cut hair, grubby clothes. Their shoes were well-worn. Some of them looked down as they walked.

When they had all gone he waited a little longer and then became impatient and ventured inside. Mr English was sitting at his desk, but he looked up when he heard the noise.

‘I’ve come for Connie,’ Mick said.

Mr English looked surprised.

‘But she didn’t come to school today,’ he said.

Mick ran home, panicking. He felt sick. He didn’t know what he thought. He didn’t notice anything he passed. He dreaded that it would be a repeat of the previous night. Therefore he was surprised and delighted when he opened the door and the smell of cooking met his nose. He paused, took in that all was well, and headed towards the kitchen and the sweet smell of beef roasting.

He stopped short at the door. The kitchen was orderly. Isabel had a glass in one hand and was stirring a pot on the stove, a wooden spoon in the other. She didn’t hear him, she was doing a little dance and swigging brandy. Then she sensed him, stopped and turned, affronted surprise taking up the whole of her rather white face.

‘Where’s Connie?’

She shrugged, went back to her cooking and poured herself some more brandy.

He didn’t know what to do, he wanted to dash around the house, searching every corner and cupboard, yelling her name, but it was pointless. Isabel was not so drunk that she would not have been aware that her child was in the house instead of in school unless Connie had sneaked back and was reading in the attic. She had no friends; he could not think of any place but here or the garden that she might have gone.

He ran from room to room. He noticed nothing but that every room was empty. When he had exhausted the
house he took in every inch of the grounds outside. He felt sure that had she been within earshot she would have come to him. He went into the stables, the carriage-house, every outbuilding, even the hen-hut.

There were no horses, no hens, no carriages. The buildings were empty. In his desire to ensure an income for his family he had neglected these. She was not there, nor in the orchard where the grass was long and the plum, pear and apple trees were old and bore no fruit, nor was she in the fields around the house. He searched the woods.

He went back to the town. It was dark and he was becoming more and more afraid. Rain began to fall, each drop hard like a gun pellet. He wanted to weep, the pain in his heart was so bad.

Had she run away? Why had she not come to the pub? He tortured himself thinking that she had been taken by someone, dismissed the idea as stupid but he felt guilty that she had not considered coming to him. How long he spent wandering the streets, watching carefully, calling her name down unmade roads and narrow alleyways he did not know. In the end he found himself on the way home, unable to believe that had she been able she would not have returned to her home.

The lights burned in the kitchen, but Isabel was not there. The meat had been taken from the oven half raw, the vegetables, cold, were in their pans of water. He wanted to stay there, afraid of what he might find. He avoided the downstairs rooms. Upstairs in Connie’s room no light
burned, but the curtains were open and even though the room was in shadow he could see the outline of the shape of his child fast asleep in bed. He wanted to break down with thankfulness, but he didn’t want to disturb her. He stood for a long time, watching, unable to believe that she was actually there. Then he made his way across the landing.

No lights burned in here either, but Isabel was sleeping and the brandy bottle, now a familiar sight, was empty; he had no doubt, he did not need to check.

Where was she getting the brandy from? He did not keep such things here. He had never kept alcohol in the house. He didn’t drink at home, Isabel had shown no inclination for anything other than the odd glass of sherry in the evening or when she was making the Sunday dinner – or so he had thought.

He went downstairs into the kitchen and opened the cupboards and was still surprised when he discovered empty bottles, dozens of them, not even at the back. If he had been at home at all, had opened a cupboard in the last twelve months, he would have known. How had he not known, he who dealt with drunks daily, who sold such things to people as his living? How had he not smelled it? He examined the bottles more carefully. It was vodka, he should have known by the shape of the bottles, he chided himself.

He didn’t want to go to bed. He sat in the living room over the grey ashes of the long-dead fire.

At the Black Diamond the following day he called Ed
into the office and asked him if he had seen Isabel recently.

Ed shook his head slowly and then said with uncharacteristic softness, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’

Since he had to tell somebody, and since Ed was the closest thing he had to a father, Mick told him what had happened. ‘I don’t know what to do, Ed.’

There was silence and Ed frowned, and then he said, ‘And do you think you’d be that much better off if you did know?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sometimes things are best left alone,’ Ed said, and he went back to the bar.

Mick decided that he needed to talk to someone who might know about such things, and the only person he could think of was the doctor, Sam Blythe.

It was mid evening when he reached Sam’s house. He had been home first to find his wife in the kitchen as though nothing had happened, making dinner, completely sober, and his child curled up with a book. After that, on the pretext of going back to work, he had gone to Sam’s house when the surgery was closed. He knocked briefly at the back door before Marjorie answered it. She looked surprised to see him, but pleased.

‘Mick!’ She kissed him swiftly on the cheek. He tried to remember when he had last seen her, felt her warmth and kindness, and wished once again that things might have been different, that she and Isabel could have been friends. ‘Come in. Sam’s just finished.’

‘I don’t mean to interrupt your evening—’

‘Nonsense. He’ll be delighted to see you. I’m just about to put the children to bed.’

There followed ten for him glorious and painful minutes when the two little girls and one boy were present. He wished his life were the same, and then Marjorie took them to bed and Sam took him through into the surgery.

‘It must be an official visit,’ his friend said. ‘You never come for anything else any more,’ and then he paused and said, ‘Sorry, I’ve had a bad day. I can tell by your face that something’s wrong. Is it Connie?’

Mick shook his head. Sam waited, but only for a few seconds. ‘Would you like a drink?’