Rustication (18 page)

He bent over the animal and I assume was prising apart the wound but I couldn’t watch. I heard him say:
I’m shoving it in. See? The blade doesn’t go to the bottom of the cut
.

Amelia came closer and peered at it. She said:
You did it twice. You slashed once and then went back and slashed again
. She called on me to play the arbiter:
Look. Here’s the first cut and here’s the second
.

I said:
I can’t believe Frederick would do such a thing
.

Amelia said:
What do you know about it? He does horrible things all the time
.

The governess said:
Amelia, be silent. You’re being very discourteous
.

But the girl shouted at her brother:
Look what you’ve done to your coat! Mama will be furious
.

Yes
, he cried.
And now I’ll get it all over you, too. And serve you right for telling such lies
.

He moved towards her and both she and the governess scurried aside, not wanting to be touched by this blood-soaked apparition. With gore smeared over his coat and spots of it on his face he looked like some figure from a Gothic melodrama. I stepped forward and held out my arm to bar his path.
That’s not a gentlemanly way to behave
, I said.

That seemed to have an effect. He stopped and replaced the knife in its sheath.

The little governess thanked me as if I had performed some heroic action. Then she knelt and kissed the youngest child who was sobbing and said:
Now, children, look how you’ve frightened poor Sammy
.

I watched in amazement as all the children hurried over to comfort their little brother—hugging him and ruffling his hair and digging into their pockets to find small gifts. Stricken with remorse for what they had said and done, they started sobbing and embracing one another. Amelia gave Frederick a cautious kiss, holding herself away from his blood-smeared sleeve, and they seemed to have forgotten and forgiven the cruel insults they had just thrown at each other. What a contrast with my own family!

We strolled on and it seemed natural that the governess and I should walk together with the children going before us.

She told me her name is Helen Carstairs and said that she knew who I was. I asked her if she liked her present employment. She hesitated and said:
I am very fond of the children
.

She must have seen my surprise because she smiled and said:
They are not always as troublesome as this
. Then she talked of the difficulty of a governess’s position caught between the family and the servants. She admitted that she had had little choice in taking up such a post and said:
I have a widowed mother and two younger siblings who depend on me
.

What is a governess paid? Fifteen pounds a year? Certainly, it is very little since she is given lodging and sustenance. If her relatives are so much in need of that, their circumstances must be desperate indeed.

We found that we both love the poetry of Keats and the novels of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. She is teaching herself German and has begun to read Goethe. She loves music, too, and told me how she would creep down the stairs at night and listen when anyone was playing in the drawing-room.

I asked:
And are they kind to you?

She said:
Mr Greenacre and I have long conversations about books and ideas
. She paused and then said:
Mrs Greenacre used to be very considerate but she has been influenced by the Rector’s wife. I fear that Mrs Quance dislikes me for some reason
. (You’re young and clever and not positively ugly. That’s reason enough, I thought.)

I told her I hated Mrs Quance for her sanctimonious self-righteousness and her wicked mischief-making. Helen was silent for a while and then she said a strange thing:
Such people are their own punishment
.

We talked of the isolation of the district and she asked:
Aren’t you lonely out here so far from everything?

I said without reflecting:
Only when I’m with other people
.

She laughed and said:
Then it’s fortunate we have come to the parting of our ways
.

I hadn’t noticed but we had reached the turning down our lane and so we made our farewells.

Now that I have had the chance to look at her closely, I see that she is not really pretty: the poor girl squints. But she is thoughtful and clever.

· · ·

Such an open display of emotion! Such volatility! Another family is a foreign country. Why were we so inhibited? Was it because we had always to calculate:
Will this revelation of my feelings anger Father?
If I replied to him in a sulky tone Father would shout:
I will not allow these moods
. Strikes me now that he was the only one of us who showed his feelings without restraint.

When I entered the parlour they were so engrossed that they did not notice me. Mother was standing smiling and clapping her hands while Effie walked round and round in front of her showing off a rather magnificent red dress that I hadn’t seen before. Mother’s eyes were hungrily devouring her daughter. I spoke and as they turned and looked at me her smile faded.

Euphemia is trying on the dress that we’re making for the ball
, she said in a tone that implied that I would not find it of any interest.

Effie, however, smiled at me and made an elaborate curtsey in my direction.

Mother said:
It looks almost as good on you as it did on me. I was a fine-looking girl once myself
.

I heard a catch in her voice and she put her head down and hurried out of the room.

Effie twirled round to show me the garment. The dress left her arms and shoulders bare and because it was unfinished it was open far down her back. I must have blushed because Effie laughed and said:
Are you embarrassed? It wasn’t many years ago that you and I used to share a bath-tub
.

With a mocking smile she sailed out of the room.

9 o’clock.

Just before dinner I was in the kitchen and saw Mother trying to reach a canister down from a high shelf. I did it for her. She had been standing on tiptoe and scrabbling for it. Those quick, nervous movements. I wonder why she cannot take things more slowly but she does everything in that rapidly scrabbling manner as if she needs to clutch at everything she desires before it disappears. She looked so thin in her worn and patched garments. I wanted to put my arms around her and hug her but she wouldn’t have cared for that.

½ past 9 o’clock.

I’ve been thinking. I let Mother down. I should have lent her better assistance with the goose. And I don’t know why I said that about the shirt last night. It wounded her as it was meant to, but why did I want to do that? Why do I feel a desire to cause her pain, and often at exactly the moment when she is showing that she loves me? What I heard her saying to Miss Bittlestone, it wasn’t unkind. The intention wasn’t to denigrate me. She was sharing her concern.

So after dinner I waited until Euphemia had left the room and said:
The shirt is beautiful. I’m sorry I didn’t thank you properly. I’m very grateful
.

She smiled and said:
That’s better, Richard. And now I hope you’ll make it up with your sister and drop this silly refusal to accompany us to the ball
.

That is a concession I don’t feel ready to make.

Later on, heroic Mother, bloodied but unbowed after the goose, began to talk of her intention to cook a fine dinner on New Year’s Eve.

11 o’clock.

Effie came back into the room and gave me what seemed to be a warning look and then started talking about the stories she had heard from friends and their brothers about the decline in morals of undergraduates.

While Mother was preoccupied with her knitting, Effie was signalling to me her intention to approach closer and closer to the subject she had raised with me this morning.

She said:
There have grown up a number of very self-indulgent and dangerous habits amongst the young men at both the Universities
.

Mother nodded absent-mindedly.

Effie went on:
The excessive drinking has, of course, been traditional for many years and can hardly now be regarded as a vice. But there are new dangers that have arisen in recent years
.

Like any blackmailer, her power ends at the point where the truth is revealed and so she adroitly held back. She had fired a warning-shot. The next broadside would be aimed below my waterline.

After half an hour Mother went into the kitchen to give Betsy some instructions. Effie asked me to help her move the pianoforte a few inches to avoid a loose floorboard. As I bent to push the instrument, her shoulder brushed against me and then she turned and her bosom was against my chest.

I’m so sorry
, she said and when we had completed the task she said:
It hasn’t made you dusty, has it?
She ran her hand down my chest and then down to the top of my leg, brushing gently. She gazed up at me with eyes sparkling. Then she flung herself onto the stool and burst into a fast waltz.

Mother came back and resumed her knitting. Effie was now playing very softly and I went closer. In a low voice she said, while her fingers still danced over the keys:
I often see your candle burning till late when I look out of my window. I wonder when you intend to sleep tonight?

I muttered:
Late
. I felt my voice croaking as I said it.

She made no response but continued to play. Why did she ask me that?

Midnight.

I will never smoke again. Tomorrow I will destroy everything: the pipe, the stuff itself. I will not let it have power over me.

Am still haunted by the agony of that wretched animal. Who is carrying out these deranged attacks? (I can’t believe it is Frederick, though he was clearly enjoying using his knife.) Whoever cut open the animal’s belly must have been very near us. Could it have been that angry young countryman I talked to?

· · ·

Pleasure in inflicting pain. An interesting phenomenon. Frederick stabbing the sheep. Amelia enjoying it as much as he. Mrs Quance at any opportunity. That man beating the chained dog. Effie now and then, I’m afraid.

½ past midnight.

I was writing that when there was a gentle tap at the door and Effie glided in! She smiled and said:
I’m not disturbing you, I hope?

I said she was not and asked her to sit. There was only the bed and she seated herself on that so I turned my chair full-circle and sat facing her.

She looked round:
It’s very cosy. I can see why you spend so much time up here
.

I found it hard to speak. She was wearing a robe that she was clutching around herself as if it might fall open at any moment. I was trying to keep my eyes on her face. She was perfumed with the scent of soap and had the rosy glow that showed she had just come from her bath.

We talked for a few minutes and I hardly recall what was said. We expressed our concern for Mother and the strain she was under. Then she brought the subject round to the ball and talked of the pleasure she was sure I would derive from it. As she was speaking her gown began to open and I found it hard to attend to her words.

I hardly knew what I was saying and was not surprised to hear myself agreeing to attend the ball. She rose and came towards me and I stood up and she thanked me and then kissed me on the cheek, her hand pressing on the back of my neck to bring my head closer and lingering there as she said goodnight. I put my arms around her briefly and felt her warm body and my hands touched her back low down and it felt almost naked under the thin material.

Then she was gone.

· · ·

Δ

Sunday 27
^th
of December, noon.

I
was spared church today because we are going to Stratton Peverel this afternoon. My strategy for the tea-party: Say as little as possible and listen for any fragments of information that I can make sense of. Both we and the Quances now have an animus against Davenant Burgoyne for the same reason: Each has a daughter who has been humiliatingly rejected by him. A strong alliance might well be constructed on such a foundation.

· · ·

Managed to get Effie alone for a few minutes. I said I wasn’t going back on what I had agreed last night but that in return for consenting to go to the ball, I required her to make a promise: She must stop threatening to tell Mother about various imagined offences of mine and prying into whatever it was that I was rusticated for.

She accepted those terms.

· · ·

Drowned in the deep brown
. I don’t feel happy with that.

6 o’clock.

As we neared the village, I spotted Miss Bittlestone ahead and increased my pace. I went straight to the point and mentioned that I had encountered Mr Davenant Burgoyne on Christmas Eve.

She needed no further prompting:
He came to tell the Lloyds about his betrothal to that brazen creature in Thurchester but he did not have the decency to come and tell us
.

(
Us!
)

I reminded her that when she came to tea we had discussed what would happen if he died without an heir. Now I asked bluntly:
Who is the “connection of the earl’s late brother” who would inherit the money at his death?

She shuddered at that last word and looked at me in dismay.
Why, Mr Davenant Burgoyne’s brother
.

His brother!

Well, his half-brother
.

I’ve never heard that he had any kind of brother!

At that moment, unfortunately, Mother and Euphemia caught up with us and Mother asked the old trout:
Are you going to tea at the Rectory?

She jumped as if she’d been accused of some discreditable act.
I’m going there but I’m to sit with Miss Quance. She’s not very well, poor lamb
.