Schooling (10 page)

31

We Like Sheep. Aurora sings Handel up to the lab We Like Sheep, Kid, unlocking the door, We Like Sheep. Singing the way inside Have Gone Astray then not singing saying, Mother says Newmarket This Year so she has to remind Aurora halfway through that she has no idea what Newmarket is, getting out a new sponge tearing at the plastic with her teeth. Aurora winds her hair into a ball, jabs it through with a knitting needle. I stole this from Lucille in the sewing rooms. Looloo. I should have been a better rider, Kid then I would be at Newmarket right now instead of in a chemistry lab then Philippa would be cheering me on wouldn’t she? Yes, she says, Philippa would be cheering you on Philippa who is Philippa and Aurora laughs and says, You’re a funny girl the way you say things like that God you make me laugh. I told you how she bought me a horse when I was twelve. You know it’s my mother. Rinsing, Who has your horse now, Aurora? Nobody, Aurora says, Well God. He had to be shot on account of a stableboy leaving a pitchfork in the wrong place. Aurora fights the faucet. They sacked the boy but shot my horse. Then Aurora gets quiet her hair in that big sad ball. The sound of running water. Too bad they couldn’t shoot the boy, she tells Aurora to make her smile. Aurora won’t look up. They shoot a horse to put it out of his misery.

Pestles bob in the filled sink. Yesterday they were out on the field watching sports the three of them. Four. Four, because Simon Puck—

Beakboy? . . . asks Aurora.

Yes. Puck is always there.

You know you talk about these friends, Kid . . . Aurora takes a pestle to dry . . . Yet you always seem to be alone.

We were out there the four of us. Sophie wouldn’t stop talking about the good the true and the beautiful until Brickie snapped that the wonder was really working his nerves so Sophie shut up and began drawing sulky pyramids in the dirt.

Not much of a yarn so far . . . Aurora’s reaching up, stacking dishes.

Silence for a while then Brickie said So these are the golden days I’ve heard so much about. Sophie dug at her pyramid, Golden seconds more like. Well Brickie was annoyed and Sophie was grumping This too will last, so to rouse good humor yes an effort at levity I shouted To hell with old Stokes that Cyclops I don’t need some piece of metal and glass to take snapshots. Indeed said Brickie eyes searching Photos or no he quoted up from under his bastard fringe It’s guaranteed we’ll haunt each other over the next half century.

He said no such thing . . . Aurora disappears in search of toxins.

In the spin of autumn’s tiny helicopters I will see you as you are now, though you too will be fifty, seventy, tedious of life, unfit for dreams.

I plan to die at thirty. This from Sophie. I have no use for being my mother the inconsequential worries of

I will be

You won’t remember, Catrine.

Will.

When you glance up through a net of trees like these, in a crosshatched American sky you’ll find us sprawled under chestnuts watching cricket.

Well it was hockey they ignored and it was too wet to sprawl so they crouched on wooden pallets but who was to argue the more beautiful rendering.

32

So he calls her an original. In his dining room, bringing her to the shuttered room she never saw the day it snowed the day she leaned in his kitchen doorway as he fussed to make her toast. Says it when he picks up his palette knife says it once more when she sighs from holding her head still for so long. You Are.

Found on a bench looking out at Sunday evening on the cricket pitch back from a weekend at the new house. He said, In early February you were the one I expected to find outside in no coat. What is it you hold against outdoor wear exactly. She smiled. He said, But that is a lovely dress. And she made room for him on the bench sticking out one foot, Father bought me shoes too. Very dashing, pulling his trousers at the knee to sit. Listen to me, he said as she was telling him I don’t like wearing dresses so much. Catrine. He had come to the fields to find her, it was no amble to chat about the service, to hear about her weekend away, a reverie for belongings she hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Catrine, you should know that Paul’s parents phoned the school. He’s gone missing. She brought down her cuffs to warm her fingers. Catrine, because he will keep saying her name like that, won’t he.

Move your chin up a bit and to the right.

Red? Gilbert’s fussing at his palette with burned colors. There’s no red here.

Remember what I said? The exact is never true.

As long as he isn’t painting her blue. On the bench, she blew on her fingers, It’s all my fault. That’s not true, he said. But Paul would still be here if it weren’t for me. Gilbert thought about this. It’s not that simple. Nothing ever was. Gilbert stretched his arm along the bench, Don’t worry, parents predict he’s squatting with friends in London. Mr. Gilbert, she said then, Did you ever tell what happened that night? He continued to stare at the sorry grass. I made you a promise, he said, That I would only tell the Head. And then he turned to her with the smile she liked, You must trust me to keep the promises I make.

She twists, someone behind her has spoken.

Gilbert coughs . . . You don’t want to come out blurry do you?

Turning back to face him she folds her hands in her lap. He came out of the shop where he was taking shelter from the wind. Screwing up his eyes to make out the sign above the bus driver. This is her father, taking her case although it was tiny and she could manage and he looked like he was carrying a toy there were questions to ask the girl who never left the girl who huddled while the car made heat saying Well the bus stank of cigarettes the whole forty minutes and was late leaving because an old woman was too old to get up the steps in less than half a bloody hour and the lady next to me told me that her boyfriend won’t ever take her out at least not and pay for it if I don’t throw up it will be a bloody miracle and you know what’s funny? What’s funny? he said looking right then left, What’s funny and don’t say bloody. Father, I thought that I haven’t been on a bus in so long and how at home I used to take a bus every day. Listen to you rabbiting, Father laughed, She’s a rabbiter again driving on toward the Georgian. Behold these barns, stables, ye bungled vegetable garden. A lawn spilling out in swells to the ghosts of rosebushes. A small swimming pool collecting leaves and in its lazy swirl, a branch nudging the dark blot of a dead mole.

I never give people enough neck so don’t take it personally if there’s a touch of quasimodo . . . Gilbert hovers over his palette . . . Slap some green on paper and you’ve got a landscape, but people, portraits. Impossible. Though it’s nice to have an audience.

To admire you?

To pity me. Middlebrow man, his pathetic hobby. Now Courbet, there was a man. Defender of the proletariat, stone breakers, the wrestlers . . . adding water . . . To think the poor man suffered nightmares of school.

Do you have friends there, Father set down the keys on the empty kitchen counter with a bag of rolls bought on the way. Girls you go to the cinema with. Then there was light. In her eye. A sweep of torch, a lady stopped with the tray. Don’t Scream At Concessions. They said no to sweets but two minutes later Gilbert was up and down the aisle to buy Maltesers. She watched his return, cuffs short, arms swinging. When he sat down he gave her the box to open as if she were a child. I like to let them dissolve on my tongue, he said as they waited for Cary Grant for
Holiday
. They sat with their dissolving Maltesers sat next to each other waiting and laughing at the students’ fashion and it was good. Afterwards, coming out into the Oxbow evening, smoky, vindaloo, it gloomed, they careened down to the carpark. You like it here, he said when she laughed, You like it here where I was a student.

Yes, she said, I have friends, Father, and yes I go to the cinema. My friend is Sophie Marsden, she said, leaving out the part about cows, told Father Aurora Dyer not mentioning the reason for that introduction. It was all in the leaving out though that will have him saying on occasion, You seem different. All grown up. You’ve gotten so quiet. He thought photographs might help. Let me see the snaps. Oh I am taking photographs, many photographs Father, the kind to write home about but left them at school. I took a photograph of Aurora Dyer laid out on the floor, her hair about her like well like flame. She sounds like she’s got some gumption, Father marveled to make her laugh. This Aurora sounds like a funny girl.

What light . . . Gilbert taps the canvas . . . Yes.

Father in the study battering the typewriter behind stacks of papers, Full of moxie that one, because she used to laugh at words like moxie. She went to the window, below were stables and a henhouse. Why do we need so much, Father? Father hunted for an elusive Q. I can’t take up all the room in that bedroom. Really? triumphant to find the letter, As untidy as you are? We never had this before, Father and I think, he looked up to see what she thought, I think she would have liked it. Yes, love I’m sure she would have. He wanted to continue typing but didn’t. I wish she were here, she said to the glass, I wish she were.

Gilbert gets up . . . What will you do for the Easter holidays? French trip?

Switching from the view of stables, henhouse, back to the metronome of Father’s slow finds, I’m going to France, announcing, For Easter. I don’t know about that, Father said, glad to be back to his Q’s, I don’t know about France. What’s in France besides French people?

My father said he’d see.

Alright you can relax for a moment, you sound like Cagney . . . Gilbert adjusts the curtain watching to see how the light plays on her . . . I’ll be there as a chaperon.

Gilbert in France. A chaperon. There’s a surprise. Waving Le
Figaro,
racing across the Pont Neuf. Gilbert tacks back the curtain.

The two of them sharing irregular verbs on her bridge in his light. This is what I behold in the brown water of Paris. May I offer a beignet. But she will be lost with Araigny’s vocabulary. What scenario requires Obstruct, Desertion, Valor?

Sounds like Madame Araigny has more in mind than cafés . . . Gilbert settles back on his stool . . . Some swordplay perhaps . . . as Gilbert picks up his brush, the curtain pops out the tack and falls across the window again.

Damn . . . Gilbert throws down his brush . . . Have a stretch while I do this.

A china dog on the mantel. Gilbert struggles with the curtain. She picks up a book. Replaces it.

Anything of interest over there?

Not really. I hate books.

Nobody hates books, Catrine.

There’s nothing true about a book.

Who said there was?

Then what’s the point?

Pleasure, I suppose . . . removing his shoe, Gilbert beats at the tack . . . Seeing. Someone. Else. Suffer.

I read the ending first, see if it’s worth beginning.

That doesn’t surprise me . . . finished at the window, Gilbert crosses, gives her a little push on the shoulders to sit her down . . . Still, I imagine you prefer dramas.

The wallpaper by his ankle misses the wainscoting by a good inch. You’d think the man would put his art to a useful purpose.

Catrine . . . Gilbert raises his arms to embrace her. No, to grasp the easel. He looks at her, her image, her. Back and Forth. One hand bears a scar. What’s the trick they asked Lawrence when he put his hand in the flame. The trick is not minding. Bearing things you never thought you could. Gilbert picks up his brush. And the tack pings out, dropping the curtain across the window again.

For God’s sake . . . Gilbert snaps.

She giggles, yes really like a schoolgirl, going so far as to cover her mouth.

Think that’s funny, do you?

She goes to him, stretching.

Not yet . . . quickly Gilbert covers her portrait . . . Have a look at this instead.

Over his shoulder, a landscape. Pastures, forked roads. What light. A brook. He laughs he puts his arm around her waist he pulls her to his side.

What do you think?

But what is there to say.

That on his stool he is her height exactly. Exactly right that she can notice paint on his cheek and sleeve much as the dirt colored her uniform that time he saved her from nature pulled her from hedges pulls her to his waist the famous muchheld hip against her hip pointing out something in the painting something about truth. A deep roil in her stomach and chest as he points out MOOD feeling his hand on her waist PERSPECTIVE of new scars the changing COLOR of his brownish eyes. You’re not listening, he says without looking and she tells him, No freely not even pretending even laughing. Catrine. Dropping his hand straightening the painting on the easel which needs no straightening not looking at her. What are you thinking? Might she be bold enough to say I am thinking of a longing. But doesn’t that sound dramatic and wouldn’t it be just like her to ruin a moment like this. Now the moment has passed. Considered for too long. When he looks, she averts her eyes to the canvas. It is less often that she regrets having spoken without thinking first as Father admonishes than the times she regrets thinking at all.

Gilbert crosses to the door . . . Let’s have some tea.

Because there is always tea.

The cold pane looks out on Gilbert’s garden. A fence has buckled, sagging in one place. The picture of winter. The pale sun catches a row of thin trees beyond the garden out toward the lane, shearing the last of light into gauze. A motion by the trees, a flash of white. But as she tries to make it out, the window steams with breath. Deer perhaps. Or nothing at all. There are spots that dance on the eyes. Spreading her fingers against the glass. A bee lies caught between the double glazing. Tap tap. Quite dead, bee legs akimbo. A probable suffocation. An example of not knowing. Overcome by the view.

In the kitchen he clinks at the cups in the cinema she sat next to him in the dark her world without end their knees up on the seat in front his smell his shaven way laughing as she took her coat around her like a smock then not laughing to say Do you want mine too Oh frozen one Oh arctic muse I am colder colder even than that.

Do we want biscuits . . . he calls from the kitchen.

And she felt his breath on her as he turned to say a word or two and it was warm.

Or are we watching our figures?

Sunday, in the darkening, Gilbert’s teeth trailed as he stood. It’s getting late and I’m on duty. They left the bench, walked toward School House. She took a leaf from a bush they passed, cracking it in her hand. He said, I’d like to paint you I’d like—Is it that you feel sorry for me? she asked, Is that what it is? Gilbert stopped short, Pardon? That you do these things with me, letting her leaf drop to the ground. I like your company, he said. Is it on account of my mother or that people think I’m dirty or—Stop, he said and walked up the three steps to the heavy wooden door. Then he turned, looking down on her he said, It’s not so complicated. Certainly not pity.

Gilbert comes in backwards, carrying a tray.

Ear against the window. No one else has him. Not like this, backwards and domestic.

Setting the tray on a table by the window . . . Toast and honey.

I never had so much bread in my life.

We’ll show restraint, save the biscuits as an incentive.

I can hear the ocean. I thought only shells do that.

It’s trapped air.

Behind him, the light makes golden squares against the door. He will be the one to swap oceans for air.

Gilbert glances up from buttering . . . You’re shivering.

Butter knife still in hand, Gilbert disappears. She can hear him opening a door down the hall. He reappears holding a sweater, tosses it to her.

Thank you . . . the sweater reaches her knees. Metallic smell of the lab mixed with something boiled.

And Sunday evening you were out by the playing fields without a coat. What on earth were you up to?

Thinking.

A radical act at Monstead. What were you thinking about?

The service . . . she reaches across—

Hold on . . . Gilbert takes her wrist, briskly rolls up one cuff, now the other . . . So, you like the evening service? I find them stuffy.

I like the building. Ever since that day. When you brought me to your university.

Not religion then, so much as architecture.

We never went to church in Maine.

You prayed at home? Folded hands, bright halo, kneeling by your bedside?

I don’t believe in God.

I see. Neither God nor books. What do you believe in?

Toast.

He surveys the piece in his own hand . . . Well, there’s honor in that.

Do you pray, Mr. Gilbert?

With you lot? Just to make it through the day.

Seriously.

Seriously . . . Gilbert stretches out his legs and crosses them at the ankle . . . I have faith.

In religion?

In people. Mushy things I’d rather not go into.

You won’t tell me what you have faith in?

Perhaps it’s not faith at all, hum. Perhaps it’s superstition.

She reaches for the sugar. Gilbert watches as she dissolves a large spoonful in her tea. She only takes two.

I get the feeling you’ve never simply sat down and cried.

A knocking.

Why would I do that?