Listening for Lions

by Gloria Whelan

  Mr. Grumbloch directed the taxi driver to Gordon Square. I was still trembling as Mr. Grumbloch led me up the walk to a narrow brick house. He cautioned me, “Though sensible in her own way, my sister is inclined to be somewhat impetuous and is, I’m afraid, a little too involved with art and other nonsense.”

  Miss Grumbloch was there to greet us. How different she was from her brother. He was as firm and rigid as a stone, while his sister with her dress of silken gauze and her hair loose about her shoulders was as airy as a cloud of mist. From the moment she opened the door to us, Frieda Grumbloch was kindness itself.

  “My dear,” she said when she saw me, “how pale you are.” She took my hands in hers. “You are cold as the grave. Come into my sitting room, where there is a warm fire. I’m sure my brother has not thought to feed you. I’ll have Effie bring you a nice hot cup of tea and some lovely biscuits from an enchanting shop I just discovered.”

  Mr. Grumbloch said, “I will leave Rachel to your care, Frieda. I must get back to business. I will be here to pick her up first thing in the morning.”

  We were soon settled in front of the fire. At first I was afraid to pick up the cup of tea, for my hands were still shaking, but Frieda—she had insisted I call her that—was so kind, and the room in which I found myself so unusual, I felt some of my worry melt away. One wall of the room was painted with a scene of trees and flowers. The lamp-shades were of bits of colored glass, put together to look like flowering trees. Even the window draperies and the rugs were woven into patterns of branches. I felt as if I had settled in an enchanted forest. Frieda herself, with her flowing hair and trailing skirts, looked like a wood nymph.

  She saw me looking about the room. “The mural on my wall was painted by a friend,” Frieda said. “The draperies are my own poor effort. Later I’ll show you my loom. Now, Rachel, we must talk about you. My brother has told me your story. What a time you have had.”

  “What I did was very bad.”

  “You fell among evil people at a time when you were most in need of help,” Frieda said. “Now you are rid of them and you can be yourself.”

  “I don’t see how Grandfather can ever forgive me.”

  “I can assure you that he has. My brother says your grandfather wants nothing more than to have you with him for as many years as he has left to him. Are you not happy at Stagsway?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve never been happier.” But that was not true, and I was resolved that from now on I would speak only the truth. “I was happier with my parents at Tumaini, but I can never go back to that.”

  “Is it just your parents that you miss? Or do you miss Africa and your friends there as well?”

  I could not keep the tears from my eyes.

  “I see,” she said. “Tell me what it was like.”

  I told her the story I had told to Mr. Grumbloch. “There is no hospital and no school now,” I said. “All my mother and father’s work at Tumaini was for nothing.”

  “Surely not. Think of all those they made well and all the children who have the gift of reading and writing. All that they accomplished will be built upon. Now you must rest for a bit.”

  Though I did not think I could close my eyes, my lack of sleep the night before overcame me, and the moment I lay down, I was asleep. It was dark when I awoke. Frieda had prepared a little evening feast, which we had in a cozy way in front of the fire. Our talk turned to books, and she asked what I had read. “Excellent, excellent,” she said, “but you would have found nothing recent in your grandfather’s library. If you love books, I will give you some to take with you, and one day I will introduce you to the writers of the books. With a mind as bright as yours you will want to find a proper school to continue your education.”

  “You mean leave Stagsway and Grandfather?”

  “Though I am sure your grandfather will be reluctant to part with you, you must go to school. You must continue the education your mother began. Young women must have an education. You would be away only for the school term. You will be at Stagsway on your vacations and, of course, for the summers. I believe I know of just the right school. Now you have listened to me chatter long enough. We’ll get you settled in your room. This has been a long day for you.”

  While I was in bed that night, the thought of going away to a school kept me awake. As much as I hated to think of it, I knew that one day Grandfather would not be there. I would have to find some life for myself. Much as I loved Stagsway, I did not think I would be happy living there alone with only the birds for company. But the only dream I had was of Tumaini and the hospital, and that was an impossible dream.

  When I set off for Stagsway with Mr. Grumbloch the next morning, along with a packet of books, I carried a letter Frieda had written to Grandfather. As Frieda saw us off, she said, “Remember, Rachel, if you ever have need of someone to talk with, you must come to me.”

  It was on the way to Stagsway that Mr. Grumbloch showed me the papers he had drawn up on Grandfather’s orders. They were adoption papers with my new name, Rachel Pritchard. I knew then that Grandfather had forgiven me and that I would have a home, but something inside me was sorry that once again I would lose Rachel Sheridan.

  BOOK THREE

  Rachel Pritchard

  ELEVEN

  I flew up the stairway to Grandfather’s room, and bursting through the door, I fell on my knees next to his chair. In no time we were hurrying to tell each other all the things we had not been able to say. We talked long into the night. I told Grandfather, year by year, month by month, almost day by day all the stories of Tumaini.

  Grandfather told me how Mr. Pritchard, after his brother’s death, had gambled away thousands of pounds. When Grandfather had refused to give him more money, he had stolen it from the estate, and the shame of the theft had made his mother so miserable, she had become ill. “It was then I sent him off to Africa. I couldn’t bear to have him by me. When I began to see in Valerie’s letters the same greediness for money, I hoped by bringing her here I might spare her repeating her father’s mistakes. It was not to be. But I have you, and for that I am most grateful.”

  “How did you guess that I was Rachel?” I asked.

  “You gave yourself away almost from the first by talking about your ‘friend’ Rachel and the hospital and the land. I could see the longing in your eyes. Out of curiosity I had Grumbloch contact the mission. I believe my curiosity kept me alive in those weeks. I could not die until I had solved the mystery. As soon as he saw the pictures of you and your family, we knew. By then I had come to love you, and I felt sure that when you were ready, you would tell me the truth. I am very sorry for the death of my grandchild, but you are a great gift. I believe Mr. Grumbloch has told you that I mean to adopt you. I hope that will please you.”

  Seeing the look of pleasure on Grandfather’s face, I could not tell him of the small doubt I had about losing Rachel Sheridan, I only took his hand in mine, saying that nothing would please me more. As soon as I said it, I thought how I had resolved to say nothing but the truth and how already I had fallen short of my resolve. I saw that truth was very complicated.

  When Ellie came to help me to get ready for bed, she stared at me as if she could not quite believe what she was seeing. “Oh, Miss Valerie, I mean, Miss Rachel. We was talking below stairs. It was so exciting, your not being who you were and your real life so different and all. It must be a bit like it is for me. At home on the farm there’s a bath every once in a while because of the trouble of getting the tub out and heating the water and all. Here Mrs. Bittery makes me wash every day until I’m sure my skin will come off.”

  “Oh, Ellie,” I said, smiling. “That is just how it was for me.” I could not help wondering how many people like Ellie and me were not always who they pretended to be.

  That night I slept once more in the room I had come to love. I tried not to worry about Frieda’s insistence on my going away to school. I would have been content to stay at Stagsway and make Grandfather happy, but I ha
d made the journey all the way from Africa, and the school would not be so far.

  The next morning Grandfather sent me out to see if the house martins had left.

  “The house martins are gone,” I reported, “and the witch hazel is blooming.” I had seen the spidery yellow blossoms standing out on the bare branches.

  “The martins gone and the witch hazel blooming. Autumn is truly here and you must follow the swallows, Rachel.”

  I stared at him. In the joy of being out of doors again, I had forgotten all about school and wondered if I was to be sent away after all.

  “In her letter to me Miss Grumbloch pointed out that you have had no schooling since you came here. Your mother, who was at such pains to teach you, would surely have wanted you to continue your education. We must find a proper school for you.”

  “Must I leave?”

  “It would be selfish of me to keep you to myself. It isn’t just the schooling, important as that is; you must have friends your own age.”

  By the end of the month I was enrolled in a boarding school, Ditchley. It was in Sussex, not too far from Stagsway, so that I could easily come home during vacations. Still, I worried. “I’ve never gone to a proper school,” I told Grandfather. “I’ve never had girl friends. I won’t know how to act.”

  “Nonsense, my dear. You are a very bright child, and your mother made a fine job out of her teaching. I have seen you tackle books from my library that would puzzle a university student. As for things like numbers and science, girls needn’t worry about such things.”

  At the end of October I said good-bye to Grandfather and left for Ditchley. Nivers drove me in the car with my luggage and a basket from Mrs. Nessel packed with biscuits and cakes and her homemade jams and jellies.

  With no thought of my dignity I climbed up on the backseat so that I could have the last possible look at Stagsway. When it was out of sight, it was all I could do to keep from jumping out of the car and running back. It seemed that my whole life was spent leaving the places I loved.

  My idea of school was Mother and myself under a tree with our books, or Mother with her pupils grouped about her. There the schoolhouse walls were made of grass mats, which let in the sun. The roof was open to the sky. Ditchley was a large stone building with a slate roof. I felt I was entering a prison. In Tumaini the pupils ran in and out as they liked; at Ditchley we marched in lines from class to class. Every minute of our time was taken from us and squeezed into a schedule that had nothing to do with our wishes.

  On my first day at school, Miss Ethelward, the headmistress, took me into her office. She peered at me from glasses pinched onto her nose. Her hair was pulled back into a skimpy knot. Her clothes were a dull gray, and her shoes so heavy, I wondered at the effort it took to lift one foot up after the other. Yet in spite of her severe look and her stern manner, I noticed that a teddy bear sat on her desk with a pink ribbon around its neck.

  “There can be no learning without discipline,” she said. “We do not believe in discipline for discipline’s sake here, only discipline for learning’s sake. Now, what languages do you know? Latin, of course. Greek? French?”

  “Swahili,” I said, “and some Kikuyu and a few words in the Masai language.”

  “Good heavens! No Latin!” She could not have been more amazed had I said I had not learned to breathe.

  “I know three Latin words,” I said. “Hylocichla guttata pritchardi.”

  There were more pained looks when Miss Ethelward learned of my difficulties in arithmetic. With little hope in her voice, she asked, “What books have you read? If, indeed, you have read any books at all.”

  At last I had something to say. I had made good use of Grandfather’s library. Out tumbled my favorites. “Everything of Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, and all of Dickens and Shakespeare’s plays except Coriolanus, because everyone kills everyone, but I know Midsummer Night’s Dream almost by heart. Wordsworth is my favorite poet, but Browning tells such wonderful stories, and Byron…”

  Miss Ethelward raised her hands as if she were warding off a swarm of bees. I saw that she was smiling, but immediately the smile disappeared as if she had been caught at some forbidden activity. “I can see that you are a special problem, but discipline will solve any little difficulties.”

  I was soon floundering about in the deep waters of mathematics and Latin verbs, but it was the discipline that sank me. At Tumaini I had been free to go where I wished. At Stagsway, when I was not with Grandfather, I roamed where I liked. At Ditchley no minute of my day belonged to me. We rose at seven, washed in cold water, put on our uniforms, breakfasted on gluey porridge, bread and margarine, and weak tea, and after a brief stop at chapel were in our classroom seats by eight o’clock. Even our recreation was scheduled. There was no time to look for birds or wander into the nearby woods. We were put into teams and sent into violent pursuit of a helpless ball.

  Not everyone followed the schedule or worked as hard at their lessons as I did. Some of the students did not mind coming unprepared to class. They behaved like lapwings. When you get close to a lapwing’s nest, the little bird makes a great commotion to lead you away so you won’t notice its young. When our history teacher, Miss Edgar, asked Sarah Evans for the date of the Battle of La Hogue, Sarah had a terrible coughing fit and had to be excused to drink some water. When Elizabeth Weston could not explain why England had a civil war in 1642, she began to scream, saying she had seen a black widow spider in her desk. The girls were often mischievous, but I didn’t dare misbehave. Unlike me, the other girls had never in all their lives done anything really bad. In pretending to be Valerie, I had already used up all my wickedness.

  I looked forward to making friends at school, but I had come late and friendships had already been formed. I could not find my way into their world. They seemed to have a secret code I couldn’t decipher. They talked about their horses and shopping in London for clothes and dances and boys they knew. Several of the girls had had French governesses when they were growing up, and their conversation was sprinkled with French words I didn’t understand. I knew when I was with them they used French to talk about me. It was considered bad form to speak of the books you read. I loved the Greek plays, which were so beautifully tragic, and longed to know what they sounded like in Greek. When I asked one of the girls who was studying Greek to read me a line or two, she gave me a withering look. Later I saw her and another girl looking my way and giggling. I heard the words gauche and ingénue.

  There was some interest in me when it was learned that I had lived in Africa, but my dismal performance in class, and then my resolve to work hard and improve, did nothing to help me make friends. If I made an error, some girl was sure to whisper, “That’s how it’s done in Africa.”

  Somehow the other girls had discovered that my parents were missionaries who had died in Africa. I walked into Latin class one morning to find on the blackboard a picture of my parents in a kettle over a fire with horrid caricatures of Africans dancing around the fire. The stupidity and cruelness were too much for me, and I ran out of the room in tears and right into Miss Ethelward, who marched me back into the classroom.

  “I think it is time you learned what Rachel’s parents did in Africa. Rachel, I want you to describe the hospital at Tumaini and the people who worked there.”

  There were groans from the girls. At first I could hardly get a word out, but then my anger took over and I described the women who would have suffered from complications of childbirth had there been no hospital and the man whose appendix might have burst and who would have died had my father not been there to operate. I told them how our nurses and Father’s assistant were Africans. “They don’t boil missionaries,” I told them, my face red with anger. “They save lives and they are a whole lot smarter than the stupid, silly girls who drew that picture.” There wasn’t a sound in the room. The girls were all looking down at their desks.

  “Thank you, Rachel,” Miss Ethelward said. “That was very i
nstructive, although you would have done well to omit your last words. What one says in anger is seldom worth saying.” Still, for just a moment I saw that fleeting smile that Miss Ethelward guarded so carefully.

  That afternoon Nora stopped me on my way into the dining hall. “Do you want to sit with me?” she asked. “Pay no attention to those fools—they’re incredibly dense.” Nora was Irish. Her father had something to do with the Irish government and was stationed in England. Nora was slim with black curls, eyes the color of violets, and a love for words. She could say whole poems by heart.

  Nora and I became friends. She took it upon herself to explain everything to me: the other girls (“They’re like a school of fish all swimming in the same direction”), the school (“You get your money’s worth”), and the way of the world in general (“You have to give as good as you get”). What really made us friends was her love of Shakespeare, but where I read it, she acted it. Her favorite scene was from Hamlet where it says “Enter Ophelia, distracted.” Nora went around reciting Ophelia’s words, “White his shroud as the mountain snow,” as if she were truly mad.

  After the Christmas vacation the winter inched along and I had only my letters from Grandfather and the thought of Easter vacation to cheer me. In March Grandfather’s letters began to speak of spring. “Mr. Duggen has reported seeing the willow wren, and from my window I have noted the swallows returning from your Africa. The other night I heard the nightingale.”

  At last the term was over. Grandfather was not well enough to come down for Prize Day, but Frieda came. She arrived in a flurry of bright scarves, sweeping skirts, and a hat that had more flowers than Mr. Duggen’s garden. Against the dull gray classrooms and the gray school uniforms, Frieda was as colorful as the showiest African bird. She sat with the parents during assembly and applauded enthusiastically when I received the literature prize, a volume of Byron’s poems.